Is Intel Centrino and Intel Mobile Pentium 4 the same thing?

[SouljaAC]

I always hear both Centrino and Mobile Pentium 4.

What is the difference - if any?

 

[eriqesque]

Centrino is a marketing name for the whole package. It is not a Processor
The Centrino notebook consists of 3 things.
1. Pentium M Processor
2. 855 chipset
3. Intel Wireless solution
The Mobile pentium 4 has nothing to do with a centrino notebook and vice versa
it's an entirely different processor AKA the Pentium 4 M

Differences are the Pentium M has lower clock speeds but generally perform at a higher level
(eg. a 1.6 Pentium M performs the same as a 2.2 or 2.4 can't remember, Pentium 4 M)
Also has enhanced Speedstep technology
Runs cooler
gives much better battery life than other mobile proc. do.

 

[kuljc]

SO MUCH MORE COOLER!!!!!!!! OMG!

 

[benz]

somebody needs to make the answer to this question a damn sticky or something...im sick these new threads asking about it!

 

[Frightcrawler]

Yeah, they are pretty annoying. This is just a case of "centrino-is-not-a-processor" with some pentium 4 tossed in.
Of course, eriqesque already explained the basics. 🙂

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: benz
somebody needs to make the answer to this question a damn sticky or something...im sick these new threads asking about it!

Wow, been around that long already?😉

 

[benz]

heh, yeah im about as n00b as they get, but just to this board. It seems every other board is plagued with the same kind of questions....people just need to do more research (aka lurking) before they post.

 

[trungthiendo]

pentium M is generally multiplied by 1.5 is usually what you get in most app to a p4

ex...1.4 is gernally 2.2 equivalent...

they run cooler, they use less power, and have the 1mb l2 cache

 

[Connoisseur]

Pentium M is a HIGHLY modified Pentium 3 core... (in that I mean it was completely stripped down given all the latest SSE2 instructions, and given a larger cache). If you remember when the first P4's came out the P3 trounced it in just about any app. Of course the P3 had a lot of difficulty scaling in frequency so the P4 eventually won out. Now it's made a comeback and the Pentium M forms the foundation of every Centrino system. As trungthiendo said, they perform much better than P4's (clock for clock) and are cooler.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: Connoisseur
Pentium M is a HIGHLY modified Pentium 3 core... (in that I mean it was completely stripped down given all the latest SSE2 instructions, and given a larger cache). If you remember when the first P4's came out the P3 trounced it in just about any app. Of course the P3 had a lot of difficulty scaling in frequency so the P4 eventually won out. Now it's made a comeback and the Pentium M forms the foundation of every Centrino system. As trungthiendo said, they perform much better than P4's (clock for clock) and are cooler.

Actually--they only perform on par or better in specific apps- and that's die to the large cache that comes with the Pentium M.

If you throw a very numeric app at the P4 and PM, the P4 will win the contest every time. Once you have a very numeric app running, there is nothing the large cache on the Pentium M can do to even the contest.

So the P4 *(when compared against a relative Pentium M) will always win in Audio encoding, video editing, and encryption just to name a few.

And yes, I've worked with multiples of each processor in each of those environments, specifically with encryption.

But for the average user, the Pentium M will seem plenty fast.

 

[Connoisseur]

lol that's why I said "clock for clock" better performance. You are correct in that the higher frequency of the P4 will beat out the PM in numeric apps. Personally I don't do much encoding myself. I'm just mostly gaming, matlab, and c++ on my lappie. But I'm not a big Pentium fan. I'm behind Athlon for now 😉.