[mythtv-users] Pentium M processor caveats?

[Jo Shields]

Paul Andreassen wrote:

>Hi all and sundry,
>
>I'm thinking of using a Pentium M processor but would like some user  
>experiences with this processor.
>
>Is it worth the money?
>
>Advantages?
>
>Linux kernel support?
>
>Thanks,
>Paul
>  
>
>  
>

Worth the money? That's down to personal opinion. It's VERY fast, for 
negligable power/heat, but is DOES cost a lot. AMD64 is better 
bang-per-buck, but Pentium-M wins hands down if you want bangs-per-Watt, 
and the associated cooling-noise benefits.


My Pentium-M system's fans stay off most of the time, as they're 
considered unneccessary by the motherboard. That's really the biggest 
benefit. You _CAN_, if you really want to, run the system without any 
heatsink at all, and certainly a large heatsink with no fan is no problem.

Kernel support is, well, MOSTLY fine. There's a big gap in terms of CPU 
frequency scaling on modern (Dothan) chips, which is fixed by a patch 
found in Ubuntu - use THIS patch: 
http://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=601. _VERY_ recent 
kernels have broken support for Dothan, so you may need to patch against 
an old speedstep-centrino.c, or manually clean up the broken crap in 
upstream's file.

--Jo Shields