PENTIUM M OR PENTIUM 4M

My Inspiron 5150 3.06 Pentium 4 rips my Pentium M 2.2 to pieces for PhotoShop 7. I have ordered the 9100 as I believe it will be great for image manipulation and digital video.  Get the faster HD (7200 RPM 60GB) and 128 MB video card.

For people salivating over 17inch competitors...the 15.4 WUXGA screen on the Inspirons actually have 30% more screen real estate at highest resolution. Take that HP!

Texruss

  

I believe Texruss means his Pentium 4M, not M as there is no Pentium M 2.2ghz.

Thanks...yes I meant my 840 Latitude is a 4M (Northwood) with 1 GB of RAM. But I have used a number of new Dell M models and they are sluggish in my opinion compared to a hot HT 4M. Svelte weight and super battery power for the M series, but if speed matters then get a fast HyperThreading processor. Video card, HD speed, and RAM also matter when labor intensive tasks are involved.

Texruss

 

There was a good article done over at amantech that compares the pentium 4m with the pentium m.  It's a good read if you're interested.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1800

The benchmarks are towards the end of the article.  The speed of which you're computer is running really depends on what applications you're throwing at it.  However, no matter how fast your pentium m or 4m is, it really isn't going to compare to a desktop processor, where size, heat, and power requirements don't really apply.

The processor naming is somewhat confusing.  The Pentium M (in the 8600 up to 1.7 ghz clock) is a dedicated portable CPU with little in common to other current chips.  In application it is the successor to the Pentium 4M as the power requirements and thermal output of the two are relatively equivalent.  The processor in the 5150 is a Mobile Pentium 4 (Northwood core up to 3.2ghz), and is very similar to a standard desktop Pentium 4 Northwood (as found in the 5100).  The processor in the 9100/XPS is a desktop Pentium 4 Prescott (Unless you you get the Extreme Edition which is a Northwood with twice the cache).  As far as performance is concerned, Pentium M can be multiplied by a factor between 1.4 and 1.7 depending on application to get the equivalent P4 speed.  As far as Northwood vs. Prescott, at equivalent clockspeeds and both processors having HT, the performance difference between the two is negligable.  However, the Prescott has a higher power requirement and thermal output than the Northwoods.  Also, there is no "mobile" prescott available, so the speed won't be scaled as effectively for power conservation as in a Mobile P4 (Northwood).  So, if you don't require cutting edge graphics, and instead raw power is your major concern, the 5150 may be a better choice as it is lighter, has much better battery life, and is less expensive, and at the same time the processing power compares favorably to any of the XPS/9100 processors other than the Extreme Edition.  However if you need all the processing power you can get, the XPS with Extreme Edition processor is the fastest out there.

JK

>>>I am looking a desktop replacement road warrior for graphics (Photoshop), and spotted the new Inspiron 9100.  Now, is the 9100 with a Pentium 4M 3.0 faster than a similar model (Inspiron or Lattitude) with a Pentium M 1.7.  Will be working with a lot of images open at one time so will have 1gig of RAM on the computer. Batterry power is not a serious issue as it will plugged in most of the time.  Any suggestions appreciated. PTB<<<

 

You may know this but as a note the 9100 comes with a desktop Pentium 4 processor, not a mobile Pentium 4. I do believe that the 5150 comes with the Pentium 4M.

The pentium M isn't as slow as it's clockrate suggests. Consider for example the AMD Athlons. A Athlon 64 3200+ can be considered as fast as a Pentium 4 3200Mhz (or if you say "intel is faster", at least faster than a P4 2800), but it's real clock is only 2000 Mhz. Remember also that the first P4 at 1400Mhz were beaten by the PIII-1000. The P4 was designed to get high clock rates (even partly for marketing purposes).
Another point to consider is that Desktop P4s are often slower than Mobile P4s because they overheat in notebooks due to their high power consumption and lower maximum allowed temperature. If temperature gets too high, they simply throttle down. It seems that The Inspiron 9100 (and XPS) has a massive cooling system, but for example the Acer Aspire 1700 series throttle their P4-2800 down to 1800 after 5 minutes of full load (and it's far from being the only notebook doing that).

Edit: but if you want THE FASTEST, you'll have to go with a P4M or P4 3000 or more. There is no doubt that they are faster than the Pentium M. The Pentium M 1.7 can be considered as equivalent to a P4M 2600.

Message Edited by HMKrieps on 03-14-2004 11:45 AM

Check my sig. for the approximate comparisons. Please note that in some applications the P-M may be faster, while in some cases the P4-M may be faster

You can ofcourse also wait for the dothan (succesor of current Pentium-M banias CPU) 2 Ghz who will be released at the end of the year. With a  larger cache (2 Mb) and a faster FSB (533 instead of 400) it will perform like a 3.7-3.8 Ghz P4.

Intel will stop their P4-M line due to the limitations of heat and energy of its design (high clock speeds require a lot of power and produce more heat).

Desktop P4's however will continue to be used in desktop replacement notebooks. Unless you really need that power (encoding, number crunching, ...) I do not suggest a desktop P4 mobile notebook as either they are huge (9100/XPS) for the cooling system, if not they overheat or sound like airplanes taking off .