How can I find out EXACTLY what kind of processor I have?

aoa321

Hi,

Can anybody tell me a way of finding out EXACTLY what type of processor I have in my machine? When I go into the Control Panel, in the system properties it tells me that it's a ...

DELL Inspiron I6000
Intel(R) Pentium(R)M
processor 1.73Hgz
1.73GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM

How does that relate to a Pentium 4 (i.e. how much slower)? I looked up the INTEL website and I can't find a match for "Intel(R) Pentium(R)M"

Is there a command I can run on the PC to get the exact details on the processor so that I can look up technical details of the processor on the INTEL website?

Thanks in advance for any help that you might be able to give.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Download a program called cpu-z, that should do the job.

Mutant_Fruit

Its a Pentium-M 1.7ghz by the sounds of it. Pretty much exactly whats in my laptop.

Generally its more efficient than a P4, uses less power in operation, and supports additional low power modes in order to save battery life by underclocking itself (which P4's can't do).

smeggle

google for cpu identifier or goto www.majorgeeks.com or www.downloads.com - both of these sites have the software utility for getting this info..

Stephen

That Pentium-M 1.73 should kick the arse off most desktop P4's up to about 3ghz. The 2MB cache on it helps

The Troll

Everest home edition will give you full system diagnostics info.

aoa321

Thanks everybody for your help and suggestions, I downloaded CPU-Z and it tells me that my machine runs on a Intel® Pentium® M processor 740.

As usual with me an answer just leads to more questions ...

The other night for the laugh I downloaded a trial version of Age of Empires and the game started giving me messages that it runs better on Pentium P4, I was surprised that a fairly standard game wouldn't run properly on my lovely new laptop (I know Dell gets a right bashing on this site at times - but when it comes to technology I have little knowledge and low expectations so in my innocence I think my Inspiron 6000 is great)

Like I say this was just a bit of a laugh and it doesn't really matter but for my own information would it be usual for games to have problems running on my processor?

Stephen says that ....

That Pentium-M 1.73 should kick the arse off most desktop P4's up to about 3ghz. The 2MB cache on it helps

what do you mean by this, surely a 3ghz processor is more powerful than a 1.73 processor, and that's that, or are there other factors to be considered when comparing the performance of processors?

Thanks again for your helpful replies

ShiverinEskimo

The Pentium-M is better designed so runs fasters than its clock speed would suggest - a normal excercise for comparing with P4s is to double the Pentium-M clock speed to get an idea of how fas it is.

I'm fairly sure one of the more technical people on here can give you a more technical answer.

DemonOfTheFall

The whole thing "runs better on Pentium 4" is bull**** that Intel pays companies to advertise at the start of their games. I'd be willing to bet that there isn't a single game out there that actually "runs better on Pentium 4". The P4 sucks for games, don't listen to their propaganda.

About why a 3ghz processor wouldnt be faster than a 1.73, there is more to consider than just the clock speed.

You have to keep in mind that the processor does a certain amount of "instructions" with each clock cycle (Hz). Imagine you have a 3,000 hz processor that does 1 instruction for each clock cycle. That's
3,000 hz x 1 Instruction = 3,000 instructions.

Now imagine you had a 2,000 hz processor that did 2 instructions per clock cycle.
2,000 hz x 2 Instructions = 4,000 instructions.

Thinkin about it like this it's pretty easy to understand why the speed in Ghz isnt everything.

In fact, the pentium M is particularly good for games and should kick the arse off most Pentium 4s.

Stephen

Yeah, basically the Pentium-M, like the AMD 64, does more work per clock cycle than the standard P4. This is why clock speed is irrelevant as a performance scale these days.
Intel's marketing people used to push their products based solely on clock speed for years, because it was an easy way for the average consumer to compare cpu's... bigger means better, right? This was typically at the expense of AMD, whose CPUs of similar speed ran at much lower clock speeds. That's pretty much why AMD adopted their PR-rating scheme - where you got an Athlon XP 2800 that ran at 2.0ghz but was equivalent - roughly - to a P4 2.8. This tactic has pretty much backfired on Intel now, as clock speed isn't the be-all-and-end-all it used to be - hence intel renaming all their processors with names like "Pentium-M 740" and "Pentium 4 630" etc.

Edit: er, what he said above me

MrPinK

aoa321 wrote:

game started giving me messages that it runs better on Pentium P4

That's just a paid advertisement and should in no way be taken as the truth.

duridian

...and the way Intel is now naming its processors is actually miles worse because it has no relation to either clockspeed or performance. when you look at for example the name '"AMD Athlon64 3800" at least the 3800 gives you some sort of an idea about what to expect.
Now, taking another example, what can you tell about "Intel Pentium4 660" from just the title?
Can you tell that it is a (albeit halfa$$ed) 64bit cpu? Nope!
Can you tell that it runs at 3.6GHZ? Nope!
In fact the only thing you can tell is that it is made by Intel and is a Pentium4 type cpu, which narrows it down (sic) to a range of cpus which have been available in 3 different sockets (423,478 and 775) and could potentially be anything from ~1.4GHz to ~3.8GHz in clockspeed. Totally stupid naming system IMO.

BopNiblets

Yes, the 3800+ which runs at 2.4Ghz... :rolleyes:

I think most users that aren't that up to date on processors will be fooled by that...
Not me though, I love my 3800+ *hugs it*

aoa321

Top class folks,

thanks for all the replies - I actually have some understanding about processors now and what all the numbers mean - interesting stuff about the Pentium 4 warning at the start of the game being a marketing ploy - I would never have guessed that !!

aoa

commited

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

The Pentium-M is better designed so runs fasters than its clock speed would suggest - a normal excercise for comparing with P4s is to double the Pentium-M clock speed to get an idea of how fas it is.

Ignoring all other component differences etc - P-M's are about equivalent to P4's with a clockspeed of 50-60% higher.

Daemonic

When i got my laptop with a Pentium M running at 1500mhz i did a few tests against my (then) 2.8Ghz P4 desktop and they returned very similar results in terms of pure processing power.

commited

I'm going based on official benchmarks etc..
Processor speed means nothing now really.