Athlon XP-M vs Pentium-M? (ferrari vs hp!)

[aakerman]

Hi!

I am seriously considering the new Acer/Ferrari 3000LMi notebook... it has very impressive specs.
The only discomforting thing about it, is that it features the Athlon XP-M 2500+ cpu (not the low voltage kind), instead of a centrino solution...

I cannot find ANY reviews of the standard XP-M range.. can somebody tell me how the battery life, noise (fan?) and performance, will be like compared to a centrino notebook (like the HP nx7000 which is my alternative)...

Thx!

 

[alexruiz]

Battery life is better in a Pentium-M, however, the Athlon XP-M is quite frugal. My presario 2100Z (XP-M 2000+) gets over 3 hours in office tasks, and a little over 2 hours watching a DVD. The included battery is 6 or 7 cells.

Noise, it depends on the quality of the fans used. However, on normal conditions it is quiet (PowerNOW! throttles the CPU to a lower speed if the task is not demanding). Performance, well, it completely depends on the whole platform. I made the analogy that a computer is like a car, being the CPU kind of the engine, and the chipset the tarnsmission. No matter how good an engine is, if the transmission CAN'T use all its output it will not perform as it should.

An Athlon XP-M 2500+ in a VIA KN266 or ATI IGP320 with integrated graphics will be steamrolled by a P4/P-M with discrete graphics even if the clock speed is lower. Pair that same XP-M with a KT333 or better AND a mobility radeon 9000 to get a potent combo, only a P4 2.66 533FSB or higher AND the same or better video card could beat it.

Also, hard drive is key. Make sure the drive is AT LEAST a travelstar 5K80 (5400 rpm, 8MB cache).

 

[aakerman]

Thx for your reply! but 3 hours is quite disheartening, as a pentium-m easily goes 4+ hours @ light use...!

The two notebooks I am compairing, have the same graphics chip (64 vs 128 mb radeon 9200)..
The clock speeds are: P-M 1.5GHz vs XP-M 1.96GHz (2500+) - are they about equal or what?

Am I to understand from your post, that the fan is always on with an XP-M cpu? Because with the centrino that I tested, the fan was never on during light use, and consequently it was totally silent!

 

[alexruiz]

Originally posted by: aakerman
Thx for your reply! but 3 hours is quite disheartening, as a pentium-m easily goes 4+ hours @ light use...!

The two notebooks I am compairing, have the same graphics chip (64 vs 128 mb radeon 9200)..
The clock speeds are: P-M 1.5GHz vs XP-M 1.96GHz (2500+) - are they about equal or what?

Am I to understand from your post, that the fan is always on with an XP-M cpu? Because with the centrino that I tested, the fan was never on during light use, and consequently it was totally silent!

The battery is only 6 cells... a 9 cells battery should give better battery life, maybe over 4 hours. A lot of people complain about the Athlon XP-M not giving good battery life, but they forget that the battery used in these machines is usually lower capacity (read: cheaper)

Regarding the fan, the answer is NO. It goes ON sometimes if you start doing something else that is more intensive, but overall is OFF.

The AX-M should be more powerful, but I still have to see a review of an Athlon XP-m laptop with decent chipset/graphics.

 

[NerdMan]

In order of preference for notebook CPUs, mine would be:

Pentium M > AthlonXP-M > Pentium 4-M > AthlonXP > Pentium 4

The reasoning is that the Pentium M is the best for battery/performance. AthlonXP-M gives the 2nd best of course, since it has power saving features. I ranked it ahead of the Pentium 4-M because higher clock speed = higher power consumption. If an XP-M can get equal performance at a lower clock speed, better reason to choose it.

On the topic of the AthlonXP being greater than the P4. Both CPUs dissipate the same heat for a given performance, but the Pentium 4 has a nasty feature: Clock throttling (this is where the CPU decreases clock speed due to overheating). I have a HP notebook and the P4 (2.0Ghz) seems to clock throttle all the time. This is due to poor cooling in such a small space. There are times when I can definately tell that the CPU is running slow, where simply opening up Word takes a few minutes.

In HP diagnostics my laptop reports temperatures of 60 degress Celsius, for those who may contest that clock throttling is not happening. I know it is, performance lags whenever the notebook heats up. If I fire up Q3 I will average 100FPS, but as the CPU heats up it drops to a steady 50-60FPS...


It depends mostly on price and how much you want to spend. Personally, If I was going for a laptop now, I'd get this one if you are a member of Sam's Club. It has a P-M, 80GB HD, DVD burner, and Rad9200. I want. Very close to the nx7000 but with the burner.

 

[alexruiz]

Hey aakerman, why don't you propose Andrew Ku to review the Ferrari laptop? I am convincing him to make an all laptop showdown...

Alex

 

[alexruiz]

Tom's hardware had a areview of the averatec 3150P..... AXP 1600+ and integrated KN266.... You can take a look at it.

 

[aakerman]

Who is andrew Ku? I would very much like to see a review of the ferrari laptop.. I am probably not the only one Though most buyers probably get it for the brand, without looking twice at the specs!! I don't care about the brand...well, maybe I do a bit

Nerdman: the link doesn't seem to work anymore.. if you are talking about the nw8000/nc8000, I don't like the looks at all, and it looks way more bulky than the nx7000!

 

[alexruiz]

Andrew is one of anandtech editors... Check the thread about the voodooPC A64 laptop and you will find him