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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bobsmith1492 - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
Granted the T8000 here is an Intel fanboy, but please notice Anand was comparing clock-for-clock.T8000 - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
There is one big difference between this review and the reviews where the Pentium M did very well: CLOCKSPEED!While others where able to get over 2.8 Ghz with aircooling, Anand got just 2.4 Ghz. This may be a coincidence, but it is the difference between surprisingly good performance and a few % below others.
As most of the benchmarks where based on the stock 2 Ghz, the difference became even greater.
So this review just shows that the stock speed Pentium M performs about 30% less with about 30% less clockspeed than overclocked versions.
A slightly redesigned version with higher voltages is not extremely unlikely to hit at least 3 Ghz. Combining that with a desktop chipset will result in stellar performance, as the benchmark scores in this review (x1.5) indicate.
But since there is no slightly redesigned version and Intel has no good reason to make one, the current Pentium M desktops will only appeal to overclockers and silent computing people.
Also, for some reason, Anand found the 90W TDP of the 2.4 Ghz A64 closer to the 20W of the P-M than to the 110W of the 3.8 Ghz P4.
CSMR - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
That's a very good option Zebo, thanks for posting it.teutonicknight - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
One suggestion: Why don't you start using a newer version of Premiere for testing? I personally don't use it, but every that I know who does says before Premiere Pro, the program sucked. I'm sure the render results would be much more realistic and accurate if you used a more up to date version of the programRegs - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
I was wondering the same thing too Jeff. If you feed it more bandwidth, it would eliminate the pipeline stalls and maybe give it a chance to reach higher clock speeds. Right? Or is it still prohibited by the shorter pipeline to reach higher clock speeds?Longer pipeline = wasted clock cycles. But to me that sounds like the PM should actually scale a lot better with a speed boost. Why exactly does it scale badly compared to a P4? Could it be remedied in anyway with a dual channel memory bus?
ozzimark - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
there's something wrong with the 3400+ in the spec tests. why is the 3000+ beating it consitantly?Warder45 - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
Maybe I missed something but I don't see the reason for all the negitivity in the final words. The 2.4Ghz P-M was very close to the A64 2.4Ghz in many of the tests, 3D rendering seemed to slow it down but that looked like it. With better boards and memory the P-M might best the A64 in a clock for clock match up.I do agree the prices are way too high. I think Intel really needs to wake up and smell what they have cooking here. With more support and more aggressive priceing they could easily have a winner in the HTPC and SFF markets.
plewis00 - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
Surely when someone builds a mainboard with the Sonoma (i915) platform using PCI-E and DDR2-533 then it will change. And I wouldn't have thought that's that far off assuming they don't charge rip-off prices for the technology. It would also be perfect for Shuttle systems where the emphasis is on quietness and coolness rather than so much on performance.Zebo - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
CSMRSo's this one very soon..
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...
...more than excellent performance wise if Dothan is excellent...power differential hopefully for AMD will be nominal.
Sokaku - Monday, February 7, 2005 - link
While it is true that the A64 has way more bandwidth, I doubt that is the reason why it crushed the P-M in the Professional Applications. I think the real cause is to be found in the P-M's abillity to do FP divisions. The P-III had a pipelined FP unit, however div operations were extremly expensive. My guess would be that Intel haven't thrown much effort into improving on this.