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Mobile Processor Showdown
AnInkle writes "The Tech Report has a head-to-head comparison between the Pentium M760 and the Turion ML-44. From the article: 'AMD has done well with Opteron in servers and the Athlon 64 in desktops, but surely AMD's K8-derived mobile competitor doesn't match up with the Pentium M. Does it?' Conventional wisdom (or marketing genius) says Pentium M's power-saving features and performance-per-watt leave AMD's Turion 64 gasping for batteries. Even though the next-gens are just around the corner, countless mobile systems will sell with these chips over the next year; find out which to choose, whether for performance, battery life or a combination of both."
Am I the only one running into relatively new laptops that overheat? I shouldn't have to keep the bottom elevated on a hard surface to keep from crashes.
personally, i would settle for a 700MHz PC (running linux of coarse) that lasted until the cow came home (it's a small farm :P ). it would probably be best to use the ARM archatecture though. im not interested in running Quake 4 when all im doing is writing a college paper, browsing and chatting... isn't that what a desktop computer is for? well, that and adding fancy lights, a see-through panel, oh... and not to mention the harddrive with a window. :)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
But it didn't really come out ahead in overall performance. Plus it costs almost $70 more than the Pentium M it was compared to.
There's a lot of AMD pole smoking going on in the comments and it's starting to make me nauseous. I love AMD's desktop processors, but I'm in no way a brand loyalist. I can't stand the thought of buying an inferior product based on brand. The Pentium M still comes away with a lead in this test when you factor in the cost difference and power consumption.
Much of the point in the pair up though was battery life.
The Duo would not have faired well. So probably they picked those two based not only on relative price, but relative power usage.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The AMD processors embed the DDR controller into the processor. There is no FSB to speak of. The AMD Northbridge takes the hypertransport from the processor and splits it to PCIe, SATA, and your other peripherals. The DDR core that is embedded with the AMD processor is a heat hog, but at least there is no FSB, which is worse. The dual core Opteron has two memory channels on the processor.
The Intel processor does not embed the DDR controller. The DDR controller is part of the northbridge for both single and dual core designs. There is an 500-800MHz front side bus connecting the proc to the NB in Intel arch.
To properly compare to AMD power consumption with Intel, you have to compare the both processor and the chipset. These fundamental differences make direct processor power comparisons meaningless.
It's pretty annoying that they put the NVidia card in for some benchmarks, and then didn't just LEAVE IT IN. They explicitly mention in one test that they think ATI graphics are having trouble with OpenGL (no shock, ATI drivers have sucked rat fur in this area for many years). Instead of twigging to 'hey, let's set this to be as fair as we can', they just accept the screwed up results! That's really dumb... they're not thinking it through. They claim to be testing the CHIPS, not the LAPTOPS.
I get so frustrated with benchmarks in general... they so often miss really obvious stuff like this. If you're trying to test a CPU, then you do your best to remove as many other variables as possible. Use the same damn video card. Test what you SAY you are testing. Sheesh.
I think it would have been interesting to see power consumption scores both with and without the NVidia card, too. It'd be nice to try to separate the video power requirements from the CPU/chipset requirements.
Since TFA showed a 2.0GHz Pentium M outperforming a 2.4GHz Turion in most of the important benchmarks, I think the 1.66GHz Core Solo (with its architectural improvements over the Pentium M) might outperform a 1.8GHz Turion by even more.
I think TFA is pretty weak, though. They emphasize the importance of performance per watt, but they don't include the widely available Turion MT. They also used freakin' desktop chipsets with these mobile processors. Doesn't this make the "system power consumption" numbers useless for most readers? I thought the mobile chipsets were supposed to have important power-saving technologies in their FSB, memory contollers, wirless modules, etc.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
I thought it was great when the smarter part of the PC community refused to play along when Intel offered a poor solution for the customer by trying to make everyone use RDRAM. AMD took the lead on price/performance, and Athlon was the big thing.
When Intel finally freed themselves from the RDRAM shackles, they debuted their 800MHZ HT chips and showed everyone that there it was possible to get higher performance with only moderately higher power levels.
But then when Intel went to their 22-stage pipeline power-hog disasters, the community did the right thing and moved to Athlon 64 and X2. AMD was providing higher performance at much better costs and using less power.
The community's move to AMD's superior solution spurred Intel to make a huge change in their strategy, abandoning NetBurst (P4) and moving to a much better solution.
When the community follows the best solution, the industry has responded.
Which is why I find it baffling that people let the wool be pulled over their eyes on AMD's mobile offerings. They back AMD unconditionally against Intel and make excuses about it too.
Ever since the Pentium M LVs and ULVs, AMD has not been able to keep up on performance/Watt. And if you compare the most recent offerings from both companies it is abundantly clear.
So I say please, make the wise move. Continue to back the company that is making the right moves. And that seems to mean Intel for low-power solutions and AMD for high-performance solutions. It could change at any time, so keeping informed is essential.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Intel beat out the AMD in nearly every performance test. They try and make an argument for the AMD on power consumption. I'll paraphrase: The AMD chip uses less energy in an idle state and since most usage is idle, the AMD chip uses less energy.
AMD is clearly the overall winner if you don't use your computer.
http://www.askthevoid.com
Some people run Apache (for web development), gcc, LaTeX, etc. Do these hotel kiosks support them?
Uh, in most of the benchmarks, the Pentium M won over the more expensive Turion. Why exactly would you stick with AMD on this particular case? I'm confused.
There are five reasons you'd stick with AMD on this one:
:D
1. You want to use 64-bit apps on your notebook. (I know, you can't stuff more than 2GB RAM in notebooks today, let alone > 4GB and the only fully-functional 64-bit OS is Linux/BSD, but...)
2. You can get AMD notebooks for a a couple hundred dollars less than an equivalent Pentium M notebook.
3. You have your heart set on one particular notebook model and it happens to have an AMD chip in it.
4. You want to use your notebook to encode video/audio with. The Turion won those benchmarks.
5. You are an AMD fanboy
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.