Does Centrino really stack up against P4 (Mobile), for power users?

[Arky]

I've just been discussing (on another forum) the use of Pinnacle Edition and Boris RED on a laptop. I am looking to buy a laptop in the next 6months but I am frustrated at Intel's apparent unwillingness to actually speed up their Mobile chips. Obviously heat is a consideration, but nevertheless, they seem to be spending far more time keeping them at the same speed but trying to integrate wirelessnetworking LSI circuits onto the CPU wafers. Obviously, this is a commercial decision, rather than anything truly groundbreaking for the customer. If Intel can integrate wireless technology onto their CPU wafers, then competitors who manufacture wireless chips (for example Lucent etc.) will be squeezed, commercially.

Anyway, looking at what Intel are currently offering, I was interested to see the performance chart on the bottom right hand side, here (http://www.intel.com/products/mobiletechnology/battery.htm?iid=ipp_mobiletech+get_more&) ("Compare Performance"):

This makes interesting reading. My question is, can a 1.6ghz Centrino really outpace a 2.4ghz P4m?

Also, I am unable to find any info on the Intel site about Hyperthreading and the Centrino. Does anyone know, conclusively, whether or not the Centrino offers Hyperthreading? I suspect it does not, in which case, I am in a quandry. Hyperthreading has been shown to make powerful applications, particularly multithreaded ones, (Edition included) run very smoothly and responsively. Therefore, if I am going to splash some serious cash on a notebook, I'd like it to be one that will be smooth, fast, and responsive enough to offer a good working performance without being outdated too quickly by my desktop. All technology improves over time, but my old 366mhz PII got outgunned too damned quickly (it used to choke during scrubbing, encoding and rendering, for example), whereas something like a Hyperthreaded 3.0ghz chip offers such a level of performance that it will have a longer serviceable life. Given the apparent reluctance of Intel to exceed 2.4ghz (Mobile) or (as I understand it, to date) introduce Hyperthreading on their Mobile Pentiums, and the performance graphs of the 1.6ghz Centrino vs. 2.4 ghz P4, what do you think about the best option to go for? I am tempted to start saving for a Centrino, if it is genuinely quicker than the 2.4ghz P4, and if the P4 is to be abandoned on the mobile platform without ever making it to Hyperthreading territory. I would really appreciate people's views and knowledge on this issue.

Incidentally, I have read
this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=52071&highlight=centrino), but my interests are for DV editing (using multithreaded applications), rendering using Boris RED and Adobe After Effects, and encoding, using CCE.

I look forward to your replies! :)


Arky ;o)

[aleksander]

Hi!
I probably won't be of much help, but I've read on one of the forums that the Centrino notebooks ARE actually faster than the P4 ones. It's because .... well - I simply don't remember. Don't know about the HT though, but I highly doubt it.
And if you're looking for a good solution you may check-out this lappy :
http://www.sagernotebook.com/pages/notebooks/product.cfm?ProductType=5670
It has a desktop P4 3.06 GHz with HT.
And the price after all is not that bad for a that kind of a laptop.

So - being not much of a help here...

take care

aleksander

[galapogos]

The reviews are in! Clock for clock the Centrino is faster than a P4 M or even a normal P4, perhaps even an Athlon XP. The 1.6GHz Centrino should indeed be faster than a 2.4GHz P4 M in most cases. Of course since they have different architectures their performance difference isn't one dimensional, i.e. the Centrino will be faster in most things but the P4 M might be faster in some others.

[Arky]

Thanks for the input, you two. As I say, I'm looking to buy a new notebook within the next 6months, so I will have time to see how things pan out with the Centrino platform. Since I last posted, I have had another thought, though. Since I wish to use Edition, and probably, in the longer term, BorisRED, I need to make sure that any machine I buy will make use of the new architecture both Edition 5 and RED 3 offer - namely, that they both now exploit not just the CPU, but also the GPU.

Therefore, I am wary of the Centrino if it turns out that every notebook manufacturer decides to use the "Intel Extreme Graphics" GPU which (from what I can gather) is integrated on the standard 855GM setup. On my desktop PC MoBo, I have this GPU, but it is disabled in BIOS, and an AGP GeForce 3 used instead. In essence, what I am saying is that it may yet prove (with these 2 programs, at least) to be better for me to buy a slightly slower P4M but which is configured alongside a 64mb GeForce GPU.

Why is nothing ever simple?!?! I'm going to sit tight and hope that 6months will be long enough for me to suss out what Intel intend to do with the P4M platform. Will they abandon it entirely, in favour of Centrino, or will they develop it concurrently? I must say that I can't really envisage them running parallel R+D, since this would not be cost-effective.


Arky ;o)

[iwod]

1.6 G Pentium M more than 90% of case outperform 2.2Ghz or 2.4Ghz P4/P4m.

But in some situation such as video file encoding it is only as fast as/ slightly slower than a 2.2 Ghz.

For a Graphics part = you could go for the Radeon 9000 now or wait for another two months for a Radeon 9600 Mobility GPU.

edit: There is a 1.6 Ghz Centrnio System with radeon 9000 in gamepc.com

So if you live in USA may be you could pick one up.

[auenf]

Originally posted by Arky
Why is nothing ever simple?!?! I'm going to sit tight and hope that 6months will be long enough for me to suss out what Intel intend to do with the P4M platform. Will they abandon it entirely, in favour of Centrino, or will they develop it concurrently? I must say that I can't really envisage them running parallel R+D, since this would not be cost-effective.

my best guess is that the P4-M will be phased out, and the superior P-M processor will take its place, most probably without HT (the chip doesnt really need it).

the P4 originally got HT cause half the processor wasnt being used most of the time, which is one of the reasons the athlons have been out gunning it, with the P-M, Intel has developed a hybrid P6/P7 chip that outperforms their mainstream desktop chip, but the P4 should get a nice performance boost with 800QDR bus, and HT over the whole range (as the new chips come out), whereas the P-M will probably be held back so it doesnt outperform the top two or three P4 desktop chips.

i had noticed in the last 6mths to year that lots of notebook manuf. have been using desktop P4's in laptops, and it is probably due to the emerging centrino.

basically my guess is that you will end up with P4 desktop chips in lappys for the 'portable power workstation', which should have a few of the top line P4 chips with HT in a lappy, and also the centrino lappys which are *real* laptops which dont roast your lap.

last point; AMD. i have a duron box and a XP1800+ box here, but i dont think AMD laptops will be anygood in the near future, the hammer laptop chip might be out next year, but who knows ;)

Enf...

[Arky]

I appreciate the point about maybe getting a laptop with a desktop chip, but I am loathe to do this as the battery life is just appalling, as well as the heat dissipation. With my previous laptop, I used to get frustrated at 2hrs-2.5hrs, since my regular train journey is 4hrs (spare batteries notwithstanding, obviously).

@ Iwod, thanks for the heads-up on the Centrino+Radeon laptop - looks like there is hope yet! That's quite a sweet little laptop actually.

@ Auenf, when you speak of P M, do you mean Centrino, or something different from either the P4M or the Centrino? I'm guessing you simply mean Centrino...

{EDIT}:

(Originally posted on AnandTech.com)

The core is clearly not designed for high clock speeds and thus provided Intel's marketing with a very difficult job. How do you explain to end users that there's a new mobile processor on the market that is faster than a Pentium 4 clock for clock, and because of its high IPC it is actually faster than most of the higher clocked Pentium 4s?

Intel's marketing team came up with the idea of moving the focus away from the processor itself, and over to the entire mobile package - CPU, chipset and wireless adapter. Intel branded this package of three components as Centrino, with hopes that end users would walk into a store and request a Centrino laptop, instead of a xxGHz laptop.

While we'll talk about the other parts of the Centrino architecture what we've been focusing thus far on has been the CPU itself, which has been going by the codename Banias for years now. The final name of Banias is the Pentium-M and today is available in 6 different flavors; each of the Pentium-M chips have the exact same features, cache sizes, etc… and only differ according to operating frequency and voltages:

- Frequency
Performance/Battery Mode Voltage Thermal Design Power
Pentium-M 1.60 1.60GHz/600MHz 1.48V/0.96V 24.5W
Pentium-M 1.50 1.50GHz/600MHz 1.48V/0.96V 24.5W
Pentium-M 1.40 1.40GHz/600MHz 1.48V/0.96V 24.5W
Pentium-M 1.30 1.30GHz/600MHz 1.39V/0.96V 22.0W
Low Voltage Pentium-M 1.10 1.10GHz/600MHz 1.18V/0.96V 12W
Ultra Low Voltage Pentium-M 900 900MHz/600MHz 1.00V/0.84V 7W




Arky ;o)

[galapogos]

I believe both Tom's Hardware and Anandtech have reviewed Centrino laptops compared to their P4 M counterparts. You might wanna read up there.

[Arky]

Thanks mate, here's a direct link to the Anandtech review of the Centrino architecture (http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1800&p=1)

Very nice discussion of the underlying thinking behind the processor, despite Anand Lal Shimpi's confession that:

Originally posted on AnandTech.com
"The first thing that you'll notice about our coverage of the Banias' architecture is that the amount of detail we can provide you is sketchy at best. The reason being that Intel is guarding a great deal of what went into Banias very carefully, so carefully in fact that there are technologies that went into Banias that Intel is afraid to patent, because of the danger of the competition picking up on them through the patent filing."

"I learned Something Today!" (SouthPark for those of you who don't recognise the quote!) ;)


Arky ;o)

[Arky]

Aha! Here's (http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1800&p=5) the answer, regarding HyperThreading:

Originally posted on AnandTech.com

Much like the Athlon 64 shares the same execution units as the Athlon XP, the Banias has the same execution unit layout as the Pentium III. This means that Banias features no more than 5 execution ports, significantly less than what we're used to seeing from the Pentium 4 for example.

By sticking with a relatively narrow execution layout, Intel continues to limit the power consumption of the Banias core; as our IPC comments from the previous section indicate however, the limited number of execution resources won't hold back performance. What the limited number of execution resources does mean however is that Hyper-Threading will not "work" on Banias.


Arky ;o)

[Arky]

Overall (and having read the AnandTech article very thoroughly), I must say that, despite the tradeoffs employed by the Pentium M in comparison to the P4M, my overiding impression is that Intel have engineered a very well thought out CPU, and despite the lack of HyperThreading support, I feel that I will be spending my hard-earned on a Centrino notebook, rather than a P4M. I am very impressed with the engineering decisions the Israel team took, during development, and the performance they have managed to wring out of this piece of silicon, while dramatically reducing the power consumption, is nothing short of extraordinary.

All I need to do now is save, and wait for Dell to produce some decent models! :)


Arky ;o)

[galapogos]

Yes, the Centrino is quite architecturally sound, with many smart comprimises made that are logical in a mobile chip. Heck, it would be pretty good as a desktop chip too if they made them. Clock for clock I wouldn't be surprised it they outperformed Athlon XPs.

Dell already has some pretty powerful Centrino based laptops if you're wondering. The Latitude D800 uses a GeForce4 4200 Go GPU, the Latitude D600 and Inspiron 600m uses the ATI Mobility Radeon 9000. All 3 are pretty potent if you ask me.

[Arky]

Yes, I read the AnandTech review (http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1801) of some of IBM, FIC, and Dell's offerings. That Dell looks seriously sweet, especially the screen. I am mindful of their remarks about the GeForce chip (soon to be updated), though.

I will also have to wait until Boris and Pinnacle are more forthcoming about what differences in performance users can expect from competing graphics cards with each of their offerings. It's a bitch that:

#) Boris have co-developed the GPU side of Boris RED 3.0 with Matrox, and Matrox, as you know, are arch enemies of Pinnacle (so Pinnacle won't have been especially motivated to develop an engine that warms to Matrox cards, esp. the Parhelia).

#) Pinnacle have co-developed the GPU side of Edition 5 with ATI. But ATI came out very poorly in AnandTech's mobile graphics tests, compared to Nvidia's GeForce card.

#) Seemingly the middle card, in terms of no allegiances to either developer, and no enemy to either of them, either, would appear to be the Nvidia GeForce, and it performed the best in AnandTech's notebook test, but:

#) AnandTech noted that the current Nvidia mobile powerhouse is an absolute wattage-muncher!!


ARGHH!! What to do; which way to turn?! it's a flippin nightmare! :(

To top it all off, I am going to be using GPU intensive applications like Edition and RED, which, of course, are the worst case scenarios if I go for a GPU such as the Nvidia. If I'm not careful, I may end up with a situation whereby my GPU speeds Edition and RED very nicely, but uses so much power that all the powersaving of the Intel chip is wasted. You just have to laugh at the irony! :eek:

I tried to find the D800 on dell.co.uk and got pretty cheesed-off because they will show you a picture but then when you actually try to find the product listing itself, the website suddenly pretends there is no such model on the face of Planet Earth. This is a very common feature of Dell.co.uk's site and it drives me nuts. You'd think that the 2nd largest PC supplier in the world would be more professional, but there you have it.

Anyway, by the time I am ready to buy my new notebook, I think the newer (hopefully lower power consumption) GeForce chip will have made it onto the shelves, and the prospects for me getting a very capable notebook look rosy!


Arky ;o)

[galapogos]

Well it depends on the requirements of the software. I'm not familiar with Boris RED or pinnacle, but the differences between GPUs nowadays, including mobile GPUs, are basically their 3D support and performance, as well as power consumption for the mobile side. If Boris RED and Pinnacle software don't use much of the 3D features(I think Pinnacle makes dve software?) then performance should be similar.

[Arky]

oops - while I was updating my post, you replied. Please read again.
It is precisely the features that you mention, which Edition 5 and RED 3 exploit, to speed realtime and rendering performance.


Arky ;o)

[auenf]

Originally posted by Arky
@ Auenf, when you speak of P M, do you mean Centrino, or something different from either the P4M or the Centrino? I'm guessing you simply mean Centrino...

yes i am meaning Centrino when i say P-M, i prefer to talk in 'real' names, not the marketing names.

btw, i saw a centrino lappy this arvo, and it was pretty good (and there was a intel guy there as well).

im pretty sure (after talking to the intel guy a little as well), that centrino lappys will be for TRUE mobile computers, and the P4-M will dissapear, and some P4 chips will make it into other high end lappys for those who want the extra power, and dont care about the battery life.

Originally posted by Arky
despite the tradeoffs employed by the Pentium M in comparison to the P4M

actually, its basically all positives from going from P4-M to P-M, the P4 architecture was created mostly for high clockspeeds (to beat AMD to 2ghz), whilst the P-M is a much better all round mobile solution than the P4 and P4-M could ever be.

Originally posted by Arky
To top it all off, I am going to be using GPU intensive applications like Edition and RED, which, of course, are the worst case scenarios if I go for a GPU such as the Nvidia. If I'm not careful, I may end up with a situation whereby my GPU speeds Edition and RED very nicely, but uses so much power that all the powersaving of the Intel chip is wasted. You just have to laugh at the irony!

the centrino i saw at the shops was a sony, 1.3ghz and had mobility radeon (didnt have a model designation, so is probably the original mobility radeon)

and of course the 1.3 ghz can outrun a 1.8 P4-M ;) (or something like that)

personally the centrino will be the best mobile solution, and should give good battery life AND good processing power, something the P4-M couldnt do, even at 500mhz speedstep mode ;)

Enf...

[Arky]

Yes, I agree, I'm still talking to Dennis (the Pinnacle Edition head honcho) on a couple of pro forums, but essentially, I think I have decided that the tradeoffs either way suggest to me, personally, that the Centrino will be my best solution. Regarding my above post, I was simply pointing out that the Centrino is a great battery power saver, but using GPU intensive appz like the latest versions of Edition and RED, may undo all that lovely power efficiency, since the Nvidia (currently the most powerful mobile GPUs) gobble power. This may change for the better once Nvidia address the power hunger of their GPUs a little.

Withn the next 6months, I forsee myself buying a Centrino 1.6ghz (or faster if they hit the market by then, although I doubt it - AnandTech reckon the Centrino architecture will top-out at 2ghz, so Intel will incrementally speed it up so they don't shoot their load too quickly, if you'll pardon the expression). I will probably go for a notebook also incorporating an Nvidia GPU, but a more efficient one. Since Boris are in cahoots with MAtrox, and Pinnacle are in cahoots with ATI, there is no single best option for running both programs, so I'll have to settle for the outright fastest (Nvidia) and take my chances.

P.S. - this is my thousandth post, but in the spirit of all thing digital, and as wmansir (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53051) pointed out, I won't call it a 'k' until I reach 1024! :D


Arky ;o)

[CaptainCarrot]

@ Auenf, when you speak of P M, do you mean Centrino, or something different from either the P4M or the Centrino? I'm guessing you simply mean Centrino...
yes i am meaning Centrino when i say P-M, i prefer to talk in 'real' names, not the marketing names.
Actually Pentium M and Centrino are not the same, but the Pentium M is one part of every centrino notebook. To call itself "centrino", a notebook also needs an intel chipset (which atm is true for all P-M-Notebooks, but ATI has announced that they're gonna build P-M-Chipsets) AND an intel W-LAN-card. Dell i.e. calls their notebook "centrino(optional)", because they have a Dell-W-lan-card and thus are not centrino-notebooks, but you can pay extra to get an intel card instead, and then it's a centrino. Pretty stupid.
So you shouldn't care about wether a nb is centrino or not, look for the Pentium M.

One word about AMD in Notebooks: they have ultra-low-voltage XP's up to 1800+ (1700+ ? not sure), and even the ones with higher voltages are not bad, my sister has one with XP2200+ and Radeon9000 from the next supermarket, and it runs 3.5h when writing text and ~2h when watching DVD.

[Arky]

Apologies, although I have now read up on this topic at Anandtech, and I understand the (commercial) distinction between Centrino - AKA three combined components permitting the licensed use of the term 'Centrino', rather than Centrino referring to the CPU itself - I was being lazy in my latter posts, by (incorrectly) continuing to use the term 'Centrino' in the sense of any notebook containing just the new Pentium M CPU. What I actually meant to say was that I intend to buy a notebook employing the new Pentium M CPU, regardless of whether or not it additionally incorporates the Intel Wireless LAN card or Intel chipset. That'll teach me not to be lazy! :D


Arky ;o)