Is my laptop recent ... ?

Dolby

Dolby

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Hi,

I needed a laptop urgently to go overseas and our new orders hadn't arrived as yet. They gave me another they had in stock which was apparantly 2 months old.

It's an IBM Thinkpad T42 with bluetooth/wireless/fingerprint reader built in etc etc The processor is a Pentium M (Centrino?) 1.7ghz.

The thing is some friends of mine are saying, 'Is that all? I have a P4 laptop with 3.0ghz processer. Yours is really old and obsolete' I have been browsing the papers recently and it seems to me that Pentium M is slower than P4 (I haven't seen one above 2.2gz). My question :

Is it inferior to the P4?
Is it really much slower?
Is my 1.7ghz really years old?
 
The Pentium M chip is better than the P4. It has lower power consumption and therefore producs less heat and the battery last way longer than the P4. Also a P4 2.2GHz = 1.7GHz Pentium M.

Pentium M is perfect for work purposes and can hold its own in games.
 
I thought so ... just didn't want to argue with him incase he happened to be right ;) Thanks
 
Yes, the laptop with the P4 3.0 is actually the crap one :) Battery life is usually in minutes and they tend to burn people etc.

I would guess a Pentium M 1.7 is about the same performance as a P4 2.5 Ghz. You could check the web (for example www.tomshardware.com) for more accurate info on comparing these.
 
In certain gaming benchmarks I've seen the 2.2Ghz Pentium M outperform a 3.8Ghz P4, so the Pentium M is really not a bad chip and its definetly not years old
 
As a general guide to use when comparing the Pentium M to the P4 is to double the clock speed of the Pentium M.
Eg. a 1.7Ghz Pentium M is roughly equivalent in precessing power to a 3.4Ghz P4.
 
centrino is far far better for a laptop, P4 laptops are piece of junk! I don't understand why the people buy them, they weight as much as a desktop and don't run much on battery, so what's the point!!! just to say I have a laptop! duh!

tell your friend to go update himself!!!
 
1.7GHz Pentium M would be slower than a normal 1.7GHz P4 - But it is newer.
The M is only used in laptops and used less power giving you better battery life.

The 1.7Ghz chip also cost more than the standard 3Ghz P4's

Although the T42 thinkpad is about 1 and a half years old - from the specs it seems to be keeping up with the middle range laptops.

The entry level Pc's now have 1.5Ghz P4m's in them to give you an idea.
 
I have a Centrino/Pentium M laptop running at 1.7GHz and it outperforms my desktop running at 3GHz

The centrino processor design is much better than the pentium 4 (desktop cpu) and it is the basis for the next generation of pentiums...
 
Person said:
1.7GHz Pentium M would be slower than a normal 1.7GHz P4
Click to expand...
No ways! The Pentium M 1.7 would kick a 1.7 P4's ass anyday! Its like comparing an AMD 3000+ that runs at 1.8Ghz to a P4 1.8Ghz.
 
nGAGEd55 said:
No ways! The Pentium M 1.7 would kick a 1.7 P4's ass anyday! Its like comparing an AMD 3000+ that runs at 1.8Ghz to a P4 1.8Ghz.
Click to expand...

Nn way a 1.7P4m would beat the 1.7P4. And the AMD's true clock speed is 3Ghz and not 1.8Ghz thats just the intel rating.
 
Person said:
Nn way a 1.7P4m would beat the 1.7P4. And the AMD's true clock speed is 3Ghz and not 1.8Ghz thats just the intel rating.
Click to expand...
Pentium M 1.7 is ~ quivalent to P4 2.4 GHz, it has been proven, unless you can prove otherwise!
 
Person said:
Nn way a 1.7P4m would beat the 1.7P4. And the AMD's true clock speed is 3Ghz and not 1.8Ghz thats just the intel rating.
Click to expand...
WTF?!?!?!?

U've seriously lost ur marbles, give me proof then i might belive you, and bout the AMD's true clock being 3Ghz, thats just BS!!!!
 
Person said:
Nn way a 1.7P4m would beat the 1.7P4. And the AMD's true clock speed is 3Ghz and not 1.8Ghz thats just the intel rating.
Click to expand...
er...you need to read up on this stuff. The general rule of thumb is STFU if you don't know what you're talking about.
 
Person said:
So you give me a link to their main site WOW. How about the part that you think is wrong ?
Click to expand...
U too lazy to search for yourself, eh? Well to be honest im not really in the mood of digging up evidence for something that the rest of us know is true. So why dont u tell us on what u base ur statement that a P4 1.7Ghz is faster than a Pentium M 1.7Ghz?
 
nGAGEd55 said:
U too lazy to search for yourself, eh? Well to be honest im not really in the mood of digging up evidence for something that the rest of us know is true. So why dont u tell us on what u base ur statement that a P4 1.7Ghz is faster than a Pentium M 1.7Ghz?
Click to expand...

Well taking it that the 1.7 P4 is more powerful and Is made of a Desktop it would be faster. Even though the tech in the standard 1.7GHz is older.

When i get to work tomorrow i'll run a 2GhzM vs an 2A P4 and let you guys know how that turns out
 
Here's one benchmark i'v found so far: http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=dothan20&page=1, where a 1.7 Pentium M outperforms a 1.8 P4

But there was some benchmarks in the PCFormat once, can remember which issue tho, where they said the Pentium M is the best gaming CPU ever, and AFAIK remember in the one benchmark, the 2.2 Pentium M outperformed a 3.8 P4. I'll see if i can find that article tomorrow.
 
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