Bringing the Pentium-M to the desktop

[Drec]

Oh ok what about that I915 mobo that asus makes that supports the P-M?

It's REALLY expensive, thats what.

 

[fAlCoNNiAn]

Nice read and Awesome Sticky!

 

[Ssetre]

The P4GD1 is expensive? It looks like any other 915 board except it has a socket 478 cpu socket.

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=12&l3=27&model=167&modelmenu=1

This is the board I was talking about but I can't find it online...

 

[Drec]

i remember it being like $300 and from what i've read is poor for OCing.

 

[Gautam]

The P4GD1 would be around $150 USD if you could ever find it. It's socket 478 and requires the use of the CT479, unlike the native socket 479 boards (the expensive ones.)

 

[Drec]

unlike the native socket 479 boards (the expensive ones.)

thats what i was refering too

 

[Ssetre]

Ah the reason I ask is that Asus says that you can control cpu voltages on that board without any pin mods.

I will see what the guys at the local computer shop can find through there suppliers.

Ah I won't find it in on this continent.

 

[Sjaak]

Ah the reason I ask is that Asus says that you can control cpu voltages on that board without any pin mods.

On the P4C800-E DLX you can control voltages with the new .023 BIOS.

Good to see so many people are hopping along. Should send a message out to Intel

 

[Highlander]

Voltage control worked with an earlier bios as well, cant remeber the version. Its pointless getting it though, as the newer one offers voltage and multi

 

[Ssetre]

Alright big question time is it worth dropping 250cad on a P4C800-e DLX vs the 130cad on a P4P800-SE?

Also should I just hold out for Yonah before I drop the chaching on a P-M? Yonah will use S479 right? There are so many upgrades happening to the P-M when intel goes 65nm.

 

[Sjaak]

Alright big question time is it worth dropping 250cad on a P4C800-e DLX vs the 130cad on a P4P800-SE?

Also should I just hold out for Yonah before I drop the chaching on a P-M? Yonah will use S479 right? There are so many upgrades happening to the P-M when intel goes 65nm.

Decide for yourself. The P4C has a more beefier power supply and clocks a bit better. It'sa huge difference tho.

Yonah won't be here till end 2006 and it's gonna need new motherboards since it's dual core.

 

[Highlander]

Alright big question time is it worth dropping 250cad on a P4C800-e DLX vs the 130cad on a P4P800-SE?

Also should I just hold out for Yonah before I drop the chaching on a P-M? Yonah will use S479 right? There are so many upgrades happening to the P-M when intel goes 65nm.

Unless you can get a cheap one no The P4P800-se also has a new bios out which supports vcore and multi adjust in bios. The only thing it lacks over the P4C is PAT over 200 fsb. If your after a good, fast rig for gaming or whatever then get the P4P800se. If your after a benchmark machine, then get the P4C

 

[stryg]

Chip: 1.6 533FSB
Motherboard: P4C800-E Deluxe (non-modded)
RAM: 2x256MB Mushkin LVL2 BH5 (no heatspreaders, 3.4vdimm)
Videocard: 9800Pro (R350, 460/370)
Cooling: Air, Zalman CNPS7700
Current Speed: 2700Mhz (245x11)
Current Voltage: 1.55v
Max FSB / CPU clock: 250Mhz / 2750Mhz (250x11)
Max Voltage: 1.60v
S-code / stepping / pack date: SL86G / C0 / 02-10-05

 

[Sjaak]

Added, thanks. That is a nice 3dmark01 score, what do you get in 03? 7.5k?

With my chip at 2.4 (12x200) and the XT at stock speeds i score 23.4k

 

[stryg]

Haven't tried 03 just yet. Will report back when I do.

 

[zachj]

Can we have some comparative benchmarks vs. A64s and Pentium4s? I'd be content with numbers copied from old reviews (assuming you don't have your own A64 or P4s), but I want to see if it's worth the money. I can't really fathom it being much better than an A64.

Z

 

[Gautam]

My 2.7GHz Dothan vs my 2.8GHz A64:

My Aquamark3 CPU score compared to some Athlon64 FX55's:

You can check our SuperPI results page to see that my score at 2.75GHz matches an FX55 at 3.2GHz. Much faster than an A64, yes, in plenty of situations, 3D especially. Much better is a different story.

 

[zachj]

How do you mean "much better is a different story"? Any chance you have numbers on video encoding or something like that? What I'm interested in is the feeling of fast. My dual xeon has that in spades, and my sister's Dell 2.6C is no slouch either. I've never been impressed with Athlon XPs or regular, non-HT 533MHz bus P4s. I know that bus speed has more to do with the responsiveness of the P4C (and higher), but I can't get it out of my head that an A64 or a Pentium M would feel as sluggish as an XP. I'm sure this is just my brief P4 experience talking, but that's what I've learned to accept as the rules- P4 is fast and feels fast, everything else is fast but drives like a Kia.

Z

 

[Gautam]

It's video encoding is nothing remarkable. IIRC, somewhere between an AXP and an A64.

You're mostly correct about "responsiveness" of the A64 and the P-M. It's a given that the AthlonXP suffers in multitasking, but it's further crippled by being severly memory-bottlenecked, lacking a wide front side bus (effectively half at best of most Pentium 4's), and usually not allowing for high memory frequencies either. Because of this, the AthlonXP will very often, if not usually, end up slower than the P4 even in single-threaded applications. This is something that the Athlon64 and the Pentium M do not suffer from. In single-threaded apps, the Athlon64 is usually quicker than the Pentium 4. If you don't have much going on, it's going to feel faster. The on-die memory controller manifests itself in plenty of ways, one practical example that I noticed was that the A64 installs software much quicker than everything else. In respects like that, the Pentium M is close to the A64, but not quite there. In general useability, I'd say the two feel quite similar, but are still both miles ahead of the AthlonXP. The Pentium M is faster in 3D. However, it's easy to slow them both down by multitasking. If you're looking for a good multitasker, I wouldn't say that the P-M is for you. In fact, even though Intel has plans to bring HyperThreading to this architecture, I wouldn't expect it to have nearly the same effect that it does in the Pentium 4, just in the nature of its short pipeline. The tradeoff between fast single tasking, slow multitasking and smooth multitasking, slow singletasking is still very much present.

 

[Sjaak]

Edited for some spelling and broken-linkage.