X-bit labs

Intel Pentium M 780 as Heart of Your Desktop PC, with ASUS CT-479 Adapter (page 20)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 06/20/2005 | 01:46 PM ]

Conclusion

The ASUS CT-479 adapter we have examined today is a truly innovative solution. And it is currently the best solution for bringing Pentium M processors to desktop computers. This adapter is compatible with a number of Socket 478 mainboards from ASUS and allows using the Pentium M with dual-channel memory and all the additional controllers available on these mainboards. Besides that, the ASUS CT-479 does not prevent overclocking, but leaves the user with almost all the overclocking options implemented in the mainboards’ BIOSes.

On the other hand, it is hard to say a definite yes or no to the “desktop” Pentium M. The indisputable advantages of this series are very low heat dissipation and power consumption, which allows building quiet and economical systems around these CPUs. The performance of such a system would be quite high, but not the best available today.

The Pentium M architecture, a descendant of the Pentium III architecture, has certain drawbacks, too. For example, these processors work with a rather slow system bus, have a low-performance FPU, lack the support of SSE3 as well as 64-bit extensions to the x86 architecture. That’s why Pentium M processors cannot rival modern Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 models in many applications.

Games are where the Pentium M looks most impressive, of course. Thanks to its fast and large cache memory, this processor is no slower than the senior Athlon 64 models in gaming applications, and gamers might appreciate this.

Yet we wouldn’t recommend the Pentium M even to this category of users. Yes, the Pentium III architecture looks quite appealing, but it still needs some tweaking to be efficient in modern desktop systems. And fortunately Intel has some plans on making the Pentium M better: the dual-core processor codenamed Yonah and scheduled for the next year is going to have the improvements we have mentioned above.