Pentium M Dothan vs. Core 2 Duo Merom

[asdftt123]

I'm just wondering which is the preferred processor for laptops these days. I realize the Dothan is slightly dated but the 2.26ghz version still goes for $670 on newegg and is more expensive than the 2.33ghz Merom ($648). Could someone elaborate on the differences between these two processors? Also, is there any difference between Merom vs. Conroe? I'm a bit confused when it comes to the hierarchy of these processors.

Also could someone help me define the hierarchy of the following processors?
Northwood, Prescott, Cedar Mill, Smithfield, Presler, Banias, Dothan, Yonah, Merom, Allendale, Conroe, Kentsfield...? Thanks.

On another note, my current laptop runs on a 1.6ghz Pentium M Banias...what kind of performance increase would I expect if I upgrade to a 2ghz+ Merom/Dothan or go the Desktop route (which I'm leaning towards) and get a Q6600?

Thanks!

 

[Ika]

Well, as I recall, Yonah was about 10-15% faster than Dothan across the board, and supposedly Merom is about 10-15% faster than Yonah... so expect a pretty good performance boost. Also, most Merom chips are dual-core, so that's a pretty big improvement.

 

[firewolfsm]

30-50% per core.

160-200% total improvement.

 

[stevty2889]

Pentium-M based chips:
Banias= First Pentium-M, 1mb cache 130nm 400mhz FSB

Dothan = 90nm pentium-m 2mb cache, 400 and 533mhz FSB a little bit faster than Banias, but not much, improved battery life.

Yonah = 65nm pentium M, single and dual core varients, improvements that increased performance over banias/dothan. 533 and 667mhz variants, shared cache on the dual core. Not electircly compatible with banias/dothan motherboards.

Merom/Conroe/Woodcrest = new architecture, mostly based on pentium-m with wider exectution, and many other improvements. 65nm. Dual core with 4mb shared cache. Merom is electricaly compatible with Yonah motherboards.

Allendale = conroe with 2mb of cache, and I belive they lack virtualization as well

Kentsfield = quad core, 2 conroe die on in single package.

Netburst based chips:
Williamette = first pentium 4, 256kb cache, 180nm, slow and hot 400mhz FSB I think they went to 2ghz, or maybe 2.4

Northwood = 130nm pentium 4, 512k cache, other enhancements over williamette, 400, 533, and 800mhz FSB varients 3.06ghz 533, and 800mhz FSB versions had hyperthreading. 1.6ghz up to 3.4ghz varients.

Prescott = 90nm pentium-4. Increased pipeline length to reach higher speeds, but only made it to 3.8ghz. 1mb and 2mb cache varients, but cache was slower than on northwood. 5xx series ran very hot, 6xx got a little better but still hot. Improved hyperthreading, 6xx series got 64bit extensions. Outperformed by slower running northwoods in a lot of applications.

Smithfield = 8xx series, 2 prescott die slapped together, very hot running, 3.2ghz max, extreme edition had hyperthreading

Cedar Mill = 65nm prescott shrink, ran much cooler, overclocked better, but still never released higher that 3.8ghz, not really many made

Presler = 2xcedar mill die slapped together, 9xx series, 4mb cache. 3.73ghz extreme editon had HT. Cooler running that Smithfield, better overclockers, but typicaly only with expensive motherboards, and still slower than Althon X2's

 

[darkfalz]

Main improvent Pentium M/Core to Core 2 was in FPU/SSE performance. Integer performance increase is not that huge in.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Main improvent Pentium M/Core to Core 2 was in FPU/SSE performance. Integer performance increase is not that huge in.

Laptops have slow I/O subsystem so it could have bottlenecked the CPU. There isn't really a benchmark that compares Core Duo and Core 2 Duo side by side with a fast hard drive to see the benefits. Even advantages in FPU/SSE performance is greatly diminished when tested in laptops. Core 2 Duo probably wouldn't have been as impressive if it first came as a laptop CPU. But anyway nothing much can really be done so what's the point of talking about it.

 

[Spikesoldier]

should be like night and day

1700mhz dothan at work

1666mhz merom at home

i can definately tell the difference

 

[darkfalz]

My Celeron M 1.73 performs on par with my 3GHz Northwood in MAME. Nice little chip for MAME, but for 3D games it would be awful - but I have GMA950 in there anyway, so anything above Quake 3 era is a no no.

 

[evolucion8]

The performance improvements in Merom and Yonah over Dothan was mainly FPU performance, Micro Ops Fusion (decrease power comsumption and more performance per watt) and slower cache latencies. When comparing Single Core CPU's at the same clock, the performance gains can be healthy in FPU, but in everything else it's small to justify an upgrade. But If you go to Dual Core, you will get the benefits of Dual Core and the other ones mentioned above. So it's gonna be a nice performance boost.

 

[asdftt123]

Whoa, evolucion, your desktop rig is running on a Pentium M? Very interesting. How would you rate the performance of it? I'm guessing they are pretty easy to overclock since they run cooler than P4's...how would you compare them in respect to a P4, Pentium D, Core, Core 2?

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: asdftt123
Whoa, evolucion, your desktop rig is running on a Pentium M? Very interesting. How would you rate the performance of it? I'm guessing they are pretty easy to overclock since they run cooler than P4's...how would you compare them in respect to a P4, Pentium D, Core, Core 2?

Until recently, I was also running an overclocked pentium-m in a desktop. I had a 1.6ghz Dothan running at 2.4ghz on stock voltage, with a dinky little heatsink. It was faster than my P4 @3.8ghz in Gaming, but lagged behind in video/audio encoding, partly due to hyperthreading. It also ran way way cooler, and of course used way less power. I put it in one of those mATX cubes, it made for a great portable gaming rig. Obviously it would be behind dual cores in programs that are capable of using multi-cores, but for gaming it was quite a bit better than a P4, and only slightly behind an A64 at the same speed.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: asdftt123
Whoa, evolucion, your desktop rig is running on a Pentium M? Very interesting. How would you rate the performance of it? I'm guessing they are pretty easy to overclock since they run cooler than P4's...how would you compare them in respect to a P4, Pentium D, Core, Core 2?

It's much faster than my P4 EE@ 3.4GHz in gaming, general aplication, runs much cooler. My 3DMark05 score increased from 7784 to 10086, the only thing that performs slower is video encoding and some multi tasking stuff, when I do audio encoding, it runs as fast as my P4, but my desktop is almost unusable due to the CPU usage manipulation. I also rode some review and in the gaming scenario when the games are not dual core optimized, it can be sometimes as fast as an Athlon X2 4800, sometimes even faster which is not bad. Overall it was an upgrade where it matters to me, gaming performance.

http://www.pugetsystems.com/max_pc.php

 

[alkemyst]

I'd not shop price too much...if you look at ebay you will see laptops of Pentium III design go for the same price you can buy a modern entry level P4/Celeron M440+ laptop for.

The Banias I don't think was officially named, but named by the masses. Banias was the first P4 at 130nm. However a PIII-M was faster, usually a PIII-M 1.2 would outperform a Banias up to 1.8-2.0GHz. This was Intel's big mistake...simply pushing P4 to the laptop before it was really ready.

Later P4-M chips were much much better and performed like their desktop counterparts. Die size went to .90nm then .65nm.

if you search Pentium 4 M on wiki there are good links.

You should be able to upgrade your 1.6GHz CPU in your laptop to a 2.2GHz for about $50. I prefer a nice desktop with a basic laptop for email/web when travelling. A 1.6 even is enough for that (I use a PIII-M 1.2).

If want to get into modern gaming a desktop is the sure way to stay current. With a laptop you are forced to upgrade the whole thing usually at each video GPU generation.

Don't get caught up on speed rating and celeron vs pentium when comparing different generations.

Also the best bet to buying a laptop is determining purpose. Many buy a laptop too big when they could have gotten a way nicer screen/keyboard/mouse setup for home much cheaper and then be able to cart it around easier in airports.

If you are a gamer, to go laptop requires a lot of cash when the same power in a desktop is a fraction of the cost.

There is an Acer at Circuit City for $350 with a Celeron M440 chip. That would smoke the 1.6 Pentium you have now. At the $650 price point the Vostro series at Dell Small Business are great deals. Right now though laptops deals are rare as demand for back to school outweighs supply and the need to discount.

 

[Ika]

Originally posted by: alkemyst
I'd not shop price too much...if you look at ebay you will see laptops of Pentium III design go for the same price you can buy a modern entry level P4/Celeron M440+ laptop for.

The Banias I don't think was officially named, but named by the masses. Banias was the first P4 at 130nm. However a PIII-M was faster, usually a PIII-M 1.2 would outperform a Banias up to 1.8-2.0GHz. This was Intel's big mistake...simply pushing P4 to the laptop before it was really ready.

Later P4-M chips were much much better and performed like their desktop counterparts. Die size went to .90nm then .65nm.

if you search Pentium 4 M on wiki there are good links.

You should be able to upgrade your 1.6GHz CPU in your laptop to a 2.2GHz for about $50. I prefer a nice desktop with a basic laptop for email/web when travelling. A 1.6 even is enough for that (I use a PIII-M 1.2).

If want to get into modern gaming a desktop is the sure way to stay current. With a laptop you are forced to upgrade the whole thing usually at each video GPU generation.

Don't get caught up on speed rating and celeron vs pentium when comparing different generations.

Also the best bet to buying a laptop is determining purpose. Many buy a laptop too big when they could have gotten a way nicer screen/keyboard/mouse setup for home much cheaper and then be able to cart it around easier in airports.

If you are a gamer, to go laptop requires a lot of cash when the same power in a desktop is a fraction of the cost.

There is an Acer at Circuit City for $350 with a Celeron M440 chip. That would smoke the 1.6 Pentium you have now. At the $650 price point the Vostro series at Dell Small Business are great deals. Right now though laptops deals are rare as demand for back to school outweighs supply and the need to discount.

Pentium M =/= P4 M. They're basically two entirely different chips (and don't confuse them). The Banias was the First Pentium M chip, an architecture designed by Intel's Israel team (the same one that designed the C2D architecture). Banias smoked the Pentium 4 architecture.

 

[alkemyst]

Right. Those original P4's were still inferior to the PIII-S/PIII-M's though.

The P4 mobile market has got to be the most confusing lineup of chips.

 

[Ika]

Originally posted by: alkemyst
Right. Those original P4's were still inferior to the PIII-S/PIII-M's though.

The P4 mobile market has got to be the most confusing lineup of chips.

The P4s were inferior to the PIIIs, but the OP is mostly concerned with the "good" mobile chips - such as Banias, Dothan, Yonah, and Merom. Here's a wiki link to the Pentium M's evolution. It seems like the Pentium M's architecture was derived from the PIII, which is interesting. In any case, the Pentium Ms performed very well.

I have a feeling I'm going nowhere with this. Oh well.

 

[evolucion8]

I used to have a Laptop with a Pentium 3 M at 1.13GHz and was able to outperform those laptops with Pentium 4 running at 1.6GHz so easily, pretty much at par with the Williamette P4 at 2.0GHz until Northwood arrived.

 

[alkemyst]

I see now. For laptops there was P4, P4-M and Pentium M.

I always thought the Banias was the P4-M. So until the Pentium M came to be it was P4 < PIII < P4-M < PIII-M.

Thanks.

 

[IntelUser2000]

The performance improvements in Merom and Yonah over Dothan was mainly FPU performance, Micro Ops Fusion (decrease power comsumption and more performance per watt) and slower cache latencies. When comparing Single Core CPU's at the same clock, the performance gains can be healthy in FPU, but in everything else it's small to justify an upgrade. But If you go to Dual Core, you will get the benefits of Dual Core and the other ones mentioned above. So it's gonna be a nice performance boost.

Micro Ops Fusion came with Banias, it wasn't a new thing in Yonah. Yonah added ability to decode SSE instructions in all 3 decoders, and slight FPU enhancements, and added SSE3. If you looked at the benchmarks of Yonah and Dothan in gaming in other sites, the increase was quite decent. Merom vs. Yonah was around 15-20% in non-FP apps actually.

Back when Pentium 4 was used for mobiles, there were 3 versions:
Pentium 4-M(True mobile version of Pentium 4): highest was 35W
Pentium 4 Mobile(Desktop version with slightly lower TDP and speedstep): highest was 89W
Pentium 4(Desktop chip squeezed into laptop): I don't need to go into detail with this...

Pentium 4 M versions NEVER came in Willamette core, it started from Northwood. From what I remember, the 1.7GHz Pentium 4-M would have been equal to a 1.2GHz Pentium III-M.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: IntelUser2000

The performance improvements in Merom and Yonah over Dothan was mainly FPU performance, Micro Ops Fusion (decrease power comsumption and more performance per watt) and slower cache latencies. When comparing Single Core CPU's at the same clock, the performance gains can be healthy in FPU, but in everything else it's small to justify an upgrade. But If you go to Dual Core, you will get the benefits of Dual Core and the other ones mentioned above. So it's gonna be a nice performance boost.

Micro Ops Fusion came with Banias, it wasn't a new thing in Yonah. Yonah added ability to decode SSE instructions in all 3 decoders, and slight FPU enhancements, and added SSE3. If you looked at the benchmarks of Yonah and Dothan in gaming in other sites, the increase was quite decent. Merom vs. Yonah was around 15-20% in non-FP apps actually.

Back when Pentium 4 was used for mobiles, there were 3 versions:
Pentium 4-M(True mobile version of Pentium 4): highest was 35W
Pentium 4 Mobile(Desktop version with slightly lower TDP and speedstep): highest was 89W
Pentium 4(Desktop chip squeezed into laptop): I don't need to go into detail with this...

Pentium 4 M versions NEVER came in Willamette core, it started from Northwood. From what I remember, the 1.7GHz Pentium 4-M would have been equal to a 1.2GHz Pentium III-M.

Sorry, my bad, it had also Micro Ops fusion, but it can do more, it's now able to Fuse some types of SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instructions (If not all, not sure about this), something that Dothan wasn't able to do before. In gaming, actually the Dothan traded blows with the Yonah in many scenarios due to it's low latency L2 cache, but in average the Yonah won by a very slight margin, even though Yonah has a higher L2 cache latency. In non FP apps, the increase was minimal, but in FP apps the increase was healthy like Media Encoding, 3D Professional Rendering, Multi Tasking and in many benchmarks but not enough to outperform the Athlon X2 at the same clockspeed.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=2627&p=1

Although we didn't consider it as such here today , Yonah will be quite impressive on notebooks. The thought of having such a cool running dual core processor in a notebook is honestly amazing, and the performance difference (especially for multitaskers) over what we have today will be significant. The other thing to keep in mind is that when you go from a single core to a dual core Pentium M notebook, you won't be giving up anything at all. On the desktop side, you normally give up clock speed for dual core support, but Yonah will be running at very similar frequencies to what Dothan is running at today. In other words, you won't be giving up single threaded performance in favor of multi-threaded performance - you'll get the whole package.

As a desktop contender, Yonah is a bit of a mixed bag. While its performance in content creation applications has definitely improved over the single core Dothan, it still falls behind the Athlon 64 X2 in a handful of areas. Intel still needs to improve their video encoding and gaming performance, but it looks like we may have to wait for Conroe and Merom for that.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...howdoc.aspx?i=2648&p=1

Our initial analysis still holds true, that for a notebook processor, the Core Duo will be nothing short of amazing for professionals. Looking at the performance improvements offered everywhere from media encoding to 3D rendering, you're going to be able to do a lot more on your notebook than you originally thought possible (without resorting to a 12-pound desktop replacement). In the past, power users on the go had to sacrifice mobility for CPU power, but with the Core Duo, that is no longer the case. You will still most likely have to resort to something larger if you need better GPU performance, but at least your CPU needs will be covered. The one thing that Intel's Core Duo seems to be able to do very well is to truly bridge the gap between mobile and desktop performance, at least in thin and light packages.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: evolucion8
Although we didn't consider it as such here today , Yonah will be quite impressive on notebooks.

Our initial analysis still holds true, that for a notebook processor, the Core Duo will be nothing short of amazing for professionals.

Umm, you're a bit behind, man. Yonah has already "come and gone" in laptops. They're already selling laptops with Merom's in them, and Merom's are Core [b.

 

[evolucion8]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: evolucion8
Although we didn't consider it as such here today , Yonah will be quite impressive on notebooks.

Our initial analysis still holds true, that for a notebook processor, the Core Duo will be nothing short of amazing for professionals.

Umm, you're a bit behind, man. Yonah has already "come and gone" in laptops. They're already selling laptops with Merom's in them, and Merom's http://2</"> Duo's.

HellO?? If you ever bothered to read the topic you should know that the original topic creator just wanted to know the difference between those CPU's cause she got a laptop, and that was a response to IntelUser2000, since when we cannot talk about history in these forums??