Intel's Pentium M Desktop Part II: ASUS' Pentium M to Pentium 4 Socket Adapter
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 24, 2005 1:31 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
With the CT-479, ASUS has effectively demolished all other desktop Pentium M solutions. There's no reason to even consider an 855GME motherboard from AOpen or DFI; the ASUS solution is cheaper, better performing and is even a much more stable overclocker. Kudos to ASUS for a job extremely well done with the CT-479. It's the only option that we'd recommend for those interested in a desktop Pentium M system.
That being said, despite being paired with enough memory bandwidth, the Pentium M continues to fall behind in desktop performance. As a gaming platform and as a general purpose/office machine, the Pentium M does fairly well, but it is in content creation, workstation and media encoding applications that the Pentium M continues to fall behind. Part of the problem is that the Pentium M needs clock speed to compete, which we saw when we overclocked it up to 2.56GHz. But even at 2.56GHz, the Pentium M wasn't a competitive CPU when it came to tasks like media encoding, indicating that if the Pentium M is to succeed on the desktop, it's going to need some architectural improvements.
At this year's Spring IDF, Mooley Eden (head of the design team who brought us the original Pentium M) diagramed the architectural features that would be improved in the next version of the Pentium M (code-named Yonah). All of the architectural improvements, outside of the move to dual core, involved SSE and floating point performance - the two major weak points of the Pentium M's present day desktop performance.
It would appear that Intel is doing their best to make the Pentium M even more desktop friendly in Yonah. While ASUS has done the best that they can to give the Pentium M a hospitable desktop environment today, we may have to wait until Yonah for it to make a lot of sense on the desktop.
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merkmal - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
I don't understand why there wasn't a direct comparison here between the i855 and the i865. It seems very un-anandtech like to go on and on about how this is such an improvment over the i855 setups and then not even show 2 of the same clocked processors in both setups to show if that really is the case. Testing a "faster" setup with a processor that is already known to be faster simply by the fact that it is clocked at stock speeds faster isn't a very good comparison or argument for better performance either.I understand the fact that lots of readers are interested in using a Pentium-M on the desktop and would like to know how it compares to other desktop processors, but I thought that was clear from the previous article on exactly that. This article should have been only Pentium-Ms in a variety of setups. It's easy to check back at the old article and see relatively how the new setup compares to the other desktop only processors.
I'm just very dissapointed in this article. I appauled you on the reviewing of the adapter, but think the comparisons drawn were just shoddy and un-thought out.
VIAN - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
Can't wait for Intel to do away with the P4 and step in with a suped-up PM.Or at least do away with the EE, market the PM as a multimedia chip and the P4 as a workstation chip.
kmmatney - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
NewEgg doesn't sell the 770 cpu, and it would be incredibly expensive if they did. Can you test the cheapest P-M, and see how it overclocks?PandaBear - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
Yeah PM is the way to go in the future. P4 architecture is getting way too inefficient and burn way too much power that it is not going to grow from where we are now. I am sure Intel is fully aware of this but keep it under the cover to avoid tanking the P4 sales. What would the customer think the PC they spend big bucks for is slower and hotter than a laptop CPU hacked from last generation technology, that would be a slap on the face.Anyhow, I still think A64 has better architecture for long term growth. Now if they come up with integrated North Bridge that has 20 PCIe lane in replacement of the HT port....
RockHydra11 - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
I don't understand the "desktop killer" thing...It never was intended for the desktop.It was centered to compete with anything else that was on the notebook platform, so Intel was not generating it to perform well against desktop processors, let alonre FLAGSHIP desktop processors. It is what it is, and that's that. Yonah is going to be the one centered toward real desktop performance.Mingon - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
Would have been nice to have run in both single and dual channel configs so as to see if the chip is bandwidth starved.68GTX - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
Looks like Legit reviews is currently testing with a new beta bios with voltage options."Part 2 is being updated... ASUS-USA sent me over a new BETA BIOS that is awesome. Fixes the performance issues and the voltage issues that were noted in the article... Take a look at the new voltages..."
http://forums.legitreviews.com/viewtopic.php?t=157...
Mangler - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
Legit Reviews also has this adapter reviewed today at: http://www.legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=181They compared an Intel 770 CPU on both the DFI 855GME-MGF motherboard and the ASUS P4P800SE for an apples to apples look. (i855GM versus i865PE)
They focus more on overclocking and use of the kit. A must read for any enthusiast.
Goi - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
#12, you can't say that tha Pentium M is based on old technology. There are many power saving techniques on the Pentium M that aren't implemented in the P4, both in the microarchitectural level, circuit level and logic level. The Pentium M is a hybrid between the P3 and the P4, but to say that it's closer to the P3, I'm not sure I agree with that. It does use executation units that are simialr to the P3's, but there are many areas where they are different, including the issue/control logic, which is a BIG part of microprocessors nowadays(and really, in the past decade or so).mrmorris - Thursday, March 24, 2005 - link
I'd like to point out that while the Pentium-M offer sub-desktop performance at worst, it does so with out heating up the room or requireing earplugs to dampen the fan noise! Therefore, as an office/coorporate workstation it fits perfect.