Why are Pentium M and Core processors clocked so low?
Clock speed doesn’t really matter as much as it used to. And, since every clock cycle uses up precious power, Intel spent a lot of time finding a way to boost the IPC (instructions per clock) performance per clock of the Pentium III core. While the Pentium-M is loosely based around the P3 core, it is in no way ancient or outdated. It does incorporate many P4 features. The added L2 cache also improves IPC performance, and the Pentium-M seems to be able to really shine in floating point applications. Although clocked slower, the performance of a 1.6 Ghz P-M outpaces the performance of a 2.2 Ghz P4-M. The Pentium M is very roughly 1.5-1.6x as fast as a P4 for gaming. For 3D rendering, 2D apps (Photoshop, Flash MX), and media encoding, even a 2.0 GHz P-M cannot match the performance of a 3.2 GHz P4.
