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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Lupine - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
I'm surprised at these results. I'm setting up a new Dell Inspiron 9200 (M 725 @ 1.6GHz/400MHz FSB) and it is schooling both my Barton 2500+ @ 2.2GHz and TBred B 1700+ @ 2.2GHz running Stanford's Folding@Home project (600 point proteins: ~37min per frame for the XP boxes compared to ~34min per frame w/ the laptop).So, if it is so weak, what is allowing it to process WUs at such a competitive rate? Sure, that is slower than an A64, but competitive w/ most P4 procs.
fitten - Thursday, February 10, 2005 - link
Something else to remember about the Banias/Dothan line of chips... Agressive power reduction was the #1 goal of the design process. In a 'normal' chip design, not all pipeline stages are the same length, the clock speed it runs at is the speed of the slowest part of the CPU. Since power usage is directly related to the frequency of the switching gates, the Intel engineers actually deliberately slowed down some parts of the chip to match the target release speeds (or get close to them) to reduce power consumption. This is, perhaps, the main reason why the frequencies don't scale so well as some would want them to scale.Visual - Thursday, February 10, 2005 - link
here's another thought... when the opterons launched initially at ECC DDR266, there were similar comments like "give it unbuffered DDR400 or higher and stay out of its way" :) well, now that we have that, ok it did improve performance a bit. but not hugely. shouldn't help the dothan significantly more too.Visual - Thursday, February 10, 2005 - link
I like how AMD got beaten by the P-M :) not because im intel fan, just because this will make things more interesting now.don't catch flame from this comment :p its my oppinion
Funny how you picked the game benchmarks btw, its almost as if you wanted to show the P-M lacking behind the A64... from what I've seen it beats A64 in HL2 and CSS, and that's a game you don't skip usually :) so why now?
Also looks suspicious how in lots of tests where P-M performs well with the A64 clock-for-clock or beats it, there is almost no difference in the 3800+ and 4000+ results... like if L2 isnt all that important, yet L2 is exactly how everyone explains the P-M success
Maybe we'll see some 2MB L2 A64 "emergency edition" once Dothan gets a decent desktop chipset, just like what intel did to (try to) save P4 from the A64 :)
actually i'd be happy if Dothan motivates AMD to develop faster L2 cache or something.
Knowing Intel, i dont expect they'd even try to match AMD's prices with the P-M... and there's a lot of room for AMD to decreace prices, as they're selling with quite a margin now. So for sure the P-M won't be cost-effective compared to A64, not if you don't care for ultra-low power consumption at least.
also it doesn't look likely Dothan could scale beyond 2.6GHz on current 90nm tech. by the time it gets there, AMD should've launched the 2.8 FX and most likely 3GHz too. so I have no doubts AMD will keep the lead for quite a while... maybe the race to 65nm will be the next turning point, as it seems its going smooth for intel (at least for P-M)
anyway, even if AMD is better in absolute performance, pricepoint and (arguably) clock-for-clock, you gotta admit it to the P-M, it does quite a punch. fun times are coming :)
Zebo - Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - link
dobwal buy intel if you want mhz, AMD is for performance.dobwal - Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - link
i wasn't referring to the FX series. Plus you are not understanding the point i was trying to make. Lets take a look at the FX series.OPN Model Operating Freq. Package ADAFX55DEI5AS FX55 2600MHz 939-Pin
ADAFX53DEP5AS FX53 2400MHz 939-Pin
ADAFX53CEP5AT FX53 2400MHz 940-Pin
ADAFX51CEP5AT FX51 2200MHz 940-Pin
ADAFX51CEP5AK FX51 2200MHz 940-Pin
the first FX51 was release around late third quarter 2003. So in a little over a year the FX series has only increased 400 Mhz. Can you automatically assume that the FX has poor scalability in terms of cpu speed. NO. You know why, because the EE is underperforming and can't touch the FX. AMD has no need to push large scale speed increases out of the FX line, which would do nothing but increase cost with each new stepping it used to boost performance.
The same goes for the Dothan at 2.26Ghz by the end of 2005. What other cpu offers the same level of performance vs. battery life. So why push for performance except to push sales.
You simply can't determine the scalabiltiy of a cpu based on its roadmap especially when its the performance leader in its market segment and has no current viable competitor or one in the near future.
Aileur - Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - link
Oh and, superpi relies on the fpu to do its calculations, so so much for this fpu is crap trend we have going here.http://mod.vr-zone.com.sg/Aopen_i855_review/25sPIm...
Aileur - Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - link
Oh and before you start bragging about the better superpi1mb result of the a64http://www.akiba-pc.com/DFI_855/d17g_2608_spi1m.gi...
this is 1 sec better, with 100mhz less, and single channel ram.
Aileur - Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - link
Since you seem to like xtremesystemshttp://www.akiba-pc.com/DFI_855/d15g_2435_spi1m.PN...
also a 1ghz overclock, also on default voltage
Id like to see how an a64 would perform on a kt266 (if that were possible)
Give the pentium m time to mature and all those "OMG HAHA YOU CPUZ IS SO HOT LOLOL!!!1111" will be obsoleet.
Zebo - Wednesday, February 9, 2005 - link
58 "How long has A64 been stuck on 2.4Ghz."----------------------------------
There not. 2.6 FX-55 been out for months. More importantly AMD does'nt have to release new chips the way they dominate the benchmarks now. Could they? Hell ya.They got a nice buffer going, New FX's hit 3.0 on stock air. Cheap 90nm's are now hitting 2.7 on default Vcore and air. And by air I mean AMD's cheap all aluminum HS with a itty bitty 15mmx70mm fan, not Prescotts copper core screamers.
T8000- You're clueless. Maybe it's the heat generated by your prescott making your head woozy, I dunno, but have a look here..1800 Mhz to 2800 Mhz on default Vcore stock fan.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...