Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Intel Hardware

Pentium-M Notebook Put To The Test 158

Posted by Hemos from the testing-it-hard dept.
BedivereW writes "Tom's Hardware has an interesting review of the first Intel Pentium-M (codenamed Banias) notebook. There are a few pieces of information missing, like heat production, but on the whole it is a good review. Intel appears to be moving in the correct direction." I'm looking forward to seeing more info on this one - seems to be the x86 response to the PowerBook series.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Pentium-M Notebook Put To The Test More

Pentium-M Notebook Put To The Test

Comments Filter:

  • Response to Apple? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by baryon351 ( 626717 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @04:51AM (#5238972)
    seems to be the x86 response to the PowerBook series

    And with a name like Centrino, sounds like a response to the apple Centris series too.

    But that was a dumb name that apple didn't keep around for long. I suspect within 6 months we'll see it renamed, and my dreams of a Quadra resurrection will be fulfilled

    muahahaha!
    • I seem to recall the Quadra/Centris convergence points were conformal with the Watts/candlepower relationship.
    • A better Response to Apple would be if PC laptop manufacturers spent a bit more time disigning the hardware. To most consumers who chose Apple, the appeal is not their software or hardware specs, but the sleekness of their machines.


      If someone came out with a decently specced Intel laptop that looked like a Ti-Book, I would go out and buy it the very first day. A friend of mine who is in the market for a laptop spend ten minutes walking though CompUSA's PC notebook section, and said "Why do they all have to be so ugly?"


      Appearance does matter.

      • Appearance does matter.

        Absolutely, though it's not all "appearance" alone. It's the whole design thing -- and design is more than just looks, it's a complicated set of stuff. My little sister and my dad both have tiBooks, and they're just a pleasure to use. It's a lot of little stuff.

        The "extra" computer I bought last year was a flat panel 17" iMac... and it's displaced everything else, partly because the footprint's small enough (and the wonky look of it's appealing enough) to leave on a narrow kitchen counter. The kids play on it there, it makes a great little "look it up" machine for the Web... just kind of fits our lives. And I think they look kind of goofy, really.

        • To quote [apple.com] Mr. Ives...

          "Our preocupation developing these products, wasn't with the visual language, although we care massively about appearence, no, our obsession was with real design, was with how the products were built, how there going to be used in the real world".

          Typing this on an iBook, which is as happy in (quite literally) the field, to a crowded media editing room to my kitchen, I think I know what he is getting at...

      • You do see some manufacturers that do put an effort into it. Sony's metal cased notebooks look very nice, as well as all the vpr matrix's.
    • That is all nice, but can the WinTel laptops be baked in an oven [slashdot.org] and still work?
    • Pentium-M is a processor.
      PowerBook is a complete notebook computer

      It's like saying the 2003 Subaru Imprezza world rally car is pirellis answer to michelin range of rally tyres.

      More likely this is a move to stay one step ahead of AMD who have recently started penetrating the notebook market. Or perhaps a response to transmetta CPUs, which are very sucessful in the notebook market in Japan. I doubt intel really have motorolla in their targets with this one.

  • Wireless choice? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xWeston ( 577162 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @04:53AM (#5238979)
    It is weird to me that Intel plans to have an 802.11a/b solution in these notebooks as a standard. It seems that going with 802.11g would be a better choice considering it works with B and is fast as A but has better range (some speculation here about speed etc since it is not as well tested).

    These notebooks arent planned to come out for a while, and considering there are 802.11g-draft products already available for purchase it seems that they would also go this route.

    Anybody know why they may not be considering this? Possibly it is in the works, who knows.

    • Re:Wireless choice? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dWhisper ( 318846 )
      Major manufacturers are still reluctant to put in b solutions, and a solutions have all but vanished for laptops (line of sight requirements). The g standard hasn't been finalized for wide market production. As it is, most wireless is still a pain to deal with, especially the Intel products.

      • Re:Wireless choice? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Qrlx ( 258924 )
        It's one of those strange things....802.11g sounded cool becuase it was 54Mbit, but actually it sucks compared to 802.11b because .11g like watching some UHF channel with a coat hangar antenna.
      • Line of sight? What are you talking about? 802.11b is a robust, capable standard. And solutions have vanished for laptops? What laptops are you buying?
        • Live of sight is what compares to 802.11a. While it can sometimes work without it, it just isn't effective unless line of sight is in place.

          I was talking about overall solutions, not just the cards themselves. Most major manufactuers offer them as an upgrade, and there are several issues with the major solutions (Orinoco and Intel, which I have to support).

    • Re:Wireless choice? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by zonker ( 1158 )
      another factor that businesses are concerned w/ is security. tossing a bunch of laptops out to all of your employees with wireless capabilities and no real wireless security solution is not smart or responsible... and wep isn't a solution. all eyes on wpa for that one, hopefully. wifi equipped laptops are currently something of a double edged sword in the business world.

      another thing is that intel's onboard solutions will very likely be plain vanilla, featureless and lacking options that you would find in competitors solutions...
    • Originally, the 802.11a standard, notice it's before b, was supposed to be realized at the same time as b, but feel way behind in schedule. Naturally they want to push their technology.
    • The problem with including any 802.11g equipment is that there currently is no 802.11g. IIRC, 802.11g has not been standardized yet, but some companies are putting out equipment labeled 802.11g. Any equipment manufactured before 802.11g is a written standard may or may not work with other types of 802.11g.
      • I've asked several companies and they have said that when the 802.11g standard is finished (it is in a stage now that promises no physical changes to the chip), they will offer a firmware to "upgrade" to true 802.11g

        I have the DWL-G650 from D-link for my laptop, but have not gotten the chance to try it out with any other 802.11g equipment yet. I plan to buy dlink's router as well as some more cards for my other computer but it seems to work fine on 802.11b networks so far.

  • Wouldn't this reduce compatability? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by amigaluvr ( 644269 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @04:58AM (#5238988) Journal
    This sounds a little odd. Combining cpu and lan and some other things all on the one chip. It's suspiciously like lock-in

    This means you don't get a chance to upgrade without completely changing your system. ie you are locked-in to one solution, the one commercial vendors want.

    Now technically it's possible to add for example 802.11g to this, but why would any manufacturer bother when there is already 802.11b, and likely a "pentium-Mg" or somesuch, which will have it.

    You will be forced to upgrade to an entirely new machine to get just one feature you need.

    Perhaps they are following Apple's lead more than it seams there.

    Not only the lock-in effect, but with all these features in one chip means you can't for example repair your 802.11b if it goes down. You'll need to replace a whole new processor
    • And your notebook now, when you want to upgrade the video or the cpu you just pop a new one in right?

      It'll at least have pcmcia/mini-pci support for other nic's and whatnot so it's not much different from the closed notebook architecture we're stuck with now anyway.

    • Did you even read the article?

      Nowhere does it mention that wlan is integrated in the cpu. It is in a chip called calexico which is part of the supporting 855 chipset. If you do not have any need for 802.11b you can always put in a 802.11g pcmcia card into the laptops pcmcia port.

      Which by the way also solves the "lock in" problem you mention.

    • Re:Wouldn't this reduce compatability? (Score:4, Funny)

      by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @07:13AM (#5239318) Homepage
      This sounds a little odd. Combining cpu and lan and some other things all on the one chip. It's suspiciously like lock-in
      Dude, you think that's something? Why, in Communist China...

      ...aww, screw it. People have been buying computers with built-in Ethernet cards for years, and some of them are integrated on the motherboard. Good lord -- is that metallic noise I hear the entire world grinding to a halt?

    • Centino is a STANDARD not a chip (Score:5, Informative)

      by citanon ( 579906 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @07:40AM (#5239384)
      Centrino = Pentium M + Intel 855 chipset + Calexico 802.11a/b However, each of the above three is a separate component. In theory a manufacturer could choose not to package the three together. However, to achieve the Centrino specification, they would have to conform to the above standard. Hope that this makes it clear.

  • x86 response to the PowerBook...? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by djupedal ( 584558 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @04:58AM (#5238989)
    I would have expected the x86 response to the PowerBook series to be something more along the lines of "......um, we will...ah...ummm...we have this new....ummmm.....what do we have, now? .....?".

    After all, PB's are all about form and function, and since Intel doesn't make a laptop, all the function in the world won't help if the form sucks.

    Or was the PB bit just an attempt to start another war? Afterall, why compare a processor to a complete product...guess I don't get it.
    • After all, PB's are all about form and function, and since Intel doesn't make a laptop, all the function in the world won't help if the form sucks.

      Or was the PB bit just an attempt to start another war? Afterall, why compare a processor to a complete product...guess I don't get it.

      I think I get it.

      In the desktop market, Intel and AMD machines have Macintosh machines pretty handilly beat, in terms of raw performance/price. You can easilly find a $600 PC which makes the $1000 eMac look downright sluggish. Apple is forced to add value to their computers in other ways in order to sell them.

      The CPU which is Apple's achilies tendon in the desktop market is actually their strength in the laptop market. iBooks and Powerbooks match up pretty well with Intel laptops in terms of performance/price, and also feature much longer battery life, and less heat (which translates into being able to build much tighter designs without down-chipping the CPU.)

      If Intel's new chip allows high-speed processing at cooler temperatures and with less power consumption, it means that companies like Sony and Toshiba have a much better chance at making comparable products to the Powerbook line.

    • After all, PB's are all about form and function, and since Intel doesn't make a laptop, all the function in the world won't help if the form sucks.

      Reminds me of one time at the last company I worked for (a consulting firm), Intel came to us and said, so, what should we do to make our products more attractive to people buying web servers? After careful consideration we said, umm, there's not much you can do directly. What you should do is send Compaq et al to speak to us, since they control your channel to market. No-one (in the server-buying market) says "I specifically want an Intel processor" they say "I want to use NT (or Linux), where can I get a good system for doing that?".

      It's like Guinness. They control the product, but the channel is owned by and large by the major breweries. All their TV advertising won't help if the product isn't competently poured by barstaff who work for Guinness' rivals. An interesting if a little precarious position to be in.

      Apart from for the fanboys, there's no real difference between AMD and Intel - all the differentiation comes from the OEM.
      • For the most part that's true, but it also comes down to the question of what platform runs your $20k per seat license workstation software fastest AND most reliably. In which case, you might decide an entire platform and just go with the standard IT OEM buy. In this case, Intel does have some nice control because they sell the platform, not just the processor. After all, if you're an OEM and you want to sell intel chips, do you offer them on VIA or Sis chipset motherboards if you're, say, Dell or even IBM?

        Now if my software ran in 10 minutes on an AMD box vs 30 minutes on Intel box and they asked what they could do to improve my performance, I'd ask them to direct me to an OEM building around their reference systems--after all, the performance is already there, I just want reliability, and no company should be sending out crappy machines as reference boxes.

    • You might recall this notebook [bestbuy.com] from a while back. Now, if your make an honest assessment of the features, you may find that at ~$1400 after rebate, this notebook [bestbuy.com], from a price/performance point of view, might compare favorably with these. [apple.com] Now I'm not talking about originality or color schemes. I'm talking about what you get in terms of functionality for the money that you paid.

      Now, the BestBuy notebook has a significant weak point in terms of battery performance. The Pentium-4M processor that it uses consumes more power than Motorola G4s found on PowerBooks but runs somewhat faster. Depending what you want to do, you can still, therefore, make a good case for a PowerBook.

      However, you take the Pentium-4M, and replace it with a chip that's this much faster, [tomshardware.com] with as good battery performance as the G4 (notice the fpu performance at 600 MHz, for example), and the remaining advantage of the PowerBooks evaporates.

      People may still buy PowerBooks because of style and OS X, but in terms of overall functionality, a Centino notebook will blow away a PowerBook. I'm looking forward to getting my widescreen one six months down the line (and no, I'm not affiliated in anyway with any of the companies involved, I've just been looking into purchasing a notebook lately since lots of my colleagues have gotten PowerBooks).

      PowerBooks are GREAT devices, but the Wintel world is fast over taking them due to their reliance on Motorola's G4 processor. Let's hope that Apple gets one of those other processors [arstechnica.com] into their product line real soon.

      • Just asking... do any Pentium-M notebooks have a DVD Writer? ... or a 17" inch screen?. ...or are an inch thick?
      • Having spent an hour or so with that VPR Matrix down at the local BestBuy, I can assure you that it has far more weak points than wattage dissipation.

        For starters, every time I visit it, it's lacking more keys from the keyboard. The same can be said for the Sony's and Hpaq's to a lesser degree - the VPR seems to have inferior mounting clips.

        The speakers are absolutely useless.

        The display hinge makes the PowerBook's hinge feel like US Military equipment. I think the top-panel is quite a bit heavier than the PB's.

        It's also sluggish running XP compared to a 1Ghz 15" PowerBook running OS X - and it's packing Pentium 4-M plugged in to the wall which should theoretically mean that it's running at full tilt! I have no doubts that the new Centrino package will alleviate this problem.

        In my eyes, it's not even a contest. The VPR Matrix would be $1500 down the tubes after 8 months, the PowerBook a sound 3 year $2300 investment... I'm more apt to drop $12 in 'protein investment' at the Mexican restaurant around the corner than $8 at McDonald's for lunch today... To each his own I s'pose.
      • >> People may still buy PowerBooks because of style and OS X, but in terms of overall functionality, a Centino notebook will blow away a PowerBook.

        What's your definition of "overall functionality"? All you are saying is about performance, nothing else. As long as it runs the vastly inferior Windoze, all its advantages amounts to nothing to me.
        • "Vastly inferior Windoze" seems to be a mantra around here.

          Please explain why Windoze is vastly inferior. I run and develop software on Irix, Apple, and Linux environments, but at the end of the day, it's my WinXP machine that gives me the greatest flexibility and ease of use.

          It goes for weeks without a single crash, every device I've tried installs and runs like butter. Software installation and uninstallation is a snap, and the array of tools that I can use is amazing.

          WinXP is a great desktop environment. I wouldn't use it as a server, but as a workstation it's close enough with OS X that the choice boils down to how much experience you've had with either platform. Linux just cannot compare.

          Lots of people around here bash Windows without realizing how much it has changed, and too many give OS X and Linux credit for stability without realizing that given carefully tested narrowly selected hardware and limited installed software services, any modern OS runs rock solid as far as single users are concerned.
          • Please explain why Windoze is vastly inferior

            Don't say you didn't ask for this...

            Firstly lets talk about security, I like not having to patch my OS every day with the [theregus.com] latest [theregister.co.uk] security [theregister.co.uk] patch [theregister.co.uk] available from my vendor.

            I like not having to worry about on single virus for my platform.. not one... how many is it that are available on the Windows platform? Tens of thousands

            My OS is also consistent in its GUI and easy to use... I thought the Start menu was supposed to be a clear way of accessing programs on your computer... it was a step in the right direction for MS in 1995, but given eight years they've screwed that one up sideways - have you TRIED to use it in its default condition in XP? It tries to be EVERYTHING to EVERYONE... but ok ok this is subjective... but how about this one:

            I presume you are sitting in front of your windows machine with IE open in front of you? Good, now click AND HOLD the file menu at the top up there, now while still holding drag the mouse down the menu, off the bottom of it and onto the page below, and then let go. MENU STAYS OPEN!. Now do exactly the same thing with teh 'Favourites' menu... MENU MAGICALLY CLOSES! Great GUI Microsoft!

            Or how about this one... So you've got XP Pro and are all happy about having the latest and greatest OS from MS yeah? Well, lets do a little play-pretend, lets say you work in an accounting office, or somewhere where you need to store lots of files on your computer in a complex hierarchy of folders etc... sure go ahead, create a new folder, name it something like 'Audits from 1997 to 1999 (inclusive)' and then go on and add a folder within that, name it something, and then a folder within that, etc.... nest around 5 or 6 folders with medium sized names and Windows stops you dead in your tracks suddenly... WHY?... becasue Windows STILL does not support longer than 256 character paths... so if you want a complex folder hierarchy... well you can't. Sorry. (Try this is OSX, and you'll be adding folers for a VERY long time).

            What else... the windowing system sucks... every Windows user knows what I mean when they double click a folder or something and the frame of the window appears maybe a second or so before the centre is filled leaving the MAGIC TRANSPARENT WINDOW! And coming out of games etc to the desktop, my God have you seen the start bar redraw itself? It stutters along and draws bits here and there... try opening up the Control Panel and WATCH the OS draw the icons in over the course of around 2 seconds. What fun.

            What about price? Well I can get a copy of OSX for £79... if I want Windows XP Pro though it'll cost me £197... but don't forget what they say kids! MACs ARE MORE EXPENSIVE!

            And of course you have the following software on your Windows PC -

            iMovie

            iTunes

            iPhoto

            iDVD

            iSync

            iCal

            Mail (with advanced heuristic mail filtering - it's a godsend)

            Safari

            What!? You can't get these apps for your platform? And this is just the surface believe me - can your OS go to sleep and wake up from sleep in under 1 second?

            I know I have been quite aggressive in this post, but I do think that you needed to have your eyes opened, there are reasons for using Windows (not many mind) but it is by far the perfect platform!

            -Nex
    • This has absolutely nothing to do with the powerbook.

  • Heat production (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Heat production is the same as the power used by the chip. 99% of the watts ultimately transform into heat.

  • What did we need Pentium IV for? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The amusing part of this product is how sad the Pentium IV looks. Except on the Bapco benchmarks of course!
    • That's the P4-M. Intel says, quoting Tom's, the Pentium-M is "better." Obviously when a product comes out to replace an old one, most of the time it is, wait for it.... better. I fail to see what's funny about new hardware being better than old hardware?

      • Re:What did we need Pentium IV for? (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What's funny is that the "new" processor is based on the PIII, and could have been released years ago. And it's not so much funny as sad - we'll now still be stuck with the big, slow, space-heater PIV instead of a cheap, ballanced, quiet desktop processor that could have been the standard two years ago.

  • Where is AMD? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Phigrin ( 645909 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @05:28AM (#5239062)
    It seems as though, with each Intel announcement, that AMD is not quite there as much as it used to be. Although notebooks have never been AMD's strong point because of greater heat production.
    • AMD might not be there but Transmeta [transmeta.com] is...
    • AMD's never been really strong in the mobile area. IMHO, it's because they're not a platform developer-supplier like Intel is, so they have to deal with inferior VIA chipsets with fairly crappy onboard video. At least that's always been my reasons for not even considering AMD a viable x86 mobile alternative to intel. ATI's recent jump into the chipset market changes the picture a bit, but if you want low power, obviously, the Athlon's not what you want in your laptop.

  • Unfair practice? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by tanveer1979 ( 530624 ) on Thursday February 06, 2003 @05:35AM (#5239080) Homepage Journal
    IMHO, wont this be unfair. There are small manufacturers in WLAN area who provide wireless cards for notebooks. In such a case intel can easily produce the whole package and very much capture the notebook wireless market bu keeping operating margins low initially. After competition is eliminated then they can put any pricing to their advantage. Its like intel manufacturing PCs with intel motherboards and only those PCs with intel motherboards will be allowed to be named as Genuine intel.

    Its always good to have peripherals separate from chip. Another danger is that intel can have a set of proprietry registers and pipelines which are not disclosed however the WLAN card from intel will be able to use it to give better performance!. Not really good i think. Its okay to have own WLAN cards but the way intel is going about is not really ethical

    • Re:Unfair practice? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      RTFA - all of you.
      Intel is publishing the specification, in a similar way to Microsoft publishing the spec for tablet PC's. It's not going to integrate the WLAN into the cpu, it's not going to capture the market for mini-pci WLAN cards. It's a spec, to be a Centrino certified PC (and benefit from the marketing $$$) you have to make a laptop reaching the minimum standard!
      Geez
      • The Spec includes a Intel Mini-PCI card that's about 2 years behind current state-of-the-art. Come on Intel, 802.11a has been dead for 2 years, 802.11g is the real 802.11b replacement.

        And of course, Apple's gone to 802.11g (which is backwards-compatible to 802.11b, unlike 802.11a) and Apple was the one that pioneered integrated WiFi (Airport Anyone?).

        Sure, 802.11g is not a finalized spec, but since products are shipping, it will be soon(They're going to have to be).

        So, what we have here is a spec for an Intel based solution, that still won't match Apple in Battery Life (If it does, it's going to be running much slower than your G4), is maybe a bit faster, will often include a piss-poor video chip (worse than what apple was shipping 5 years ago), in crappy cases, with no integrated Firewire(Let alone ieee1394b/Firewire 800), likely no DVI-I support, poor screens (Apple still wins on LCD quality, over most comparably priced laptops), likely doesn't offer a SuperDrive or GigE.

        And I want one because??

    • Eh?

      You'll still be able to plug in whatever sort of NIC you feel like into your PCMCIA/USB/FireWire/whatever port, if you don't like the included intel offering.

      Of course it'll hurt the competitors. Waah. That's what competing is all about. For all we know, it'll turn into an AMD/VIA/SiS integration game, which doesn't sound all bad given the application (de-facto proprietary, inherently fragile, finicky laptops).

      But, history seems to indicate that things will turn out just fine, whatever the outcome. Sometime in the 90s, it became apparent that all general-purpose PCs were shipping with modems and sound cards of varying levels of integration.

      Did this affect the third-party market? Certainly. Several companies left the market or disappeared completely, while product offerings of those who remained became a bit less diverse. This was particularly apparent after things dead-ended with v.90 and 16-bit stereo sound, killing the upgrade cycle for most people.

      Yet at the same time, I see such things as modems and sound cards being increasingly available. In the early 90s, if I wanted to buy a modem locally, I had to go to the neighborhood boxbuilder between 9AM and 5PM, Monday through Friday, and pay a premium for this "convenience."

      Nowadays, I can just head over to Wal-Mart or another department store, at any time on any day except Christmas, and buy all the modems, sound cards, and other periphery I care for, at prices on-par with discount-whore mailorder shops.

      To me, this seems like a vast improvement. I see no reason why the same trends would not follow broad acceptance of wireless protocols.

      'sides, Orinoco, Cisco, Linksys and D-Link aren't going anywhere. There's an ongoing need for wired network products which is not soon to wane (if ever), and someone is going to have to keep busy building access point hardware for all these 802.11b-equipped laptops.

  • Wow, Intel actually made a CPU that runs at a slower clock speed that keeps up just fine with one that is running 600 MHz faster. Tom does mention that this will cause it's marketing folks a bit of backpedaling, but he kinda just glosses over it at that.

    Seems to me that the Pentium-M's approach is a bit like the AMD's and the G4's - Do more each clock cycle. As a Mac convert, it warms my heart to hear that Intel is admitting that this approach DOES in fact work.

    Let's kill off that MHz myth once and for all shall we?

    DaveC

    • Re:Intel admitting that clock speed isn't all that (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I fail to understand how because Intel has a couple of products that are more IPC heavy than Clock speed heavy that makes 'further proof' that there is a Megahertz myth?. Megahertz *alone* doesn't make a processor faster, but sometimes Megahertz IS the only way to speed up certain types of tasks.

      Intel engineered the P4 for overall performance. It's clearly spanking Athlon now, and it may be the chip that kills AMD in the end (what would happen if AMD had another round of 4-6 quarterly losses?), it would be very ironic if Megahertz is what killed them literally :-)

      For notebook performance however, it seems that higher IPC = less overall power consumption (although P-M has several other advantages over P4-M besides IPC tweaks), so Intel is creating a chip catered to that market.

      I'm really suprised to see the # of Slashdot readers here that can't seem to grasp that performance is IPC x Megahertz. They just shout "holy cow, Megahertz Myth!!!", well, let's take the reverse approach. I'll hold an Itanium 1 and a P4 in each hand, and yell "IPC Myth!!!", why?, because the Itanium 1 was crushed in Integer applications by the P4, so it *must* be the megahertz that won. Don't you see the ridiculousness of this argument?.

      Let's just give Intel kudos on designing an advanced low power x86 core, that will hopefully serve as a wakeup call for the other vendors (ex Apple, Transmeta, etc) that it's time they update their designs significantly :-).

      Long live the Banias!
      • "It's clearly spanking Athlon now"

        Hold on, a few % is "spanking"?

        http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1746 &p =1

        The Athlon 2800+ wins sometimes, and admiddadly loses in the other tests. However, we're talking about 5% or less here. It's not like the P4 is twice as fast.

        The P4 is a respectable CPU and Intel's strategy has clearly allowed them to push it.

        AMD's strategy has also worked. With a much lower R&D budget they have managed to remain competative (although they are going bankrupt in the process). AMD CPUs now power about 10% of PC desktop systems. The Athlon may not be as technologically advanced as the P4 3.06GHZ with Hyper-Threading, but it can certainly crunch numbers nearly as well.

        Athlon XP Barton will be shipping in a few weeks (if AMD doesn't do another "paper launch"). That will be the real CPU to compare to the P4.
    • Trust the marketing people to soon come up with a new measure "effective Mhz" instead of just "ordinary Mhz", where 1 "effective Mhz" equals 2 "ordinary Mhz". New slogan: Does your Pentium do effective Mhz, or are you still stuck with ordinary Mhz like everyone else?

      Ah, I should have become a marketing guy...

    • The cpu isn't really a new design. There is some evidence this is the evolution of the PIII, at least the benchmark numbers support this theory perfectly well. The weakest point of the PIII was its limited front side bus bandwidth, so the Pentium-M gets a new bus interface (looks similar to the bus interface of the P4). In addition, the Pentium-M also has the SSE2 instructions, and some power saving features were added.
      mczak
    • Let's kill off that MHz myth once and for all shall we?

      Well, not so fast. Intel isn't playing its hand, but I sincerely believe Banias can hit current Penitum 4 speeds, which means at 2.8 GHz, it will be performing like a 3.4 GHz machine. So MHz will always be important, just maybe not across brands.

  • News about heat production (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have inside news about the notebook's heat production. With this new M chip the notebook will now fry an egg nicely in less than half the time of our old notebooks.
    • no way...thats crazy talk!

      didnt you hear? they strongly recommend the watercooling system which was on slashdot yesterday!

      apparently balancing the bowl of water on one knee and the laptop on the other is not for the weak at heart...but you have to be pretty hardcore to risk burning you groin by putting a laptop on your lap!

      (maybe the water might come in handy if you get a scalded sack)
  • Holy guacamole, 'power consumption of less than 1W'? Can this really be true? Maybe the marketing department is taking account of the hours during the day when the notebook is in sleep mode or switched off...

    Still, it would be nice to have an Intel chip with low power consumption. Is anyone making desktop systems or motherboards with the mobile chipset?
  • The CPU looks more like an updated PIII (but with a decent frontside bus and slightly higher clock speed). The decision to go 802.11/b+a is also wrong in my opinion, and 802.11/g+a is the only decent way at this moment! The review was also very poor regarding power consumption and heat generation.

  • Slip-up or intentional? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Andy Dodd ( 701 ) <atd7@cornel l . e du> on Thursday February 06, 2003 @09:49AM (#5239900) Homepage
    "The 855PM (Odem) is meant to be the link to a dedicated GPU via an AGP 4x port, while 855GM (Montata-GM) comes with Intel's own integrated 3D-decellerator."

    Did Tom's Hardware slip up and accidentally let their opinion of the 855GM's graphics out, or did they intentionally say this?

    I'm thinking they slippped up in letting their opinion out, since it's accelerator/decelerator. (One L, not two.)

    Either way, I'm not surprised, as Intel's integrated graphics solutions always have (and probably always will) suck.
  • At least when you look at battery life

    If you then take the operating time of both platforms with respect to battery capacity, figuring in a factor of an imaginary battery with a capacity of 10 Wh for example, then the Pentium-M system gives you an operating time of about 20 minutes longer. Sensibly enough, you take the operating time for the presentation application in order to make the calculation: in this operating mode, the optical drive is not in use and the graphics card is not under a heavy load. Therefore, the power consumption of those two components only has a marginal effect on the test results.


    170 minutes for DVD playback. Not enough to watch LOTR:FOTR :(

  • Apple just introduced 802.11g, bluetooth and Firewire 800 in one stroke, but Intel and the rest of Wintel box makers are still pushing the awkward and more expensive b & a combination. Let's face it, even the name is confusing - version a is a few years older than version b - wtf.

    Similarly, when Apple dropped the floppy drive and added USB and Firewire 4 or 5 years ago, people were laughing at them. Now even Dell are moving away from the floppy.

    As another example, USB is a nice and simple low bandwidth technology for connecting mice and printers, and Firewire is ideal for high bandwidth. But oh no, things have to be more complicated, so Intel must chip in and muddle the water with the theoretically faster but practically slower 480 Mbps USB2 than Firewire 400. Now Apple has Firewire 800 and potentially 1600 and 3200 soon, are we going to see USB3 and USB4?
    • Since Intel owns USB I'd say that ther probably will be a USB 3 and 4.

      The whole design of USB is to push all the heavy lifting onto the CPU and away from the device. This makes it cheaper to implement USB on the device and makes the fastest CPUs look good. Also makes those with slow machines want to get new ones because their new device is slowing them down. When in fact all they need is a better bus in the first place.

      This doesn't much apply to things like MICE or Keyboards or any low speed device. Devices like CD-ROMs, Web Cams, or any device that might require a lot of bandwidth can easily eat up a lot of CPU if not implemented correctly (both in driver and in hardware).
  • I just want to see how it stack up versus Astro with 802.11g LAN from Broadcom...
  • how mac-centric...

    this chipset has little to do with apple what-so-ever.

    this chipset (was code named banias before) is a response to the market share that intel lost to transmeta. they noticed that not everyone is interested in raw power and that batterylife and portability is sometimes the most important factor.

    But...if apple users want to equate less power with cutting edge, they can go back to their powerbooks that have the latest 4200rpm hard drives (cause apple laptops are sooo energy efficient). That said, wouldnt mind having a 17" g4 (swap the HD with an IBM/Hitachi 5400 or 720--when those hit the market)!

    my blue hammer is better than your red hammer...bah its just a tool!

  • FYI (Score:2)

    by asv108 ( 141455 )
    First off, the release of a new Intel mobile chip has absolutley nothing to do with the powerbook. Intel is trying to get some battery life, which has been an issue since the Osborne, which Intel has done a poor job of addressing.

    Transmeta's next offering [tomshardware.com] is going to put the Penitum-m to shame, if it doesn't Linus will be looking for a new job.


  • Intel execs have been reading slashdot in hope to hear good news, there wait was not in vain.

    BedivereW wrote "...Intel appears to be moving in the correct direction."

    One intel execs was heard saying "thank God BedivereW likes where we are going, I have no idea how we would have survived if he didn't"

  • all right, didn't the Pentium, the first one, come out in the mid-1990s? and I know that they're up to the Pentium 4 now. Is the P5 next? Or will they actually stop to think of a new name? at least Motorola and IBM give each new generation of the PowerPC a new and distinct number (601, 750, 840, 950, etc.) but I suppose there's no marketing glitz associated with those names... not like the almighty, all-loved Pentium... (grumble, grumble, grouse) ;-)
  • I think the authors got their fractions reversed. AFAICS the data indicates a significant increase in battery life, not just 20 minutes. From the article:

    "One thing becomes immediately apparent: the Pentium-M system runs longer. In order to estimate approximately how much longer it runs compared to the Pentium 4-M notebook, however, the batter capacity must be considered as well. The capacity of the battery in the Pentium-M notebook is 48.8 Wh, while that of the Pentium 4-M battery is about 59 Wh.


    If you then take the operating time of both platforms with respect to battery capacity, figuring in a factor of an imaginary battery with a capacity of 10 Wh for example, then the Pentium-M system gives you an operating time of about 20 minutes longer."

    The chart immediately above this quote shows the Pentium-M lasting about 30% to 50% longer than the older Pentium-4-M, depending on the test. On a smaller battery. So the conclusion that it only gets you about 20 minutes is far too conservative.

    On the other hand, I'm suspicious of any such dramatic increases in battery life. It would probably be fair to deduct points for the smaller screen size on the Pentium-M because it should draw less power than the 15-incher on the P-4-M.
  • what i want most is a low-cost, low-wattage compute server - cpu+ram+fan+box. something that can run off a car battery charged by a solar panel. one or two of them would be have a hard disk, and the rest would netboot linux over 802.11a - even the swapfile is networked. imagine an acre of these sitting out in the desert: computebox+panel+battery. want more capacity? just drop more box/panel/battery nearby. and i want it to cost $200.
  • That sounds really stupid to me.

    On my Dell notebook, battery life time halves when I insert the WLAN pcmcia card. That's why I would never buy a notebook where I would have to fiddle with screws to get a mini-pci WLAN card out.

    Not being able to disable on-board WLAN would be even worse, obviously.

    WLAN is nice, but I don't use it all the time. Just today I spent 5 hours in the train hacking around on my notebook, and with WLAN I would have had to call it quits after 3.5 hours or so.
  • I wish they would have used a more common notebook like a Dell, Toshiba or Sony for the comparison.

Slashdot Top Deals

The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives. -- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project

Close