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#1
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Beyond 2.4Ghz Mobile Pentium 4-M -- why the price jump?
I was just looking to buy an upgrade for my Thinkpad's processor,
and noticed that prices for Mobile Pentium 4-M chips are reasonable until 2.5Ghz, where they jump by around $200 suddenly! Does anyone know anything about the architecture of these chips that would justify this massive jump in price over 100Mhz? Also, what is the difference between "Mobile Pentium 4" and "Mobile Pentium 4 - M" chips? Intel seems to designate them differently. - Tim -- |
#2
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P-M & P4-M are not the same chip.
If your laptop uses P4-M you can't fit a P-M into it. Also verify how far you can u/g the processor re speed: o BIOS upgrades will take you quite a way o However, h/w board revision can be a factor The best upgrade for a laptop is to go from say a P4-Celeron 2.0Ghz to a P4-2.66Ghz for example. Within a range, eg, P4-M, you are only going to get the benefit of a few hundred Mhz. If you find it is the HD that is slowing you down, consider fitting a Hitachi 7200rpm - your old HD may well be 4200rpm which is slower on latency & peak transfer. Re 2.4Ghz v 2.5Ghz, for the 200$ you could buy a faster HD for example. Depending on your application, that may be more noticeable than the CPU. -- Dorothy Bradbury www.stores.ebay.co.uk/panaflofan for quiet Panaflo fans & other items www.dorothybradbury.co.uk (free delivery) |
#3
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Dorothy Bradbury wrote:
P-M & P4-M are not the same chip. If your laptop uses P4-M you can't fit a P-M into it. There was no mention of Pentium M (Dothan can't reach 2.4 GHz yet). The question was: What is the difference between "Mobile Pentium 4" and "Mobile Pentium 4 - M" chips? Mobile Intel Pentium 4 Processor: http://intel.com/products/notebook/p...obilepentium4/ http://processorfinder.intel.com/scr...p?ProcFam=1025 http://intel.com/design/mobile/datashts/253028.htm http://intel.com/design/mobile/datashts/302424.htm Mobile Intel Pentium 4 Processor - M http://intel.com/products/notebook/p...rs/pentium4-m/ http://processorfinder.intel.com/scr...sp?ProcFam=826 http://intel.com/design/mobile/datashts/250686.htm -- Regards, Grumble |
#4
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There was no mention of Pentium M (Dothan can't reach 2.4 GHz yet).
Indeed - you are right, sorry, my eyesight isn't that great :-) I'm not sure the processor upgrade is going to yield that much; o yes it will be quicker in benchmarks o however, perception in real-world use may be less noticeable Can you upgrade the memory from 512MB to say 768MB also? o 512MB is a good size depending on your application & using XP o However, swap between big apps/files and it isn't actually that big If you are sat waiting for computations to finish, any CPU u/g helps. -- Dorothy Bradbury |
#5
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In article ,
Dorothy Bradbury wrote: P-M & P4-M are not the same chip. If your laptop uses P4-M you can't fit a P-M into it. Yes, certainly, this I know. I am talking only about P4-M chips. Also verify how far you can u/g the processor re speed: o BIOS upgrades will take you quite a way o However, h/w board revision can be a factor The best upgrade for a laptop is to go from say a P4-Celeron 2.0Ghz to a P4-2.66Ghz for example. Within a range, eg, P4-M, you are only going to get the benefit of a few hundred Mhz. If you find it is the HD that is slowing you down, consider fitting a Hitachi 7200rpm - your old HD may well be 4200rpm which is slower on latency & peak transfer. Already done (using fastest drives). Re 2.4Ghz v 2.5Ghz, for the 200$ you could buy a faster HD for example. Depending on your application, that may be more noticeable than the CPU. The only thing I can do for this laptop is max out the memory and upgrade the chip, since everything else is already done. The memory is decent now (512MB), but I'm bumping it up to 1.25 gig. - Tim -- |
#6
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Spammay Blockay wrote:
I was just looking to buy an upgrade for my Thinkpad's processor, and noticed that prices for Mobile Pentium 4-M chips are reasonable until 2.5Ghz, where they jump by around $200 suddenly! Does anyone know anything about the architecture of these chips that would justify this massive jump in price over 100Mhz? Price usually has more to do with supply and demand than what it costs to do the individual parts, and there's almost always a big premium on the top-end parts, if you want value you select one or a few steps below the top-end parts (it's usually obvious where price chart flattens out). Sometimes this is caused by low yield (causing low supply and/or high manufacturing prices), but as often it's due to market segmentation. The Mobile Pentium 4-M only goes up to 2.6GHz, and that model isn't even on the "Process Spec Finder"! So, I suspect that in reality the 2.5GHz CPU is the highest in that series that's really available, so don't expect to find it cheaply until there's at least one and possibly two MP4-M processors above it (and they have to be available in some volume too). Also, what is the difference between "Mobile Pentium 4" and "Mobile Pentium 4 - M" chips? Intel seems to designate them differently. Different power ranges and frequency ranges (and requires different chipsets too). The frequency range overlap somewhat, and when they do the Mobile P4 uses a LOT more power than the Mobile P4-M for the same performance. The Mobile P4 is basically a standard P4 with SpeedStep support (power savings). As an example I checked out the MP4 2.4GHz and compared it with MP4-M 2.4Ghz, "Thermal Guideline" for them are 59.8W and 35W respectively. Quite a difference, even if Thermal Guideline doesn't tell all of the story, the power reducing features is equally important but is much harder to measure... As a comparison the regular P4 2.6GHz has a Thermal Guideline around 59-60W, BUT doesn't have SpeedStep so in practice it will use significantly more power than the Mobile P4. The Pentium-M is much harder to compare because we can't use MHz even as an approximation, but the 2 GHz version should certainly be much faster and only has a Thermal Guideline of 21W... SPEC CINT2000 suggests 1.4-1.5GHz P-M might be a more fair comparison, there are 1.4 GHz TG at 10W(the LV version mentioned below) and 21W... The Pentium-M 1.1GHz ULV version's TG is 5W, now THAT's low power. Then there's Mobile Celeron (similar to Mobile P4?) and Celeron-M. It looks C-M is P-M derived, but rumor has it that it lacks much of the power saving features that makes P-M so effective, and the spec sheet does indeed seem to be missing some buzzwords :-) The Celeron-M TG is similar to the P-M's, but if lacks SpeedStep it's probably closer to a MP4-M in power usage! Intel has a lot of information all this on their Webpages, follow the links if you want more information. http://www.intel.com/products/notebook/processors/ This is an attempt to summarize the P-M and P4 processors commonly used in mobile applications (the regular P4 is sometimes used for portable "workstations", so I've included it). Pentium-M http://www.intel.com/products/notebo...sors/pentiumm/ * 1.3-2GHz * Low power consumption (and the LV/ULV versions are better yet). * 855 chipset * Enhanced P6 derived core, significantly faster than the P4-based cores on a per-clock basis (so MHz can't be compared directly with the other below). Mobile Pentium 4-M http://www.intel.com/products/notebo...rs/pentium4-m/ * 1.4-2.6 GHz * Medium power consumption * Mobile 845 chipset * P4-derived core Mobile Pentium 4 http://www.intel.com/products/notebo...obilepentium4/ * 2.4-3.2GHz * High power consumption * 852 chipset * P4-derived core Pentium 4 http://www.intel.com/products/deskto...sors/pentium4/ * 1.3-3.6GHz * Very high power consumption * 925/915/875/865/848/850/845 chipset * P4 or P4-derived core * No SpeedStep (power/frequency management functions) |
#7
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In article ,
Torbjorn Lindgren wrote: Price usually has more to do with supply and demand than what it costs to do the individual parts, and there's almost always a big premium on the top-end parts, if you want value you select one or a few steps below the top-end parts (it's usually obvious where price chart flattens out). Yeah, I thought it was something like that. Weird pricing structures. The Mobile Pentium 4-M only goes up to 2.6GHz, and that model isn't even on the "Process Spec Finder"! So, I suspect that in reality the 2.5GHz CPU is the highest in that series that's really available, so don't expect to find it cheaply until there's at least one and possibly two MP4-M processors above it (and they have to be available in some volume too). I noticed that -- I wonder why they would put 2.6Ghz on their site as the top speed, but only have a spec for 2.5Ghz. Again, weird. Maybe just because they're phasing this chip out. This is an attempt to summarize the P-M and P4 processors commonly used in mobile applications (the regular P4 is sometimes used for portable "workstations", so I've included it). Thanks for all the information! Very useful. I eventually found everything I needed, and saw that the main difference between the M and non-M versions of the P4 was power consumption. Now, actually GETTING a P4-M is quite tough... most places, despite showing it as "in stock", don't actually have it. Eventually ordered it from PC Connection, and they told me they have to route one from their distributor to a certain warehouse that ships to my state, for tax reasons. So rather than getting it in 2 days, it might take a week or more. Sucks. - Tim -- |
#8
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#9
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A ram(to 512 meg) and/or hard drive(to a 7200 rpm one) upgrade(if your ram is
under 512 meg, and your notebook hard drive is 4400 or 4200 rpm) are probably much more reasonable upgrades than a cpu upgrade in a notebook. Spammay Blockay wrote: I was just looking to buy an upgrade for my Thinkpad's processor, and noticed that prices for Mobile Pentium 4-M chips are reasonable until 2.5Ghz, where they jump by around $200 suddenly! Does anyone know anything about the architecture of these chips that would justify this massive jump in price over 100Mhz? Also, what is the difference between "Mobile Pentium 4" and "Mobile Pentium 4 - M" chips? Intel seems to designate them differently. - Tim -- |
#10
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Don't put too much money into the notebook, as you might want to get
an Athlon 64 notebook next year, especially after Windows 64 bit is out. Well before the end of this year, expect to see a number of different slim and light Athlon 64 notebooks built around AMD's low power 90 nm mobile Athlon 64 chips. JK wrote: A ram(to 512 meg) and/or hard drive(to a 7200 rpm one) upgrade(if your ram is under 512 meg, and your notebook hard drive is 4400 or 4200 rpm) are probably much more reasonable upgrades than a cpu upgrade in a notebook. Spammay Blockay wrote: I was just looking to buy an upgrade for my Thinkpad's processor, and noticed that prices for Mobile Pentium 4-M chips are reasonable until 2.5Ghz, where they jump by around $200 suddenly! Does anyone know anything about the architecture of these chips that would justify this massive jump in price over 100Mhz? Also, what is the difference between "Mobile Pentium 4" and "Mobile Pentium 4 - M" chips? Intel seems to designate them differently. - Tim -- |
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