Hands on: Core Duo reigns supreme

The PC processor market has become a lot more interesting recently, with Intel wiping its architectural slate clean for the Core 2 Duo platform.

Until the mobile version of Core 2 Duo (codenamed Merom) arrives, though, it’s the older Core Duo (codenamed Yonah) that continues to power performance laptops.

Interestingly, while originally designed for mobile environments, it’s also the Core Duo you’ll find powering Apple’s Intel-based desktop Macs.

I’ve long believed mobile processors make great desktop systems because low heat-generation allows small cases and quiet cooling, while anything that extends battery life benefits mains power consumption.

And thanks to a handful of innovative manufacturers, you can buy desktop motherboards with mobile processor sockets.

Aopen led this revolution for desktop Pentium M motherboards and its i915GMm-HFS board has been a regular feature in this column, but the company was one of the few that believed in Pentium M on the desktop.

With the launch of Core Duo, though, more manufacturers are now producing ‘Mobile on Desktop’ or ‘MODT’ products – no doubt thanks to the steady rise in Media Center PCs and the fact that Core Duo motherboards should also work with forthcoming mobile Core 2 Duo processors.

We’ve put one of the first Core Duo motherboards to the test and compared it with previous Pentium M models.

Core Duo test rig
To see how Core Duo measures up against its predecessor, we got hold of the T2600 model, which is clocked at 2.16GHz.

This was closest to the 2.13GHz speed of the Pentium M Model 770 we’ve benchmarked in earlier Hardware columns.

At the time of writing, the T2600 and Pentium M 770 cost £350 and £288, respectively.

Core Duo processors won’t work on existing Pentium M motherboards, so we sourced a new model designed specifically for it – the Asus N4L-VM DH – which costs about £90.

The N4L is a micro-ATX motherboard, featuring Intel’s 945GM chipset and integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 950, along with one x16 PCI Express slot, one x1 PCI Express slot, two standard PCI slots and support for up to 2GB of 533MHz or 667MHz DDR2 memory using a pair of Dimms.

There’s also onboard Raid, Gigabit Lan and Firewire interfaces. Before running our tests we updated the N4L to its latest 0603 Bios version, which claimed support for future Merom Core 2 Duo processors.

In line with other Core Duo motherboards, the N4L is compliant with Intel’s Viiv technology.

So, by fitting a Core Duo processor, you could build a Viiv-compliant PC and enjoy its benefits of quick start-up and access to exclusive content via Windows Media Center Edition’s Online Spotlight.

Like many earlier Pentium M motherboards, the Asus N4L also comes supplied with its own compact heatsink and fan, designed specifically for the Core Duo, and held in place using two clips at the side.

It’s possible to configure the fan to spin slowly and fairly quietly, but we’d still prefer a standard retention mechanism, allowing an easy option to upgrade it to a premium Pentium 4/Pentium D heatsink from the likes of Zalman.

It’s possible to keep a Pentium M cool with a large heatsink alone.

Completing our Core Duo test system were a pair of Crucial 1GB Ballistix DDR2 PC2-6400 Dimms with overhead for overclocking and a 400GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 hard disk loaded with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

For these tests we used the N4L’s integrated graphics which have an analogue VGA output.

Asus offers an optional riser card to equip the N4L with DVI output; alternatively, you could fit a PCI Express graphics card and enjoy considerably superior 3D performance.

The Pentium M test rig used for comparison featured a 2.13GHz Model 770 fitted in an Aopen i915GMm-HFS motherboard, with 1GB of Crucial memory and the same 400GB Seagate hard disk.