pentium m

girardogirardo
edited June 2004 in Hardware
hi guys,

Could somebody give some more information on this cpu:

Intel® Pentium® M Processor 735, 1.70 GHz, 2MB L2 Cache, 400MHz FSB

Is it a good processor for my laptop? Why does it look so slow? (1,7 ghz)

As you might notice I am not really a hardware expert, hope you guys can give me some more information about the performance of this cpu

thx

Comments

  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited May 2004
    Yes thats a very good CPU for a LapTop. I would say it would perform as good as a 2.4 Ghz P4 or so. Thats the new Dothan core since it has 2mb L2 Cache.

    Dont know if you have seen any of Intels ads for the Centrino package but that CPU is part of it. The centrino is built for performance using low power unlike the Desktop CPUs which is all about MHz.
  • qparadoxqparadox Vancouver, BC
    edited May 2004
    Basically the frequency (ie what "MHz") of a processor is only relevant when comparing processors from the same line. Ie you know a Pentium 4 2.4C is performs lower than a Pentium 4 2.8C. When comparing between different product lines frequency means nothing. Its sorta like trying to compare engines by maximal RPM rather than max Horsepower. Sure an electric motor can spin @ 10000 RPM, but you don't see many race-cars with electric motors now do you?.

    A key reason for this difference is pipelining, on which I quote the great Thrax:
    Question:
    Why does adding pipelines allow the CPU to reach higher clockspeeds? Doesn't it add complexity, which would (at least logically) keep the CPU from reaching high clock speeds, because there's more to go wrong?

    Answer:
    In a CPU, a pipeline is like a factory assembly line—it executes program instructions one stage at a time. The more stages there are in the pipeline, the less time each stage needs to complete its work, so the faster the CPU can cycle. While most CPUs have four to seven stages, and the Athlon is considered a superpipelined CPU with 10 stages, the P4 has more than 20 stages.

    But superpipelines have drawbacks, which partly explains why a P4 doesn’t always perform as well as the clockspeed would indicate. Clock frequency is not an absolute measure of performance.

    One drawback of superpipelines is the penalty they impose when the CPU must branch to another part of the program (Say.. Suddenly going from encoding a movie to loading plugins). Like an assembly line that must stop to change the kind of vehicle it’s manufacturing, a CPU pipeline must often pause to load a different stream of instructions. The deeper the pipeline, the greater the penalty during this switch. Modern processors try to avoid that penalty by using branch prediction units, and preloading registers that the CPU thinks it will have to use next.

    So, by adding more stages to the pipeline, the CPU is allowed a higher speed because each stage needs less time to do the work, and when each stage needs less time to do the work, the clockspeed may rise because the demand on the pipeline isn't as high now.

    Look at it this way: One assembly line has 10 steps to complete a car, and it has six minutes to build a car. That means each step may spend no longer than 36 seconds building. Each step needs exactly 36 seconds to build.. There's no room for extra efficiency, this line is assembling at maximum capacity.

    Second assembly has 20 steps to build a car, and it must also do it in 6 minutes, and each step can take no longer than 18 seconds.. But here, because each step is so specialized, these steps only take 10 seconds. This line completes each car with 2 minutes and 40 seconds to spare.. Which allows them to send more cars down the line to assemble per day. But there's a problem in this one; the workers sometimes work so fast that there are errors, which may impede the next step, or the final product in total... So sometimes the cars have to be aborted and started over, thus diminishing the efficiency of this line, and reducing the 00:02:40 that this line has left to assemble. To compensate, this line has begun noticing when and where the errors go wrong in majority, and has started to predict where it needs parts to keep the errors under control.

    But.. Even in the end; line two is still faster. If they added more steps to the assembly, it would reduce time per step, and increase the efficiency further.

    I have a pentium-M in my laptop and love it. I have the old version with 1MB L2 cache running @ 1.4 GHz. It performs about the same as a XP 2200+ or ~2.2 GHz P4 (varies from application to application).
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited May 2004
    The Dothan is clock for clock on par with the Athlon 64/Opteron which is far better (usually) that the Pentium4.

    Dothan vs the World (French article - but the graphs are universal)
  • MedlockMedlock Miramar, Florida Member
    edited May 2004
    Omega65 wrote:
    The Dothan is clock for clock on par with the Athlon 64/Opteron which is far better (usually) that the Pentium4.

    Dothan vs the World (French article - but the graphs are universal)
    Wow. I wish you could pull that nifty trick of putting a mobile processor in your desktop computer, like the athlons... That thing owns! :thumbsup:
  • girardogirardo
    edited May 2004
    Would it be advisable to overclock this processor and should I do this?
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited May 2004
    Most laptops don't even have any fsb speed adjustments, so I doubt that you could overclock it anyways. Plus, you would be putting a hell of a strain on the cooling system used on the laptop and it's not like you can go out and install an aftermarket hsf in a lappy.:) I think that you will find a 1.7 Pentium M to be closer to the P4M 3.0 or 3.2 in performance, rather than 2.4-2.6 myself.
  • Omega65Omega65 Philadelphia, Pa
    edited May 2004
    TheGr81 wrote:
    Wow. I wish you could pull that nifty trick of putting a mobile processor in your desktop computer, like the athlons... That thing owns! :thumbsup:

    Ask & you shall recieve...
    The Inq: Intel Dothan desktop board makes Japanese debut

    THE JAPANESE site that closely watches new technology as it appears in the high tech shops of Akihabara in Tokyo, are reporting that a Dothan Intel Pentium M motherboard has appeared on the streets.

    The firm, called PFU, has designed a Socket 479M mobo using the i855GME chip set and the whole kit and caboodle costs ¥49,800.

    It supports DDR333 and has a system bus speed of 400MHz, the site says.

    It also comes with three PCI slots, two slots to support 2GB of memory, AGP, on board VGA, 10/100 LAN, USB and the like.

    There's pictures and more, here. µ
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited May 2004
    Damn, I want one of those! :D

    I never have understood why Abit or some other overclocking-friendly mobo maker hasn't produced a desktop matx board for the Pentium M procs. Or Shuttle, in one of their little boxes too? :confused:

    Can you say, quiet and powerful? ;) Something like that would own the Via processor junk.
  • MedlockMedlock Miramar, Florida Member
    edited May 2004
    :respect: ...sweet... :respect:

    Doh! yen suck!! What does that equate to in US$??
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    I was quoted! :celebrate

    It just absolutely boggles my mind that Intel didn't think to just drop their Pentium 4 line in favor of the Banias/Dothan architecture. They would've been right on top of AMD's X86-64 line with 2, 2.2, and 2.4GHz market entries with real world speeds identical to, or better than AMD.

    Only AFTER did they start getting spanked in the home, workstation, server, and enterprise realms did they stop to think: "Hey, maybe the Pentium 4 architecture, which Thrax has been saying was ****ty for 4 years, doesn't work after all!"

    Then they fired a ton of employees, canned the jayhawk and tejas, and went crying all the way back to R&D.

    Firing off a dothan in the form of a Xeon or the Pentium's successor would trigger a silicon arms race between Intel and AMD, both of which are finally of comparable capability to invest in this race. It would bottom the prices out, and we'd see some brilliantly new innovations (As if x86-64 weren't enough).
  • MedlockMedlock Miramar, Florida Member
    edited May 2004
    Thrax wrote:
    I was quoted! :celebrate

    It just absolutely boggles my mind that Intel didn't think to just drop their Pentium 4 line in favor of the Banias/Dothan architecture. They would've been right on top of AMD's X86-64 line with 2, 2.2, and 2.4GHz market entries with real world speeds identical to, or better than AMD.

    Only AFTER did they start getting spanked in the home, workstation, server, and enterprise realms did they stop to think: "Hey, maybe the Pentium 4 architecture, which Thrax has been saying was ****ty for 4 years, doesn't work after all!"

    Then they fired a ton of employees, canned the jayhawk and tejas, and went crying all the way back to R&D.

    Firing off a dothan in the form of a Xeon or the Pentium's successor would trigger a silicon arms race between Intel and AMD, both of which are finally of comparable capability to invest in this race. It would bottom the prices out, and we'd see some brilliantly new innovations (As if x86-64 weren't enough).
    (quoted again :) )

    Yeah, kinda like what's happening with ATi and nVidia, is what you're sayinG? Two leaders compete to make the best product, and the consumer wins. Gotta love it! :D

    I'm happy I was still a n00b when I built this machine. (at least that's what I would call myself now, I've learned so much in the past few months.) If I had gone AMD, I might have become a fanboy. (kinda like I did with ATi. ;D )
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited May 2004
    More or less. However the last 4 years have been the direct antithesis to that pretense, merely because Intel has an inordinate amount of money and was able to "Win" on brand-consciousness rather than upon actual quality.

    Now that AMD has thrown it down, and rolled out the stumbling blocks for Intel to trip all over (Licensing X86-64, switching to performance ratings, canning the Jayhawk + Tejas) Intel realizes that money won't give them the edge any more. And that word of mouth is often superior to markitechture, which is what Intel adores.

    Big changes are on tap!
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited May 2004
    That board looks a lot like the RadiSys LS-855 to me. The RadiSys board is a lot cheaper, though ($350 vs. $450).

    I'm probably going to try to set up a group buy of that RadiSys board this summer, so hold your horses for a little while :) I believe they offer custom BIOSes, so I was going to try to get them to write one that has some overclocking options, and I was hoping to get enough people interested to get the price down to say, $200. (I was going to post this on a number of forums). But it's going to have to wait until a. I have $200, and b. I have the time to organize it, which won't be for a little while yet.
  • qparadoxqparadox Vancouver, BC
    edited May 2004
    Heh that Radisys board looks sweet. I'm definitely looking at switching my folding farm to something that produces more points / power consumed as my folding room has become unbearably hot. $300 cdn is a lot of scrape together but I'll definitely be trying :D.
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited May 2004
    Oh, even the $200 US (which I assume is $300 CDN, judging by your post...) is a tib expensive, but it's really not unreasonable for what you get. Check out the detailed specs on that board on RadiSys' site, and read the manual. I'm dead serious. Go download the manual, and read it. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor after I finished, because the kind of information they provide is insane (and I mean that in a good way). ASUS, ABIT, ECS, MSI, Gigabyte-even Tyan and Supermicro (although the manual for Supermicro's Itanium2 boards are pretty good)-could stand to take lessons from RadiSys on how to write a manual.

    And even at $350, it's not all that overpriced for an industrial board. Tyan's really nice high-end dual opteron boards will run you about $500, so... :-/
  • jchanbrjchanbr Brazil - São Paulo
    edited June 2004
    Geeky1 wrote:
    Oh, even the $200 US (which I assume is $300 CDN, judging by your post...) is a tib expensive, but it's really not unreasonable for what you get. Check out the detailed specs on that board on RadiSys' site, and read the manual. I'm dead serious. Go download the manual, and read it. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor after I finished, because the kind of information they provide is insane (and I mean that in a good way). ASUS, ABIT, ECS, MSI, Gigabyte-even Tyan and Supermicro (although the manual for Supermicro's Itanium2 boards are pretty good)-could stand to take lessons from RadiSys on how to write a manual.

    And even at $350, it's not all that overpriced for an industrial board. Tyan's really nice high-end dual opteron boards will run you about $500, so... :-/

    Hi,

    If you get this mobo for that price (U$200), I'm very interested in one ;D

    I also discovered that these company have pentium m mobos

    http://www.kontron.com/news/nwpressreldetail.cfm?PressID=5167 (full atx)

    http://www.rei.ricoh.com/scu_main.html (FB8M model)

    []'s
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