A Review of the Pentium M on the Desktop - LAME, DivX
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LAME
The second to last of the media-oriented tests is an MP3 conversion of The Tragically Hip - Phantom Power album using the DBPoweramp frontend. The disc was first ripped to WAV format on the HD, so that the CD drive wouldn't be the limiting factor. In addition, more error correction from beat up discs is possible with this method. The Pentium M runs much closer to its other Intel family members; the Pentium4 has typically dominated this type of task. However, clock speed scaling is the great equalizer, and the ability to easily raise the performance of the Sempron shows that you would have to raise the speed of the P-M beyond a rather sedate 2.26GHz to rip albums as fast as an FX-55 (2.6GHz).
DivX
Using the latest version of Gordian Knot, a two pass, two CD rip of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie was made. Here's the first task where the Pentium M gets its ass handed to it. From just looking at the graph, you can see the P-M runs pretty close to the A64 and Sempron 3100+ both clocked to 1.8GHz. You have to read the fine print there though, which shows that those are the results from the overclocked P-M. I ran it twice at 2.26GHz just to make sure I hadn't fudged something. Both returned the exact same results, and I didn't even bother wasting three or four more hours running the test on the Pentium M at stock.
Suffice it to say that if you are concerned with DivX conversion performance primarily, this is NOT the CPU for you. In the future I'm going to look at doing some other tests with Windows Media Encoder similar to what I did in my reviews from a year ago to see if this schlacking is limited to DivX, or extends to other encoding formats as well.
I hope this works as a solid introduction to the Pentium M platform for you. Please check back again for the review of the DFI 855GME-MGF for more detailed benchmarking, and a closer look at one of the first platforms available for this product on the desktop. Thanks for joining us today here at Dev Hardware. If you wish to comment on this article, or just want to talk hardware, then by all means, drop by our forums. Otherwise, feel free to jump back to the front page for more hardware news and reviews.
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