Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Intel Releases New Pentium M Processors

Posted by timothy on from the leapfrog dept.

doormat writes "Its been known for a while, but now it's official, as Intel releases Dothan, the 90nm version of Banias, aka the Pentium M processor. It also debuts Intel's new numbering scheme. The fastest new part is a Pentium M 755 2GHz w/ a 100MHz FSB, and 2MB of L2 on die cache. Reviews are starting to tip up as the NDA expires. One is at Tom's."

26 of 190 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm by odano · · Score: 5, Funny

    For some reason I don't think it is a coincidence that intel basically stole BMWs numbering scheme...

  2. Intel fanboys around the world do a 180... by rokzy · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...over an AMD-style rating system instead of GHz.

    the resulting transfer of angular momentum changes the Earth's orbit moving it slightly further away from the Sun.

    the increased distance and lower temperature makes cooling easier. AMD stock set to skyrocket.

    1. Re:Intel fanboys around the world do a 180... by sotonboy · · Score: 4, Funny

      I have solved this, my PC _IS_ my hairdryer. I dry my hair and check my email at the same time, saving 0.05 hours per day.

  3. The Bottom Line by haunebu · · Score: 4, Informative
    "In a direct comparison between the old Pentium M 1.7 GHz and the new Dothan with 2.0 GHz, the newcomer clearly manages to gain the upper hand. In some of the benchmarks, the mobile CPU produced with 90-nm technology is up to 22% faster. Even if you only consider the difference in clock speed between the two CPUs, Dothan still offers a 5% advantage.

    The results of the battery life benchmarks show the benefits of 90-nm process technology. The two test systems were identical, except for the CPUs, and gave nearly the same results."

    From here.

    --

    Blue skies, Barthy Burgers, girls...

  4. Some more Dothan reviews by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Couple of more reviews of the Dothan I came across around the web as Tom's isn't the only site reviewing new kit.

    TrustedReviews - http://www.trustedreviews.com/article.aspx?art=428

    Digit-Life - http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/asus-m6000/asu s-m6.html

    PC Mag - http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/asus-m6000/asu s-m6.html

  5. This stuff seems to overclock nicely by Chep · · Score: 5, Informative
    ... and with quite decent per-clock performance, to boot:

    Here

    (yeah, yeah, it's in French. Machine translate it for the text, and after all the pictures and chart don't need much of an explanation, do they?)

  6. laptop woes by Ryan+Broomfield · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Laptops get faster but laptop users don't get any smarter. Every day I see people with a brand new processor and 128MB of memory on windows XP. They insist that their laptop is slow but refuse to spend the extra 50 bucks to get a decent amount of ram in the machine. oh well.

    --
    download games I make at: http://www.shippysite.com
  7. What I don't understand... by drsmithy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...Is why more hardware vendors aren't using these CPUs in Blade configs. They seem perfect for high density computing power.

    1. Re:What I don't understand... by leuk_he · · Score: 4, Informative

      Check again:

      HP to sharpen blade with Pentium M

      And don't forget: high end servers don't use bleeding edge processors since they need some extra time to certify the hardware.

  8. Re:FSB @ 100 MHz ? by Chep · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I beg to disagree, if those guys can be trusted. Sure, a better FSB would clearly help, but look at what they achieve with a single-channel FSB100.

  9. Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    These new names seem about as useful as self confessed penis inches. Real world benchmarks?

  10. Re:FSB @ 100 MHz ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Umm.. no. First its Quad-pumped, meaning that it acts like a 400MHz bus. I believe the P4 at 800MHZ quad pumped is somewhere in the 6GB/s range. So this should be sufficent since the architecture is less dependant on bandwidth.

    You could even bother to do a back of the envelope calculation.
    BW = (100*10^6)(4)(2 words)(4bytes/word)/(1024^3 GB/byte) = 2.98 GB/s

    So yeah, its sufficent.

  11. Desktop by moxruby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    My ageing duron 1.3ghz does everything I want it to.
    If someone made a reasonably priced, Pentium-M desktop using low power and heat components, I would consider buying it. Especially if it had no fan.
    The energy savings alone would make it worthwhile.

    1. Re:Desktop by BenjyD · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Let's see:
      Intel Pentium-M 735 $294,21W
      Comparable Athlon-XP (2600-3000?) $170, ~70W

      Price difference = ~$120
      Power difference=~50W

      Electricity cost (UK prices, don't know any others)=$0.10/Kwh

      Time to break even=~2.7 years

      Which is about the lifetime of a processor, I guess. Of course, that's assuming you use both at 100% CPU constantly for three years.

    2. Re:Desktop by Darren+Winsper · · Score: 4, Informative

      AMD chips have implemented the HLT opcode for many years.

  12. Overclocking Dothan by mst76 · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you can read French, there's an article on x86-secret where they opened a laptop, installed a big cooler, and overclocked a 2.0 Ghz Dothan to 2.4 Ghz. It remained stable during 2 hours of BurnP6 and stayed under 30 degrees C. The 2.4 Ghz Dothan beat the 3.4 Ghz P4 in all their benchmarks, and is comparable to the Athon 64 3400+.

  13. Re:FSB @ 100 MHz ? by stephenry · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The large cache is probably more likely used to lower the power consumption of the processor. It's far cheaper (in terms of power) to drive short chip level wires to get commonly used data from a cache than it is to drive long, high capacitance, board level wires to memory.

  14. Linux on Centrino laptops and notebooks by wehe · · Score: 4, Informative

    As soon as the new Centrino generation will be available on laptops and notebooks, there will be Linux information about Dothan machines here.

  15. Re:Welcome to the silly numbers by martingunnarsson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Those sites getting more popular is a good thing, right? Instead of just looking at the clockrate, people will actually compare performance. The average Joe has no idea what makes a P4 2.0 GHz better than a Celeron 2.0 GHz. They're the same speed for crying out loud! Yeah, you get the point.

    --
    Martin
  16. Dothan / Banias Compatibility by NeGz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't suppose anyone knows if it the new Dothan CPUs are compatible with existing Banias notebooks at all? I very much doubt it, but I've not seen it expressly said thus far. It would be nice to be able to upgrade my ~3 month old 1.5ghz Banias to a Dothan, heh.

    Also, if they are not compatible, is Intel planning to take the Banias chips further, or will I be stuck at 1.7ghz max (or is it 2.2ghz?) until I buy a new one?

    Excuse me for being a little ignorant. :)

  17. Re:So The Bottom Line Is... by klui · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not sure how to read the comparison table between Banias and Dothan.

    Peak thermal power is 24.5W for Banias and 21W for Dothan. But it looks like average thermal power is 6W for Banias vs. 7.5W. Sleep power, deep sleep power, and deeper sleep power are all higher for Dothan.

    Does this mean if you're not doing a lot of number crunching, your battery life will be less than a Banias system? Maybe the cache has something to do with this... whatever. I would be more impressed if the power requirements were lower across the board. And the lower peak doesn't seem that low. What's the best case thermal advantage going from 130nm to 90nm of an identical circuit?

  18. Re:Welcome to the silly numbers by PhrostyMcByte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Someone needs to make an open source benchmark on a bootable cd so OS doesn't matter, and no background apps can cause harm to it. Moving from MHz/FSB/Cache/etc to a single common rating # would make things a lot easier for the consumer. This would also spur more competition between the CPU companies, as they couldn't so easily obfuscate the true speed from their users.

  19. I'm going to miss the good old days of MHz by otter42 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Yes, I know that MHz were somewhat misleading, but come on, they weren't that bad after all. While it was never true that a Pentium 3GHz was twice as fast as a Pentium 1.5GHz, it was nonetheless faster. And Intel's dominance forced AMD to give similar numbers (rounded up for inflation, of course) that helped us all compare.

    Now I have to wonder which new chips are faster. To (blatantly) steal from an earlier post:

    Will the Pentium 5 X159-XL-SE be more power full than a Pentium 5 X150-Pro-Ultra ? Or less powerfull than a X160-LE ? Does it compare to an Athlon 64 Dual FX-95e 4699+++ ?


    I hate the "consumer electronics" style of naming things, incrementing a model number in order to sell an inferior product. Who here honestly thinks that Intel won't do exactly this when they release a product that bombs? I still remember the to-do when Tom's Hardware published a pre-release review of the Pentium II, showing that it was inferior to a Pentium MMX of the same clock speed.

    What I would REALLY like to se is AMD seize the MHz banner now that Intel has abandonned it. I mean, now AMD doesn't have to give performance "numbers" to convince people to buy it. They could go back to simple MHz ratings, forcing Intel to keep itself honest. After all, we all know that the whole reason we all hated the MHz rating was because AMD had superior performance at inferior speeds and it just wasn't fair. I don't remember too many people complaining when AMD went back to MHz specs with the Athlons. Here's hoping to see it again soon.
    --
    www.eissq.com/BandP.html Ball and Plate System. Amuse your friends. Crush your enemies.
  20. Marketing by Ed+Avis · · Score: 4, Funny
    From the article^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpress release:
    The new chip opens up advanced applications to notebook computer users like full-screen high-definition video playing and mobile videoconferencing, while keeping the PC relatively light, Intel said.
    Isn't that just what they said for the previous line of processors? If this new chip is needed for videoconferencing, are we to conclude that the previous chip couldn't do it, contrary to what Intel said at the time?

    (My point is, reprinting inane press releases does nobody any good.)

    I'm surprised that the marketing department missed the upcoming opportunity to label dual-core CPUs with 'twice' the clock speed, as is done for bogomips.

    --
    -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
  21. Re:So The Bottom Line Is... by mczak · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Does this mean if you're not doing a lot of number crunching, your battery life will be less than a Banias system?
    Yes. However, the difference is rather small (keep in mind the cpu is not the only thing drawing power, so that 1.5W difference is really not that much).
    Maybe the cache has something to do with this... whatever. I would be more impressed if the power requirements were lower across the board. And the lower peak doesn't seem that low.
    No, it's not because of the cache (actually, banias/dothan have neat tricks to reduce power draw of the cache). It's a direct result of 90nm vs. 130nm. Peak power draw goes down, because of the lower voltage needed for switching in the transistors. But idle current goes up, because if you reduce structure size, you get more and more leakage current (which, btw, is a huge problem nowadays - leakage current was basically 0 just a short while ago, but it goes up exponentially with smaller structures).
  22. Digital Restrictions Management in Dothan by Adam+J.+Richter · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From The Register:
    The dark side of Dothan also reared its head, briefly. When asked why Intel was introducing a new naming scheme for Centrino, Chandrasekhar replied that the numbers represented more of "goodness measure" and reflected features that were not necessarily "performance enhancing", such as Le Grande. Le Grande is Intel's contribution to TCPA-compliant lock-down computing,and allows large media companies to impair the user's ability to exchange media files, such as their favorite songs. So you can see why Le Grande isn't "performance enhancing", and quite the reverse. [...]

    Here is a link about TCPA as a threat to free software.

    Slowing TCPA adoption is enough of an benefit to me to prefer a TCPA-free processor even if it costs $50 more for the same performance. I just hope I'll have that option for a while, as Intel is not the only company promoting TCPA.