Intel's Pentium M on the Desktop - A Viable Alternative?
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 7, 2005 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Clock Speed based Performance Comparison
While the price-based performance comparison is the more practical comparison, a comparison based on clock speed is quite possibly the more interesting. We took an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket-939, 2.0GHz) and pitted it against our 2.0GHz Pentium M 755 to see how efficient Intel's mobile core happens to be.| Business/General Use | |||
| AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| Business Winstone 2004 | 22.1 | 24.2 | 10% (Pentium M) |
| SYSMark 2004 - Communication | 134 | 127 | 6% (Athlon 64) |
| SYSMark 2004 - Document Creation | 169 | 187 | 11% (Pentium M) |
| SYSMark 2004 - Data Analysis | 133 | 108 | 23% (Athlon 64) |
| Microsoft Office XP with SP-2 | 544 | 546 | Tie |
| Mozilla 1.4 | 360 | 321 | 11% (Pentium M) |
| ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0 | 553 | 574 | 4% (Athlon 64) |
| Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3 | 497 | 510 | 3% (Athlon 64) |
| WinZip Computing WinZip 8.1 | 448 | 396 | 12% (Pentium M) |
| WinRAR | 566 | 370 | 53% (Athlon 64) |
| Winner | - | - | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ |
The Pentium M is extremely competitive with the Athlon 64 in our business/general use tests, even outperforming it in four of the benchmarks. However, in tests where the Pentium M's 2MB L2 cache isn't enough, the Athlon 64 pulls ahead - such as the Data Analysis SYSMark 2004 test and the WinRAR test.
Multitasking Content Creation
| Multitasking Content Creation | |||
| AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| Content Creation Winstone 2004 | 30.9 | 27.9 | 11% (Athlon 64) |
| SYSMark 2004 - 3D Creation | 174 | 168 | 4% (Athlon 64) |
| SYSMark 2004 - 2D Creation | 214 | 238 | 11% (Pentium M) |
| SYSMark 2004 - Web Publication | 161 | 160 | Tie |
| Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder | 685 | 641 | 6% (Pentium M) |
| Winner | - | - | Tie |
Surprisingly enough, the Athlon 64 and the Pentium M 755 give us a tie here. Content creation applications tend to be more memory bandwidth sensitive than not, so we were a bit surprised to see that the Pentium M did so well here, but it appears that the low latency L2 cache is able to make up for its lack of memory bandwidth. To AMD's credit, as applications increase in size, the Pentium M wouldn't be able to compete as well, but for present day applications, it's interesting to see the Pentium M do so well without the aid of AMD's on-die memory controller.
Video Creation/Photo Editing
| Video Creation/Photo Editing | |||
| AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 | 364 | 332 | 8% (Pentium M) |
| Adobe Premiere 6.5 | 405 | 418 | 3% (Athlon 64) |
| Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5 | 349 | 411 | 15% (Athlon 64) |
| Winner | - | - | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ |
The race is fairly close here, but AMD pulls away in the two video editing tests.
Audio/Video Encoding
| Audio/Video Encoding | |||
| AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| MusicMatch Jukebox 7.10 | 540 | 529 | 2% (Pentium M) |
| DivX Encoding | 40.8 | 36 | 13% (Athlon 64) |
| XviD Encoding | 27.8 | 25.4 | 10% (Athlon 64) |
| Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0 | 1.85 | 1.83 | Tie |
| Winner | - | - | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ |
The Pentium 4 completely blew the Pentium M away in the video encoding tests and while the Athlon 64 also manages to outperform it, the margin of victory isn't nearly as great. With a faster memory bus, it is possible that the Pentium M could significantly lessen the gap. Regardless, the win still goes to the Athlon 64.
Gaming
| Gaming | |||
| AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| Doom 3 | 90.3 | 85 | 6% (Athlon 64) |
| Halo | 87 | 85.2 | 2% (Athlon 64) |
| UT2004 | 58.7 | 55.2 | 6% (Athlon 64) |
| Wolfenstein: ET | 93.1 | 85.5 | 9% (Athlon 64) |
| Winner | - | - | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ |
Gaming performance is extremely close, but AMD takes the slight lead over the Pentium M.
3D Rendering
| 3D Rendering | |||
| AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| Discreet 3dsmax 5.1 (DX) | 278 | 269 | 3% (Pentium M) |
| Discreet 3dsmax 5.1 (OGL) | 344 | 350 | 2% (Pentium M) |
| SPECapc 3dsmax 6 | 1.28 | 1.23 | 4% (Athlon 64) |
| Winner | - | - | Tie |
3D Rendering performance is even closer between these two, leaving us with a tie between the Athlon 64 and the Pentium M at the same clock speed.
Professional Applications
| Professional Applications | |||
| AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| SPECviewperf 8 - 3dsmax-03 | 15.47 | 10.73 | 44% (Athlon 64) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - catia-01 | 12.06/strong> | 9.096 | 33% (Athlon 64) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - light-07 | 12.08 | 10.71 | 13% (Athlon 64) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - maya-01 | 15.69 | 15.47 | Tie |
| SPECviewperf 8 - proe-03 | 15.22 | 10.74 | 42% (Athlon 64) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - sw-01 | 12.24 | 8.593 | 42% (Athlon 64) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - ugs-04 | 13.99 | 10.24 | 37% (Athlon 64) |
| Winner | - | - | AMD Athlon 64 3200+ |
The SPECviewperf 8 suite goes to AMD, as the Athlon 64 completely dominates the Pentium M, clock for clock, in these very memory bandwidth, latency and FP intensive tests.
Pentium M vs. Athlon 64 Clock Speed Based Comparison Conclusion
While the Athlon 64 3200+ pulled away with the win in most of our test suites (tying twice), the Pentium M 755 put up a very hard fight. Given how strongly the Pentium M competes with the Athlon 64 on a clock for clock basis, the obvious answer would be to use the Pentium M to compete with AMD instead of the Pentium 4, right?Wrong. The fundamental issue is that although the Pentium M is surprisingly competitive with the Athlon 64 on a clock for clock basis, the Pentium M's architecture can't scale to the same clock speeds that the Athlon 64 can. The fact of the matter is that while the Pentium M will hit 2.26GHz by the end of 2005, the Athlon 64 will be on its way to 3.0GHz and beyond. It's the same argument that was present during the Pentium III vs. Pentium 4 transition period, and we all know the result of that transition.
The Pentium M's astounding successes against the Athlon 64, despite the lack of an on-die memory controller and only a single channel DDR333 memory bus, are without a doubt due to its 10 cycle L2 cache. We've seen how much a reduction in memory latency can do for performance - the Athlon 64 is a living, breathing example of that. But an even greater reduction in L2 cache latency is even more powerful under the right circumstances.
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bluesdoggy - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
...in the mobile world, the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 are often castrated or limited either by low clock speeds...Mommy, is that processor a steer?
valnar - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
As usual, an unfair review. Comparing a 2.0Ghz 400FSB laptop CPU against 3.0Ghz desktop heatmonsters? Of course it won't beat them. But look at how well it does, and probably would do (if reviewed correctly) against Pentium 4 2.4-2.8Ghz CPU's. Considering the ultralow power it needs and lack of heat it generates, this WILL be the hot (err... cool) ticket for Shuttle XPC's and the like in the near future. For anyone who doesn't need the fastest processor at the moment, the Banias designers did a fantastic job.EODetroit - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
Great article, its about time that you did this one. And you compared both P-M motherboards on the market, I don't remember the other web sites doing that.You stated that the P-M won't scale, and that's the reason this isn't Intel's desktop future. One thing though... Intel's other desktop CPUs aren't going to scale much this year either. In fact, on a percentage basis, the P-M might actually scale more this year than the various P4-Kiln edition CPUs after all.
Combine that with a mobile-915 chipset for the desktop, and therefore the elimination of the huge memory bottlenecks (and hopefully a little more voltage adjustments) and all of the sudden we may see all those Losses and Ties turn into Ties and Wins.
Whatever happens, don't be the last enthusiast site to review the mobile-915 desktop motherboards when they arrive, like you were with this. We need a trusted source to know what to buy.
mickyb - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
The performance per watt is awesome. Great for SFF. The article is good, but until there is a newer chipset for this CPU, we won't be able to determine a final performance ruling. I am dissappointed in the lack of desktop MB offerings. This will be the challenger to the MAC mini in near future. Someone will be putting laptop components in a box and call it done.I found a couple of things interesting. Taking the memory out of play, it seems the A64 is still better optimized. L1 cache of Northwood is pretty impressive. AMD has an opportunity to improve performance just by improving the L2 cache latency.
I really don't think the Pentium-M limits are around 2.6 GHz by the end of the year. At 22W, this could probably reach higher speeds. I think the upper limit that Intel is publishing is in context of a laptop and the cooling challenges in that platform. If you put a chip in a DT, then it is a different story.
AtaStrumf - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
A great article! Another Anand classic :-)I'd just like you to add an Athlon XP 3200 to the lineup and at least one more Newcastle (which is just the most popular A64 at the moment ;-) May I suggest a 3000+ 2,0 GHz/512/1CH? With just one dot on the graph extrapolating anything becomes a nightmare :-(
As for P-M it's one hell of a CPU considering it's limitations and we just can't stop wondering what it could become if Intel decided to remove them. Sonoma will party answer that question, but unfortunately the ultra low voltage cap will still remain, so we may never really know.
On the other hand I think an A64 will still be a nice enough desktop CPU so we really have no need for P-M on the desktop side of things. With Lancaster-Turion supposedly on S754 we may be in for a very nice successor to 2500+ Mobile, so to hell with P-M >;-)
bob661 - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
C'mon guys. These tests aren't showing that the P-M is crap, just not what we originally thought it was. I am surprised as hell at these results. For a laptop CPU, it still kicks ass. And with two A64 and three AXP machines, I am no Intel fanboy.paulsiu - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
For folks who want to have a mobile chip lower power solution, why not just go to the mobile Athlon 64? The CPU performance should be about the same as their desktop counterpart (at least the socket 754 version) and you can often use the same motherboard as the desktop.The Pentium Mobile idea seems nice, but I can't imagine spending $300 on a board that contains outdated technology.
MIDIman - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
Superb article.Granted, this is a "desktop" review, but I think the P-M is a completely different world from the P4-775 and A64, and I'm not entiely sure how people can compare them. This was built to be a portable solution and has been moved to desktop. Put that into account, and you have an extremely capable system that is silent, passive, and can be extremely small (matx here, but ITX is out there). I'm just trying to figure out why I didn't just read a Sonoma-based review, since it is out and being made (i.e. Dell's new 6000 laptop), or at least a 2.2ghz Dothan.
I think Sonoma will bridge a bit of this performance gap, but consdering that these types of chipsets and CPUs will always be low voltage, I think we'll always see places where its performance is maybe not up to par, but well worth every penny for small and silent with desktop performance. THey'll only get smaller and faster, and IMHO, this is pretty damn close to desktop performance.
muddocktor - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
I agree withpost #36 about the benchmarks seemingly being picked to go for the P-M's weaknesses, but I guess that's how you get article hits. ;) I do fully agree that the present motherboards and chipsets they use hold back the perfromnace quite a bit; it might be a different story when the new mobile 915 chipset mATX boards come out for desktop use though.One glaring weakness in this comprehensive test though is the utter lack of numbers on system power usage and noise. If I were deploying a whole bunch of new systems for a corporation, I would give serious thought to a P-M setup even though the initial outlay would be more than a comparable P4 setup due to the decreased wattage used by the P-M system and the resultant heat from operation being much less, leading to lower environmental costs. Face it, in typical office applications the P-M is more than powerful enough for 90% of the users for the forseeable future and if your company has hundred or thousands of computers, the power saving should more than compensate for the higher pricetag of aquiring the P-M systems.
Anand, when the new mobos based on the mobile 915 chipset come out, you need to revisit Dothan and it's performance.
msva124 - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
What were people expecting out of the pentium m? I have always multiplied the Mhz by 1.5 and used that number as the speed rating. So for instance the 2.0Ghz Dothan would be 3000+. The benchmarks confirm this - with the exception of one or two tests, it met or exceeded the performance of the Athlon 64 3000+.Whenever it was discussed as a desktop alternative I always assumed the implication was that this would be way off in the future, once clock speeds were ramped up.