Identical? Which one is better for your money? Many people root for the Centrino, what's their reason? Which is better deal for $950? (for Game-playing?): Centrino 1.4Ghz 256MB 30GB or Celeron M 1.5Ghz 512MB 60GB. Im looking to getting a new laptop, since my two year old one is getting out of date.
From my knowledge this is my two cents in a third person p-o-v:
Many people are thinking that centrino is the way to go, and celerons are the cheap version of pentiums, but what defines "cheap"? In prices, yes, in performance, no, and in hardware, absolutely not.
There are only two differences in the two processors, both through the usage of its identical hardware, the L2 cache and the speedstep unit.
Performance is almost identical at equal clock speeds, and so if I were to get a celeron m at a higher clock speed than a centrino, then the celeron would be just as good as the centrino, yet, at a lower price.
This is because L2 cache is short for Level 2 cache, cache memory that is external to the microprocessor. L2 cache memory, also called the secondary cache, resides on a separate chip from the microprocessor chip. Pentiums have between 256kb to 512kb, while Celeron M's also have 512kb cache, making its performance equal in that sense.
When compared to a Pentium M, though, it does have less L2 cache, or I should say "uses" less cache, because its hardware is exactly identical. Just that half of its cache and its speedstep unit is not functional.
The speedstep unit is where the main difference is, its a hardware that allows for deeper sleep, when the processor is not being used. But how often is that? not very; more often than not, youve got music playing or some program running, which means you wont be utilizing the centrino's "special" speedstep unit, that which the celeron m, sadly, does not have.
This second difference in centrinos is that it has a functional speedstep unit, that celerons cant use, that allows centrinos to go to one level lower of sleep, which is called "deeper sleep" than the celerons.
The processing done by celeron vs centrino at each level of sleep is identical. The voltage used by celeron vs centrino at each level of sleep is only fractions of a watt difference, the thing that people pride over their centrino, is the "deeper sleep" which it can accomplish, and at that stage it uses only about .6 watts, again, how likely will your computer be able to go to deeper sleep? Even if it gets near it and reaches just "deep sleep" the celeron uses only about 7 watts while the centrino uses about 5 watts, 2 watts difference for more of your cash? Not very smart.
So if we look at the performance, pretty much identical. If you do want to play high res games, get a stronger graphics card; if you want to do high end apps, get an apple, haha. If we look at the "batery saving" yea, couple watts, and if you dont plan on just looking at your comp and not using it, then the speedstep unit, is useless; the difference then, in battery saving power? Few measly watts. So watt' so hard about making the decision, get a celeron, save some money, and get your girlfriend a gift instead!
http://www.computing.net/cpus/wwwboard/forum/10977.html