Mobile PII 300MHz or Celeron-A 400MHz?

[Gerbil333]

I bought an IBM Thinkpad 600e with a PII 300MHz CPU, along with an extra mobile Celeron-A 400MHz ($2 more). Which one will be faster?

Edit: Poll reset. The Celeron is one of these, with 128kb L2 cache (instead of 0kb as most of you'd assumed). SiSoft Sandra 2005 estimates a hefty performance gain.

Also, which would consume less power?

 

[WackyDan]

I'd go PII

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

PII all the way. That class of Celerons were worthless, as they didn't have any cache whatsoever.

 

[Gerbil333]

I read that the Celerons of this era have 128KB of full speed L2 cache and the Pentium II has 512kb of half-speed L2 cache. Am I wrong?

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: Gerbil333
I read that the Celerons of this era have 128KB of full speed L2 cache and the Pentium II has 512kb of half-speed L2 cache. Am I wrong?

it depends. Celerons of this era had no cache whatsoever, however the Celeron "A"s had 128kb full speed cache making them on par with the PII most of the time.

I would guess that in that laptop there is no cache, so I would go PII.

 

[Cerb]

Google says it has cache.
Intel's site only lists a single mobile Celeron at 400MHz, and it is an 'A".
Then http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Celeron/
Then http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_Mobile_Celeron_(2)

 

[ViRGE]

My memory of any power usage differences between the mobile Celeron and mobile P2 are fuzzy, but the 400mhz mobile Celeron definitely had 128k L2 cache(as cacheless Celerons never made it past 300mhz before Intel changed their ways). I'd go with the Celeron.

 

[WackyDan]

And having had multitudes of Notebooks of that era, and having bouth my parents a 500mhz celeron laptop during that era.... I still have to say PII.

 

[Gerbil333]

Ok, so the Celeron has 128kb L2 cache. Now what do you guys think?

 

[alimoalem]

never take celeron over Px (even if it's PII) is what i say

 

[Lvis]

I'd go with the celeron. The cache is a wash, the bus speed the same, it's 100 mhz faster.

 

[jlbenedict]

I guess nobody remembers the Celeron 300 @ 450 and Celeron 366 @ 550 days??

These cpu's performed neck & neck along side of their PII & PIII equals..

Now, I'm not sure how the mobile chip worked.. but I do know the desktop Celeron 400 had a high rate of running at 600Mhz, and performed just as well as the PIII equal PIII 600 (512k cache chip, not the Coppermine)

 

[stardrek]

This is one of my favorite types of questions and I would like to explain the answer in glorious detail.

The Pentium II that is in your laptop does not run at a 100mhz FSB. The PII 300?s run with a 66mhz FSB; all of the PII300?s ran at a 66mhz FSB. The first PII was the Klamath, which used the 350nm manufacturing process, but this was used only for desktops. The PII in your laptop could be a Tonga, which used the 250nm process, and came with a new type of socket called MMC-1, MMC-2 and the Mini-Cartridge. Both of these versions of the PII used the 66mhz FSB and the PII didn?t get to enjoy the freedom of the 100mhz FSB until the Deschutes, which still used the 250nm manufacturing process, but had a 2.0 volt core as opposed to the 1.6volt core the Tonga did. This could have been a factor to allow for a high FSB clock speed.

Now with these series of PII?s the L2 cache was not onboard and as a result ran at only half speed of the processor. This was a dramatic step back from the Pentium Pro series of processors, which is what the PII was based on. This did not make a lot of people happy and was considered a bad move by many enthusiasts. This slower L2 cache speed will likely make the celeron a better processor because it has a full speed on-die L2 cache. So even though it is smaller, it will be able to get info in and out of the cache much faster. Celeron cache will run at 400mhz, while the PII?s cache will run at 150mhz.

Here is where it gets complicated:

If your laptop is any of these models from the 600e series:
3A0, 3AA, 3AC, 3AF, 3AH, 3AJ, 3AK, 3AP, 3AS, 3AT, 3AU, 3TJ, 4A0, 4AA, 4AC, 4AE, 4AF, 4AH, 4AJ, 4AK, 4AP, 4AS, 4AT, 4AU, 4TJ, 5A0, 5AA, 5AC, 5AF, 5AH, 5AJ, 5AK, 5AP, 5AS, 5AT, 5AU, 8A0, 8AA, 8AC, 8AF, 8AH, 8AJ, 8AK, 8AP, 8AS, 8AT, 8AU, CAA, CAB, CAC, CAD, CAE, CAF, CAG, CAH, CAJ, CBA, CBB, CBC, CBD, CBE, CBF, CBG, CBH, CBI, CBJ, CBK, CCA, CCB, CCC, CCD, CCE, CCF, CCG, CCH, CCI, CCJ, CCK

Then you do not have a Tonga PII. You will have a Dixon PII. Now the Dixon PII had an L2 cache of 256KB but was on-die. This means that it ran at the full speed of the processor. Though it still suffered from the 66mhz FSB and back down to the 1.6 voltage, though it could also go to a lower voltage of 1.5 or 1.55. This version of the PII will most likely perform better then the Celeron 400mhz, but this could be a lot harder to postulate.

Now if you do not have one of the above models then you have another option. The older PII?s, the Tonga, came in the MMC-2 socket, which I mentioned above. This means the processor is replaceable AND the FSB is adjustable with a jumper setting. This can bring the FSB to 100mhz. This also means that you can used a version of the mobile PIII because it was electrically and pin-wise identical. There are BIOS workarounds and step-by-step instructions to do this here: http://kihwal.fayoly.net/600e/

I hope this helps out.

In summery:
If you have an older laptop the Celeron will be faster but upgradeable
If you have a new laptop the PII will most likely be faster but not upgradeable.

Edit: Grammer

 

[3chordcharlie]

If it's the 'newer' 256kB L2 chip, then you're probably looking at a wash between the clock speed and cache, depending on your most common applications. A 30% clock speed increase on the same FSB is a lot, and under 500mhz the 66mhz bus speed was not so crippling as to completely kill the performance of the celeron chips.

If the P2 is a half-speed 512kB model, the 400mhz celeron will beat it quite badly in most applications.

 

[Maximilian]

Celeron, easily, its cache is full speed and its 100 mhz faster. Sure the PII has 512 kb's but its so slow anyways it shouldnt matter too much, the celeron will own it.

 

[Brian48]

My old C300a@450mhz was either on par or flat out beat my old PII400 in all the benchmarks I ran. Of the two choices mentioned, I'd take the Celeron so long as it comes with full speed cache.

 

[Gerbil333]

Stardreck: It's a 600e 2645-55U (not in that last). It's one of the 512kb half-speed L2 cache PIIs in an MMC-2 socket. I've been reading about the possible CPU upgrades. I'm confused about one thing. There seem to be two sets of 600e's--the list you gave above, and the others such as my 55U. The list you posted uses a different BIOS, and one of the BIOS updates lists support for 256MB memory modules, whereas that feature was never implemented for my 55U. Will it work at 100MHz if I disable the onboard 32MB memory and L2 cache with the HEX editor, and then re-enable the L2 cache in Windows?

I doubt I'll buy a PIII to find out. They're around $40-$50 on eBay. I think it'd be more wise to save the money and spend it on a new laptop. A PIII at 500-600MHz still isn't that fast.

I'll get around to installing the Celeron 400 when I have time. About how long does it take to disassemble the laptop and put it back together?

 

[stardrek]

Originally posted by: Gerbil333
Stardreck:

Stardrek (My name is a play on words and comes from yiddish...no 'c'.

Will it work at 100MHz if I disable the onboard 32MB memory and L2 cache with the HEX editor, and then re-enable the L2 cache in Windows?

This can be done using the info under "BIOS workarounds" in the link I gave. I would use what it says because that is what most people do.

I doubt I'll buy a PIII to find out. They're around $40-$50 on eBay. I think it'd be more wise to save the money and spend it on a new laptop. A PIII at 500-600MHz still isn't that fast.

A PIII at 500mhz or 600mhz will be a fair bit faster.

I'll get around to installing the Celeron 400 when I have time. About how long does it take to disassemble the laptop and put it back together?

This is a weekend project.

 

[Gerbil333]

Sorry about the name.

So any 600e can accept PIIIs with some BIOS modding? Even my 55U?

This is a weekend project.

Thanks, I'll plan for it. I've only upgraded the CPU in one laptop, but I have a feeling the 600e will be trickier.

 

[stardrek]

I can not say for sure that it will, but some research using google will take you a long way. Read the site I gave you and IBMs website is useful as well.

 

[Fisher999]

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
I guess nobody remembers the Celeron 300 @ 450 and Celeron 366 @ 550 days??

These cpu's performed neck & neck along side of their PII & PIII equals...

There's at least two of us here old enough to remember those days; and I also remember the good old Celeron 533 "A" days; spected to run 66MHz FSB, full-speed 128KB on-die L2 cache, coppermine core. They were essentially a PIII copermine with half of their on-die 256KB L2 cache disabled and drummed down to run on 66MHz FSB. They were great little overclockers; you just kicked the mobo's CPU FSB up to 100MHz and those 533MHz celerons would run at 800MHz all day long and then some and they performed better than stock PIII Coppermine 800MHz of the 100MHz FSB variety. AGP, PCI and ISA busses ran at spec so their was no interference with hardware running on the other busses. I used one of these 533 "celermines" oc'd to 800MHz way back in late 1999/early 2000 and for its day it was an awesome little chip - I learned about them back then here at AT where they were very popular.

BTW, late as it is, I vote for the Celeron 400 so long as it is the 128KB full-speed on-die L2 cache version.

 

[vegetation]

Originally posted by: Fisher999

Originally posted by: jlbenedict
I guess nobody remembers the Celeron 300 @ 450 and Celeron 366 @ 550 days??

These cpu's performed neck & neck along side of their PII & PIII equals...

There's at least two of us here old enough to remember those days; and I also remember the good old Celeron 533 "A" days; spected to run 66MHz FSB, full-speed 128KB on-die L2 cache, coppermine core. They were essentially a PIII copermine with half of their on-die 256KB L2 cache disabled and drummed down to run on 66MHz FSB. They were great little overclockers; you just kicked the mobo's CPU FSB up to 100MHz and those 533MHz celerons would run at 800MHz all day long and then some and they performed better than stock PIII Coppermine 800MHz of the 100MHz FSB variety. AGP, PCI and ISA busses ran at spec so their was no interference with hardware running on the other busses. I used one of these 533 "celermines" oc'd to 800MHz way back in late 1999/early 2000 and for its day it was an awesome little chip - I learned about them back then here at AT where they were very popular.

BTW, late as it is, I vote for the Celeron 400 so long as it is the 128KB full-speed on-die L2 cache version.

Make that three. I even had a BP5 dual celeron 550's back in '99. All these newb's today thinking dual cpu's are some new thing.

 

[Fisher999]

Originally posted by: vegetation

Make that three. I even had a BP5 dual celeron 550's back in '99. All these newb's today thinking dual cpu's are some new thing.

BP5 ??? Was that the famous ABIT mobo introduced late 1999/early 2000 that ran dual socket 370 CPUs ? I can't remember the model number but I had a MCSE instructor at a local college who had one of those ABIT boards. He was running dual oc'd 366 celies on it. Of course today we have dual CORE CPUs but, yeah, the dual processor boards did exhist way back then.....