Turion vs. Pentium M

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-09-11 12:04pm

Interesting read. I've never seen such similar laptop systems offered with two completely different processors from two completely different manufacturers. The article went in assuming that the Pentium M would be better at everything, but the Turion came out ahead in virtually every category (including battery life under most circumstances, performance, etc.). Is this actually representative of the new Turion processors? My brother is looking for a laptop pretty soon, and I can get him a speced out Turion for $200 less than a comparable Centrino. Is this something that I should be looking into?

Seggybop · Post by **Seggybop** » 2005-09-11 03:55pm

Turion is definitely more powerful (it's bascially a lower-wattage Athlon 64 with SSE3). The only thing it might lose on would be battery life, but if their tests are accurate, even that is no longer of convern. I currently have a standard Athlon 64 mobile CPU in my laptop, and it gets about an hour less of battery than the P-M machines my friends have but crushes them in CPU-intensive tasks.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-09-11 04:59pm

The newer Pentium M CPUs aren't as power efficient as they used to be, but I hear Intel is trying to rectify that.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-12 08:26am

The arn't as efficient, but they sure as hell keep up with AMD64(full scale) givin equal platforms(GamePC.com).

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-09-12 09:19am

Ace Pace wrote:The arn't as efficient, but they sure as hell keep up with AMD64(full scale) givin equal platforms(GamePC.com).

Not in everything but they certainly do well in gaming.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2005-09-12 11:28am

True, they are behind as hell in Rendering/any media creation, but otherwise their pretty solid, with impressive power/heat numbers.

tumbletom · Post by **tumbletom** » 2005-09-12 01:33pm

I just got a turion lappy a month ago and I havent had any problems with it. I think it sucks out battery life though but it doesnt seem that bad (I have a 12 cell lithium battery and it drains with about 3.5 hours of internet surfing and stuff like that)

I'd say its a good buy just because of its price--I got this laptop for about 300ish dollars cheaper than a similar performance pentium m.

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2005-09-12 07:14pm

Yeah, he ended up going with the Turion. It was only about $1600, and a comparably equipped Pentium M system would've cost nearly $2000. The Turion comes with a better graphics card, too, even though its out-of-the-box wireless capabilities aren't as strong.