Anyone help with the difference between Laptop CPU's?

virgo17

Hello all.

Our family is thinking of buying a second laptop and I wonder if anyone can offer advice about the speed of the CPU?

At present we have a Toshiba Satellite Pro A60 which has an Intel Celeron 2.8G CPU. We are happy with this laptop but would like to buy another laptop for other uses. Out budget is slightly lower than when we bought the Toshiba. We have seen the HP NX6110 which gets very good reviews. The CPU is stated as a Celeron M360 1.4G processor.

What I would like some advice on is the (likely) difference in speed between these two CPU's. Could it be that the Celeron M360 1.4G processor is a more modern CPU and has better cache or maybe the Toshiba (2005 design) has a first generation CPU whereas the HP has a second generation CPU. I believe the 'M' stands for mobile and therefore this more recent CPU may be optomised for laptop units?

Could anyone comment as to what to expect, or the differences between them. I'm fairly certain that it is not just a matter of saying that 2.8 is twice as fast as 1.4 in this case.

Many thanks,

V.

fguk

Hi

Well, where to start....

Your old laptop is using the old version of the Intel Mobile Celeron Processor*, this needed a fast clock speed to get good performance.

The new laptop is using the new version of the Intel Mobile Celeron Processor*, this uses "cleverness" and "trickery" to get better performance than the old processors at a much decreased clock speed.

*those arent the exact names, but for ease of reading, it is the best way of describing them.

I cant say for sure if a 1.4ghz Intel Celeron M, is equivilant, faster, or slower than a 2.8Ghz Celeron, but I dont think you will be dissapointed (so long as its not used for fast paced 3d games). Of course the ultimate would be an Intel Pentium M, but then it costs more, and budget dictates!

Make sure you get plenty of memory (512Mb or above) and I am sure you will be fine.

virgo17

fguk wrote:

I cant say for sure if a 1.4ghz Intel Celeron M, is equivilant, faster, or slower than a 2.8Ghz Celeron, but I dont think you will be dissapointed (so long as its not used for fast paced 3d games). Of course the ultimate would be an Intel Pentium M, but then it costs more, and budget dictates!

Make sure you get plenty of memory (512Mb or above) and I am sure you will be fine.

Thank you very much for this reply. It is very helpful. I will get another 256Mb of RAM and will just be using it for WP and basic office type apps.

Many thanks,

V.

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The Celeron-M is very similar to a Pentium-M and as a comparison you can multiply the processor speed by 1.5 to get the equivalent speed on a normal a Pentium. The old Celerons were very poor, due to being held back by the small cache size, and comparison tests put it far slower than something like a 2ghz Pentium so you'll see much improved performance especially if you get the extra RAM. Having said that for basic tasks the difference will be less noticable.