I’ve been doing some research for a laptop purchase and came across two low power AMD models that some of you might be interested in.

The 25 watt Sempron model is cheaper than the Turion 35 watt and had a high spec for the money. I’ve previously found that inexpensive Acer’s have poor quality TFTs so watch out for that. I’ve also found their Pentium Ms to run close to silently until the fan kicks under a high load.

On paper they look interesting and the Semprons aren’t crippled like the Celeron Ms i.e. PowerNow is enabled.

Hi there. I'm a first time poster but I have been lurking for about two years now.

Smilingcrow, are the semprons a good choise for a laptop? Right now I have to choose between a Celeron M 1.5 ghz and a Sempron 3000+. Which one is the best?

I am also looking at inexpensive Acer's right now, so thanks for the tip


Now bring on those big, blue letters!

Hi,

A mobile Sempron 3000 will be faster and cooler than a Celeron M 1.5 and should have slightly better battery life.
The Celeron M doesn't use Speedstep, which is its achilles heel.

You have to make sure that it's a mobile Sempron though and not the plain Sempron. If you look at the link below it will give you an idea of UK prices and configurations; I'm beginning to sound like an Acer rep

http://www.acernotebooks.co.uk/Acer_Asp ... s/prod.asp

All of the 3000 series sport the 25W sempron? What chipsets are they using?

First of all I'm not sure about that first statement, how do you know that?
And about CM, all 90 nm CM got speedstep. Older 130 nm are totally locked though.

SIS 760GX, and not Intel 855GME as the text says...

The Celeron M does not have Speedstep in any form even the 90nm.
If you look at the processor specs from Intel you will notice that 'Deeper Sleep' state is not present on the 130nm or 90nm Celeron M but is on the Pentium M.

Celeron M 90nm
Celeron M 130nm
Pentium M 90nm


I would tend to agree with Smiling crow on this, certainly if you really wanted longer battery life then you could run the processor at 1000Mhz at lowest voltage and get power consumption of less than 10w under load.

In stock form the Celeron M and 25w Sempron are around the same power wise, i believe the celeron is just over 20w. With powernow it should enable the sempron to beat the celeron M although this doesn't seem to be reflected in Manufacturers estimated battery life figures?

I deduced the performance by comparing benchmarks of Dothan on a desktop board versus a Sempron desktop part. So it is not an exact science, but close enough.
Considering how well the Sempron did against a Dothan, which was a 533 MHz and 2 MB cache part, the Celeron is going to struggle @ 400 MHz & 1 MB.
Also, the Sempron 3000 mobile is a 1.8 GHz part whereas Celeron Ms are currently maxing out at 1.5 GHz. A Celeron M @ 1.8 would be a closer call no doubt.
I just remembered that I was focussing on Audio/Video encoding performance, so the overall performance advantage is probably not as high overall.

I wasn’t aware of Intel’s change of policy on the Celeron M! Great to see them making the change. Where did you read about this? I looked at the Datasheet for 90 nm CMs when I was considering building a desktop with a PM or CM and it didn’t mention speedstep at all!

Not all mobile Semprons are 25 watt, see the link below for models.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/Virt ... 09,00.html

If this was true then wouldn't the Celeron be taking sales away from the more profitable Pentium M?
The difference between say a 1.5Ghz Pentium M and Celeron M in performance terms is no more than 5%, but the price difference is massive, about twice as much.

Have a look over at Xtremesystems.org, everyone who wants to overclock a CM prefer a 90 nm 3x0 because they're not totally locked, just like PM. You don't need Deeper Sleep to use Speedstep AFAIK? The J Version (NX bit) is even more popular since it got the latest C0 stepping, the same as PM 533 FSB have.

The price difference is not that big, Shopping.com lists
CM 370 (1500 MHz/400 MHz/1 MB): $147
PM 730 ( 1600 MHz/533 MHz/2 MB): $207
40 % more expensive rather than 100 %.
This is a comparisation between the fastest CM and the slowest PM, but it is not fair. As you can see, PM is faster and got a faster bus besides the bigger cache.
But if you plan to overclock it's another story. The CM got a higher max multiplier which is always good. And it will most likely run at 533 FSB (2000 MHz). But which one of them will reach highest speed? I don't know.

Mats,

The over-clocking potential of a Celeron M in a desktop board is not of much relevance in this context, as we are discussing inexpensive laptops which are very unlikely to offer any form of over-clocking.

The price differential between Celeron M and Pentium M systems has shrunk considerably over the last 6 months to the point where a Celeron M (without Speedstep) doesn’t seem worth considering. It used to be more than just the price differential between the 2 CPUs, as manufacturers seemed reluctant to sell very cheap centrino systems. I guess they were all milking the centrino bandwagon for all they could, but now there are plenty of cheap centrino systems.

I see the Sempron mobiles as offering strong competition for Celeron M systems, as they offer good features at a good price point. I still haven’t seen any hard evidence that Celeron Ms are now supporting speedstep in LAPTOPS. Maybe they can be hacked on desktop boards, but that is not relevant when choosing a laptop.

Personally I do like Intel’s chipsets, so I’m more drawn to a full Centrino.

Acer laptop seems pretty well buildt, they look real good. And the prices are amazing.
Acer Aspire AMD Turion 64 3000+(AS5002WLMI-XPH) 80GB 512Mb 15.4" DVD+/-RW 802.11g XP Home Laptop only About $1200cdn
Thanks

They are, but as I mentioned above, the screens can be so bad as to make them pretty useless. I chose to return one in the past and I'm not especially fussy about TFTs. I don't recommend you buy one blind unless you can return it or are very unfussy about screen quality.

i have an 'inexpensive acer' (cel-M 1.5), and am wondering what specifically do u find bad about the screens?
not good enough colour reproduction/contrast or what? thats about the only thing i could think of being 'bad' about it if u pushed me? i can live with that considering how much cheaper they seem to be compared to similar laptops from other brands.

Well hopefully they've improved on newer models, the models that I found appalling are discontinued.

Well that's how it works with rumours, and especially bad ones. For instance, some uninformed people still think AMD got heat problems just because of the Tbred A (like four years ago). In one way I'm just like that, well most of us are, you stay away from bad products. Bad reputation is still bad reputation. All you can do to is to keep yourself updated, manufacturers do fix problems sometimes.

fair enough i was just wondering what u found bad about them (in the past) specifically anyway?

Hi mb2,

It was over 6 months ago and I don’t remember the issue clearly enough to give a technical analysis of why I found two Acer 292 series screens so abysmal. I noticed the issue on two different models, although they were both part of the 292 series.

I didn’t mean to imply that Acer is particularly the problem here, but that when buying inexpensive or even not so inexpensive laptops without having seen them first hand, there does in my experience seem to be a bit of a lottery going on.
I’m not excessively fussy about TFT screen quality I don’t think, but I have noticed that quality varies a lot within a particular price bracket.
I’ve bought blind and been disappointed before, but these two Acers were in my opinion not of a quality that was fit to sell. I’ve seen plenty of decent screens on Acers also. The 292 series was a budget line, but even so, for me there is a minimum standard that needs to be met and wasn’t here.

I would be wary now of buying a laptop blind without having at least read a review from a trusted source or preferably two; especially at the budget end of the market.
I was grateful that I could return the Acer with no charge to myself. I simply wanted to pass on my experience to others in case they found it useful. Make of it what you will, but it certainly was intended as an anti-Acer rant. I’d consider buying another, provided I could check the screen out upfront

Phew, enough already.

I just bought the Acer 3000 from CC. It turned out to be $500 AR, including an extra 256MB Chip (backordered).

They messed up the specs on the box because it was supposed to be a Semp 2800+ w/DVD/CDRW but it turned out to be a 3000+ w/DVD DL!!!!!!!!

thank you www.slickdeals.net

The battery lasts about 1.5 hours, the screen is so-so (OK after you tweak the colors and brightness with the SIS driver), and it is super light ~6lbs.

POLIST8: Tell us about the CPU later on when you know. Does it get hot, does it start the fan and have you tried any undervolting?

I haven't checked the CPU temperature with Sandra, but it does get pretty warm. The notebook has good cooling though, and exhausts on the right-hand side.

I just loaded XP Pro on it, and deleted the stupid backup 3GB partition they preload, as well as XP Home.

I'll post some specs this weekend sometime.

why not stick with Pentium-M beats the hell out of even Turion with power consumption and speed

cargocult, Welcome to SPCR !!