Compaq Presario 2800 Pentium 4-M 1.7GHz Notebook

Performance - Content Creation

Content Creation Performance Internet Content Creation SYSMark 2002 Compaq Presario 2800T 1.7GHz Desktop 1.8GHz Desktop 1.7GHz Desktop 1.6GHz WinBook N4 1.8GHz Desktop 1.5GHz Desktop 1.4GHz Toshiba 1905-S277 1.6GHz 226 220 211 203 200 194 186 164 | 0 | 45 | 90 | 136 | 181 | 226 | 271

It is interesting to see the Compaq Presario 2800T, a 1.7GHz notebook computer, beating out the desktop systems it was compared to in the Internet Content Creation section of SYSMark 2002, including the 1.8GHz Pentium 4 we paired it up against. The reason that the Presario 2800T was able to do so well in this test: because of the extra L2 cache incorporated on the Northwood based CPU in the Presario 2800T. Like all other Mobile Pentium 4-M processors, the 1.7GHz Mobile Pentium 4-M used in the Presario 2800T is manufactured on a 0.13 micron process and features 512KB of L2 cache. For testing reasons (because the only unlocked Pentium 4 chips we have are Willamette based), we use a Willamette based Pentium 4 in the desktop systems. This chip is manufactured on a larger process, 0.18 micron to be exact, and includes less cache with just 256KB of integrated L2 cache.

The additional 256KB of L2 cache gives the Presario 2800T the edge it needs to beat out the desktop setups we compared it to. Again, it is the additional memory bandwidth offered by the 266MHz memory bus on the Presario 2800T that gives it the 13% performance increase over the 1.8GHz WinBook N4. The system also clearly dominated the Toshiba Satellite 1905-S277 1.6GHz system, this time by 38%.

Content Creation Performance Content Creation Winstone 2002 Desktop 1.8GHz Desktop 1.7GHz Desktop 1.6GHz Compaq Presario 2800T 1.7GHz WinBook N4 1.8GHz Desktop 1.5GHz Desktop 1.4GHz Toshiba 1905-S277 1.6GHz 26.1 25.2 24.5 24.1 23.8 23.6 22.6 18.9 | 0 | 5 | 10 | 16 | 21 | 26 | 31

As we have seen in every notebook review to date and proved early on by hooking a laptop hard drive to a desktop system, Content Creation Winstone 2002 is very I/O intensive. This poses a problem for notebooks, where the largest system-wide bottleneck is typically the I/O system. In the case of the Presario 2800T the slow hard drive left the system performing 5% slower than the desktop system. This is less of a speed decrease than we have seen in the past, a fact which can be attributed to the Presario 2800T's additional L2 cache (when compared with the desktop systems). The Presario 2800T only slightly outperformed its competition, the WinBook N4.