WoW done, Pentium M coming along, Wildcat in the pipe
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 23, 2005 12:26 PM EST- Posted in
- Anand
My World of Warcraft Performance Guide is finally done. I ended up turning in around 5AM this morning for a few hours of rest before polishing off the guide. The server I was testing on didn't get back up until around 10PM last night, pretty much wiping out a good day of testing as it was down since 8AM. I couldn't get much done while I was waiting for the server to get back up since my Pentium M testbed was running through hours of WorldBench, Winstone and SYSMark all yesterday.
I'm hoping to be done with the Pentium M article late tonight. So far I'm not too impressed with the performance. It looks like the memory bandwidth deficit of the 855GME chipset isn't that great, as moving to a dual channel memory configuration doesn't improve performance all that much. It looks like the only saving grace for Dothan on the desktop right now (performance wise) is clock speed, otherwise AMD is the much better bet from a performance standpoint (but obviously not from a power consumption standpoint, and once again I'm talking strictly desktop).
Derek is also working on a Wildcat article that should be ready by the end of tonight as well, so either his piece or my Pentium M piece will be up tomorrow morning for you all to check out. The remaining article will be up on Friday.
Now that the WoW article is done, time to cook up some breakfast...err brunch and get back to it. We actually had a reasonably warm day yesterday, it was about 51 when I went out scavenging for food here in Branford...not too shabby. Unfortunately it's back to cloudy and unfriendly temperatures today it seems.
I'm hoping to be done with the Pentium M article late tonight. So far I'm not too impressed with the performance. It looks like the memory bandwidth deficit of the 855GME chipset isn't that great, as moving to a dual channel memory configuration doesn't improve performance all that much. It looks like the only saving grace for Dothan on the desktop right now (performance wise) is clock speed, otherwise AMD is the much better bet from a performance standpoint (but obviously not from a power consumption standpoint, and once again I'm talking strictly desktop).
Derek is also working on a Wildcat article that should be ready by the end of tonight as well, so either his piece or my Pentium M piece will be up tomorrow morning for you all to check out. The remaining article will be up on Friday.
Now that the WoW article is done, time to cook up some breakfast...err brunch and get back to it. We actually had a reasonably warm day yesterday, it was about 51 when I went out scavenging for food here in Branford...not too shabby. Unfortunately it's back to cloudy and unfriendly temperatures today it seems.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
guytonaSince you asked, is there anything in particular you'd like to see us cover?
Take care,
Anand
guytona - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Sounds good. Thanks. I'm looking forward to seeing what's going on.Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Aquila76:) It's only temporary thankfully, I'm still shocked at how it still hasn't warmed up around here. I can't believe I liked the snow when I was little :)
guytona
This week has been relatively dry for a couple of reasons. For starters a couple of NDAs slipped, which left us with holes early on in the week as well as the fact that a number of AT staff are working on articles scheduled for publication later this month/early next month. Never fear though, the second half of this week has got some good stuff cooking as I've been talking about in this blog and I'm hoping to have next week back to normal around here.
Take care,
Anand
guytona - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
What happened to all the reviews? I loved reading your guys' take on the motherboards, video cards, and anything else that struck your fancy. Is this just a slow time, or is that not a focus anymore?Aquila76 - Wednesday, March 23, 2005 - link
Yup, cloudy skies and another ~6" of snow tonight. Why'd you move here from NC again? ;)From other reviews I've read (which seem to echo your conclusions), I think I'll stick with my 3500+ A64 for a while on my main box, but a Pentium-M passivly cooled in my HTPC would be pretty sweet!