New laptop

[Yohhan]

It's been a couple years since I purchased my P4 1.6 ghz, so that's the last laptop based processor technology that I'm familiar with. I'm looking at purchasing a new machine, and I'm trying to figure out what the "Pentium M" is. Could anyone explain some of the high level differences between a P4 1.6 ghz and a PM 1.6 ghz machine?

 

[newParadigm]

The CPU Architecture is completely different, they are Pipelined better, and to put it plainly, its a completley DIfferent CPU.

They also consume much less power, and therefore Pentium M/ Centrino Rigs have much longer battery life.

 

[uOpt]

I don't have numbers for the smaller Pentium-Ms, but the 2.0 GHz is about as fast as a 3.2 GHz Pentium-4.

Also, the Pentium-4 is very selective to only run code fast that it "likes" (read: has been optimized for it). With the Prescott it got worse. The Pentium-M is much better, much more even for different programs.

On the heat/battery side the Pentium-M is much better even as a Pentium-4 mobile (Pentium-4M), not to
speak of a desktop P4 which you find in many notebooks, too.

Last but not least you can reasonably hope to put a much better Pentiium-M into a notebookw hich you buy now with a 1.5 GHz CPU. If you get a 2.8 GHz P4 this is not entirely reasitic because the faster P4s produce too much heat.