Why In The World: A Pentium M Computer

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Introducing....

I want to start a thing either here or on the wiki of "Why in the world would I use this computer / those headphones / that OS / etc" with comps being the focus. Until the wiki is done and has a proper area for fun random stuff like this the blog area will have to do.

Lets do a run down of my personal Pentium M machine.

HP NW8000 - 60GB IDE HDD - 2 GB DDR Sync - ATi Mobility Radeon FireGL T2 - 5:4 TN Max Res 1600 X 1200

If you've gotten this far with intrigue to spare, yay!

Now, why the bleedy hell would anyone use one of these machines? They have modified pentium 3's with all the extra gubbins turned off at manufacture, such as hyperthreading, and don't work that well for anything anymore, assumeably. At that the video card is a dual core 9600 with 128 MB of who knows what kind of vram and ide is a joke! (you say in the back of your head.)

I don't use this machine every day, I would be mad then, but back in high school its what I had and for what it was it did everything I wanted. Quake, Urban Terror, HL2, DJ stuff, and the internet. Playing with it a few years later it still does that stuff but now I have more games to fiddle with and more things I can do with it.

Mostly at the moment the machine runs XP. This isn't a problem fr me as the only place I go on the internet on any laptop is youtube. With that the few things I can do is limited as steam and other platforms become newer and a laptop from 2004 becomes a relic more and more, but its still good. I play a lot of quake. At that I can only play quake well on an eraser head mouse. True story. Largely what I do with it is play quake because of that. I also made a podcast for the middle and high schools with it for our school district going over what students liked and disliked abut what the school was doing (the school did not care very much about what any of the students said about anything) and it was a good gap closer. About an hour of audio actually gets shot through in about ten minutes if you can believe it.

I also started my interest in DJ'ing on this machine. It holds up pretty well for a few hours at a constant but when you're done the machine needs to cool down as it only has its one single fan. Not amazing, but it still opens up areas people don't normally get to have.

So OK what is the construction of the thing? How much are they now? Since they were what alienwares and asus ROG laptops are now, you can guess a high price and maybe be right. At the time of release an NW8000 was 4500 to 5600 bucks a pop. Now? They are about 20. Funny to think of that sort of price drop. The build of the machine feels like it was expensive with an alloy metal housing around the 15 inch screen and a spacious and well supported case around the rest the thing will survive a car crash. At least, mine did. Its how I got it from a recycle center.

For 20 bucks its a good machine. To experiment in some things or just to play quake. If you see one, grab it.

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People where I am would rather run the pc into the ground or throw it out than to sell it cheap to someone. If I could get older pcs for $20 I would definitely do it. Heck I still want an AMD K6 machine again.

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I need to do some dumpster diving. The only thing you have worry about is how much power you're going to consume, but I guess so long as it runs with a 500 watt power supply you know it itsn't going to be that much.

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Pentium M lappys are still worth using for some minimal stuff. Even code. I used my lappy for code class in college.

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I have a K6-2 clocked at 500MHz, I keep the CPU in a clear box on top of my water-cooled FX-6300 server just for giggles. I've also got a Pentium III on a card.

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Might hate me..... My secondary PC is a K7 >.>

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What about games?

So now I want to go over some of the games you can/could play on one of these machines as well as some apps.

Considering my machine has 2 GB ram and a 9600 it can actually play quite a piece and run a bit hot but evenly. One of the first games I got into was Combat Arms. Considering that I can run CA on my K7 machine with an Nvidia GeForce 4 (and at that use a WORSE GPU than that) I will make a recommendation to CA on a Pentium M machine as long as it has a 9600 and up. If your machine has a 9800 (a rather rare thing) or a 9700 (the GPU's work differently) then you want more than 1 GB ram.

TF2 also happens to run, somehow, though I wouldn't try to pop the GPU options up too high. You might get somewhere with bloom and lighting effects but otherwise medium/low combo settings run pretty well. Other source games run OK enough. I have not tried garrys mod 13, but 12 and 11 run at 60 FPS no problem. The mods might cause a problem so looking into modifying the GPU config would be worth looking into.

Fable is an OK game if you would like to try playing it, but when I played it the first time it ran pretty meh but I also only had 512 MB ram (I found that amazing as my desktop was a pentium 2 with 16 or maybe 32 mb ram) so I might as well try it again.

Also fun fact, if you have the machine I have at least, audiosurf runs at 120 FPS at max settings. Why? I don't bloody know.

So the hardware may be old but a lot of stuff runs. Some better than others but even stuff like visual studio is pretty good. 2010 at least. Also for any of these machines, depending on the GPU and drivers, use windows XP. OSX might be a fun project and things like AROS are great, but linux runs like shit. No games work well if at all and ven YT videos run like shit.

I am hoping to make a list of software for different machines on the wiki after it is finished so if anyone has anything else they like to run on these machines PM me :D

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What is it?

Last post then I am going to move onto another chip. P4 maybe? Also keep in mind that I have had business laptops that kicked ass on major levels so if lesser pentium M laptops that weren't 4700 USD on original sale didn't do what I have said in these posts keep that in mind.

So what exactly IS a pentium M? Yes, a Pentium M is, in fact, not a pentium M. Nor is it a pentium 4 as many people assume. A Pentium M is a modified Pentium 3 with a LOT of the extentions you would have on a 3 turned off. If speedstep, MMX, and SSE2 is enough for you then you're in luck!

The development of the M was caused by the Pentium 4 being awful. In every case it was atrocious (but they fixed it in 2008 with the final release microcode and actually they make great machines. I played skyrim on mine perfectly fine at less than medium settings) and they were getting the same bad press they were getting when they released the pentium 3 as the "High level powerhouse everyone is going to use". Pentium 4 laptops basically had the desktop chips in them and they made such ridiculous amounts of heat that they would melt laptops (such as the Acer Aspire 1800 series). With the release of the Pentium M people were skeptical. P4's were garbage and people were buying up P3's because their high power P2's wouldn't work for too much longer.

With P3's being in demand again they had some room to make a couple more shipments but not many. Most people that weren't in the high band couldn't tell the difference in a desktop, laptop, P3, P4. Hell I saw a lot of celerons in a lot of machines before the Pents took that slot. Anyways, they couldn't get the P4's to go like they said and their 10 GHz claims weren't going to happen. So they took the Pentium 3, modified it a little, and then jumped the clock rate and amount of DRam up. By their release, the Pentium M offered higher clock rates and better laptop performance. All sorts of companies (Alienware, HP, IBM, etc) were making all their high end gear with these chips and, at least I think, its fair to say that the PM started their rise back to the top.

I have a soft spot for pentium M machines. If one is paired with an awesome GPU and not shit BIOS I'll grab the machine and buy it.

What chip should I do next? P3? P4? Duron? Athlon Phenom Turion? Let me know!

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Final Note

I just wanted to throw a note in here and a games list update. If, IF, you ran XP or 2000 I think you would benefit from either of those the best. Even at full stock and IF you found drivers for windows 7 it will run like garbage on a pentium M. Though, there is irony in the fact that my netbook and my HP are the same powerhouse but the netbook has the atom and an intel 945GM GPU, where the HP has a Pentium M and a FireGL T2. Kek.

As for the games, I have been trying to get runescape to rune. RS3 actually but it hates me for some reason. However 2 runs great as does one, both of which I like more than 3. 3 looks like it should be a 60 FPS game but its jagged and meh like the older games to appeal to old players. Straying from the formula but not... ANYWAYS before I die of bullshit syndrome I would also like to say in this final note that, for no reason whatsoever, I can play Lord Of The Rings Online at 60 FPS in some places, 40 in overworld most of the time though, with relatively high settings no problem. I don't know to whom an old PM laptop like this would benefit for gaming but to me it makes it better and better.

Thats all.

Have fun.