Core Duo vs. Pentium M

I was looking into buying an MSI 1035 / L725 but it only comes with an Intel Pentium M proccesor. If I am running 1 or maybe 2 GB of RAM, will there be a noticble difference in the speed and performance when multitasking? (I do a lot of multitasking, I usually have about 14 windows open)

 

Probably depends on the kind of multi-tasking, if you just have lots of programs open might not make a huge difference, if you have lots of programs open that are all doing things at the same time, might make a noticable difference.

 

I don't notice a difference from my old Pentium M 1.5 Ghz and my Core Duo .66 Ghz if I am just surfing and working on an office program. They just don't do enough for it to be a problem. If I have a TV program open, and I am surfing, and working in office, and I am on two monitors, and running all sorts of different things, there is a HUGE difference. The Core Dueo runs without a Hitch, while the Pentium M choked a bit on that. The RAM will certainly help, though.

 

The programs run smoothly on my desktop which only has 512 MB RAM, but has a nice P-4 3.0GHz with hyperthreading. I was wondering if the RAM would improve the performance if the processor were slower (about 2.0GHz)

 

Core Duo is about 10-30% faster than Pentium-m at the same clock speed on most applications however on multi-threaded apps its a much bigger gap. There is only very few apps/games that utilise this at the moment but in future you will see a lot more.

I find the link later which demonstrates how the 2 compare.

Core Duo is the way to go for future proofing but pentium-m is by no means slow...

 

I figured that the Pentium M still had some potential, since MSI is using it in their performance series.

 

Here is an apple for apple comparison.

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2663&p=7

There is a plus side to pentium-m if you can get hold of old dothans 400fsb cpus (eBay) and pinmod they become 133fsb. This means 1.6 -> 2.13Ghz, 1.7->2.26Ghz, 1.8->2.4Ghz etc... Some guy achieved 2.8Ghz from a 2.1 dothans (lucky bum!! Only few people achieve this...). That will beat any core duo...

Also processors are so fast these days its so difficult to notice the difference. Gaming is probably the only area where you may notice a "REAL" diifference since everything else more or loads up or reacts to tasks instantly.

RAM is also very important when multi tasking... 1GB is minimum since windows can easily swallow 250MB+ without doing anything. 512MB is just too low (it's the bare minimum).

Charr pentium-m is much faster than p4 clock for clock. It's approximately 1.4 to 1.8x faster than a penrium 4 depending on the apps you use. so a 2Ghz pentium-m is approx 2.8 - 3.6 Ghz p4.

 

Ok, so the P-M should be fine then .
But that pin upgrade looks very tempting, but I don't think I am going to do that on my first one :O

 

Definitely don't do it until you actually need to and when warranty has expired.

 

LOL! Look at what i have to put up with (as my sig says) im running windows with 192MB RAM and its not pretty - not only because i had to disable themes but because everything holds up. Having more than 1 program up at the same time is a nightmare!!

So if i have msn, firefox and windows media player running at the same time, will i notice a big speed jump if using the 1.8PM instead of a 1.66Duo? Im guessing a fast processor can time share is power between programs quickly?

 

As mentioned you'll notice 10-30% improvement with core duo but running so few simple apps at the same time doesn't even stress the Pentium-m or the core duo. Your future laptop has enough ram so its fine... It can handle tons more than that...

Your old laptop just have too little ram... If you had say 1GB then you could do those tasks easily even with the celeron.

 

In my new laptop I also wanted fast load times. For example, launching Word or Excel takes ages. So I thought I'd go for the best procesor (i.e. core duo) i can get. The price difference between that and Pentium M is negligabke when compared to the amounts in question e.g:

Pentium M 1.7GHz 400FSB
1024MB DDR2 RAM
Radeon x700 128MB VRAM

Will cost me £758 whereas,

Core Duo 1.66 GHZ
1024MB DDR2 RAM
Go 7300 64MB VRAM

Wil cost me £820.

I run programs like CAD and Matlab sometimes aswell on my laptop so I thought I'd go for the core duo. I tend not to play games now and so I doubt I will on my new laptop but I really wish the GFX card was better on the second laptop

Which setup do you think is best for me?

 

The Asus a6jc will be better for apps but the one with the x700 is better for games (the x700 is about 2x the speed of the 7300go). I personally would go for core duo... It's better for future proofing. I help you look out for other laptops around that price range. Acer have laptops with decent graphics and core duo but I'm not a fan of Acer so I wouldn't recommend it. Also the 400FSB pentium m is dated...

Take a look at this. Its more expensive but this baby has a Geforce 7600. http://www.ebuyer.co.uk/customer/pr...9kdWN0X3NwZWNpZmljYXRpb25z&product_uid=110794

 

Are you sure it should be Banias? I think it was rather done using Dothan P7x5 processors. Banias are just older (130nm technology) versions of them.

 

Thanks for the reccommendation. I was thinking of getting the sony FE11H which is similar to the A6jc. But after hearing nothing but horror stories from people who have used sony support I decided not to get a Vaio, plus the Asus laptop has 2 year warranty as standard.

 

Yeah you're right its the dothan 400fsb cpu's. It was v. late here when I posted it. Now corrected.