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The Register Finds Fault In Turion Benchmark Setup
An anonymous reader submits "From The Register, it appears that AMD has joined Intel, ATI, nVidia, and just about every other hardware manufacturer on the planet in benchmark fiddling. The benchmarks for the Turion appear to have been compared using quite different systems - a 35 watt Turion 64 with an ATI GPU versus a 25 watt Pentium M with an Intel integrated graphics processor. Sadly, it appears the original benchmarks were too good to be true."
Just register them to be opened by ghostview. It starts up instantly and in a seperate window.
in the gaming benchmarks. Anyone with half an interest in games would see that one, right off the bat.
On a related side note, I've never seen these graphs before. I'm not sure if I just read reputable sites, or if I just didn't happen to see these "official benchmarks" before.
"up to one-third less battery"
Not "one-third of".
Press and hold the shift key as soon as Acrobat begins to launch. It'll skip the initialization process of the mostly-useless plugins. Doing this decreases the load-up time to less than two seconds on my 500mhz Celeron.
Intel shows it's thermal design power (TDP) at 27 watts for the 2Ghz chip, while AMD shows 35 watts. This is, however, an apples to oranges comparison. Intel's Prescott P4 at 2.8Ghz has a TDP of 89 watts, the same as an Athlon64 2800+. But according to this link, the P4 will actually draw 179 watts compared to the Athlon's 115. So, if the "marketing delta" holds true for the mobile line as well, we can expect the AMD solution rated at 35 watts to use roughly 45 watts of power at load, while the "27-watt" Pentium M will take 54 watts.
According to TFA, Turion notebooks might have 1/3 the battery life of Intel's Ultra Low voltage products. Now, Intel has a separate line of ultra-low-voltage Pentium M's, not to be confused with normal Pentium M's. The ultra low voltage Pentium Ms are only available at 1-1.2 Ghz, Turion's bottom out at 1.6 Ghz. So it's not a fair comparison. Regardless, with the power taken from the LCD and hard drives and stuff, I doubt it's even possible for an ultra low voltage Pentium M having 3 times the battery life of a Turion using the same battery.
While the article accuses AMD of comparing "Apples vs. Bananas" (their subtitle, not mine) the author includes a pro-Intel quote containing the same type of flawed comparison they accuse AMD of making. Much of the article was complaining about the lack of battery life benchmarks. Example:
"The answer is that the battery life isn't so good," Reynolds said, adding that Turion-powered systems could have up to one-third less battery life than laptops running on Intel's ultra low voltage products.
Turion is not an ultra low voltage CPU and does not claim to be. Guess why Intel's ultra low voltage products are ultra low voltage products? It's because their clock speed is limited to a mere 1.2GHz so the voltage can be lowered to reduce power consumption and increase battery life. Had AMD compared the 2GHz Turion to a ULV 1.2GHz Pentium M, yes, Turion battery life would be lower, but AMD's benchmarks would have been a legitimate 50+% higher.
Those wattage specifications are usually "thermal dissipation power", the maximum power that the processor can use under full load at full speed (which is the amount of heat that a design must be prepared to deal with, hence the name).
Processors hardly ever actually eat this much power, especially mobile processors that have C-states, underclocking, and undervolting to save power. My laptop has a 62W Athlon 64 in it, but under light load I can run the whole system on 22W or so.
Then there is the whole problem that the AMD chips have onboard memory controllers while the Intels don't, the question of how much performance gets lost when the processor underclocks, etc., etc.
what's more, Intel and AMD mean different things by their power ratings. AMD's tend to be worstcase and Intel's are typically typical.
personally, I can't imagine why anyone cares. laptops are for portability and speed is nearly irrelevant (my PIII/733 is plenty). if you really want a desktop in a quiet, tidy formfactor, why would you care about battery life?
There is the Apple G4 where power consuption is 10W and battery life 6h.
It does contain the memory controller. There does not exist an AMD64 chip without one. It's an integral part of the design.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
AMD wattage includs the memory controller. Do anyone know how much watt take the Intel memory controller (without the integrated graphic) ?
6hrs with a G4 based Apple laptop is close, but a little optimistic if you want real world use out of it. You *can* get 5hrs straight out of a 14" iBook with Airport off and the LCD turned down to the first notch without having to reduce the laptop's performance by clocking down or parking the hard drive. Instant sleep mode helps you stretch battery life also.
I have been able to consistently get 6 hours out of my 12 inch 800MHz G4 iBook.
...]
Even using it for real world useage. [By which I assume you mean; running JBoss, and Eclispe with Safari, Mail, and Word also open while listening to Internet Radio with iTunes over my 802.11g wireless connection
I do keep the screen turned down. I find that it is just too bright normally anyway. And, of course, it is only a 12 inch screen.
Just my personal experience.
Perhaps I am just a lucky apple bunny?
watashi wa bengoshi dewa arimasen!
Actually, if you look at benchmarks on the fastest Pentium-M chip, they beat the high-end P4 quite consistantly.
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I looked at the benchmarks and they definitely *do not* beat the high-end P4's consistently.
The Pentium-M compares to the P4 much the same way that the old Cyrix chips compared to a Pentium- they do well on non-CPU intensive tasks such as Microsoft word and internet explorer, but the weak FPU hinders its raw performance in CPU hungry tasks. The Pentium-M's floating point performance is slightly better than half of the high end P4's.
When you design a chip to be low power, you have to make tradeoffs. Intel designed a pretty efficient chip that delivers good performance for the amount of wattage it consumes, but it shouldn't be confused with more powerful desktop chips. It does well in light applications that aren't really CPU hungry and won't bog the processor.
Anandtech did a pretty thorough review of the Pentium-M and how it compares to desktop chips.
"As a mobile processor, the Pentium M cannot be beat - we've actually seen why, even in this comparison today. With a highly power optimized architecture, the Pentium M continues to deliver performance that is competitive with other mobile CPUs on the market. The problem is that in the transition to the desktop world, its competitors get much more powerful, while the Pentium M is forced to live within its mobile constraints."
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
A chip can have similar clock-for-clock performance to another chip and still be CPU-bound. Technically you can perform better than an Itanium but if the clock speed is low enough it will be a slug.
The Pentium M may perform well on a clock for clock basis, but its clock speed is still pretty low when you compare it to high end chips like the Athlon 64 and P4. It's a mobile chip, its main purpose is to have low power consumption. It was never designed to take on the P4 and A64 in raw performance.
The clock speed of Pentium M was identical to that of the Turion 64. There is no clock speed difference here. As I also mentioned in elsewhere in this thread several gaming reviews have shown that Athlon 64 and Pentium M performance is close when a high-end desktop video card (GeForce 6800GT or similar) is used.
So what other than poor integrated graphics performance is holding back the Pentium M in gaming? There is nothing. Had the Turion used Intel integrated graphics and Pentium M used ATI graphics the gaming benchmarks would have turned out almost exactly opposite of what they did.
As I also mentioned in elsewhere in this thread several gaming reviews have shown that Athlon 64 and Pentium M performance is close when a high-end desktop video card (GeForce 6800GT or similar) is used.
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The Pentium M doesn't fare very well in games vs. the Athlon 64, even when using the same video card.
Anandtech did a test comparing the A64, Pentium M and Pentium 4, and gave them each the same high end graphics card. The Pentium M finished in the lower half of the pack on almost every benchmark.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx
In addition, the Pentium M is pretty expensive, so you'll be able to buy a high end Athlon 64 chip with the same money as this below average performing Pentium M chip.