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Pentium-M Notebook Put To The Test
BedivereW writes "Tom's Hardware has an interesting review of the first Intel Pentium-M (codenamed Banias) notebook. There are a few pieces of information missing, like heat production, but on the whole it is a good review. Intel appears to be moving in the correct direction." I'm looking forward to seeing more info on this one - seems to be the x86 response to the PowerBook series.
the real question is, what's on second?
seems to be the x86 response to the PowerBook series
And with a name like Centrino, sounds like a response to the apple Centris series too.
But that was a dumb name that apple didn't keep around for long. I suspect within 6 months we'll see it renamed, and my dreams of a Quadra resurrection will be fulfilled
muahahaha!
It is weird to me that Intel plans to have an 802.11a/b solution in these notebooks as a standard. It seems that going with 802.11g would be a better choice considering it works with B and is fast as A but has better range (some speculation here about speed etc since it is not as well tested).
These notebooks arent planned to come out for a while, and considering there are 802.11g-draft products already available for purchase it seems that they would also go this route.
Anybody know why they may not be considering this? Possibly it is in the works, who knows.
It reminds me of the Pentium MMX that appeared back in the mid 1990's. Radio shack was selling the Compaq's that used these processors. Remember that parrot program that we alway demonstrated? The newer version required MMX.
Beep. Boop. Beep. You have questions. I have answers and your home address.
IMHO, Intel's Pentium- M is not going to make any earthbreaking change in environment. But yes, if the microprocessor offers more features and is efficient than Apple's Powerbook series, it may get marketshare.
This sounds a little odd. Combining cpu and lan and some other things all on the one chip. It's suspiciously like lock-in
This means you don't get a chance to upgrade without completely changing your system. ie you are locked-in to one solution, the one commercial vendors want.
Now technically it's possible to add for example 802.11g to this, but why would any manufacturer bother when there is already 802.11b, and likely a "pentium-Mg" or somesuch, which will have it.
You will be forced to upgrade to an entirely new machine to get just one feature you need.
Perhaps they are following Apple's lead more than it seams there.
Not only the lock-in effect, but with all these features in one chip means you can't for example repair your 802.11b if it goes down. You'll need to replace a whole new processor
I would have expected the x86 response to the PowerBook series to be something more along the lines of "......um, we will...ah...ummm...we have this new....ummmm.....what do we have, now? .....?".
After all, PB's are all about form and function, and since Intel doesn't make a laptop, all the function in the world won't help if the form sucks.
Or was the PB bit just an attempt to start another war? Afterall, why compare a processor to a complete product...guess I don't get it.
Heat production is the same as the power used by the chip. 99% of the watts ultimately transform into heat.
The amusing part of this product is how sad the Pentium IV looks. Except on the Bapco benchmarks of course!
Hey, don't give anyone ideas. Next thing you know, Microsoft will ship out 4 licenses for WindowsXP Home edition to the
Pentium-I ...
Pentium-II
Pentium-III
Pentium-IV
I wasn't expecting Pentium-M before a thousand years.
It seems as though, with each Intel announcement, that AMD is not quite there as much as it used to be. Although notebooks have never been AMD's strong point because of greater heat production.
So you must be forgetting that time that CmdrTaco claimed that he tried installing Windows XP no less than 13 times, and he just "couldn't figure it out."
Maybe the Slashdot janitors should stick to Apples --- one mouse button.
...considering that the PowerBook series was launched in 1991....
Its always good to have peripherals separate from chip. Another danger is that intel can have a set of proprietry registers and pipelines which are not disclosed however the WLAN card from intel will be able to use it to give better performance!. Not really good i think. Its okay to have own WLAN cards but the way intel is going about is not really ethical
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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They'll change to NVidia's caming convention from now on an call the cheap version of the M a Pentium M MX?
Ok, you lend me the cash, and I'll go buy a 17" PowerBook right now.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
There's shit I cant figure out in XP. I have like a bajillion pr0n pictures/movies in one folder -- C:\Program Files\Agent -- and when I open the folder, explorer like pins the cpu at 99.99999%. Having that folder open (even minimized) means explorer is at about 25% cpu on average. (1.4 GHz Athlon XP by the way)
Then, every once in a while, explorer throws a C++ Runtime error, and the shell goes presto-changeo
I have no idea what is going on with either of these. I wonder if I could fix the first one somehow in System Policy (or registy), but who knows where to look. And the second one is anybody's guess.
XP sucks, 2000 is still their best product.
Wow, Intel actually made a CPU that runs at a slower clock speed that keeps up just fine with one that is running 600 MHz faster. Tom does mention that this will cause it's marketing folks a bit of backpedaling, but he kinda just glosses over it at that.
Seems to me that the Pentium-M's approach is a bit like the AMD's and the G4's - Do more each clock cycle. As a Mac convert, it warms my heart to hear that Intel is admitting that this approach DOES in fact work.
Let's kill off that MHz myth once and for all shall we?
DaveC
There are no stupid questions...just stupid people.
I can't wait for fuel cells to deliver and amps vs. mips becomes less of an issue.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I have inside news about the notebook's heat production. With this new M chip the notebook will now fry an egg nicely in less than half the time of our old notebooks.
I wanted to know how this Pentium-M core does compared to the desktop version of P4.
Pentium-M seems to be really efficient! I wanted some of the performance improvements of this new core on the desktop Pentiums as well...
What do you guys think?
Holy guacamole, 'power consumption of less than 1W'? Can this really be true? Maybe the marketing department is taking account of the hours during the day when the notebook is in sleep mode or switched off...
Still, it would be nice to have an Intel chip with low power consumption. Is anyone making desktop systems or motherboards with the mobile chipset?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Just to note too, for the thickos who'll often come back with the bizarrest retorts to "Mhz Myth" statements.
The Mhz Myth is the myth that Mhz is the ultimate and undeniable measure of a computers speed, and that it is comparable not just across different machines, but different architectures. It's what drives people to see a machine at 1.2Ghz and see it as being exactly 20% faster than a 1Ghz machine
It doesn't mean Mhz is completely useless, just limited. All else being identical, a higher Mhz machine will be faster than a lower Mhz machine - and even then not in direct proportion as many advantages involve diminishing returns. However, all else is never identical unless you're talking about Mhz differences in the same model by the same manufacturer using the same components. There is architecture, cache, ram, bridges, software, drives, screen, OS & GUI design and a dozen other parts to what makes a computer useful.
I think it's doing that because it is trying to generate previews of all those pictures.
Open the folder and from the View menu Select List
That might fix it.
Everyone always looks at the selling price, not the total price of the unit over it's lifetime. The only way to beat apple in total costs is to buy a laptop without windows and install LINUX on it. And then you are limited to the number of 17" laptops to stick LINUX on (um 1)
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Originally, the 802.11a standard, notice it's before b, was supposed to be realized at the same time as b, but feel way behind in schedule. Naturally they want to push their technology.
The CPU looks more like an updated PIII (but with a decent frontside bus and slightly higher clock speed). The decision to go 802.11/b+a is also wrong in my opinion, and 802.11/g+a is the only decent way at this moment! The review was also very poor regarding power consumption and heat generation.
First give me the money you would use to pay for XP, and office. Now give me the service and support costs for the lifetime of your laptop. Now the software that comes free on a mac and you have to pay for on a PC (iLife, X windowing system, a decent terminal with easy portability of UNIX aps etc.). Productivity time losses when fighting with windows to do what you want. Then add in the cost of the hardware of your cheaper laptop.
This argument is akin to saying it's cheaper to buy a $40,000 Jaguar than a $20,000 Chevy because if you tried to custom-add the Jaguar's all-wheel-drive system to the Chevy, it would cost you a fortune. Well, sure it would, but that doesn't mean buying the Jag is cheaper - or smarter - for those of us who don't need all-wheel-drive.
Now replace the phrase all-wheel-drive with "iLife, X windowing system, a decent terminal with easy portability of UNIX aps etc." from your post, and you'll begin to connect the dots.
What's your damage, Heather?
Centrino = Pentium M + Intel 855 chipset + Calexico 802.11a/b However, each of the above three is a separate component. In theory a manufacturer could choose not to package the three together. However, to achieve the Centrino specification, they would have to conform to the above standard. Hope that this makes it clear.
all codenames are in hebrew and named after places in israel both "banias" and "dothan" are rivers in israel and "odem" the chipset is a forest I believe.
Both centerino and MMX were developed in Israel Dev Center (IDC)
I fail to understand how because Intel has a couple of products that are more IPC heavy than Clock speed heavy that makes 'further proof' that there is a Megahertz myth?. Megahertz *alone* doesn't make a processor faster, but sometimes Megahertz IS the only way to speed up certain types of tasks.
:-)
:-).
Intel engineered the P4 for overall performance. It's clearly spanking Athlon now, and it may be the chip that kills AMD in the end (what would happen if AMD had another round of 4-6 quarterly losses?), it would be very ironic if Megahertz is what killed them literally
For notebook performance however, it seems that higher IPC = less overall power consumption (although P-M has several other advantages over P4-M besides IPC tweaks), so Intel is creating a chip catered to that market.
I'm really suprised to see the # of Slashdot readers here that can't seem to grasp that performance is IPC x Megahertz. They just shout "holy cow, Megahertz Myth!!!", well, let's take the reverse approach. I'll hold an Itanium 1 and a P4 in each hand, and yell "IPC Myth!!!", why?, because the Itanium 1 was crushed in Integer applications by the P4, so it *must* be the megahertz that won. Don't you see the ridiculousness of this argument?.
Let's just give Intel kudos on designing an advanced low power x86 core, that will hopefully serve as a wakeup call for the other vendors (ex Apple, Transmeta, etc) that it's time they update their designs significantly
Long live the Banias!
Ah, I should have become a marketing guy...
Now replace the phrase all-wheel-drive with "iLife, X windowing system, a decent terminal with easy portability of UNIX aps etc." from your post, and you'll begin to connect the dots.
;)
I dunno. this is a mac user we're talking about... might decide to connect them in a manner that is harmonious with their feng-shui and atlantean crystals.
and in the words of the immortal Human Torch... "FLAME ON!"
If someone came out with a decently specced Intel laptop that looked like a Ti-Book, I would go out and buy it the very first day. A friend of mine who is in the market for a laptop spend ten minutes walking though CompUSA's PC notebook section, and said "Why do they all have to be so ugly?"
Appearance does matter.
Ñ'
The cpu isn't really a new design. There is some evidence this is the evolution of the PIII, at least the benchmark numbers support this theory perfectly well. The weakest point of the PIII was its limited front side bus bandwidth, so the Pentium-M gets a new bus interface (looks similar to the bus interface of the P4). In addition, the Pentium-M also has the SSE2 instructions, and some power saving features were added.
mczak
The PIIIs throw off less heat and use far less power than the P4 - and in spite of this the PIIIs are roughly 30% faster than the P4 when benchmarked at the same clock speed.
Expect the PIIIs to make a comeback in desktop PCs - the P4s are just too bloody noisy as result of the huge honking fans you have to use.
Sun uses only PIIIs in their x86 server product line for these reasons.
it's 1.2'' thick.
... for roughly $2000 more.
You could get a 17'' screen and a superdrive
Or, you could get a power book with the same 15.2'' screen that it has and the same features.... for roughly $1000 more.
Which one gives better bang for your buck?
Transmeta predicted that power consumption would be more important than speed years ago.
Are they competitive with this Pentium 3M chip?
"The 855PM (Odem) is meant to be the link to a dedicated GPU via an AGP 4x port, while 855GM (Montata-GM) comes with Intel's own integrated 3D-decellerator."
Did Tom's Hardware slip up and accidentally let their opinion of the 855GM's graphics out, or did they intentionally say this?
I'm thinking they slippped up in letting their opinion out, since it's accelerator/decelerator. (One L, not two.)
Either way, I'm not surprised, as Intel's integrated graphics solutions always have (and probably always will) suck.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Absolutely, though it's not all "appearance" alone. It's the whole design thing -- and design is more than just looks, it's a complicated set of stuff. My little sister and my dad both have tiBooks, and they're just a pleasure to use. It's a lot of little stuff.
The "extra" computer I bought last year was a flat panel 17" iMac... and it's displaced everything else, partly because the footprint's small enough (and the wonky look of it's appealing enough) to leave on a narrow kitchen counter. The kids play on it there, it makes a great little "look it up" machine for the Web... just kind of fits our lives. And I think they look kind of goofy, really.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
170 minutes for DVD playback. Not enough to watch LOTR:FOTR
Apple just introduced 802.11g, bluetooth and Firewire 800 in one stroke, but Intel and the rest of Wintel box makers are still pushing the awkward and more expensive b & a combination. Let's face it, even the name is confusing - version a is a few years older than version b - wtf.
Similarly, when Apple dropped the floppy drive and added USB and Firewire 4 or 5 years ago, people were laughing at them. Now even Dell are moving away from the floppy.
As another example, USB is a nice and simple low bandwidth technology for connecting mice and printers, and Firewire is ideal for high bandwidth. But oh no, things have to be more complicated, so Intel must chip in and muddle the water with the theoretically faster but practically slower 480 Mbps USB2 than Firewire 400. Now Apple has Firewire 800 and potentially 1600 and 3200 soon, are we going to see USB3 and USB4?
so clearly it's an Apple copy. Everything's an Apple copy, even the stuff that came before Apple put one out. Apple invented everything. PC laptops were trying to grow thicker and thicker and consume more wattage, and Apple came along and said, hey guys, why not make laptops smaller? Maybe even more power efficient?
Gosh, those Apple guys sure are clever.
His point was that it's stupid and broken, not that there may be a workaround.
But Intel is paying them to use their patents as well as being a part owner!
I just want to see how it stack up versus Astro with 802.11g LAN from Broadcom...
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
>> I have like a bajillion pr0n pictures/movies in one folder -- C:\Program Files\Agent -- and when I open the folder, explorer like pins the cpu at 99.99999%. Having that folder open (even minimized) means explorer is at about 25% cpu on average. (1.4 GHz Athlon XP by the way)
That's why iPhoto is so good - its a photo database that allows you to resize hundreds and thousands of pictures in real-time even on my 700 MHz G3 iMac, while XP just gives you the "My Pictures" folder.
how mac-centric...
this chipset has little to do with apple what-so-ever.
this chipset (was code named banias before) is a response to the market share that intel lost to transmeta. they noticed that not everyone is interested in raw power and that batterylife and portability is sometimes the most important factor.
But...if apple users want to equate less power with cutting edge, they can go back to their powerbooks that have the latest 4200rpm hard drives (cause apple laptops are sooo energy efficient). That said, wouldnt mind having a 17" g4 (swap the HD with an IBM/Hitachi 5400 or 720--when those hit the market)!
my blue hammer is better than your red hammer...bah its just a tool!
To quote Mr. Ives...
"Our preocupation developing these products, wasn't with the visual language, although we care massively about appearence, no, our obsession was with real design, was with how the products were built, how there going to be used in the real world".
Typing this on an iBook, which is as happy in (quite literally) the field, to a crowded media editing room to my kitchen, I think I know what he is getting at...
>> This argument is akin to saying it's cheaper to buy a $40,000 Jaguar than a $20,000 Chevy because if you tried to custom-add the Jaguar's all-wheel-drive system to the Chevy, it would cost you a fortune.
Another clueless Windoze idiot. The other guy simply states the actual fact that a Mac comes with better and more useful software than a Wintel box and people will be more productive, that's all. But you, my darling, just went off on your own.
Transmeta's next offering is going to put the Penitum-m to shame, if it doesn't Linus will be looking for a new job.
I think it's doing that because it is trying to generate previews of all those pictures.
Open the folder and from the View menu Select List
That's not it. I thought of that...
I always set my folders to Detail view anyway...Doesn't matter if it's in Thumbnail or Detail or List or if I Open the folder or browse it with Explorer...it still becomes extraordinarily CPU-intensive to navigate/browse/what have you a folder with 20,000 jpgs and 500 MPG/AVIs.
It seems to work a little better when I am using the two-pane Explorer (with the hierarch on the left and the folder contents on the right) than when I Open it into a single window (with no hierarcy and the previews on the lower left) -- but only a little better.
I could just delete my pr0n, I suppose....nah
Intel execs have been reading slashdot in hope to hear good news, there wait was not in vain.
BedivereW wrote "...Intel appears to be moving in the correct direction."
One intel execs was heard saying "thank God BedivereW likes where we are going, I have no idea how we would have survived if he didn't"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have an older 667MHz Powerbook - at that time they offered a BTO option of a larger 40gb drive that was 5200 rpm. I'm really surprised to find they don't still offer a faster drive as an option on any of the powerbooks!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
'nuff said
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
For the most part that's true, but it also comes down to the question of what platform runs your $20k per seat license workstation software fastest AND most reliably. In which case, you might decide an entire platform and just go with the standard IT OEM buy. In this case, Intel does have some nice control because they sell the platform, not just the processor. After all, if you're an OEM and you want to sell intel chips, do you offer them on VIA or Sis chipset motherboards if you're, say, Dell or even IBM?
Now if my software ran in 10 minutes on an AMD box vs 30 minutes on Intel box and they asked what they could do to improve my performance, I'd ask them to direct me to an OEM building around their reference systems--after all, the performance is already there, I just want reliability, and no company should be sending out crappy machines as reference boxes.
So, when's lunch?
Let's kill off that MHz myth once and for all shall we?
Well, not so fast. Intel isn't playing its hand, but I sincerely believe Banias can hit current Penitum 4 speeds, which means at 2.8 GHz, it will be performing like a 3.4 GHz machine. So MHz will always be important, just maybe not across brands.
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AMD's never been really strong in the mobile area. IMHO, it's because they're not a platform developer-supplier like Intel is, so they have to deal with inferior VIA chipsets with fairly crappy onboard video. At least that's always been my reasons for not even considering AMD a viable x86 mobile alternative to intel. ATI's recent jump into the chipset market changes the picture a bit, but if you want low power, obviously, the Athlon's not what you want in your laptop.
So, when's lunch?
obviously your a lame mac user, who ever believed that power/performance is related to Mhz/Ghz - if your elite like me you have alwasy known this!
all right, didn't the Pentium, the first one, come out in the mid-1990s? and I know that they're up to the Pentium 4 now. Is the P5 next? Or will they actually stop to think of a new name? at least Motorola and IBM give each new generation of the PowerPC a new and distinct number (601, 750, 840, 950, etc.) but I suppose there's no marketing glitz associated with those names... not like the almighty, all-loved Pentium... (grumble, grumble, grouse) ;-)
-- haaz.
The chart immediately above this quote shows the Pentium-M lasting about 30% to 50% longer than the older Pentium-4-M, depending on the test. On a smaller battery. So the conclusion that it only gets you about 20 minutes is far too conservative.
On the other hand, I'm suspicious of any such dramatic increases in battery life. It would probably be fair to deduct points for the smaller screen size on the Pentium-M because it should draw less power than the 15-incher on the P-4-M.
Bandannarama
I'm looking forward to the Pentium-MMX in 2010.
But how does it do in a 400 degree F oven for twenty minutes?
a 10Wh battery is a really small capacity. An extra 20 minutes out of that scales up to an extra 100 or so minutes out of a typical medium notebook battery. This is noticeable.
what i want most is a low-cost, low-wattage compute server - cpu+ram+fan+box. something that can run off a car battery charged by a solar panel. one or two of them would be have a hard disk, and the rest would netboot linux over 802.11a - even the swapfile is networked. imagine an acre of these sitting out in the desert: computebox+panel+battery. want more capacity? just drop more box/panel/battery nearby. and i want it to cost $200.
That sounds really stupid to me.
On my Dell notebook, battery life time halves when I insert the WLAN pcmcia card. That's why I would never buy a notebook where I would have to fiddle with screws to get a mini-pci WLAN card out.
Not being able to disable on-board WLAN would be even worse, obviously.
WLAN is nice, but I don't use it all the time. Just today I spent 5 hours in the train hacking around on my notebook, and with WLAN I would have had to call it quits after 3.5 hours or so.
"It's clearly spanking Athlon now"
6 &p =1
Hold on, a few % is "spanking"?
http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=174
The Athlon 2800+ wins sometimes, and admiddadly loses in the other tests. However, we're talking about 5% or less here. It's not like the P4 is twice as fast.
The P4 is a respectable CPU and Intel's strategy has clearly allowed them to push it.
AMD's strategy has also worked. With a much lower R&D budget they have managed to remain competative (although they are going bankrupt in the process). AMD CPUs now power about 10% of PC desktop systems. The Athlon may not be as technologically advanced as the P4 3.06GHZ with Hyper-Threading, but it can certainly crunch numbers nearly as well.
Athlon XP Barton will be shipping in a few weeks (if AMD doesn't do another "paper launch"). That will be the real CPU to compare to the P4.
toms hardware are long refered to integrated graphics as 3D decelerators
Have you tried looking at an iPhoto album with a couple hundred picture? Suddenly things slow down...
Ever tried view a folder in KDE with a couple thousand files? Suddenly things slow down....
I wish they would have used a more common notebook like a Dell, Toshiba or Sony for the comparison.
My question is to how soon will there be Linux support for the Banias CPU and Calexico's Wi-Fi capabilities?
The chip seems like it'll be binary-compatible with previous x86 CPUs, but I wonder how much work Linux will need to support the Banias and Intel 855 chipset power saving capabilities?
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