celeron 2.6Ghz to pentium 4 2.6Ghz - is it worth it?

[bluxa]

Hi all,

I have a friend who has an Acer Travelmate 244LM laptop. Its quite old and still works well. I will be doing some upgrades on it for him next week in terms of RAM and HDD. In this laptop it is possible to change the CPU too and I am wondering if it is worth doing it for him or whether it will cause more problems than it solves.

The model has a Celeron 2.6Ghz CPU (socket 478) at present. I am looking at upgrading it to a Pentium 4 2.6Ghz (socket 478) or higher. I am planning on using a Northwood chip as I have been told that the Prescot chips generate more heat. Is this feasible/worth the hassle? Are there likely to be heat issues? He is not going to get another laptop until this one dies so this is simply about making this one a little faster for him. He uses it mainly for interenet, movies, music, and a few old games.

Any help on the this would be appreciated. Many thanks.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Since this is a laptop, is it possible that he has a MOBILE Socket 478 chip installed? If so, you will have to find a mobile chip to replace it with. The mobile chips don't have the heatspreaders that the desktop chips have.

What price range were you looking to spend on a replacement CPU? I might have one around here for you.

 

[Foxery]

A celeron is nothing more than a Pentium 4 with a bit less cache. The rest of the architecture is identical, and swapping one chip for another at the exact same speed will produce no tangible benefit.

If the system can take a Pentium M, that might be a different story, as it's a drastically different architecture - but it's unlikely to be compatible.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: Foxery
A celeron is nothing more than a Pentium 4 with a bit less cache. The rest of the architecture is identical, and swapping one chip for another at the exact same speed will produce no tangible benefit.

If the system can take a Pentium M, that might be a different story, as it's a drastically different architecture - but it's unlikely to be compatible.

You forget - mobile P4s support SpeedStep, mobile Celerons do not. So switching to a P4 would increase his battery life.

 

[bluxa]

Unfortunately Pentium M is not compatible, which is a shame because I have a spare one! The specs that I read on the computer just say celeron 2.6Ghz so I'm not sure it is a mobile. In the manual it shows how to access the processor and shows a picture of it - it looks just like a regular desktop processor. I am assuming that the mobile versions would look more like the Pentium M chips so the top is mainly green with the island section in the middle - is that what you mean when you say 'doesnt have heat spreaders'?

Someone has offered me has offered me the following for 2000yen (about $20):

pen4 2.60ghz/512/800
sl6wa malay

As I understand it though mobile pentium runs cooler, so if it could fit i may be interested.

 

[kotrtim]

Heatspeader is a Metal Cap on top of the CPU, normally silver colored, laptop procs do not have that , Core 2 or Turion, not sure about Pentium 4, if you push the heatsink wrongly, it will damage the chip. the increase in cache is going to help a bit maybe more than 10% in games. I wouldn't recommend upgrading though, so much of trouble.

EDIT
Buy a larger capacity battery to increase battery life, much more effective than changing the celeron with a P4.

 

[bluxa]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I decided not to upgrade the cpu in the end - not enough benefit in terms of speed for the hassle. I will just upgrade RAM and HDD. Thanks again.