Gaming performance difference

[jtusa]

P4 3Ghz HT, 512 RAM, with a mobility radeon 9700 agp with 128MB

and

Pentium Mobile 1.5Gz, 512 RAM, with a mobility radeon 9600 proturbo with 128MB

 

[fbrdphreak]

Is the Pentium-M a Dothan or Banias core? The Dothan has 2MB L2 cache and is more efficient in general, i.e. more powerful (not by a huge degree tho). The 9700 is basically an overclocked 9600, so the 9600 won't hinder you too much. I guess technically the P4 system will be better, but not by a huge margin. If you plan on doing a lot of gaming, the P4 will probly work better for you, but you effectively LOSE portability in that case. A 3Ghz P4 will suck down any battery. Anyone care to clarify the gaming diff between a P4HT vs P-M?

 

[stratman]

Check out the Anandtech gaming benchmarks between Pentium M processors and The P4s here: http://www.anandtech.com/cpuch...c.aspx?i=2129&p=10

Summary: The 1.6ghz Pentium M beats the 3.2ghz P4 in some, and loses to the P4 in some. They have similar gaming performance. So presumably a 1.5ghz Pentium M would have similar performance to a 3.0ghz P4 processor.

I don't think (I could be very wrong ) that HT technology helps gaming. I thought it was designed for multitasking business people.

fbrdphreak is likely much more knowledgable than me, but I thought the 9700 was much closer to the 9800 than the 9600, so that would be a plus for the performance of the P4 machine.

Good luck.

 

[BigButt]

so pretty much the 8600 and the 9100 is pretty much the same huh?

 

[cirthix]

p-m will have MUCH better battery life

 

[cirthix]

y not go with an amd laptop?

 

[BigButt]

another question would be .. is it worth it to 45 dollar more to get the wsxga compared to a wxga? both is 15.4 .

 

[uOpt]

The Pentium-M has an entirely different performance characteristic than the P-4, even with the same amount of cache.

The Pentium-4 only runs code fast that it "likes", but then really well. The Pentium-M is more in line with traditional code than ran well on Pentium-IIIs and now runs well on AMD.

On top of that is the cache difference, some applications, e.g. Unreal Tournament really profit from having more than 512 KB, but there are few. For most things a big cache is not overly useful as most applications have been tuned with standard CPUs or else there are applications which just hit the memory anyway because they have very bad cache performance. Half-Life 2 seems to be such a case.

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: BigButt
so pretty much the 8600 and the 9100 is pretty much the same huh?

No, the Pentium-M is much nicer. Longer battery life, less dependent on specially tunred P4 code, and probably less likely to overheat the notebook, which can lead to less noise at least and a notebook not burning out at most.

The only reason to go with the P4 is if you know your specific application run very fast on it (or you know you can actually make good use of hyperthreading).

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: BigButt
another question would be .. is it worth it to 45 dollar more to get the wsxga compared to a wxga? both is 15.4 .

For gaming - probably not.

Take into account that LCDs don't look good when not run at native resolution. With newer games you are unlikely to be able to run them at WUXGA at acceptable speed.

In your place, I would get the resolution you usually use for games.

 

[shabazkilla]

You guys totally avoided the video cards. They will have a greater impact on gaming than the processors.

MR 9700 > MR 9600

 

[fbrdphreak]

Originally posted by: shabazkilla
You guys totally avoided the video cards. They will have a greater impact on gaming than the processors.

MR 9700 > MR 9600

This is correct, however as I stated the 9700 is the same core as a 9600, just an OCed version. Anyone disagree? (As I'm not 110% sure) Soooo, one could use the Omega drivers and OC the videocard for gaming purposes. For gaming, I guess a WSXGA or WUXGA would not be ideal. However, for non-gaming purposes a higher res screen is a GODSEND. I wouldn't recommend going below an SXGA, but that's my opinion. Maybe see if you can see a model @ the Dell kiosks that they have in some malls? That might give you an idea if you can see a game vs desktop real estate w/higher res screen.

 

[Inappropriate4AT]

If it's anything like their desktop counterparts, the 9700 would slaughter the 9600 with its 8 pipelines and 256-bit memory as opposed to the 9600's 4 pipes and 128-bit memory.

 

[ShellGuy]

But they arn't like the desktop... Atleast not yet so the 9700 won't kill the 9600... Lappys are sooo behind on vid it is sad.. But like anything else it will catch up... Im still seeing people buying custom systems with onboard vid... LOL..



Will G.