[SNYPE2K10]

I'm considering buying an old tablet pc with these specs as my tablet is dieing. I just wanted to get everyone's opinion.

Pentium M 2.0 GHz @ 2.6 GHz
2 GB DDR2 RAM
nVidia Geforce Go 6600

Based on real world benchmarks it looks like a Pentium M at 2.0 GHz performs as well as a Pentium 4 at 3.4 GHz. I'm expecting somewhere around Pentium 4 4.0 GHz performance at 2.6 GHz. I've seen a Pentium M 1.8 GHz on Youtube play Kingdom Hearts 2 at what looked like half speed. At 2.6 GHz a Pentium M is about as powerful as a TL-52 but with double the cache, so just a little slower than my old AMD Turion x2 TL-56 1.8 Ghz, which got fullspeed in Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy X ... 3-4 years ago? Since the emulator is probably more optimized now, I would think that it should be possible to get fullspeed on the more optimized games with speedhacks, especially since the GPU is discrete unlike the X1150 i used back then.

Anyone have any good or bad news for me?

I'm probably getting it anyway as it should emulate Dreamcast perfectly and it will play most games. It will replace my current laptop for gaming and mobile development. Hell, I've even seen it play Crysis on Youtube...

EDIT: I have a laptop right now with a TL-50, 2 GB of RAM, and a 3200 HD IGP (which is barely slower than the 6600) so I really should have a good idea of how it'll run overclocked if i test it on here. i'll have to get downloading.

 

[StriderVM]

Nope, I'm quite sure that laptop will be slow.....

Who told you that a Pentium M @ 2.0Ghz will be as fast as a P4 @ 3.6Ghz? I think that comparison will only apply if you used synthetic benchmarks like SiSandra or something similar.

A dual core is seriously recommended for PCSX2 at least.

I remember the first generation Athlon64 beating the IPC of the Pentium M, meaning to match a 2.0Ghz single core Athlon64, you'd need at least 2.2Ghz Pentium M.

 

[SNYPE2K10]

A lot of benchmarks show a Pentium M and an Athlon 64 at about the same performance clock for clock at least the Dothan Pentium Ms anyway. Maybe Banias fell behind because it was considerably slower than Dothan. It's pretty hard to judge just based on benchmarks as they tend to have biases and sometimes just don't reflect real world performance. So I tried look into things like video rendering and 3D rendering performance benchmarks rather than just things like Sandra.

In any case I wasn't really banking on it. I was just looking into it since I saw a video of someone from back in 2008 trying Kingdom Hearts 2 on a Pentium M 1.8 Ghz and getting surprisingly decent performance...well considering it's a 1.8 Ghz Pentium M. It wasn't even close to fullspeed, but somewhere near half speed. Though I figured the video was from 2008 and that there must have been some performance boosts in the last 2 years. That there was a slight chance the faster games would be kinda playable overclocked. To be honest the only games I'd care about playing are:

Final Fantasy X
Kingdom Hearts
Disgaea

Which should be fast (I don't know about Disgaea being fast, but graphically it's pretty low end so I'm assuming it is). I'm mostly just a huge Dreamcast fan, but every once in a while I like to get a Square fix. That and disgaea is a great game, it's very deep and incredibly funny. So I'd like to play that from time to time. I honestly wouldn't be heartbroken if I couldn't as I have two desktops that are up to the challenge and after upgrading the CPU on my laptop I should be able to play on that overclocked. It's just sad when something can play Crysis and can't even handle Final Fantasy X xD

EDIT: Oh and how does cache affect performance? One of the greatest benefits of the Pentium M series is that most of them have a fast 2 MB L2 cache.

 

[tallbender]

Athlon64,Celerons,Atom,Turion, and pentiums are awful for pcsx2.

including you trying to buy that old tablet PC don't get that....get the modern laptop one like Core 2,i3,i5,i7.
Athlon II for laptops is still not good for pcsx2.

 

[Princess Garnet]

I can't see it doing full speed. You really need two cores for consistent enough full speed in most games for PCSX2.

The guesses of a Pentium M Dothan being about equal to an Athlon 64 are about correct, and the dual core Athlon 64s, while they aren't too bad, aren't ideal themselves for PCSX2.

Even if a Pentium M at 2.6GHz is about equal to a Pentium 4 at 4.0GHz (sounds like it could be about right, but it's very hard to say it is since it so wildly varies from the situation), it still won't be enough. I had a Cedar Mill Pentium 4 641 (about the best type of Pentium 4 there is) at 4.5GHz. No go on Final Fantasy X at full speed, speed hacks or not, on a relatively recent PCSX2 revision. Now, it did decent for a single core Netburst. It was between about half speed and two-thirds speed on average I'd say. Get in battle and have all characters flee but one, and have one or two enemies on screen, then you'd get full speed, but only then, so consistently, no, you'd be playing in pretty slow motion.

If this is just for a tablet, why worry about PCSX2 performance? You already have two PCs for gaming/emulation respectively (and by the way, I'd concentrate efforts on building one better PC as opposed to two separate weaker ones, but that's just me).

 

[rui-no-onna]

You already have two PCs for gaming/emulation respectively (and by the way, I'd concentrate efforts on building one better PC as opposed to two separate weaker ones, but that's just me).

I'm with Zedeck on this. Unless you already own those systems, you're better off speccing a single nicer system than going half-ass on both. Besides, that Celeron E3200 (even overclocked to 3.5GHz) is a prime example of too much GPU and not enough CPU. Cache tends to matter in games and while the difference between 6MB and 3MB may not be much (E8x00 vs E7x00), 1MB is just a mite too small.

Part 1: Building A Balanced Gaming PC
Part 3: Building A Balanced Gaming PC

 

[Princess Garnet]

Also, that's 1MB shared over two cores, so it's even less than 1MB in a way, just 512k per core. The Core 2 architecture ideally wants 1MB per core minimum, 2MB per core ideal, and 3MB per core helping a little more. The original Pentium Dual-core CPUs (the ones with 1MB total, not the newer Wolfdale ones with 2MB total) and the Celeron dual cores just have 1MB total to share with two cores. That can sometimes hurt things a little, especially when both cores are in use. When only one is in use, then you get about the full 1MB per that one core.

P.S. I'm pretty sure they already own those systems, as they're listed in their signature.

 

[rama2]

I tested a 6600GT with GSdx once, it was horrible

 

[drhycodan]

Forget it, not even the i7 980x can emulate the PS2 full speed with some games. I'm waiting for Sandy Bridge to come out and maybe that will achieve full speed on a certain number of games.