The Pentium M doesn't fare very well in games vs. the Athlon 64, even when using the same video card.
That Anandtech review was one of three reviews I linked to that showed Athlon 64 and Pentium M would perform about the same. On average the Pentium M system is only about 5% behind that of Athlon 64. But the Athlon 64 desktop systems were using DDR400 while the Pentium M was limited to DDR333 and a 400MHz FSB and 4X AGP.
So what happens when Pentium M moves from 400MHz FSB/single channel DDR333/4X AGP to 533MHz FSB/dual channel DDR2-533/PCIe in gaming? Tom's Hardware seems to be the only site with a somewhat valid comparison. They compare a 2.13GHz/X600 system to that of a 2.1GHz/Radeon 9600 system (and adjusted the video card clocks to match each other). The 2.13GHz system does have a 1.6% frequency advantage so feel free to subtract that off the results.
Notice that the performance increases of 533/DDR2/PCIe would at least offset the A64 performance lead over Pentium M in the Anandtech review? Also notice that the 533/DDR2 system is what AMD used in their Turion benchmarks. Had the Intel integrated graphics not been the limiting factor the Pentium M and Turion would have scored very close in gaming performance. But they didn't score close in gaming because the Pentium M system was bottlenecked by Intel's integrated graphics.
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.
Price is definitely a large advantage for Turion buyers unless/until Intel lowers their prices to Turion levels.
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.
Better to be an AMD fanboi with the facts than an Intel fanboi with the flames I guess. I mean after all your comment that "they "forgot" that Intel chip used integrated graphics" was shown to be completely false. Quite an embarrassment for a non-AMD fanboi like yourself, wouldn't you say?
Intel system has this shitty "Extreme" integrated graphics with no dedicated RAM. If you've ever used a system with Intel Extreme integrated graphics, you know it's dog slow. Putting it into a laptop with slowish system bus doesn't make it any better.
Now let's look at AMD system. It has integrated GPU (!) from one of the leaders in computer graphics hardware with _32M_ of _dedicated_ Video RAM. I wonder if I've emphasized this clearly enough to get through your thick skull.
What do you not understand? The systems were comparing integrated graphics performance? Is that a fair measure of CPU gaming performance? No. Is it a fair measure of gaming performance you can expect to get with an AMD and Intel laptop with integrated graphics? Sure is.
You realise Intel MANDATES that every Centrino using integrated graphics must use Intel integrated graphics, right? You realise that Intel has discouraged ATI and others from producing top-of-the-line integrated video chipsets for Pentium M because they are not allowed in Centrino bundles, right?
By the way "GPU" is just a fancy marketing name for graphics processor. ATI integrated graphics is no more of a GPU than Intel's integrated graphics.
Now let's look at AMD system. It has integrated GPU (!) from one of the leaders in computer graphics hardware with _32M_ of _dedicated_ Video RAM. I wonder if I've emphasized this clearly enough to get through your thick skull.
Better to have a thick skull with a brain in it than a normal one with none. In case you hadn't noticed Intel "forgot" to do the same to improve their performance. There is a tradeoff in battery performance. The good news is that you can get somewhat acceptable gaming performance without taking a much larger hit in battery life by using a discrete video card like the Mobility 9600 card with 128MB RAM.
Wouldn't it be cool if instead of cooking the benchmarks AMD put the processors head to head and made them use the same Radeon Mobility 9600 card with 128M RAM? Why didn't they do this? Were they afraid of something?
The gaming benchmarks weren't cooked as they compared the best integrated graphics chipsets on each platform in terms of features, performance and expected availability. But I do agree that benchmarks using the same video card would be interesting and more indicative of pure CPU gaming performance. As I mentioned in another post Pentium M performance is very competetive with Athlon 64 on desktop gaming benchmarks when a top-of-the-line desktop video card is used.
The Intel is obviously CPU-bound in the gaming benchmarks. Anyone with half an interest in games would see that one, right off the bat.
That is wrong. The Intel system is graphics bound, not CPU bound. In a clock-for-clock comparison Pentium M performs very similar to Athlon 64 in gaming performance when a high end video card is used as Tech Report, Anandtech, Sudhian and others have shown.
The problem with Intel's gaming performance in this review falls squarely on the low performance of Intel's integrated graphics. It is a problem of Intel's making. Intel will not let vendors use the Centrino name unless an Intel chipset is used. Being frozen out of the Centrino notebook market discourages others like ATI from creating better integrated graphics solutions for Pentium M.
Turion is faster than P-M, too. Except they "forgot" that Intel chip used integrated graphics.
Apparently you "forgot" to read. The gaming benchmark PDF clearly shows in the bottom right hand corner that the 915GME chipset (integrated graphics chipset) was used for the Intel system.
And you have wrongly assumed that the AMD system was using something other than integrated graphics. If you happened to read this link in the article that the Turion system using ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset with integrated graphics.
Yes, the only "suckage" here is Intel Extreme Graphics gaming performance. Looks like those "AMD fanbois" are on to something. Perhaps you should listen more and post less.
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.
Another is to trick people by offering rebates that expire too soon for people to actually get them (see Tiger Direct - rebates often expire in a few days).
You do not understand how rebates work. Most rebates just require that the returned rebate envelope be postmarked 30 days after the order. I routinely buy items from Tiger Direct and elsewhere on the "last day" of a rebate offer. A few days working days later the packages arrive leaving me a few weeks to find the time to fill out the rebate forms.
Isn't 130 still less than the power needed by the latest ATI and nVidia graphics boards?
The GeForce 6800 Ultra card "only" uses 110W according to this article. If the core was 90-nm like Prescott and the latest Athlon 64s instead of 130-nm the power requirements would likely be even lower.
Fab 30 currently makes all AMD CPUs (Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Opteron, etc.) Fab 36 is under construction next door to Fab 30, but won't even start limited production until H2 2005.
The author incorrectly states that Intel's dual core CPU is "more than a year ahead of schedule". Six months ago during the Intel fall analyst meeting Intel claimed (slide #40) dual core for the home computers would arrive in 2005.
This is a rather interesting bit of information from the article: "This strategy was not expected for at least a year-and-a-half, said Dean McCarron, the head of Mercury Research."
Well, how is this news? Intel is claiming that they will go dual core by the end of 2005. A year and a half from now is...2005, just like the Intel presentation from six months ago said.
Bah...the rating is worthless if you don't double the '+' as well. Not only will Joe Sixpack understand the extra plus to somehow mean extra performance, but programmers will also recognize the Intel 7400++ model as being incrementally better than the plain old Intel 7400.
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Bad Editing. "They have also apparently gotten approval for "Parents React," "Celebrities React," and "Parents React""
Multipliers on AMD processors are unlocked in the downward direction.
Athlon 64 processors are unlocked in the downward direction. Athlon 64 FX processors are unlocked in both directions.
The Pentium M doesn't fare very well in games vs. the Athlon 64, even when using the same video card.
That Anandtech review was one of three reviews I linked to that showed Athlon 64 and Pentium M would perform about the same. On average the Pentium M system is only about 5% behind that of Athlon 64. But the Athlon 64 desktop systems were using DDR400 while the Pentium M was limited to DDR333 and a 400MHz FSB and 4X AGP.
So what happens when Pentium M moves from 400MHz FSB/single channel DDR333/4X AGP to 533MHz FSB/dual channel DDR2-533/PCIe in gaming? Tom's Hardware seems to be the only site with a somewhat valid comparison. They compare a 2.13GHz/X600 system to that of a 2.1GHz/Radeon 9600 system (and adjusted the video card clocks to match each other). The 2.13GHz system does have a 1.6% frequency advantage so feel free to subtract that off the results.
Notice that the performance increases of 533/DDR2/PCIe would at least offset the A64 performance lead over Pentium M in the Anandtech review? Also notice that the 533/DDR2 system is what AMD used in their Turion benchmarks. Had the Intel integrated graphics not been the limiting factor the Pentium M and Turion would have scored very close in gaming performance. But they didn't score close in gaming because the Pentium M system was bottlenecked by Intel's integrated graphics.
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.
Price is definitely a large advantage for Turion buyers unless/until Intel lowers their prices to Turion levels.
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.
Let me guess, you're an AMD fanboi.
Better to be an AMD fanboi with the facts than an Intel fanboi with the flames I guess. I mean after all your comment that "they "forgot" that Intel chip used integrated graphics" was shown to be completely false. Quite an embarrassment for a non-AMD fanboi like yourself, wouldn't you say?
Intel system has this shitty "Extreme" integrated graphics with no dedicated RAM. If you've ever used a system with Intel Extreme integrated graphics, you know it's dog slow. Putting it into a laptop with slowish system bus doesn't make it any better.
Now let's look at AMD system. It has integrated GPU (!) from one of the leaders in computer graphics hardware with _32M_ of _dedicated_ Video RAM. I wonder if I've emphasized this clearly enough to get through your thick skull.
What do you not understand? The systems were comparing integrated graphics performance? Is that a fair measure of CPU gaming performance? No. Is it a fair measure of gaming performance you can expect to get with an AMD and Intel laptop with integrated graphics? Sure is.
You realise Intel MANDATES that every Centrino using integrated graphics must use Intel integrated graphics, right? You realise that Intel has discouraged ATI and others from producing top-of-the-line integrated video chipsets for Pentium M because they are not allowed in Centrino bundles, right?
By the way "GPU" is just a fancy marketing name for graphics processor. ATI integrated graphics is no more of a GPU than Intel's integrated graphics.
Now let's look at AMD system. It has integrated GPU (!) from one of the leaders in computer graphics hardware with _32M_ of _dedicated_ Video RAM. I wonder if I've emphasized this clearly enough to get through your thick skull.
Better to have a thick skull with a brain in it than a normal one with none. In case you hadn't noticed Intel "forgot" to do the same to improve their performance. There is a tradeoff in battery performance. The good news is that you can get somewhat acceptable gaming performance without taking a much larger hit in battery life by using a discrete video card like the Mobility 9600 card with 128MB RAM.
Wouldn't it be cool if instead of cooking the benchmarks AMD put the processors head to head and made them use the same Radeon Mobility 9600 card with 128M RAM? Why didn't they do this? Were they afraid of something?
The gaming benchmarks weren't cooked as they compared the best integrated graphics chipsets on each platform in terms of features, performance and expected availability. But I do agree that benchmarks using the same video card would be interesting and more indicative of pure CPU gaming performance. As I mentioned in another post Pentium M performance is very competetive with Athlon 64 on desktop gaming benchmarks when a top-of-the-line desktop video card is used.
The Intel is obviously CPU-bound in the gaming benchmarks. Anyone with half an interest in games would see that one, right off the bat.
That is wrong. The Intel system is graphics bound, not CPU bound. In a clock-for-clock comparison Pentium M performs very similar to Athlon 64 in gaming performance when a high end video card is used as Tech Report, Anandtech, Sudhian and others have shown.
The problem with Intel's gaming performance in this review falls squarely on the low performance of Intel's integrated graphics. It is a problem of Intel's making. Intel will not let vendors use the Centrino name unless an Intel chipset is used. Being frozen out of the Centrino notebook market discourages others like ATI from creating better integrated graphics solutions for Pentium M.
Turion is faster than P-M, too. Except they "forgot" that Intel chip used integrated graphics.
Apparently you "forgot" to read. The gaming benchmark PDF clearly shows in the bottom right hand corner that the 915GME chipset (integrated graphics chipset) was used for the Intel system. And you have wrongly assumed that the AMD system was using something other than integrated graphics. If you happened to read this link in the article that the Turion system using ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset with integrated graphics. Yes, the only "suckage" here is Intel Extreme Graphics gaming performance. Looks like those "AMD fanbois" are on to something. Perhaps you should listen more and post less.
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.
Another is to trick people by offering rebates that expire too soon for people to actually get them (see Tiger Direct - rebates often expire in a few days).
You do not understand how rebates work. Most rebates just require that the returned rebate envelope be postmarked 30 days after the order. I routinely buy items from Tiger Direct and elsewhere on the "last day" of a rebate offer. A few days working days later the packages arrive leaving me a few weeks to find the time to fill out the rebate forms.
Isn't 130 still less than the power needed by the latest ATI and nVidia graphics boards? The GeForce 6800 Ultra card "only" uses 110W according to this article. If the core was 90-nm like Prescott and the latest Athlon 64s instead of 130-nm the power requirements would likely be even lower.
replacing professors with games. LAN party field trip anyone?
On my systems three Q*berts is not sufficient for error correction in my simulations. Coily always gets me sooner rather than later.
Where is the roadmap I want?
Here is one. A 25W mobile Athlon 64 should be a good candidate for a low power desktop system with very modest air cooling.
Fab 30 currently makes all AMD CPUs (Athlon XP, Athlon 64, Opteron, etc.) Fab 36 is under construction next door to Fab 30, but won't even start limited production until H2 2005.
Without the scroll lock key I'd have to crawl under the desk and press a button on my KVM every time I needed to switch computers.
...but they missed the perfect opportunity to build the "world's tallest cloverleaf interchange".
I mean, Intel is a year a head of schedule.
The author incorrectly states that Intel's dual core CPU is "more than a year ahead of schedule". Six months ago during the Intel fall analyst meeting Intel claimed (slide #40) dual core for the home computers would arrive in 2005.
This is a rather interesting bit of information from the article: "This strategy was not expected for at least a year-and-a-half, said Dean McCarron, the head of Mercury Research."
Well, how is this news? Intel is claiming that they will go dual core by the end of 2005. A year and a half from now is...2005, just like the Intel presentation from six months ago said.
What about those folks that live in Dildo, Newfoundland?
Never mind the fact that it's located right next to Spread Eagle...
Spread Eagle, Wisconsin doesn't need a Dildo nearby because there is a Goodman just down the road.
AMD 3700+ = Intel 7400+
Bah...the rating is worthless if you don't double the '+' as well. Not only will Joe Sixpack understand the extra plus to somehow mean extra performance, but programmers will also recognize the Intel 7400++ model as being incrementally better than the plain old Intel 7400.