Celeron M performance?

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Jordan
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Celeron M performance?

Post by Jordan » Mon Jun 27, 2005 9:50 am

The Celron line a big step up in performance with the release of the Celeron D and everyone knows how good the Pentium M is so how does the Celeron M compare?

perplex
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Post by perplex » Mon Jun 27, 2005 2:59 pm

this had me interested also. i think with power because it doesnt have Speedstep its not quite as good as Pentium-M during idle time but maybe about same during load. i dont know about performance wise though but i guess its better than Athlon XP - who needs more? :P

teknerd
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Post by teknerd » Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:06 pm

celeron performance is very poor because of the architecture employed by intel. Even with the difference in the 'M' version, it is still not up to the standards of pentium M's or even athlon xp's.

Jordan
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Post by Jordan » Mon Jun 27, 2005 3:25 pm

The Celeron D's were on equal terms performance wise with Semprons and no-one expects Celerons to be keeping up with Pentium Ms etc but I'm asking how it compares to a budget CPU like the Sempron or Celeron M.

It's just for a general use/office apps laptop.

perplex
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Post by perplex » Mon Jun 27, 2005 4:01 pm

teknerd are you sure? becuase my understanding was M was different to the D celerons

alglove
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Post by alglove » Mon Jun 27, 2005 6:05 pm

Well, my Mom has an entry-level Acer Celeron M 1.5 GHz laptop. It has only 1/2 the cache of the Penitum M (512 kB vs 1 MB, in this case), and no Enhanced SpeedStep. Since a large part of the Pentium M's performance comes from its large cache, it does affect performance. However, it is a good fit for a general use/office apps laptop.

Oh, and I have never heard the fan turn on in that laptop. :)

ghowarth
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Post by ghowarth » Mon Jun 27, 2005 7:55 pm

The Celeron M is the same as a Pentium M with half the cache and fewer power saving features. Which means you need a Pentium M motherboard to use it. I read a review (sorry can't recall the site) comparing two identical notebooks with the only difference being a Celeron M CPU and a Pentium M CPU, and it said that the performance gap was negligable, the Pentium M's only real advantage being its power saving for extra battery life. The lack of advanced speedstep will perhaps make it run a little hotter as well, but the saving in cost probably makes it worth it.

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Post by frostedflakes » Mon Jun 27, 2005 8:31 pm

alglove wrote:Well, my Mom has an entry-level Acer Celeron M 1.5 GHz laptop. It has only 1/2 the cache of the Penitum M (512 kB vs 1 MB, in this case), and no Enhanced SpeedStep. Since a large part of the Pentium M's performance comes from its large cache, it does affect performance. However, it is a good fit for a general use/office apps laptop.

Oh, and I have never heard the fan turn on in that laptop. :)
Just wanted to add that there are two Pentium-M (and therefore Celeron-M) cores. Banias, which is 130nm and has 1024KB L2, and Dothan, which is 90nm and has 2048KB L2. As far as I know, Banias and Dothan are identical architectures.

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Post by Mariner » Tue Jun 28, 2005 5:10 am

In theory, the Dothan-based Celeron M ought to be equivalent in performance to the Banias-based Pentium M - both have the same amount of cache. If you factor in the fact that the Dothan-based Celeron M ought to be a good overclocker, I would have thought that performance could potentially be very good for the low price. Celeron M certainly shouldn't be confused with Celeron D as they are utterly different architectures.

I'm pretty sure I remember reading some pretty decent Celeron M performance figures in a thread somewhere on this board - have a search around.

mb2
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Post by mb2 » Tue Jun 28, 2005 5:17 am

just to reinforce what some other people have said, Celeron M performance is *very* similar to the Pentium-M and the main reason for someone to buy a P-M (for a laptop) is that its power saving functions give much better battery life. from what i remember of xtremesystems 90nm celeron M's OC pretty damn good.
whilst they may supply massive caches with the P-m, i dont think its actually as cache dependant as a P4?

Jordan
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Post by Jordan » Tue Jun 28, 2005 7:09 am

Hearing that the Celeron M still had a 512kL2 cache was music to my ears. The Semprons had 512k L2 cache and so do mose A64s whereas the Celeron D STILL had 256k cache and kept up quite well.

Mariner
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Post by Mariner » Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:07 am

Jordan wrote:Hearing that the Celeron M still had a 512kL2 cache was music to my ears. The Semprons had 512k L2 cache and so do mose A64s whereas the Celeron D STILL had 256k cache and kept up quite well.
The 90nm Dothan-based Celeron M chips actually contain 1MB of L2 cache, not 512KB.

http://www.intel.com/products/processor_number/info.htm

Jordan
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Post by Jordan » Tue Jun 28, 2005 9:26 am

So it does. Most of the PMs have 2MB cache so it is still half yet 1MB sounds plenty. They also have the same 400MHz FSB as the PM Dothans...

All this spec banter and specutation is good but we arn't really getting any colser to knowing real world performance :)

Mats
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Post by Mats » Tue Jun 28, 2005 10:12 am

I think the very low latency of PM's L2 cache is another reason for their perfomance, not only cache size.
The performance for a 1 MB CM is quite good AFAIK.

There are two types of regular, 90 nm PM:

7x5: 100 MHz FSB, stepping B1
7x0: 133 MHz FSB, stepping C0

The same goes for regular, 90 nm CM:

3x0: 100 MHz FSB, stepping B1
3x0J: 100 MHz FSB, stepping C0

If you ever want to overclock, you want stepping C0. They can easily reach over 220 MHz (I've seen 270 MHz too) while B1 can do 165 MHz or better, but never over 200 MHz.

AFAIK, the trick for overclocking a cheap laptop (which in general is impossible) must be to get a 100 Mhz CPU and a chipset that supports 133 Mhz CPU's (I915). Tear the machine apart and ground the right BSEL pin with a U-wire and the CPU will be recognized and runned at 133 MHz FSB. Do your homework at intel.com and read their tech docs, should be pretty easy if you've done it before. I've never tried it on a PM though.

Mariner
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Post by Mariner » Wed Jun 29, 2005 4:03 am

Jordan wrote:So it does. Most of the PMs have 2MB cache so it is still half yet 1MB sounds plenty. They also have the same 400MHz FSB as the PM Dothans...

All this spec banter and specutation is good but we arn't really getting any colser to knowing real world performance :)
Right. I've just spent about 10 minutes of my valuable time searching for this link, so you'd better appreciate it! :evil:

(Overclocked) Celeron M benchmarks

:)

Jordan
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Post by Jordan » Fri Jul 01, 2005 3:15 pm

Yip :)

Thanks everyone for the responses!

~El~Jefe~
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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Tue Jul 05, 2005 9:07 pm

wow dothan celeron eh?

That actually would be a cool budget compy. id take that over a Sempron.

although, get real I think to myself, a 754 amd 3000 setup on a name brand board is dirt cheap and pummels for its pricerange.

no speedstep and yet its dothan???

thats freaky.

Ralf Hutter
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Post by Ralf Hutter » Wed Jul 06, 2005 5:13 am

~El~Jefe~ wrote: no speedstep and yet its dothan???

thats freaky.
Just a feature Intel stripped out to save $$.

I really find no need for Speedstep on a desktop Pentium M board anyway, as long as the board itself is undervoltable.

mathias
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Post by mathias » Wed Jul 06, 2005 11:46 am

Ralf Hutter wrote:
~El~Jefe~ wrote: no speedstep and yet its dothan???

thats freaky.
Just a feature Intel stripped out to save $$.
You're sure that it affects the cost significantly, and isn't just a way to distinguish it from the Pentium M? From what I remember, Intel always crippled celerons artificially with low bus speed.

~El~Jefe~
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Post by ~El~Jefe~ » Fri Jul 08, 2005 8:43 pm

hm. it shouldnt be called a celeron, that name leaves an icky-ish taste im my mouth.

it might be faster than a p4 3+ ghz preshot

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