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Review: SavRow Razor 1.7 Laptop

by Tarinder Sandhu on 8 June 2004, 00:00

Tags: Savrow

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ScienceMark 2.0, Pifast, WAV





Running PC3200 SODIMMs won't help when the CPU, in this case a single-channel Pentium M 1.7GHz, runs off a native 100MHz FSB. Memory is run asynchronously at 133MHz speeds to produce around 2.1GB/s of bandwidth.



Relatively low bandwidth and high latency doesn't usually bode well for performance. The Pentium M, however, has more grunt than you might at first imagine.



Pentium M and Athlon 64 processors use a higher work-per-clock-cycle ratio than a Pentium 4. That's why the Razor's 1.7GHz Banias-based Pentium 4 is less than 10% behind a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 Northwood in Pifast. All that in a form-factor that tips the scales almost half of the Rock's 4kg+ weight.



But a low MHz speed won't fare as well in pure computational tasks. Still, it's not that slow.