Intel's Pentium M on the Desktop - A Viable Alternative?

Clock Speed based Performance Comparison

While the price-based performance comparison is the more practical comparison, a comparison based on clock speed is quite possibly the more interesting. We took an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket-939, 2.0GHz) and pitted it against our 2.0GHz Pentium M 755 to see how efficient Intel's mobile core happens to be.

Business/General Use
	AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz)	Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz)	Performance Advantage
Business Winstone 2004	22.1	24.2	10% (Pentium M)
SYSMark 2004 - Communication	134	127	6% (Athlon 64)
SYSMark 2004 - Document Creation	169	187	11% (Pentium M)
SYSMark 2004 - Data Analysis	133	108	23% (Athlon 64)
Microsoft Office XP with SP-2	544	546	Tie
Mozilla 1.4	360	321	11% (Pentium M)
ACD Systems ACDSee PowerPack 5.0	553	574	4% (Athlon 64)
Ahead Software Nero Express 6.0.0.3	497	510	3% (Athlon 64)
WinZip Computing WinZip 8.1	448	396	12% (Pentium M)
WinRAR	566	370	53% (Athlon 64)
Winner	-	-	AMD Athlon 64 3200+

The Pentium M is extremely competitive with the Athlon 64 in our business/general use tests, even outperforming it in four of the benchmarks. However, in tests where the Pentium M's 2MB L2 cache isn't enough, the Athlon 64 pulls ahead - such as the Data Analysis SYSMark 2004 test and the WinRAR test.

Multitasking Content Creation

Multitasking Content Creation
	AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz)	Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz)	Performance Advantage
Content Creation Winstone 2004	30.9	27.9	11% (Athlon 64)
SYSMark 2004 - 3D Creation	174	168	4% (Athlon 64)
SYSMark 2004 - 2D Creation	214	238	11% (Pentium M)
SYSMark 2004 - Web Publication	161	160	Tie
Mozilla and Windows Media Encoder	685	641	6% (Pentium M)
Winner	-	-	Tie

Surprisingly enough, the Athlon 64 and the Pentium M 755 give us a tie here. Content creation applications tend to be more memory bandwidth sensitive than not, so we were a bit surprised to see that the Pentium M did so well here, but it appears that the low latency L2 cache is able to make up for its lack of memory bandwidth. To AMD's credit, as applications increase in size, the Pentium M wouldn't be able to compete as well, but for present day applications, it's interesting to see the Pentium M do so well without the aid of AMD's on-die memory controller.

Video Creation/Photo Editing

Video Creation/Photo Editing
	AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz)	Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz)	Performance Advantage
Adobe Photoshop 7.0.1	364	332	8% (Pentium M)
Adobe Premiere 6.5	405	418	3% (Athlon 64)
Roxio VideoWave Movie Creator 1.5	349	411	15% (Athlon 64)
Winner	-	-	AMD Athlon 64 3200+

The race is fairly close here, but AMD pulls away in the two video editing tests.

Audio/Video Encoding

Audio/Video Encoding
	AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz)	Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz)	Performance Advantage
MusicMatch Jukebox 7.10	540	529	2% (Pentium M)
DivX Encoding	40.8	36	13% (Athlon 64)
XviD Encoding	27.8	25.4	10% (Athlon 64)
Microsoft Windows Media Encoder 9.0	1.85	1.83	Tie
Winner	-	-	AMD Athlon 64 3200+

The Pentium 4 completely blew the Pentium M away in the video encoding tests and while the Athlon 64 also manages to outperform it, the margin of victory isn't nearly as great. With a faster memory bus, it is possible that the Pentium M could significantly lessen the gap. Regardless, the win still goes to the Athlon 64.

Gaming

Gaming
	AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz)	Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz)	Performance Advantage
Doom 3	90.3	85	6% (Athlon 64)
Halo	87	85.2	2% (Athlon 64)
UT2004	58.7	55.2	6% (Athlon 64)
Wolfenstein: ET	93.1	85.5	9% (Athlon 64)
Winner	-	-	AMD Athlon 64 3200+

Gaming performance is extremely close, but AMD takes the slight lead over the Pentium M.

3D Rendering

3D Rendering
	AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz)	Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz)	Performance Advantage
Discreet 3dsmax 5.1 (DX)	278	269	3% (Pentium M)
Discreet 3dsmax 5.1 (OGL)	344	350	2% (Pentium M)
SPECapc 3dsmax 6	1.28	1.23	4% (Athlon 64)
Winner	-	-	Tie

3D Rendering performance is even closer between these two, leaving us with a tie between the Athlon 64 and the Pentium M at the same clock speed.

Professional Applications

Professional Applications
	AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz)	Intel Pentium M 755 (2.0GHz)	Performance Advantage
SPECviewperf 8 - 3dsmax-03	15.47	10.73	44% (Athlon 64)
SPECviewperf 8 - catia-01	12.06/strong>	9.096	33% (Athlon 64)
SPECviewperf 8 - light-07	12.08	10.71	13% (Athlon 64)
SPECviewperf 8 - maya-01	15.69	15.47	Tie
SPECviewperf 8 - proe-03	15.22	10.74	42% (Athlon 64)
SPECviewperf 8 - sw-01	12.24	8.593	42% (Athlon 64)
SPECviewperf 8 - ugs-04	13.99	10.24	37% (Athlon 64)
Winner	-	-	AMD Athlon 64 3200+

The SPECviewperf 8 suite goes to AMD, as the Athlon 64 completely dominates the Pentium M, clock for clock, in these very memory bandwidth, latency and FP intensive tests.

Pentium M vs. Athlon 64 Clock Speed Based Comparison Conclusion

While the Athlon 64 3200+ pulled away with the win in most of our test suites (tying twice), the Pentium M 755 put up a very hard fight. Given how strongly the Pentium M competes with the Athlon 64 on a clock for clock basis, the obvious answer would be to use the Pentium M to compete with AMD instead of the Pentium 4, right?

Wrong. The fundamental issue is that although the Pentium M is surprisingly competitive with the Athlon 64 on a clock for clock basis, the Pentium M's architecture can't scale to the same clock speeds that the Athlon 64 can. The fact of the matter is that while the Pentium M will hit 2.26GHz by the end of 2005, the Athlon 64 will be on its way to 3.0GHz and beyond. It's the same argument that was present during the Pentium III vs. Pentium 4 transition period, and we all know the result of that transition.

The Pentium M's astounding successes against the Athlon 64, despite the lack of an on-die memory controller and only a single channel DDR333 memory bus, are without a doubt due to its 10 cycle L2 cache. We've seen how much a reduction in memory latency can do for performance - the Athlon 64 is a living, breathing example of that. But an even greater reduction in L2 cache latency is even more powerful under the right circumstances.