Different Processors

fatboyonadiet

So what's difference between all the processors out there? Started a thread about getting a Sony laptop on another board and someone suggested a different one, I always thought a Pentium 4 would be best - but apparently not?!

How does Celeron and Intel differ from a P4, what's the best and why? (Regardless of cost implications).

Joe_Bloggs

Intel is the major manufacturer and advertiser. The Celeron is a cheap but crippled P4, both made by Intel. The Intel Pentium M (M for mobile) is worthy of consideration in the mobile environment. This CPU often lumped together with suitable chipset technology and described as Centrino. You can get P4s and celerons squeezed into laptops but they run hot,burn your thighs/desk and use too much battery life.
J_B. (excessive clock speed can be a waste of time}

wolfman

Ok, there a two main chip retailers. Intel and AMD.

Intel Produce the Pentium (their flagship) and Celeron (budget range).

AMD produce the AMD64 (flagship), Sempron (budget), but also their last generation of chips are still about, the Athlon (previous flagship, now effectively a budget) and Duron (previous budget, being phased out).

Generally speaking, Pentium 4's are very good for multi-tasking (running a lot of things at once) but run very hot.

AMD64's run much cooler, are usually faster at performing a single task, and use less power.

I've always gone with Intel until recently when I made the switch to an AMD64 3500 from an Intel Pentium 4 2.8Ghz. I have to say, I am very happy with my AMD cpu, and if I were to buy again I'd go with AMD.

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Also though the Celeron-M is a cheap but not "crippled" version of the Pentium-M. Celerons are weak because they have small amount of cache memory on the processor but this is not the case for Celeron-Ms. The processor speed on both these is slower than regular Pentium but the design means they work as well as much quicker Pentiums. The less heat also means less fan noise and laptops with Pentium-Ms or Celeron-Ms are generally lighter.

fatboyonadiet

So which one would be the best for performance? I've looked at a Pentium 4 about 3 GHz what's an equivalent in the others?

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With Pentium-Ms a 2 ghz is similar to a 3 ghz Pentium though these are not cheap. Generally you multiply by 1.5 to get the equivalent speed. For some applications it's better for some it's worse. AMD processors are both cheaper and tend to perform better though I've read that Athlons can get quite hot. The number attached to AMD processors is supposed to show it's similarity to Pentium speed. I think with Semprons the figure is supposed to compare to the desktop Celerons (Celeron-D) though they are better than that.

The best performance is from the latest AMD processors. For a laptop though I wouldn't look beyond Pentium-Ms, though for the very latest games you probably need to go for 2ghz. I have a 1.5ghz Pentium-M which is great for me. And noise is a major consideration for me and the fan noise in fast Pentiums and AMDs is appalling to me. However you can get some very decent priced Pentium 3ghz laptops these days.

fatboyonadiet

OK, thanks all, so my best bet would be getting a Pentium M 2Ghz rather than a Pentium 4 3Ghz???

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Well that's up to you. Depends on your budget and how important weight, heat, battery life and fan noise are for you. As well as the inbuilt wireless capabilities you get with Pentium-M laptops. I don't think you would get a 2 ghz Pentium-M for £600. The key thing is what your going to use it for. If it's for recent games or intensive graphics applications you'll need to have a seperate graphics card included rather than shared graphics. If not you can get easily get away with slower Pentium-M processors which will come in much cheaper.