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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?"

4 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. Not CPU-limited. by Temporal · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    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.

  2. Not enough information by holymoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    hmm I would like to know which video game it ran to get equal performance. Also, was the game software rendered or was there a graphics chipset involved?

  3. 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
  4. Pentium M will catch up ONLY when FSB goes up by StandardCell · · Score: 5, Informative

    As I had mentioned in a previous comment, the front side bus speed is the biggest limiting factor on Pentium M processors. The day we see an 800MHz FSB Pentium M is the day the direct MHz comparisons will apply (i.e. 1.8GHz P-M vs. 1.8GHz A64). Even the Tom's Hardware Guide review of the new Sonoma chipset for P-M shows fairly marginal gains and proves the FSB is the limitation, PLUS they do the stupid thing here and put in DDR-2 which does little for performance but increases system costs.