CPU Comparison

[Yves M.]

Trying to decide on a new notebook for work and was wondering if anyone has
a good comparisonsite for Intel CPUS, specifically PIII 1.2Ghz vs. Pentium M
1.5 - 1.8Ghz range vs. P4 mobile around the 3Ghz range. No one compares
them to older CPUs like the PIII that I currently have.

Just trying to figure out if it's worth it. Of course the whole system
matters, but I am just wondering from a pure CPU performance what the
difference in speed is. Thanks in advance!

Rgds,
Yves

 

[keith]

Trying to decide on a new notebook for work and was wondering if anyone has
a good comparisonsite for Intel CPUS, specifically PIII 1.2Ghz vs. Pentium M
1.5 - 1.8Ghz range vs. P4 mobile around the 3Ghz range. No one compares
them to older CPUs like the PIII that I currently have.

Pentium-M is essentially a PIII bred for laptops. P4 is a waste of
engineering.

Just trying to figure out if it's worth it. Of course the whole system
matters, but I am just wondering from a pure CPU performance what the
difference in speed is. Thanks in advance!

I am not an Intel dweeb, by any means, but I don't think I'd buy a laptop
that wasn't a Pentium-M today. I wouldn't pay a dime for the "Centrino"
name, but wouldn't settle for less than a Pentium-M.

 

[Oxford Systems]

Pentium-M is essentially a PIII bred for laptops. P4 is a waste of
engineering.

Yeah, but the P4 Prescott in cold climates is really a dual purpose device.
It's a frickin space heater with computational powerZ!

 

[George Macdonald]

Trying to decide on a new notebook for work and was wondering if anyone has
a good comparisonsite for Intel CPUS, specifically PIII 1.2Ghz vs. Pentium M
1.5 - 1.8Ghz range vs. P4 mobile around the 3Ghz range. No one compares
them to older CPUs like the PIII that I currently have.

Different P4s have been used in notebooks: desktop P4s, Mobile P4s and
P4-Ms... with varying degress of power management, from near none in the
1st down to tolerable in the last. The 1st would only be applicable to a
system used as a replacement desktop type notebook with no regard to
battery life. AFAIK none of those P4s get close to a P-M on battery life
so the answer for you is it depends somewhat on your targeted usage. It
would also appear that P4-based notebooks are disappearing from product
lines.

Just trying to figure out if it's worth it. Of course the whole system
matters, but I am just wondering from a pure CPU performance what the
difference in speed is. Thanks in advance!

With the original Pentium-Ms a 1.5GHz was usually considered approximately
equal to a P4 2.4GHz; with the increase in P-M L2 cache and memory speed
since then and the P4 not changing much if at all, it could be closer to a
P-M 1.5GHZ == P4 2.6GHz but I don't have accurate data on that.

Whether it's worth it to upgrade from a PIII 1.2GHz, or whether to wait for
a further speed bump, depends on what you do with it and what your goals
are: how much is startup time bothering you and how and how does general
performance look compared to recent desktops? Recent upgrades we've made
from PIII 800MHz to P-M 1.5GHz have made a huge difference so you're going
to see a significant improvement. The performance/price sweet spot just
now seems to be a 1.7GHz P-M; when looking at prices be careful about
warranty terms (1year vs. 3 year) and note that there are still P-Ms in the
channel with the older CPU with 1MB of L2 cache.

 

[Tony Hill]

Trying to decide on a new notebook for work and was wondering if anyone has
a good comparisonsite for Intel CPUS, specifically PIII 1.2Ghz vs. Pentium M
1.5 - 1.8Ghz range vs. P4 mobile around the 3Ghz range. No one compares
them to older CPUs like the PIII that I currently have.

Just trying to figure out if it's worth it. Of course the whole system
matters, but I am just wondering from a pure CPU performance what the
difference in speed is. Thanks in advance!

Unfortunately it's rather rare that notebook processor get compared
since it's quite a bit more difficult to fairly compare chips when
basically every component is changes between the two notebooks. That
being said, you can find a few comparisons here and there. First off
there is SPEC CPU2000. You can find the CINT scores here:

http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/cint2000.html

And the CFP scores here:

http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/cfp2000.html


Yes, there are a LOT of processors here, and VERY few of them are
Pentium-M scores (only two that I see, a Dell Precision Mobile
Workstation with a 2.0GHz "Dothan" Pentium-M and an HP Blade server
with a 1.0GHz "Banias" Pentium-M).

It works out that, clock for clock, the Pentium-M is about 20-30%
faster than the PIII for integer stuff and about 40-50% faster for
floating point stuff.

The P4 will perform similarly to the Pentium-M for most applications,
though it does so with MUCH higher power consumption. I really can't
see any good reason to go for a Pentium-4 processor for a notebook
unless you like brag about high GHz numbers. Here's a fairly recent
comparison of these two chips:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2129

Note that the P4, if used in a laptop, would be somewhat slower than
what is tested in the above comparison since laptops would only have
half as much memory bandwidth as the desktop P4 system used.

 

[Yves M.]

Thank you so much for the feedback... I'm going bananas with my current PIII
1.2Ghz in my Thinkpad T23...it's gotten so slow (or the new software so
bloated?). Sounds like the Pentium M is the way to go (I've been so long in
the desktop AMD area that I had no idea how the P4 lines and P M lines
compared).

Looking at T42's with a 1.8Ghz Pentium M 745 right now... this time it
needs a faster HD too... Thanks!

Yves

 

[George Macdonald]

Thank you so much for the feedback... I'm going bananas with my current PIII
1.2Ghz in my Thinkpad T23...it's gotten so slow (or the new software so
bloated?). Sounds like the Pentium M is the way to go (I've been so long in
the desktop AMD area that I had no idea how the P4 lines and P M lines
compared).

Are you sure you don't have a trojan or virus?... and have you checked for
malware with Ad-Aware and Sybot S&D etc.?

Looking at T42's with a 1.8Ghz Pentium M 745 right now... this time it
needs a faster HD too... Thanks!

I'm afraid Notebook HDs are still dog slow compared with desktops.

 

[RusH]

I'm afraid Notebook HDs are still dog slow compared with desktops.

there are 7200 2.5' hdd nowadays

Pozdrawiam.

 

[George Macdonald]

there are 7200 2.5' hdd nowadays

Yeah at the very top end and remembering that RPMs is not everything -
5400rpm notebook drives were much slower than 5400rpm desktop models.

 

[RusH]

Yeah at the very top end and remembering that RPMs is not
everything - 5400rpm notebook drives were much slower than 5400rpm
desktop models.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/hitachi-25-7200.html


Pozdrawiam.

 

[Yves M.]

Are you sure you don't have a trojan or virus?... and have you checked for
malware with Ad-Aware and Sybot S&D etc.?


I'm afraid Notebook HDs are still dog slow compared with desktops.

I regularly check for this type of stuff... it's a work machine so I keep it
very clean. I really noticed when we moved from Office 2000 to Office 2003.
It takes forever to open Word, Excel or Outlook 2003. Once in it, it's
fast, but the initial load... ARGH.

I think a lot of it also has to do with the HD (60GB 5400RPM IBM/Hitachi)
but the CPU pegs at 100% very frequently, especialy during loading.

I think I have decided on a T42 with the new 60GB 7200 RPM HD. However, I
will wait a couple of months until the T43 is released as I expect the
prices to drop a bit more if I can make it that long...

Rgds,
Yves

PS: George - were you on the AltCPU list, formerly the Cyrix list? Your
name sounds familiar... maybe I just have seen your posts online...

 

[RusH]

I really noticed when we moved from Office
2000 to Office 2003. It takes forever to open Word, Excel or
Outlook 2003. Once in it, it's fast, but the initial load...
ARGH.

so try openoffice.org


Pozdrawiam.

 

[George Macdonald]

I regularly check for this type of stuff... it's a work machine so I keep it
very clean. I really noticed when we moved from Office 2000 to Office 2003.
It takes forever to open Word, Excel or Outlook 2003. Once in it, it's
fast, but the initial load... ARGH.

I think a lot of it also has to do with the HD (60GB 5400RPM IBM/Hitachi)
but the CPU pegs at 100% very frequently, especialy during loading.

You might want to check your Startup and (Registry)Run key (MSCONFIG if
your OS has it) for things cluttering the startup sequence... and then run
Taskinfo, http://www.iarsn.com/downloads to check for nuisances or fluff.
It's kinda annoying the number of software packages now which want their
place in the startup/taskbar without explaining why - often they just want
to check for updates.

I think I have decided on a T42 with the new 60GB 7200 RPM HD. However, I
will wait a couple of months until the T43 is released as I expect the
prices to drop a bit more if I can make it that long...

The T42s are nice - I got one a few weeks ago, a 2378FTU from CDW. It was
a rush order (in our office in <24hrs), as so often happens, so I might
look more closely for a leisurely purchase: e.g. 3 year warranty vs. 1 year
and a faster HDD, as well as comparison shop at www.newegg.com and IBM's
site for deals, but it's a very nice system... I'll probably add some
memory from Crucial to get to 512MB. The Thinkpads just seem to get better
and better with each new generation... which is why we're all wondering how
the Lenovo thing is going to pan out.

Rgds,
Yves

PS: George - were you on the AltCPU list, formerly the Cyrix list? Your
name sounds familiar... maybe I just have seen your posts online...

I think I may have posted a couple of times at AltCPU and did a fair amount
at one of Compuserve's PC hardware forums - I was strongly interested in
Cyrix CPUs back then.