The Pentium M was Intel's first mobile processor designed from the ground up. Previously, mobile processor lines were just low power versions of the desktop variety... to disastrous results. When energy consumption is not an issue the Pentium 4 is perfectly adequate for desktops, however to stick it into a notebook is akin to running a hot plate off your laptop battery.

While the Pentium M processor is compatible with the Pentium 4 bus the CPU uses the Socket 479 form factor, so there is no intercompatibility. If you'd like to run a Pentium M processor in a desktop system, you'll have to get yourself a Socket 479 motherboard or small formfactor PC system.

The Intel Pentium M 740 that passes through the PCSTATS test labs today is built on Intel's 90 nanometer manufacturing process, has a default clock speed of 1.73 GHz, runs on a 533 MHz FSB and has a large 2MB of L2 cache.

As you can see from the benchmark results, the Intel Pentium M 740 processor offers pretty good performance.

The CPU was especially impressive in the office style tasks like SYSMark2004, Business Winstone and Content Creation. Sure, it's slower than the high end desktop processors, but not by much given the massive difference in clock speeds. In most situations a chip like this would be perfectly adequate for office applications.

In processor intensive programs like ScienceMark, Super Pi and Maya, the Intel Pentium M 740 shows off its ability and again can keep up with the competition even though clocked significantly lower. By now I'm sure you've noticed that no gaming tests were run, it wouldn't be fair since the AOpen Mini PC test system uses an integrated Intel 915GM videocard with no standalone videocard options.

With a retail price of $224 CDN ($203 US, £107GBP), the Intel Pentium M 740 processor is moderately priced but if you're looking to give your laptop an extended life or want to build a silent machine, it's a great option. As we've shown, the Pentium M 740 is no slouch in terms of performance and it's not surprising that Intel choose the Pentium M architecture to extend into the Intel Core 2 Duo desktop line.

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