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Socket Adapter Brings Pentium M to Desktop
EconolineCrush writes "Intel's Pentium M processor is widely regarded as the company's most compelling chip, and although desktop versions of it won't be available until next year, a new adapter from Asus allows users to run a Pentium M on existing Socket 478 motherboards. When coupled with a compatible motherboard, the CT-479 adapter is much cheaper than existing Pentium M desktop platforms, and also offers better performance by allowing the processor access to dual-channel memory configurations. Considering the Pentium M's frugal power consumption and great clock-for-clock performance, this could be an interesting upgrade for those looking for a low-noise system."
more than you would want to pay for a chip+adaptor
Dude, he was asking how much the adapter, the CT-479, in the article was. It's $42.49.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Toms's Hardware has a great article on Pentium M's performance. It's definitely worth a read.
"...and although desktop versions of it won't be available until next year..." Uh, both AOpen and DFI have had Socket 479 (Pentium-M) motherboards for the desktop available (iirc, both are micro ATX form factor) for several months. Granted, those motherboards are overpriced (at least they were back in January when I built a Dothan box for my mother (mobo was about $250 back then), but that clearly shows the above quote to be bullshit.
si vis pacem, para bellum..."if you wish peace, prepare for war"
If anyone cares, there is already a native Pentium-M board from AOpen based on the Intel i915G chipset. No need for convertor crap. The upcoming small form-factor Pandora XPC from AOpen is Pentium-M based as well.
Actually, the lower voltage Mobile Barton models run on 35W, albeit they don't perform as well per clock as a P-M or A64. The Low voltage A64s, on the other hand, guzzle around 30W to 40W but you have to keep in mind that the memory controller is on the chip as well. On a Pentium M setup, the chipset will be using more power as the mem controller is still on the northbridge so overall system power consumption will be close enough that you wouldn't notice on a desktop system.
Does that explain the apparent contradiction?
I believe the "it" in your quote is a Pentium M in a standard desktop socket CPU package. A DFI board is in fact used in the review.
There are already Aopen Desktop P-M boards out for quite a while.
I own the i855whatever version and run it with a P-M 1.7@1993Mhz(117FSB)
In video encoding it sucks.
But for day to day development work, like compiling, it beats the 3.6Ghz Xeon "big boy" by a small margin.
Expensive? Sure
Heat+Noise?
CPU needs only small and silent cooler
GPU onboard - screw 3D performance for development work
2x GBit NIC onboard the Aopen board
With a good small uATX case+PSU the ultimate development machine for a no noise system, very good for concentration+productivity
Would I buy one again? YES
The Amiga had such a board way back when, a generic CPU emulator that used FPGAs to emulate multiple processors. It could supposedly emulate a Mac faster than a real Mac (probably using the Amiga's CPU, though). They were still trying to get 486 emulation debugged last I heard, many moons ago.
While it's nice to get a lower-power CPU, your results aren't going to be very impressive. The fact is, northbridges are also very power-hungry, and using the northbridge for a P4 with a Pentium M will certainly not give very good results. You really need a motherboard designed for the Pentium-M to get a low-power system, otherwise you'll just be wasting watts, and making a lot of heat for no reason.
It seems nobody ever talks about the Northbridge, which, IMHO, will over-take the CPU, within a year, as the hottest component in a computer. If you take a year-old system, and put all the components (CPU/RAM) in a brand-new motherboard, you'll see the power consumption go up 10-20 watts. Why do you think they are now requiring fans on many of them? Even the motherboards that don't have one, commonly NEED one. They just leave it off because they know people don't buy motherboards with fans on the northbridge.
They just assume case airflow with be enough to keep the northbridge within spec, which is rarely true. Many people with unstable systems may assume it's a CPU or software problem, while pointing a fan at the northbridge heatsink may be all they need to do to solve the problem. I have some Asus and MSI motherboards that are guilty of this (SiS and VIA chipsets).
What pisses me off (personally) is that repeated requests to Asus, MSI, VIA and SiS for power specs on their chipsets/motherboards have been completely ignored. For that reason, I have kept using my old systems (brand-new Asus motherboard wasting space in my closet) and will not upgrade until I can find specs on motherboards (idle/load) before I buy them.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
As one of the many people who picked up an AthlonXP-Mobile, I can tell you it's pretty nice.
An SI-97 and a Panflo ultra quiet fan, it's nice and cool, and the loudest thing on the computer is a pair of WD ATA hard drives.
The biggest drawback to intel right now for me is the 80-100+W TDP on most of their chips.
I look forward to a dual core Yonah ~40-50W part.
Pentium-M 778 - 1.6 GHz - TDP of 10 watts
Pentium-M 780 - 2.26 GHz - TDP of 27 watts
Celeron 380 - 1.6 Ghz - TDP of 21 watts
Because Intel doesn't have the balls to admit that NetBurst (the P4's microarchitecture) is a steaming pile of crap, and that the Pentium M is far superior to anything that's ever been based on NetBowel.
And, for the record, the PM already contains the only two good features the P4 ever had: SSE2 and the QDR bus. And that's on top of all the wonderful features of the PM that have nothing to do with the P4.
Yeah, Intel is really insecure right now. They're too ashamed to admit that the P4 was a massive fuckup, so they're trying to hide what could have been an incredibly good desktop platform.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Where in the hell did you get your numbers? 89W is absolutely INSANE for any PIII processor.
PIII-500E FC-PGA 1.6V 13.2W
PIII-1.0G (6-B-x) 1.15V 12.1W
And the 10W P-M is not typical, but a real rareity. Most are ~25W. eg.
Pentium M-1.5G 1.484V 24.5W
Personally, I would LOVE to get my hands on a PIII 933MHz or 1.0GHz system. Should be cheap, accepts all the old PC133 RAM I've got lying around, and really, really low power. Otherwise, I'm not getting a new system until some of the lowest-power AMD64s get cheaper.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
It costs about $50, and comes with the adapter, heatsink and fan.
How good is it? I have no idea, since I broke a pin on it while trying to get it to work.
Here's a warning to everybody thinking of trying it: The adapter is held in the motherboard's CPU socket only by the locking mechanism. The design makes it quite easy to apply pressure in such a way that it will rip the adapter off the motherboard's socket.
For some reason, the instructions go like this:
Insert adapter, insert CPU, lock CPU with screw, add heatsink. But I found that it's very uncomfortable, and risky. Be really careful when doing that, especially while installing the heatsink.
On the next time I'll probably do it differently: insert the CPU into the adapter, lock it, then insert the adapter into the motherboard and add the heatsink.
I broke it because I thought I was applying too much force while trying to fix the CPU and didn't turn the screw far enough. After removing and inserting the adapter several times I finally realized I didn't turn it all the way, but that must be when I bent the pin.
But that's just it, if it wasn't for the Pentium 4, there'd be no Pentium M. Pentium M was designed as a comprimise between the Pentium 3 M and the Pentium 4 M. The P3M was a fast mobile chip, but they needed something faster and lower in heat production. So, taking the technologies from the Pentium 4 (Netburst-style micro-ops fusion, QDR FSB (and pretty much all of the logic dedicated to bussing), SSE2, (SSE3 eventually), along with the Pentium 4's voltage profile, etc), they made a fairly compatible chip (testimony to the ability to use a small adapter to fix the pinout for the P4 board to use a PM).
Now, the Pentium 4 serves the Pentium M in one last service until they can retire this iteration of Netburst; a technological proving ground for new technologies. Think about all of the innovation going into the Pentium 4, better virtualization support (vanderpool), dual cores, EM64T, NX Bit, the list goes on and on. These are all things that will find their way into the Pentium M, but aren't appropriate as of current for a mobile processor.
Lastly, I'd hate to say that Netburst is dead. I think just as everyone does, Intel has made some mistakes with the Pentium 4 that are unforgivable. The next iteration of the Pentium series based on Netburst will probably have the Pentium M's cache system, a shortened pipeline, and a lot of micro-op revamping. It'll probably only see the light of day in the Xeon department, giving Intel something they've been working towards for quite a while; having different archetectures, better suited for work that they're doing.
Normally, I'd go into everything AMD is doing to compete, but since this articles all about Intel, I'm just gonna sit back and be done. Note that I'm an all-around processor fanboy from lowly ARMs to the biggest of the bigboy processors IBM's cranking out.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush