RE: Celeron vs Pentium for a TWer's laptop?

Subject: RE: Celeron vs Pentium for a TWer's laptop?
From: jsmith -at- informatica -dot- com
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 14:15:01 -0800

Geoff wrote in response to Milan Davidovic:

> Milan Davidovic is <<...considering my first purchase of a
> Windows machine.
> For my purposes, a laptop is better than a desktop. Windows
> laptop with
> Intel processors feature either a Celeron or a Pentium
> chip... what are the
> important
> differences between these two processors?>>
>
> Assuming you're buying current versions of both processors (a
> Celeron faster
> than 400 MHz vs. a comparable Pentium II or even a Pentium
> III) and that all
> else (particularly cache memory, RAM, video chip, and hard
> disk size) are
> comparable, then the Pentium's the better chip. Although both are
> relatively good choices for basic word processing, anything
> graphical should
> run faster on the Pentium at equal clock speeds. The Pentium

I recently asked this question and I heard the most specific answer ever.
The Celeron processor *is* a Pentium processor (whether you're talking about
P II or III) except Intel has "crippled" it. Intel cripples it by giving it
a slower bus. The computational aspect of the chip is exactly the same, but
the bus is smaller/slower.

What that means is that graphic manipulation is theoretically the same on a
Celeron as on a Pentium because graphic manipulation is all mathematical
computation. What *does* get crippled by having a smaller bus is the rate
of I/O, input/output. So, if you are moving large amounts of data, for
example with a database, you will see a significant difference in speed.

This is, of course, assuming all else is equal. If, however, you don't have
enough RAM for your graphics, then you start swapping to disk. In that
case, you are impacted by having a slow bus and you will definitely see a
difference with the Celeron processor.

I would imagine a Celeron processor-based computer would be definitely

adequate for a tech writer. If price has become an issue for you and you
really want a laptop instead of a desktop, then I would get the Celeron.

Here's my caveat: I have never used a Celeron processor-based computer, so
I don't speak from experience. =} I am only repeating what a couple good
computer geeks told me... (Also, there are minor differences between the
two chips but I forget them and I think they were relatively minor.)

Jennie Smith

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