Dothan has been a quite hot, if you can call it that, subject in the forum. For those of you who are unaware of what Dothan is it’s also known as Pentium M. A processor designed for the mobile market that has found its way onto the desktop one. Not all that surprising though since many of today system are having trouble with heat and Dothan seems to perform quite well at fairly low MHz, in comparison, and with a the thermal design power of measly 21W.
The Dothan still suffers from at least three drawbacks though: price, availability and old chipsets. It’s not very easy to get a hold of one and if you do, it’s gonna cost ya!
The desktop mainboards available today are based on the old “Montara” chipset. No SATA, no PCI-Express and DDR333.
(AOpen is working on a board based on the mobile verion of the 915Gm chipset)
How does Dothan perform then? Is it worth the extra cash and actually take a step back in history? I think Sudhian said it best:
“Right now, if you wanted the absolute best gaming performance from an Intel chip, you wouldn’t buy a Prescott, a Northwood, or an EE. You wouldn’t buy Grantsdale or Canterwood, or PCI-Express. You’d buy a DFI board based on Intel’s Montara chipset, you’d use single-channel DDR333, AGP 4x, and a regular ATA hard drive—and your frame rates would rock in silence.”
:: Sudhian :: HotHardware :: GamePC :: LostCircuits :: SilentPCReview :: TechReport :: ExtremeTech :: TheChannelInsider :: devHardware ::
