# Do you recommend a Pentium M for Gentoo?

## g3n

I'm going to buy a new Laptop, but almost anything that i can buy here in México have Centrino Technology now. Could someone please explain me about this? My current Laptop is Pentium 4 (not mobile) @ 2.66 GHz, i'm buying a new one because the APM isn't working and it doesnt have a wireless adaptor.

The available computers here are (All in an ASUS motherboard, if you need more data i can post some specifications):

Pentium 725 M 1.6 GHz 2MB Cache

Pentium M 1.7 GHz

Celeron 2.8 GHz D333

Celeron M340 1.5 GHz

That's almost the only data available for the CPU, there where i'm concerned.

I'm going to use the laptop as a mobile Apache, PHP, Mysql server and use it apply exams for around 70 people (on an intranet) and doing demos of the system on the go and for a mobile php developing desktop.

Should the pentium M be enough for this? should i keep looking to find a Pentium 4? what's the main difference between my Pentium 4@2.66 and a Pentium M?

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## donjuan

The Pentium M is a pretty awesome CPU.  Any of the Pentium Ms that you get there should work out to be as powerful as the Pentium 4 2.66 GHz that you mentioned.  I don't know what Intel did, but with the Pentium M they managed to make a more powerful CPU running at lower clock speeds with less power consumption.

Centrino is basically a marketing gimmick.  It's a combination of the Pentium M processor, some Intel chipset, and an Intel wireless adapter.  The main thing you would be after is the Pentium M processor, because that thing is nice.  Intel recently released Linux drivers for their wireless cards so you should be good with any Centrino laptop.  Just make sure that it doesn't have an ATi card in it.  nVidia's the way to go (you probably know that by now).

Last thing is, I would avoid the Celerons because they're basically gimped Pentiums.  Compile times are probably way slower on the Celerons.

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## g3n

Precisely, i want a Stage 1 gentoo with its weekly updates, so i'll avoid the celeron then, what was you said about the linux driver for the wifi? are they difficult to configure? i think they are running atheros wireless adaptors, are they?

Why do i don't want the ATI? i've never tried a nvidia on my laptops, what's so nice about them? the ati mobility (cheapest around) gives me a accelerated X11 (cuz i only use for the desktop cuz i don't run games in the laptop). Please, tell me more.

Thanks.

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## donjuan

All I really know about the wifi is that Intel released Linux drivers for it recently, and it looks like those drivers are open source.  I'm pretty sure that Intel makes its own chipset so the cards don't use the atheros chipset.  I've never tried configuring it myself, so I don't know how difficult it is.

The general concensus in the Linux community is that ATi drivers aren't very good, whereas nVidia's are very good.  Though if you go with an Radeon 9200 or below you should be fine because there's open source drivers for those, so you don't have to use the proprietary ATi drivers.  It sounds like you're looking at the ATi Mobility Radeon 9000 or something like that, so you should be fine then.  You would just be running into problems if you got an X300 or something like that.

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## g3n

this was helpful, thanks  :Smile: 

A second opinion is accepted.

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## TNorthover

I'll go along with that. Recently got one with the Intel wifi card which works perfectly with the ipw2200 drivers now. 

Processor seems perfectly fast enough to be useful (1.6 Pentium M I believe). Only noticably slower than P4 2.8 on KDE startup, so I'm happy.

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## g3n

 *TNorthover wrote:*   

> I'll go along with that. Recently got one with the Intel wifi card which works perfectly with the ipw2200 drivers now. 
> 
> Processor seems perfectly fast enough to be useful (1.6 Pentium M I believe). Only noticably slower than P4 2.8 on KDE startup, so I'm happy.

 

Doesnt ur P4 2.8 have more RAM than the PM 1.6?

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## TNorthover

Well, laptop has 512M, desktop has 1024. I think it's really not an issue at startup (where neither uses the full amount, even for cache, so it doesn't matter how much there is). 

I suppose that just by the nature of what I do with the laptop, I'm running less programs at once so I don't notice that limitation. Perhaps compiling goes more slowly, but I only ever do that when I'm around my main computer, so I just leave it to get on and don't care how long it takes.

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## vivpr

I use a pentium-m laptop (hpnc6000) at work, and I'm really happy with it. The performance is awesome - I'm able to compile java apps faster on my laptop than some of my colleagues with p4 desktops and scsi hard drives  :Very Happy: 

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## erikm

Hi,

I've got everything working on my Centrino laptop, and I'm really impressed with the pentium-m. I'm planning to chuck my P4 HT out of my desktop for a 755 when the socket 478 => 479 adapter is released.

Also, check out this article for a hint of the true pentium m potential...  :Wink: 

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## nightblade

Stage1 over a Pentium M, here... works as a charm (ATI card as well, btw)

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## gtr-xu1

Dont forget the brand new Intel "Sonoma" - I know someone that just got one off Dell for an awesome price. This machine rocks.

Laters

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## rncwnd

I recently bought a "Sonoma" Notebook: Asus V6V. clunky

Well this thingy rocks. I have the version with 1.7GHz and 512MB RAM. It also has an ATI X600

and I have to state here, that I have NO problem with this gpu. Just emerged the newest ATI-

Drivers and installed Xorg. I also patched the development-sources-2.6.10-r1 with the newest

vesafb-tng patch. That means 1400x1050 on console and in X.

Oh, did I mention 3d-hw-acceleration in X?

All in all, the Pentium M is way faster than my 2.8GHz P4 (FSB 533 on Asus P4PE with 1GB RAM).

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## donjuan

I wasn't saying that it isn't possible to get 3D acceleration with ATI R3xx and R4xx GPUs (those that are in the Radon 9500 series and above), I was saying that the drivers aren't that great.  Try getting the Xorg composite extension running with the ATI drivers and see what happens.  And for the longest time it wasn't even possible to get Xorg 6.8.0 working with ATI drivers.  Lots of games that run fine on nVidia cards with Cedega won't run on ATI cards.  As it stands nVidia drivers are still much better.  Tough it looks like ATI might be making a new commitment to improve its Linux drivers, so hopefully these problems will be fixed sometime in the near future.

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## g3n

 *nightblade wrote:*   

> Stage1 over a Pentium M, here... works as a charm (ATI card as well, btw)

 

What card do you have?...

--Edited--

NVM... i don't think that i can get rid of the integrated Intel855, does that even work?

The motherboard could be an ASUS A2500H, A2400NE, A3500H, A6B00n or M5200N, do you know any of this ones or where to find specs? i dont find them in google?

--Edited Again--

I can get a Radeon 9600  :Smile:  i hope it's good.

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## g3n

What configuration should i use for my Pentium M, the one of the pentium 3 or the pentium 4?

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## val

I've had a dell 600m which has a pentium M for about 9 months now and I am very happy with it.  Gentoo runs very smoothly.  The only thing that is missing is the 3d-accel and composite, but 2d graphics are just fine.  It's not that much of an issue to me because I don't do gaming.

Anyway, to answer your question above, get a gcc version greater than 3.4 and there is an option for pentium m.  :Very Happy:   If you find yourself having to use gcc 3.3, you can use either the p3 setting or the p4.  Someone else can tell you whether the M is closer to p3 or p4, but I think I've tried both and didn't really notice a difference in performance.

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## g3n

 *val wrote:*   

> I've had a dell 600m which has a pentium M for about 9 months now and I am very happy with it.  Gentoo runs very smoothly.  The only thing that is missing is the 3d-accel and composite, but 2d graphics are just fine.  It's not that much of an issue to me because I don't do gaming.
> 
> Anyway, to answer your question above, get a gcc version greater than 3.4 and there is an option for pentium m.   If you find yourself having to use gcc 3.3, you can use either the p3 setting or the p4.  Someone else can tell you whether the M is closer to p3 or p4, but I think I've tried both and didn't really notice a difference in performance.

 

tnx, im using the p3, i can't change the make.conf now because the system is half installed already, but what should i put in /etc/make.conf in the CFLAGS to use the pentium m instead?

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## val

```
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium-m -mtune=pentium-m -pipe -ftracer -fomit-frame-pointer"
```

And you can change that at any time, really, but it only works with gcc>3.4

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## lghman

I also use a pentium m with gcc 3.4.3. Works like a charm. I did the install using the Stage 1NPTL  on Stage 3 tarball. The compling times really wernt bad at all, did the whole install in one day.

--sonik

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## omnicloud

A celeron is a low cost Pentium. The low cost comes from there being only half the cache memory. Cache memory is one of the BIGGEST influences on CPU speed.

EDIT: I put a pentium is a low cost pentium when I meant to say a Celeron is a low cost PentiumLast edited by omnicloud on Sun Mar 27, 2005 6:28 am; edited 1 time in total

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## g3n

 *val wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium-m -mtune=pentium-m -pipe -ftracer -fomit-frame-pointer"
> ```
> ...

 

My CFLAGS point to the pentium3 instead, what can i do to change that? change the make.conf and then do a emerge -e kde?

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## val

Yes, change the make.conf.  You might comment out your old cflags and put a new one in.  If you have to compile something with gcc 3.3, you'll need to change back.  You could reemerge everything (emerge -uD world) but you don't really have to just to make your system work.  If not, everything you compile from now on will be with the new cflags.  Be careful when you compile drivers/kernel modules.  They have to be compiled with the same compiler as the kernel.

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## jerome bettis

would these flags be better / worse / not work for a pentium m as apposed to what is posted above:

CFLAGS="-march=pentium-m -mtune=pentium-m -O2 -pipe -msse2 -fomit-frame-pointer -fforce-addr -frename-registers -fprefetch-loop-arrays -falign-functions=64"

versus

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium-m -mtune=pentium-m -pipe -ftracer -fomit-frame-pointer"

what do you guys think?  i'm not sure if more is better here as i have no idea what this stuff really does to the compiler.

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## TerranAce007

Well, I have an AMD64 laptop running a 64 bit install of Gentoo, and I use ATI's 64 bit drivers. The 3D acceleration works, and I don't have any major problems with them. If your going to be gaming in Linux, I'm not sure how the ATI vs Nvidia argument works,  but I have read bout problems in both. My laptop came with a copy of WinXP home, so I just use that for my gaming needs.

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