Testbed and Methods

One of the goals of this review is to determine the performance level of the Pentium M processor if it is installed into a desktop computer system by means of an ASUS CT-479 adapter. Considering that a senior Pentium M model and this adapter would cost about $700 together, we will compare the Pentium M 780 with top models from the following desktop CPU series: Pentium 4, Pentium D, Athlon 64, Athlon 64 FX, and Athlon 64 X2.

Even though you can now use the Pentium M in desktop mainboards for enthusiasts, there still remain certain limitations concerning the frequency of the memory subsystem. Particularly, the i875 and i865 chipsets that the mainboards compatible with the ASUS CT-479 are based on support only dual-channel DDR333/DDR266 SDRAM due to the fact that the system bus of modern Pentium M processors is clocked at 533MHz. This deficiency is not a catastrophe, though. Dual-channel DDR333 SDRAM’s bandwidth of 5.3GB/s is quite sufficient for feeding data to the Pentium M’s system bus which has a bandwidth of 4.3GB/s.

We built our test systems out of the following hardware parts:

• Processors:
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ (Socket 939, 2.4GHz, 2x1024KB L2, E6 core revision - Toledo);
• AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 (Socket 939, 2.6GHz, 1024KB L2, CG core revision - Clawhammer);
• AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (Socket 939, 2.4GHz, 1024KB L2, CG core revision - Clawhammer);
• AMD Athlon 64 3800+ (Socket 939, 2.4GHz, 512KB L2, E3 core revision - Venice);
• Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 840 (LGA775, 3.2GHz, 2x1MB L2);
• Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.73GHz (LGA775, 3.73GHz, 2MB L2);
• Intel Pentium 4 670 (LGA775, 3.6GHz, 2MB L2);
• Intel Pentium 4 660 (LGA775, 3.6GHz, 2MB L2);
• Intel Pentium 4 570 (LGA775, 3.8GHz, 1MB L2);
• Intel Pentium M 780 (Socket 479, 2.26GHz, 2MB L2).
• Mainboards:
• ASUS A8N SLI Deluxe (Socket 939, NVIDIA nForce4 SLI);
• ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe (Socket 478, Intel 875P);
• ASUS P5ND2-SLI Deluxe (LGA775, nForce4 SLI (Intel Edition));
• ASUS CT-479 (Socket 479 adapter).
• Memory:
• 1024MB DDR400 SDRAM (Corsair CMX512-3200XLPRO, 2x512MB, 2-2-2-10)*;
• 1024MB DDR2-667 SDRAM (Corsair CM2X512A-5400UL, 2x512MB, 4-4-4-14).
• Graphics cards:
• PowerColor RADEON X800 XT (PCI Express x16);
• PowerColor RADEON X800 XT (AGP 8x).
• Disk subsystem: Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB (Serial ATA-150).
• Operating system: Microsoft Windows XP SP2.

* DDR400 SDRAM worked as DDR333 SDRAM on the Pentium M platform.