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
Price based Performance Comparison
To make it easier to digest all of the numbers, we've done a couple of head-to-head comparisons that help paint a more complete picture of the Pentium M's desktop performance.The first, and most important, comparison from a consumer standpoint is the price-based performance comparison - pitting the Pentium M against equivalently-priced desktop CPUs.
At $430 the Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz) is the perfect competitor for the $435 Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz). So, let's see how the two stack up:
| Business/General Use | |||
| Intel Pentium 4 560 | Intel Pentium M 755 | Performance Advantage | |
| Business Winstone 2004 | 21.4 | 24.2 | 13% (Pentium M) |
| SYSMark 2004 - Communication | 137 | 127 | 8% (Pentium 4) |
| SYSMark 2004 - Document Creation | 201 | 187 | 7% (Pentium 4) |
| SYSMark 2004 - Data Analysis | 184 | 108 | 70% (Pentium 4) |
| Microsoft Office XP with SP-2 | 522 | 546 | 4% (Pentium 4) |
| Mozilla 1.4 | 459 | 321 | 30% (Pentium M) |
| ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0 | 547 | 574 | 5% (Pentium 4) |
| Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3 | 545 | 510 | 6% (Pentium M) |
| WinZip Computing WinZip 8.1 | 412 | 396 | 4% (Pentium M) |
| WinRAR | 479 | 370 | 29% (Pentium 4) |
| Winner | - | - | Pentium 4 |
Under business applications, the Pentium M does fairly well, winning four benchmarks, but the Pentium 4 560 comes ahead with 6 total wins and a higher average win percentage. It is noteworthy to point out the Pentium M's victory in Business Winstone 2004, which is due to its low latency L2 cache, something that the Pentium 4 most definitely lacks.
Multitasking Content Creation
| Multitasking Content Creation | |||
| Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| Content Creation Winstone 2004 | 32.7 | 27.9 | 17% (Pentium 4) |
| SYSMark 2004 - 3D Creation | 231 | 168 | 38% (Pentium 4) |
| SYSMark 2004 - 2D Creation | 288 | 238 | 21% (Pentium 4) |
| SYSMark 2004 - Web Publication | 206 | 160 | 29% (Pentium 4) |
| Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder | 676 | 641 | 5% (Pentium M) |
| Winner | - | - | Pentium 4 |
In multitasking content creation applications, the clear win goes to the Pentium 4 with much larger margins of victory in applications that stress FP performance as well as memory bandwidth.
Video Creation/Photo Editing
| Video Creation/Photo Editing | |||
| Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1 | 342 | 332 | 3% (Pentium M) |
| Adobe Premiere 6.5 | 461 | 418 | 9% (Pentium M) |
| Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5 | 287 | 411 | 30% (Pentium 4) |
| Winner | - | - | Pentium 4 |
The Pentium M is surprisingly competitive in Adobe Photoshop and Premier, but clearly loses to the Pentium 4 in the VideoWave test. With more and more video editing applications being optimized for the Pentium 4's architecture, at this point, we'd give the win to the Pentium 4 here as well.
Audio/Video Encoding
| Audio/Video Encoding | |||
| Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| MusicMatch Jukebox 7.10 | 484 | 529 | 9% (Pentium 4) |
| DivX Encoding | 55.3 | 36 | 54% (Pentium 4) |
| XviD Encoding | 33.9 | 25.4 | 33% (Pentium 4) |
| Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0 | 2.57 | 1.83 | 40% (Pentium 4) |
| Winner | - | - | Pentium 4 |
Although audio encoding paints the Pentium M in a competitive light, look at any of the video encoding tests and it's obvious that the Pentium M isn't in the same league as the Pentium 4 on a price competitive basis.
Gaming
| Gaming | |||
| Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| Doom 3 | 84.6 | 85 | Tie |
| Halo | 87.5 | 85.2 | 3% (Pentium 4) |
| UT2004 | 59.3 | 55.2 | 7% (Pentium 4) |
| Wolfenstein: ET | 97.2 | 85.5 | 14% (Pentium 4) |
| Winner | - | - | Pentium 4 |
Gaming performance is pretty close, but the Pentium 4 does take the slight lead in some games.
3D Rendering
| 3D Rendering | |||
| Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| Discreet 3dsmax 5.1 (DX) | 268 | 269 | Tie |
| Discreet 3dsmax 5.1 (OGL) | 327 | 350 | 7% (Pentium 4) |
| SPECapc 3dsmax 6 | 1.64 | 1.23 | 33% (Pentium 4) |
| Winner | - | - | Pentium 4 |
As we've already seen, FP performance is not a strongpoint of the Pentium M when compared to higher clocked Pentium 4s - which is why we see the Pentium 4 with such a strong lead in the 3dsmax 6 test.
Professional Applications
| Professional Applications | |||
| Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz) | Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz) | Performance Advantage | |
| SPECviewperf 8 - 3dsmax-03 | 17.04 | 10.73 | 59% (Pentium 4) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - catia-01 | 13.87 | 9.096 | 52% (Pentium 4) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - light-07 | 14.3 | 10.71 | 34% (Pentium 4) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - maya-01 | 13.12 | 15.47 | 18% (Pentium M) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - proe-03 | 16.7 | 10.74 | 55% (Pentium 4) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - sw-01 | 13.09 | 8.593 | 52% (Pentium 4) |
| SPECviewperf 8 - ugs-04 | 15.31 | 10.24 | 50% (Pentium 4) |
| Winner | - | - | Pentium 4 |
The SPECviewperf 8 suite stresses both FP performance and memory bandwidth, so the results here are not surprising at all - the Pentium M isn't a workstation class processor either.
Pentium M vs. Pentium 4 Price Based Comparison Conclusion
At the same price, the Pentium 4 560 is a much better deal than the Pentium M 755, regardless of application suite. Also remember that we're not taking into account motherboard cost in this comparison, which makes the Pentium M 755 about $100 more expensive on the desktop.The Pentium M does produce a lot less heat than the Pentium 4 560, which has to be worth something, right? Well, as we've shown in previous comparisons, the Athlon 64 3500+ is fairly competitive with the Pentium 4 560, and if you get the new 90nm core, produces significantly less heat - making it the better option. You get the performance of the Pentium 4, but with thermal characteristics closer to the Pentium M.
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bob661 - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
The only problem with this chip is that the marketing is oriented towards the mobile market and therefore not a direct competitor to the A64. It would be nice if it was. It might bring some cats out of the bag on the AMD side. Competition in the marketplace is good for us all.jvrobert - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
Really, AMDroids, get a grip. You're all excited because the AMD chips beat a mobile processor pretty handily, and because you are making some silly assumption that the Pentium-M in its current form is Intel's "last chance".First, Intel doesn't need a last chance. They make enough money to make AMD look like a Mexico City taco stand. So enough of those delusions of grandeur.
But on a technical front, if Intel ramps the clockspeed up to the 2.8 range (easy), and releases a desktop class chipset for the Pentium M it would match or exceed any current chip. And these are _basic_ steps. What if they made more improvements?
jvrobert - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
bob661 - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
#45You are a rock. The point of the article was to compare the P-M to desktop CPU's because most of us here wanted to know it will perform. And you know what? It performed very nicely.
classy - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
I just can't help but to laugh at some folks. Its a nice chip but clearly not in the A64 ballpark. Its that simple. As far as the 2.8 oc, that was only accomplished in one reveiw. All the reviews show the same thing you have oc so it can it compete. What's interesting though is most of these Intel fanboys don't want to see a comparison of an oc'ed A64 vs a Dothan. Smoke city :)FrostAWOL - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
IF the Pentium-M and P4 are electrically incompatible then someone please explain this:HP Blade system Pentium-M with Serverworks GC-SL chipset
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/prolian...
FrostAWOL
jae63 - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
Great review & of interest to those of us with HTPCs. Too bad the price point is so steep.One minor correction on page 11:
"The Pentium M does a bit better in the document creation tests, as they are mostly using applications that will fit within the CPU's cache. However, the introduction of a voice recognition program into the test stresses the Pentium M's floating point performance, which does hamper its abilities here."
Actually NaturallySpeaking uses almost no floating point but is very memory intensive. The performance hit that you are seeing is because it uses a lot of memory bandwidth and its dataset doesn't fit in the L2 cache.
Here's some support for my statement, by the main architect of NaturallySpeaking, Joel Gould:
http://tinyurl.com/6s4mh
segagenesis - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
#43 - I think you have the right idea here. This processor is not meant to be performance busting but rather a low energy alternative to current heat factories present inside every P4 machine. I would love to have this in a HTPC machine myself but the cost is still too damn high. Hopefully higher production will bring the cost down.Aileur - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
I guess the pentium M isnt ready (yet) for a full featured gaming machine, but with that kind of power, passively cooled, it would make for one hell of an htpc.PrinceGaz - Tuesday, February 8, 2005 - link
#45- It was not an unfair review, on the contrary it seemed very well done. The reason the P-M was compared with fast P4 and A64's is because they cost about the same.Maybe someone else buys your computers for you, but most of us here have to spend our own money on them so cost is the best way to decide what to compare it with.