True, but the whole scene is just an excuse for her to react that way.
What is odd about the film is that despite being machines I would think that the laws of physics would still apply. If a robot is significantly smaller than another robot (like the T-X versus Arnie) then how is it possible that she would be stronger than that robot? I mean Kristanna Loken is not only hot, but though she's petite in frame she's definitely strong .. certainly stronger than me and I'm a guy who has almost 10 years on her. but wouldn't the size of the robot affect their strength? Comapred to arnold, she's pint sized.
What's stronger; a small piston or your larger muscles?
You'll find it's the piston.
Total strength isn't just size; it's also strength per size unit, and total weight. If the T-X is built with more powerful, and especially HEAVIER materials, better power distribution, and better strength distribution in her limbs and range of movement, she can indeed be smaller yet much more powerful then Arnie.
In fact, this is rather shown. Remember when Arnie gets hit by a shotgun blast he's actually launched backward? When T-X got hit by a shotgun blast nothing happened and simply continued moving forward, she didn't even need to take a step back to brace herself. Therefor she's heavier, and very possibly much more so (remember, she's heavily fortified battle chassis, essentially a walking tank even by the future's standards) and thus indeed stronger than Arnie.
Her "stregnth" isn't built on the size of her muscles but on the strength of her hydraulics and frame. There's no reason why a machine would have to be as "big" as the Ahnold Droid was. He was only that big to *look* intimidating. But their physical size wasn't an indicator of strength.
Well, size does matter, if the same technology is used. A bigger version of the essentially the same endo-skeleton would be more powerful than the smaller one. And I think the T-800 was big because it was Skynet's main battle chassis endo-skeleton. Remember, we see T-800 Terminators unskinned taking part in the battles. It was thus the biggest most powerful Terminator that could be built without losing maneuverability and go for human - and thus used as the main battle terminator.
The reason the resistance used dogs, and Kyle had to take the risk of letting the Terminator get to Sarah instead of him just taking her right away, was because they and he had no way of recognizing a Terminator. Hence, there would have been smaller Terminators, female Terminators, and I'd bet even child Terminators - how irresistible is it to save the sweet crying child? And once it is inside a shelter it'll snap your neck, take your gun and start killing.
Hence why Kyle did not talk of THE T-800 TERMINATOR, but the T-800 SERIES. There'd be an whole range of different sized, different gendered endo skeletons made to have human flesh grafted onto them, each having their own Cyberdyne Systems Model number, but ALL of them being part of the T-800 series of terminators.
