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is 1.3ghz Pentium M "slow"?

F

fuzzzzydonut

Junior Member
I know centrino's are great and all, but i'm thinking of picking up a used IBM R40 and i was wondering if 1.3ghz pentium M is slow. Frankily speed is not a huge concern for me, I just want something that gets the job done. However, I will be using it everyday for all sorts of usual apps (email, word, maybe a bit of photoshop, basically everything except 3d gaming). Just want your thoughts on this guys.

Thank you.
 
not at all. except for photoshopping it's PLENTY fast for your purposes. If you want comparisons I'd say that 1.3p M performs as well as a 1.8-2ghz P4. For photoshop, the amount of ram would matter a lot more than the PM. If you only have 256 in that system, that's stretching it. Get at least 512mb and you should be smooth sailing for all your purposes.
 
Yeah a 1.3 M isn't slow at all... I think when benchmarked they were equivalent to atleast a 1.7ghz desktop P4... I remember the 1.6 was about equal to a 2.4ghz P4. Anyway, like the guys said up your ram to atleast 512mb... though adding a 512mb stick for a total of 768mb would be a better idea IMHO. Ram is cheep... and it'll give you a good boost! The only thing slowing you down then would probably be your HDD. I'm not sure what speed you'd be getting but I'd be willing to bet it would be something like a 4200rpm drive...
 
I agree with everyone here. That 1.3GHz Pentium M is the last thing I would worry about. If you have only 256MB of RAM and a 4200rpm hard drive like most laptops, getting more memory and/or getting to a 7200rpm hard drive will make more difference than getting a faster processor.
 
Hell I have a PIII 850m and it runs great. I do have 384mb of ram and it is fine to use.

Koing
 
No way in hell, my 1.3ghz pentium M was able to give me great speeds with the mobility 9600 gpu. Because the pentium M is stuck with 400mhz fsb, so increasing clock rate by multiplier is not as effective as increasing by fsb. Other than fsb, the only other big difference is the cache (banias vs dothan). I recall that my bros laptop with his pentium M @ 600mhz got 5800 in 3dmark2k1. With the pentium M @ 1700mhz, it only got 1400 more 3dmarks.
 
Originally posted by: Wuzup101
Yeah a 1.3 M isn't slow at all... I think when benchmarked they were equivalent to atleast a 1.7ghz desktop P4... I remember the 1.6 was about equal to a 2.4ghz P4. Anyway, like the guys said up your ram to atleast 512mb... though adding a 512mb stick for a total of 768mb would be a better idea IMHO. Ram is cheep... and it'll give you a good boost! The only thing slowing you down then would probably be your HDD. I'm not sure what speed you'd be getting but I'd be willing to bet it would be something like a 4200rpm drive...
Click to expand...

1.7GHz P4, as in Willamette or Northwood?
 
The HD will likely be a performance bottleneck before a PM-1.3, though obviously you'll want enough RAM for your purposes, too (more multitasking -> more RAM). If my P3-700 with PC100 is fine for office work, a PM-1.3GHz with PC2100 should be smooth. A 20GB 4200rpm laptop HD will probably be a noticable drag compared to an average 40+GB 7200rpm desktop HD, but it may not bother you. If that R40 feels slow, I'd look to upgrade RAM from 256MB to 512MB first, then maybe to upgrade to a 5400rpm HD (SilentPCReview seems to like the new Samsung for speed and low noise).
 
@ Pollock - I believe it was a Northwood but I'm not too sure. I'm fairly certain it was around that speed... might have been a 1.8 I'm not too sure. I do know that the P-M tested was the first rev... not a dothan.

Also, someone above mentioned a PIII which shouldn't be compared to a P-M as the P-M is faster clock for clock. Even the faster PIIIs are nice to work with though on a lappy unless you're doing really in depth encoding or something of that order. Also someone said something about a 600mhz P-M. I wasn't aware that the P-M was ever avaliable in a 600mhz flavor... possibly you mean PIII? I think even the ultra low voltage P-M processors were 900 and 1000mhz at least.

Anyway, someone above had a great point. A 7200rpm drive and 512mb or more of ram will make that system very snappy. Those are what I would be worried about. The faster drive (assuming you have a 4200rpm drive) will make the most difference in almost all real world applications.
 
A faster hard drive (like the Hitachi Travelstar 7K60) is definately under consideration. However, I bought my notebook for one of the primary reasons: Battery Life. I'm afraid a 7200rpm hd will suck the daylights out my battery life.
What do you guys think of the Hitachi Travelstar 7k60? Anyone have one?
 
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