via c3 questions...

[JonnyJonJon]

alright, i know these chips aren't the best performance-wise, but a friend of mine just bought a laptop that takes desktop cpu's. it comes with a 400-500 mhz celeron chip inside (i don't know the exact mhz). to extend battery life and reliability, i thought i'd recommend getting a c3 chip inside. i know they run extremely cool and at a very low voltage. after researching, i found that they come in three different cores. the ezra core seems to be the newest of the bunch, so i decided to look further into that. i don't think his frontside bus will go over 100mhz, so i was looking for one that runs at that speed. after reading the specsheet, i found out that they made an ezra core cpu running at 8 x 100 and another running at 9 x 100. i believe all the others run at the higher 133 fsb. i found the 900 mhz one, but i don't know if it would run too warm. i can't seem to find the 800mhz one.

to sum things up, i'm looking for the 800 ezra (8 x 100), wondering how hot the 900 ezra (9 x 100) would run, wondering if the samuel 2 core is really that much worse, and thinking about running a 133 fsb ezra core cpu underclocked...

if anybody has any suggestions, please let me know.

 

[fitz4521]

bumpidy bump bump

that bastard...he stole my trout logo

 

[rogue1979]

I was looking at laptops and did a little research. The Via C3 cpu is a dog, but it runs very cool and uses little voltage. The advantage it has over the Celeron is that it runs on a 133MHz fsb, not 100MHz. In processor speed a Via C3 933MHz (samuel 2 .15 micron) is only equal to about a Celeron 500-600MHz. But at least in notebooks the Via C3 933-1GHz unit is actually cheaper than a corresponding Celeron 500-600MHz and uses less power. So I would think that is still a better deal.

 

[Migroo]

Therefore going on what Rogue1979 said, if you already have a Celeron 500-600 then stick with it...

(in my opinion)

 

[rogue1979]

Agreed!

 

[Migroo]

 

[ShadowDJ]

Somehow I'd see myself going C3 for some reason. Probably bacause I'd be the one in a million who owns a VIA. I'd possibly upgrade to compensate low battery life after a while if they're using it much.

$0.00000002

 

[dakata24]

are those the cpus that only require passive cooling (just heatsink, no fan)?

 

[alpineranger]

Ezra? Along with Samuel and Joshua, those references aren't too subtle. At least the division formerly known as Cyrix has never locked the multipliers.

As far as upgrading laptop cpus, from what I've seen, nice new Intel laptop cpus tends to be difficult to find, expensive to purchase, and difficult to install (you've got to make sure the heatsink and enclosure is up to the task of cooling the processor). As long as your friend is limiting himself to tasks which don' t demand killer processing power (eg. 3d games), I don't think performance will be an issue.