Intel Celeron M?

[BroadbandGamer]

How much better are the Pentium M CPU's?

What I'm looking at is a Gateway M210. It's not a gaming rig so I'm just trying to figure out if I really need a Pentium M or if a Celeron M would be good enough.

What do you guys think? According to Gateway, the Celeron M is the older version with 512KB of L2.

Thanks,

 

[fbrdphreak]

Gateway is wrong, the Celeron M is not old at all. It is basically a Banias core with half the L2 cache disabled and some of the more advanced power saving/CPU efficiency features also disabled. For your basic internet/e-mail usage on a lappy, its not bad if the notebook is cheap (which they usually are). Make sure you have 512MB RAM of course, or it will really suck

 

[ssvegeta1010]

A decently clocked Celeron M would be fine. Generally I have heard that they are good processors.

 

[JMoore]

They are decent processors, but there battery life is way shorter than a PM's. PM's can "throttle" down when you don't need all of their power thus saving a lot of battry, but the Celys don't have that feature. Unless money is really a major concern I'd spring the extra 2 hundred or so for the PM.

 

[fbrdphreak]

That's a good point. The Cel-M's only have "regular" Intel Speedstep. The P-M's have "enhanced" Speedstep, allowing them to throttle to several different clockspeeds from 200MHz up to the full clockspeed. Very nice
I know you can get a P-M notebook from Gateway for around $1000 at BBY, just check the sales ads (All instant rebates too!)
Or even better, customize yourself a dv1000 from HP. Sweet little lappy and you get can get 40GB, P-M 1.7, 512MB, wifi, CDRW, etc for around $1000. VERY NICE

 

[uOpt]

If it wasn't for the Pentium-M, the Celeron-M would be the perfect laptop chip. They are really not bad CPUs. Not to mention they are newer, not older, than the Pentium-M.

 

[Philippine Mango]

They have the power efficiency of a Pentium 4 and the slowness/crappiness of a celeron. There is no benifit to having a celeron on a laptop unless your really cheap. If you want a nice laptop but can't afford it, look for an ebayed IBM laptop, they are usually treated well and with $500 you can get a nice processor (not celeron).

 

[tRaptor]

I wouldent rule out getting a dell referb. I just got a 600m for $875. Its got a 1.4 Pentium M and its nice and fast. I've looked at a lot of dell referbs latley and they start at about $650.

I was also thinking of getting a laptop from ebay, something like a 1ghz P3 or such. Prices seemed at about the 500 range. in the end both my friend and I just decided that it wasent worth it. You didnt mention what the laptop was for but I would make sure to have a warranty, that is what eventually made me shy away from ebay laptops. Of course some on ebay have warranties. But for the price your going to spend its probably just safer to spend a little more and buy from a company.

 

[Accord99]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
They have the power efficiency of a Pentium 4 and the slowness/crappiness of a celeron. There is no benifit to having a celeron on a laptop unless your really cheap. If you want a nice laptop but can't afford it, look for an ebayed IBM laptop, they are usually treated well and with $500 you can get a nice processor (not celeron).

No they don't. The Celeron-M doesn't have SpeedStep but it still has Halt and good idle and full power characteristics that make them still a reasonable choice for laptops.

 

[uOpt]

Originally posted by: Philippine Mango
They have the power efficiency of a Pentium 4 and the slowness/crappiness of a celeron. There is no benifit to having a celeron on a laptop unless your really cheap. If you want a nice laptop but can't afford it, look for an ebayed IBM laptop, they are usually treated well and with $500 you can get a nice processor (not celeron).

The Celeron-M has most (all?) the power saving features that apply to actual CPU usage. Only when it's idle it uses more power than the Pentium-M.

Plus the centrino chipset as such is also using less power than P4/P4-M chipsets.

The performance characteristic of the Celeron-M is, like the one on the Pentium-M, much more like Pentium-III and AMD chips, which means it doesn't require heavily P-4 optimized code.

A Celeron-M is much superior to a Pentium-4 mobile from a power standpoint, and superiror to other celerons both for performance and power.

I just got a Thinkpad off ebay, and it was a very mixed experience. I had to do it because I wanted a thinkpad and I wanted SXGA+. But if I just wanted a working notebook with XGA I'd buy a Celeron-M new with 3 years warranty anytime.

 

[deejayshakur]

if i coulda saved $200 between a 1.6ghz dothan and 1.4ghz celeron-m, i woulda gone with the celeron-m. however, the difference was only $125 when i configured my dv1000 so i just ponied it up for the dothan. choose your price point; both p-m and c-m are good chips