Celeron 440: enough for Leopard?

[mshan]

Do you think a Celeron 440 in a Shuttle SG31G2 is sufficiently powerful to run Leopard in a snappy manner, mainly for iTunes (esp. via Front Row Interface), and general web-surfing.

Does Leopard really need that second core to function properly?

 

[Kaido]

Leopard is pretty snappy on a 1.5ghz Core Solo (the original Intel Minis had it), but it gets clogged up on iMovie edits and stuff (although it's still doable...just slow). For iTunes and Web, a Celeron 440 should be fine. Do you have a 1.86, 2.0...? It will be slower than the equivalent Pentium. I have a $70 2.0ghz Allendale in one of my machines and it screams (plus OC's to 2.8ghz, which is great) - and it's a super-cheap chip. It would fit your Shuttle and is only $69 shipped:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819116052

But give it a try on the Celly first and see how you like it! Shouldn't be too terrible 🙂 (Leopard's minimum requirements are 867mhz, although that's hackable for lower)

 

[mshan]

Hi Kaido:

I was thinking Celeron 400 series because of very low power consumption (35W).

I am just researching different options for a music server Hackintosh (Intel BoxDG31PR mobo I already own inside my full size tower case), or something very stylish and small like a G2 Shuttle.

I read that the Intel mobo I recently bought ships with an old BIOS (confirmed by Intel Support), and I would need a compatible cpu in order to support any of the newer processors. 🙁

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mshan
Hi Kaido:

I was thinking Celeron 400 series because of very low power consumption (35W).

I am just researching different options for a music server Hackintosh (Intel BoxDG31PR mobo I already own inside my full size tower case), or something very stylish and small like a G2 Shuttle.

I read that the Intel mobo I recently bought ships with an old BIOS (confirmed by Intel Support), and I would need a compatible cpu in order to support any of the newer processors. 🙁

You'd need a compatible cpu...to support any of the newer processors? 😕

If it's for a music server, Celeron should be more than fine :thumbsup:

 

[mshan]

I bought a BoxDG31PR brand new from Buy.com about a month ago and it shipped with BIOS 28 (someone over at Newegg said the same thing happened to him, so I e-mailed Intel about my particular mobo and they said it shipped with 0028 also):

http://processormatch.intel.co....aspx?Boardname=dg31pr

I was initially eventually planning to build around an e7200, but Intel was saying I either need a spare cpu or have to go through this BIOS recovery procedure (still not clear it if will even work without compatible cpu).

edit: my Mac Mini (1.83 gHz Core Duo with 2 GM RAM) runs iTunes via Front Row nice and snappy in Leopard. If the Celeron 400 series can match that, I would be plenty happy with that cpu horsepower for essentially a music server). It would be connected to an HDTV, so screen resolution would either be 720p or 1080.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: mshan
I bought a BoxDG31PR brand new from Buy.com about a month ago and it shipped with BIOS 28 (someone over at Newegg said the same thing happened to him, so I e-mailed Intel about my particular mobo and they said it shipped with 0028 also):

http://processormatch.intel.co....aspx?Boardname=dg31pr

I was initially eventually planning to build around an e7200, but Intel was saying I either need a spare cpu or have to go through this BIOS recovery procedure (still not clear it if will even work without compatible cpu).

Oh I see, you need a compatible CPU in order to upgrade the BIOS.

Well, that's retarded on their part 😛

 

[mshan]

Yeah, sounds like they've got new old stock in the retail chain. 🙁

 

[mshan]

Forgot to add that my "sound card" would be an Apogee Duet, which I think uses Core Audio in Leopard.

How cpu intensive is Core Audio, and will using Core Audio and the Core Video Front Row interface be too much for the single core Conroe-L Celeron 400 series cpu?