AMD versus Celeron - I'm hopelessly confused

I was all set to buy a Compaq V2000 with a celeron M 380 for around 550 and was quite happy until I read another post on here that said that Celeron's aren't really well designed for battery management in the way that other processors are. the thread suggested the AMD Turion 64 ML-32 (or 34) was a much better alternative. Then I read another thread that did a comparison of battery life and found that the V2000 actually outperformed the V2000Z (among others - although both were taken by the Gateway NX200S). So what's the deal? Is the celeron better? should i spend the extra little bit to get the AMD because of the 64 bit tech? Or is it just going to eat up battery? Can someone help me out here? I'm not into gaming, I'm really just interested in the internet and word processing mainly. So, I suppose all things being equal, I'd assume have the computer that had the best battery life/usage.

 

Celerons Ms are basically older Pentium Ms without the ability to slow the battery life to save on battery life. It is called SpeedStep. So if you get a 1.4Ghz Celeron M, it runs at 1.4GHz all the time whether you need it or not. From a battery life standpoint, this is bad. If all you are doing is office and internet you don't need to run full bore. It also creates heat and noise issues. For office and internet, I would suggest the v2000z with the Sempron CPU. Unlike the Celeron it can slow the CPU to conserve the battery. Semrpons run at very low voltages, even lower than the Turions or Pentium Ms. Battery life probably won't be as good as a Petnium M based machine, but you'll pay a lot less and there is a larger battery if you need more time. Invest the money you save in a faster hard drive which will give you a bigger performance boost than the CPU. Good Luck.

 

If you don't use processor intensive applications, and just use the computer for normal stuff ie word processing, internet, small excel files and the like, the Sempron would be fine. The Celeron is also a good budget processor but as mentioned earlier, it does not have SpeedStep. I would go with the Sempron.

I would invest in more ram at least 512mb preferably 1gb and a 5400rpm hard drive.

 

So, just to be clear, the Sempron is more ideal in terms of battery life and power optimization than the Turion is? And I won't regret not spending the extra hundred or so to get the 64 bit processor (I'm assuming such a thing is totally useless to me, but you know, when the newest technology is dangled in front of me . . .)?

 

oh, sorry to add another question onto this, but the Sempron processors have 128K L2 caches. given that there's no other option on the Sempron I'm assuming this is standard, but the Turion has a 512 and a 1MB, and I definitely read a review or two of the V2000z where the reviewer spoke about the merits of a larger cache. Is this another one of those things that I don't really need to worry about given my lack of game playing/super computer intensive tasks?

 

Yea you probably don't need to worry about the catch if you aren't doing anything too intensive.

I personally would recommend finding one with a Pentium M, as the prices on these are really reasonable, they're being replaced by Core Solo's.

 

Let me put it this way. Celeron is ok but Sempron is better. Turion and Pentium M both beat the Sempron. Turion and Pentium M are roughly within 10% of each other. Some benchmarks say the PM is superior and some say Turion wins. I think its a toss up.

 

Even though Sempron only has 128kb cache vs 1MB's celeron M has, but remember sempron has integrated memory controller inside the CPU. Assuming sempron 3000+ vs Celeron M 1.4/1.5/1.6GHz, sempron would beat celeron M as it has faster real clock speed.

 

A lot of people believe that the best processor is what they have, simply because they have it and it works, without really owning and comparing computers with other processors (having the equal remaining part of hardware).

There is also a huge doctrine of power-saving Pentium M's, but again, with hardly any official studies or direct test comparisons.

In terms of your choice. If your option right now is either Celeron 1.6 or Turion, having all other components equal, and your priority to have a good battery life, and using computer to surf the web and using office software primarily, the answer should be straightforward: Compare the power consumption ratings of each processor and choose one with least consumtion. This info should be available on the manufacturer's website.

My experience with Celeron M370 was nothing but great. It is quite and cool (compare to computers on display in electronic stores (idling!!!)). The 6 cell battery lasts me at least 2.5 hours, and if i dim the screen, the time goes up to 3+ hours (of normal web browsing).

In terms of performance, the celeron is quite decent! The time to calculate the P to 2 mil digits is 2 minutes 16 seconds, which is better than many desktops. The idling temperature is between 41 and 43 C on my machine. Many other chips run hotter, around 50 C.

The windows starts in under 40 seconds and everything else is quite fast!

So, I would definitely recommend getting the celeron and spending the extra money on such goodies as mouse, carrying case, etc.

 

If I'm not mistaken the Compaq with the Celeron M had a better battery life than the Compaq with the Sempron...

 

I am stuck in time as the Sempron/Celeron, PM/Athlon is all new to me.
Still trying to figure it out myself.

My last current knoweldge is when P4 was good and you can easily tell whats a good CPU by their clockspeeds.

Now I have just bought a VERY cheap Desktop PC w/ an AMD Sempron 3200+ in teh hood.
(got it for my 3yr old instead of building him one or fixing the old P3 600mhz my Aunt gave me.)
What would be teh processing power of it compared to a P4 as that is the only thing I can really understand on how to compare on todays machines

(Yeah I know, in time I will figure this all out better.)

 

this forum is an incredible source of information. there are hundreds of answers to your questions here. So, if you spend some time reading here or following the links posted here, you will learn all that you want to learn.

yeah, clock speed is no longer a criteria in determening the performance of a processor, more importantly, of a computer as a whole. Think about a locomotive engine and a lawnmore engine, just because second one is much faster in terms in revolution, it doesn't mean it can do more work...

 

not all semperons have on-board memory controllers, IIRC only the 3100+ and up do; at least for desktop configurations.

And my experience with Celerons has been poor. One we had at work would bog when simply navigating through folders in Explorer, and my sister's Toshiba laptop crashes relatively often.

 

All mobile as well as desktop versions of Sempron based on Socket 754 have on board memory controllers.

Only Skt A based Sempron do not have on board memory controllers. So it has nothing to do with the model numbers.

 

That's not necissarily due to the Celeron M; It could be any number of things that cause the trouble you've mentioned. I'd start by considering software and memory first.

I have yet to have a problem with mine in the laptop or in my desktop. And I've pushed mine harder than most people would've considered possible. In general I find people talk bad about the Celeron M but really, they are highly under-rated and perform on par with an equal speed Pentium M.

 

I agree... actually, there relatively few activities a computer can do where the performance of a CPU will be tested directly and exlusively.

calculating the pi digits, perhaps??

even then, we see that time largerly depends on how many other programms are opened in windows...

 

My choice is the Sempron. And I just bought a Compaq M2000z with a Mobile Sempron 3000+.

Your choice should be the Celeron M. Coz your main concern is with battery life, you should go with the Celeron M since the max power consumption of the Celeron M is 21W.

The Sempron have a max power consumption of 25W and from what I gather, a power consumption of 20W in power saving mode( 1/2 speed). Simple logic determine that the Celeron M will have better battery life even without power management.

In addition, Windows XP sucks at power management. My M2000z had power saving by default in bios and windows. Meaning it always ran at 0.8ghz instead of using the 1.8ghz full speed even when needed. Mobile Sempron lappies are more for users who know how to configure their machines properly. I had to go into bios and set it to start at full performance and download RMclock to create power management profiles in Windows so that it would run at full 1.8ghz on AC power and run from 0.8ghz to 1.8ghz( 6 steppings) as and when CPU power is needed by applications.

In general, Celeron M lappies have a battery life of 2.5-3hrs and Sempron 2hrs. Try as I might, I could only get my Sempron to last a maximum of 2.5hrs. This I did by undervolting the CPU from 1.35v to 1.15v at full speed. Regretably, current Mobile Sempron CPUs have a hardcoded minimum voltage of 1.075v even in power saving mode and thus you can't get it to consume less power.

The advantage of the Sempron is in the ondie memory controller. I removed the DDR333 ram and slot in DDR400mhz and the system memory ran at 400mhz without any tweak for a 25% boost in memory benchmarks. Whereas the Celeron M run at DDR2-400 fixed unless you have a 915 chipset AND open up the lappie to do a physical overclocking. DDR2 is inferior to DDR at same rated speed due to increased layer of latency. DDR333 is roughly equal to DDR2-400 and DDR400 is roughly equal to DDR2-533.

The other reason why I went with Sempron is cost and GPU. In Singapore, Celeron M lappies 99% come with GMA910 graphics which is inferior to the ATI Xpress 200 series commonly found on Sempron lappies( Note: Celeron lappies can come with Xpress 200 GPU too but more expensive here.

In addition, my choice is also based on my confidence that I have the know how to upgrade the 32bit Sempron for a 64bit Turion( open lappie to change CPU) when Windows Vista come out.

Thus generally Sempron lappies have better price performance( CPU and GPU power) but inferior battery life.

 

I´d like to add one more question to this (for me really useful) discussion:

Surely, Celerons provide enough performance for general tasks most people do on their computers. But I´m working with CAD (both 2D and 3D, drawing, rendering) - which CPU is the sufficient minimum you would suggest for this kind of work? What is the issue that matters the most in CPU performance when doing such things? (cache, frequency, 32b vs. 64 b - does it make a real difference here?)

This may seem a very stupid question as today there are many other and powerful processors, but I´m limited by the price (in my scope are Cel Ms, Semprons, some basic Turions or PMs).
Thanks for any opinions.