Quiet Makes Some Noise

August 17, 2005 admin Uncategorized 11

Not everyone wants or needs a hot box. Hot boxes tend to be, well, hot, and hot usually means noise, and hot usually means bigger so the noise has a good chance to get rid of the hot.

Currently, those who prefer little, cool and/or quiet have not had optimal choices. The Via Epia choices have been LCQ, but a bit too underpowered for most people’s liking. The Pentium M is much better powered, but desktop options have been more than a bit too overpriced.

Via will be shortly offering a new option. They will have a new line of processors called the C7-M series, plus mobo chipsets (the VN800 series), which will also support Pentium Ms. The chipset supports both DDR/DDR2, can have an AGP slot, and can run up to an 800MHz bus.

It remains to be seen how well Via’s CPU holds up against Intel’s “M” chips; Via seems to think their new chip ought to be competitive with the Celeron M. It may, it may not, but it will be cheap, it ought to fit more computing needs than the current C3 chips, and if it doesn’t, one can always get a Celeron/Pentium M.

For those who prefer quiet to power, the C7-M is made using SOI, and if you underclock and not do anything too demanding, you may be able to get away with passive cooling of the CPU.

For those who prefer power to quiet, while this doesn’t make a Pentium M any cheaper, any desktop mobos based on this chipset ought to cost much less than the current socket 479 mobos floating around.

90nm lower-end Celeron Ms cost less than $100 today. A few months from now, you might be able to take a 1.3 Cel-M, and crank it up, well maybe not double the speed, but not too far away from it.

No matter whether you like power or quiet better, mobos based on the VN600 ought to be appealing to those who like good computing in small, cheap packages. If you don’t want to wait (and pay) for MiniMac, Intel-style, or Minintel, Apple style, this could be for you later this year.

Not for everyone, but for some, definitely something to keep an eye on.

Ed

Related Articles

No Picture

What Do You Pay?. . .

October 24, 2002 admin Uncategorized 0

I’m working through the “what will you pay for an advanced AMD chip” questionaire, and I’ve run across something of interest. Non-Americans seem willing to pay a good deal more than Americans for CPUs. I rather strongly suspect that’s because

11 replies

Join the discussion →

Loading new replies...

Avatar of mjw21a
mjw21a

Member

5,258 messages 6 likes
#1 Aug 17, 2005

I suspect that they're talking about Pentium M's running at stock speeds Sjaak. Personally when I next look at getting a system the choice will be down between a Pentium M and an Athlon 64. P4's won't even be considered (nor have they ever been).

Reply Like

Avatar of Sjaak
Sjaak

Member

7,036 messages 0 likes
#2 Aug 18, 2005

I suspect that they're talking about Pentium M's running at stock speeds Sjaak. Personally when I next look at getting a system the choice will be down between a Pentium M and an Athlon 64. P4's won't even be considered (nor have they ever been).

He's talking to a crowd of overclockers :)

Reply Like

O
Overlag

Registered

55 messages 0 likes
#3 Aug 18, 2005

He's talking to a crowd of overclockers :)

yes, however MjW21a is right, at stock the Pentium M's are simply not worth it.

However learn how to adjust a few bios settings and you now have the fastest CPU without hardly any risk ;)

I just wonder why Intel wont do that for "us". Why dont they release a 2.6ghz desktop (478) version? WHY NOT??? The yields seem good enough.

Reply Like

Avatar of Voodoo Rufus
Voodoo Rufus

Powder Junkie Moderator

6,932 messages 608 likes
#4 Aug 18, 2005

yes, however MjW21a is right, at stock the Pentium M's are simply not worth it.

However learn how to adjust a few bios settings and you now have the fastest CPU without hardly any risk ;)

I just wonder why Intel wont do that for "us". Why dont they release a 2.6ghz desktop (478) version? WHY NOT??? The yields seem good enough.

Just making them socket compatible, even leaving them at current speeds, would make me happy.

Reply Like

Avatar of mjw21a
mjw21a

Member

5,258 messages 6 likes
#5 Aug 18, 2005

I believe that Intel wants to charge a price premium for their notebook processors. Besides, they'd still have a hard time selling the Pentium M to the mainstream crowd vs P4's. The average joe sixpack still doesn't understand that a 1.7GHz Dotahn beats the crap out of a 2.4GHz P4......

At the same time, I do believe that Intel should ditch the P4's altogether in favour of the P-M. The core is much smaller so both yields are higher and material costs are lower translating into overall less cost for Intel. Keep charging what they are right now and this translates into a very nice profit margin.

I don't really understand why they're keeping the P4 architecture around. I mean, from day 1 the P4 architecture was a complete dog. In the end they revived the old P6 architecture and it was still better. What's that tell you?

Reply Like

click to expand...
Avatar of gvblake22
gvblake22

Member

2,705 messages 0 likes
#6 Aug 19, 2005

Isn't intel's new dual core architecture supposed to be more efficient like the Pentium M rather than the P4?
But I agree, intel should have started a desktop line based off the Pentium M a long time ago! :mad:

Reply Like

Avatar of TheGame240
TheGame240

Member

574 messages 0 likes
#7 Aug 19, 2005

I believe that Intel wants to charge a price premium for their notebook processors. Besides, they'd still have a hard time selling the Pentium M to the mainstream crowd vs P4's. The average joe sixpack still doesn't understand that a 1.7GHz Dotahn beats the crap out of a 2.4GHz P4......

At the same time, I do believe that Intel should ditch the P4's altogether in favour of the P-M. The core is much smaller so both yields are higher and material costs are lower translating into overall less cost for Intel. Keep charging what they are right now and this translates into a very nice profit margin.

I don't really understand why they're keeping the P4 architecture around. I mean, from day 1 the P4 architecture was a complete dog. In the end they revived the old P6 architecture and it was still better. What's that tell you?

That's one of those situations where marketing overpowers common sense. You can't spends years and years beating into the average desktop user's head that megahertz is everything then suddenly go "You know AMD had a point, our processors aren't very efficient and MHz doesn't really matter". Their hand was forced in the mobile market due to the horrible inefficiency of the P4 design, but in the desktop market they won't budge as long as they're able to keep increasing the pipes and pumping up the MHz.

Reply Like

click to expand...
Avatar of Who
Who

Member

327 messages 0 likes
#8 Aug 19, 2005

...I do believe that Intel should ditch the P4's altogether in favour of the P-M...

That's what they're doing. The Conroe chip is based on the PM and will replace the P4.

Reply Like

Avatar of mjw21a
mjw21a

Member

5,258 messages 6 likes
#9 Aug 21, 2005

That's what they're doing. The Conroe chip is based on the PM and will replace the P4.

Actually, my understanding is that the Conroe will be halfway between a P-M and a P4 in that it'll have a longer pipeline but still have much greater efficiency than the P4. Gives better clockspeeds. :shrug:

Reply Like

Avatar of Audioaficionado
Audioaficionado

Sparkomatic Moderator

12,420 messages 73 likes
#10 Aug 23, 2005

One big reason Intel keeps pushing PressHotts is because they need to milk more profits from that broken design to pay off all the R&D/marketing costs and fund R&D for the next AMD killer (whatever that might be or not).

People keep buying them and Dell is satisfied now that things are better than when PressHotts first came out. The P-D is still basicly a dual core improved PressHott. Costco is selling a Gateway PC with one of those in it for $1300. Dell's got to have some soon if not already.

I'm interested in getting that Asus adaptor and the qualified Asus i865 mATX board for a more ecconomical SFF build. Once you take a 1.6 P-M past 2GHz, it becomes a great bang for the buck. They overclock easy with just an FSB jumper change from 400 to 533 or 533 to 800.

I believe the Yonah will be the dual core P-M and not a P4/P-M hybred. I'll take one with EM64T thank you very much :thup:

Reply Like

click to expand...

Join the full discussion at the Overclockers Forums →