Better processor than Pentium-M (Centrino) ?

[mubs]

Heah.

 

[CougTek]

And as a CPU alone, Efficeon meets modern requirements. It has 1MB of level 2 cache, full compatibility with Intel's SIMD (single instruction multiple data) vector math acceleration, and according to Transmeta, the ability to outperform Centrino at the same clock speed.

Great if true, but I have strong reserves. Transmeta's past CPU was far, FAR, from being even close to par with Intel's offerings. Could Transmeta improved that much the performances of their chip within a single generation? Doubtful.

 

[Adcadet]

like he said: "prove it"


As far as notebooks go, I'm a total believer now in "less is more." Sure, my Dell 8200 with a 2.0 GHz P4-M and 512MB of RAM and 15" screen 5400 RPM HD outperforms the Dell D600 (Centrino 1.3 GHz, 256 MB RAM, 4400 RPM HD) that my school gave me, but the D600 weighs considerably less and has a better battery life (I get about 3.5 hours out of a full charge on the D600 compared to about 2.5 on my 8200). Nope, the weight difference is small and the battery life difference is small, but for what I use it for (surfing, email, basic HTML editing, watching lectures online), it makes a huge difference.

 

[e_dawg]

Yep. Small is beautiful when it comes to notebooks. I have a Sony VAIO Z-505LE that is 2.5 years old (March 2001). It's only a P3-650, but once I upgraded the slow 12 GB 4200 rpm 512 KB cache HD to a 40 GB Toshiba 5400 rpm 16 MB cache HD, it was noticeably faster. Similarly, when I upgraded the 192 MB of RAM to 320 MB, I got a noticeable boost. These two upgrades worked wonders and make my 2.5 year old VAIO feel as fast as any current notebook on the market today -- and it's smaller and lighter than most of them too.

Having said that, I couldn't care less if this new CPU lags behind Intel. Battery life and size/weight are the most important things in a notebook, not the latest in CPU performance. In fact, CPU performance is the least important variable in a notebook's performance. The HD is a huge bottleneck, and RAM is close behind. You shouldn't even think about CPU power until you have removed the HD and RAM bottlenecks first.

 

[Pradeep]

You shouldn't even think about CPU power until you have removed the HD and RAM bottlenecks first.

Unless you run F@H of course

 

[e_dawg]

touché

I used to run F@H on my notbeooks -- first my ThinkPad, and then my VAIO, but then I noticed that they became very warm (obviously) and that the fan was running full blast all the time. I don't want to subject my notebook to undue stress, and I don't want to have to replace wear and tear items such as the fan for likely an unreasonable sum. With desktops, it's no big deal. You can replace/upgrade anything you want easily and cheaply. With notebooks that are worth 3x as much as a desktop, 24/7 crunching is asking for $$ repairs in the future, IMO.

 

[CougTek]

Having said that, I couldn't care less if this new CPU lags behind Intel.

I do. I would like to see a power-efficient CPU be so powerful that it would become a competitive solution even for desktops. I'm tired of the insane power requirements of moderns and soon-to-come (Prescott) processors. Why eat 70W, or even close to 100W in case of Intel's flagship P4, if a 20W> CPU can do the job?

Battery life and size/weight are the most important things in a notebook, not the latest in CPU performance. In fact, CPU performance is the least important variable in a notebook's performance. The HD is a huge bottleneck, and RAM is close behind. You shouldn't even think about CPU power until you have removed the HD and RAM bottlenecks first.

Disagree. I hope to see notebook's CPUs being so performant that they could replace desktops. And ten pounds isn't heavy for everyone BTW. I would put RAM well before hard drive in the performance ranking of notebooks. Anyway, you can't generalize that RAM and HDDs are always the performance bottleneck. RAM was a huge bottleneck back when laptops were limited to PC133 RAM and low-speed FSB. Nowadays, with 400MHz FSB for Centrino, it's another story. And the performance benefits quickly decrease when you pass the 512MB amount of memory. And HDDs aren't involved in that many computer tasks. They are still a bottleneck (which you can't remove), but not as much as they used to be, at least in higher-end models. The graphic card too can be a bottleneck sometimes.

At the end, it all depends to what you do with your laptop. The bottleneck of one can be very different of the bottleneck of another. Overall system responsiveness is a balance of all the components making the system. A notebook with a lot of RAM and a fast 2.5" drive will still be slow for many tasks if it has a lowly CPU and an obsolete graphic card (for instance : gaming).

I don't believe Efficeon will beat a Pentium-M, but I certainly hope so. Faster is better, even for laptop processors.