Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Centrino Mobile Equals Desktop Pentium 4 in Speed

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the six-on-one-hand dept.

Spy Handler writes "On Wednesday during the launch of its new Sonoma Centrino Mobile, Intel put on a demonstration running a video game on a laptop. It matched the performance of a high-end Pentium 4 desktop running the same game, declared Intel. The contenders were a laptop sporting a 2.13 GHz Pentium M processor, 1GB RAM, and the Alviso chipset versus a desktop with a 3.6 GHz Pentium 4 with hyperthreading, 1GB RAM, and the Grantsdale chipset. Is this a testament to how far the Pentium Mobile architecture has come, or a sad comment on the clockspeed-pushing design of the Pentium 4?"

7 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Not enough info for a statement by MarcoPon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > Is this a testament to how far the Pentium Mobile architecture has come, or a sad comment on the clockspeed-pushing design of the Pentium 4?

    No, it's probably only a testament on not showing enough info about the benchmark system/conditions to provide any useful technical data, but only marketing data.
    Who know? Maybe the game was simply framerate limited by the similar integrated graphics chipset.

    I'm not saying that the Pentium M isn't fast, or as fast as a desktop P4; only that probably that demo don't prove that.
    Just my 2c.

    Bye!

    --

    SeqBox
  2. Performance of Pentium 4... by SharpFang · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...with the fan attached or without?

    I had the "pleasure" of performing a heavy number crunching on a P4 laptop. Luckily it was winter and one of the rooms in my house is unheated. Leaving the laptop there (temp. about +3C) with bottom lifted off the floor by some books to allow free access to the built-in fan prevented it from entering thermal throttling mode and allowed it to run at full speed...

    --
    45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
  3. It's a sad comment all right by Spacejock · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I 'upgraded' from a P3-1 ghz to a P4-2.26 ghz and noticed hardly any difference. I upgraded from my P4 to an Athlon64 3400+ and it not only smokes it, it also has a variable clock speed which only ramps up when needed.

    I've been a loyal intel user since the Pentium 90 came out, but after building several cheap and stable AMD systems for friends and family I took the plunge myself, and I'm more than happy.

    --
    Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
  4. Benchmark time by Zeinfeld · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I think it's a testament to the fact that whatever game they were running doesn't bottleneck at the CPU. Most video games are not CPU-limited beyond a GHz or two.

    Its time to do what we used to do back in 1990 before the Pentium arrived, run benchmarks to determine how fast the machine is.

    The only interesting thing about using a game as a benchmark is if the thing will run. Its not unusual to find that a game simply does not run on a laptop.

    --
    Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
    Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
  5. Scientific and Engineering computing by heffrey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    One area where Pentium M is fantastic is in scientific and engineering simulation software. My company produces such a piece of software called OrcaFlex (www.orcina.com). The code is mainly old fashioned 8087 FPU instructions doing 3 dimensional vector operations.

    In the past few years clock speed has become much less important than memory architecture in determining how fast the simulations run. Of current architectures P4 stinks and is comprehensively stuffed by Opteron. However, PM even beats Opteron. Our fastest machine for OrcaFlex is a DELL Centrino notebook! This just edges out our top of the range Opteron workstation.

    Has anyone else out there seen anything similar with other applications?

  6. Re:Both! by 0111+1110 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Exactly. The only news here is Intel essentially admitting their mistake with the marketing driven P4. For those who are surprised by these results see previous stories on the subject. See this Doom3 and Far Cry benchmark from the link in the first slashdot article and this extremetech article and this French benchmark. And these are not the only sources. The fact is that on a modern platform the Pentium M is quite competitive with not only a P4 at nearly twice the clock speed, but also with Athlon64 chips at nearly half the power of even a 90 nm Winchester Athlon64 with a max TDP of either 21 or 29 Watts for the older and newer chips respectively.

    That's not to say that it is competitive in every domain, but for gaming it is tough to beat. And, yes, many modern games do scale with CPU power.

    --
    Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
  7. Re:Pentium M will catch up ONLY when FSB goes up by BoomerSooner · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Isn't the Pentium-M based off the PIII core? In that case a PIII that is modern as you put it is the Pentium-M which matches or outperforms the P4.