Intel's Centrino CPU (Pentium-M): Revolutionizing the Mobile World

Content Creation Performance

In order to measure Content Creation performance we used Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 and Internet Content Creation SYSMark 2002. First we'll start off with the Winstone benchmark, which is best described by its creators at Veritest:

Multimedia Content Creation Winstone is a system-level, application-based benchmark that measures a PC's overall performance when running top, Windows-based, 32-bit, multimedia content creation applications on Windows 2000 (SP2 or higher), Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows XP. Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 uses the following applications:

Adobe® Photoshop® 7.0
Adobe® Premiere® 6.0
Macromedia® Director 8.5.1
Macromedia® Dreamweaver 4
Microsoft® Windows MediaTM Encoder 7.01.00.3055
Netscape® 6.2.3
NewTek's LightWave® 7.5
Sonic Foundry® Sound Forge® 6.0

Following the lead of real users, Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 keeps multiple applications open at once and switches among those applications. Multimedia Content Creation Winstone 2003 is a single large test that runs the above applications through a series of scripted activities and returns a single score. Those activities focus on what we call "hot spots," periods of activity that make your PC really work--the times where you're likely to see an hourglass or a progress bar.

Content Creation Performance Content Creation Winstone 2002 (Score in Winstones - Higher is Better) Pentium 4 2.66GHz Pentium-M 1.6GHz Pentium 4 2.4GHz Pentium 4 2.2GHz Pentium-M 1.5GHz Pentium 4 1.7GHz Pentium 4 1.6GHz Pentium 4 1.5GHz Pentium 4 1.4GHz 37.6 36.1 35.5 33.8 33.0 27.1 25.5 25.2 24.4 | 0 | 8 | 15 | 23 | 30 | 38 | 45

Keeping in mind that the Pentium III had a higher IPC than the Pentium 4, and also remembering that the Pentium-M features a significantly higher IPC than the Pentium III, it's no surprise that a 1.6GHz Pentium-M is able to outperform the fastest Pentium 4-M CPU (2.40GHz) and come within striking range of a desktop 2.66GHz Pentium 4. The 1.5GHz Pentium-M is faster than a 2GHz Pentium 4, and on the heels of a 2.2GHz Pentium 4.

Content Creation Performance Internet Content Creation SYSMark 2002 (Score in SYSMarks - Higher is Better) Pentium 4 2.66GHz Pentium 4 2.4GHz Pentium 4 2.2GHz Pentium 4 1.7GHz Pentium 4 1.6GHz Pentium 4 1.5GHz Pentium 4 1.4GHz Pentium-M 1.6GHz Pentium-M 1.5GHz 306 296 278 229 220 208 195 184 178 | 0 | 61 | 122 | 184 | 245 | 306 | 367

Internet Content Creation SYSMark 2002 is much more optimized for the Pentium 4's architecture, which is why we find the two Pentium-M processors at the bottom of this chart. Overall content creation performance should be somewhere in between what we see here and what we saw in Content Creation Winstone 2003. One thing is for sure though, the Pentium-M at 1.6GHz is significantly faster than the Pentium 4-M at 1.6GHz.