Pentium 3s

Is a Pentium M processor equal or better than a Pentium 4?

I bought a webcam that recommends a pentium 4 processor. My laptop is a pentium m, but it is fairly new. Does anyone know whether they think it may be compatable? The webcam is a Logitech QuickCam Pro 5000. Got it for only $10 at Circuit City so it would be great of it works out. Bought another for family across country but will return them if they won't work out.

Public Comments

1. Chances are it will work fine. Pentium M is a mobile chip, released around the same time as P4. You shouldnt have any problems
2. your processor should have no problem using a web cam
3. pentium m is better than pentium 4
4. The Pentium M is a newer design than the Pentium 4, actually based more on the Pentium III architecture than the Pentium 4. The Pentium M is faster than the Pentium 4 at the same clock speed on most things. In fact, a Pentium M at 1.6GHz is comparable to a Pentium 4 at 2.4GHz. The Pentium M architecture was moved to the desktop, to become the Intel Core processor. And that was redesigned again, to become the Core2, which is currently the fastest x86 CPU around (and I'm saying this as a long time AMD fan). Sometimes, when a requirement for a certain CPU is made on a box, they really mean it. At other times, that's simply saying "this is all we plan to support, because this is all we test with". At other times, it might relate to the whole system... if you assume Pentium 4 (or later), you can make assumptions that the system probably has USB 2.0, probably has 3D graphics acceleration, probably had hi-color screen (16-bit or 32-bit), probably has at least several GB free on disk, etc. They also know which chipsets are likely to be used, and tech support people will be prepared for questions on those parts. They may not be prepared to deal with older chipsets, so they can simply say "not suppported -- we told you so". Anyway, you should be fine with Pentium M. Pentium 4 was designed with one goal in mind -- super high clock speeds. Part of this was simple: Intel noticed that, at least back in the Pentium III days, people judged systems based on clock speed, not actual performance. So some of this was marketing, and some was the idea that they could push speeds up practically forever. That didn't work ... the new chip technologies ran hotter than than anyone expected. The Pentium M wasn't supposed to be mainstream, it was designed to compete with super low power chips, like those from Transmeta, Inc. that started showing up in subnotebook computers in the late 90s. But it turned out to be the right answer for laptops, "blade" processors, and eventually desktops... all of the current Intel processors harken back to the Pentium M, not the P4.