Upgrading Laptop Cpu's

Hi does anyone have experience with upgrading the cpu in their laptops? Im thinking of upgrading my CeleronM 1.4 (Donthan) to a faster CeleronM or a PentiumM and need to know is there any potential problems i should be aware of..??

 

If you have an 855 chipset you have to stick to P-M with 400MHz FSB. Other than that there shouldn't be any problems, if the BIOS supports the new CPU.

What laptop do you have?

 

There should be no problems, as long as you have confirmed that you can access the CPU socket.

 

Yeah the main thing i was worried about was the bios.. The Donthan Pentium M's are all 400Mhz arent they.. i think the higest i can get is the PM 725A which is 1.6Ghz.. or are there higher clocked versions that support 400Mhz fsb..??

Talking about my bios.. when i turn on my laptop it displays the CeleronM logo..but if i succesfully fitted a Pentium M, would it still display this and just run anyway?

 

oh and i have a Toshiba Satellite Pro A100..

 

There are both 400mhz and 533mhz Dothans.

The highest 400mhz Pentium M is the 765 at 2.1ghz.

 

Don't upgrade to Celeron again, though it has higher clock, you should get Pentium M Dothan with 400MHz FSB either 1.7 or 1.8, go to ebay.

 

Yeah but the problem is the price of the pentiumM. It would cost me at least €190-220 for the PentiumM and only €90-100 for the CeleronM and their both the same cpu(Donthan) with the celeronM jst having no power management and half the level2 cache. If i were to get the 1.7 celeronM, how much more power would it have comnpared to my 1.4..? 20%? Amd if i got the Pentium M would i be getting much better battery life..?
My toshiba currently gets about 2:15mins on full battery..

 

Did your laptop have an option for a P-M or a faster celeron? Or at least the same/simillar model exists with a faster celeron or P-M.

If so, I would favor going with an option that you know is supported and will work. Because those faster models would essentially be identical to yours, other than having a different CPU, therefore the BIOS should work.

 

i can't imagine you seeing any type of gain by upgrading celeron > celeron that would be worth your money.

i would go so far as to say the same thing for the pentium M although i think you would see some serious gain in battery life; maybe another 1+hrs.

however, if you're already worried about the cost of the upgrade, as is evident in your post, i think you're going to be sorely disappointed after dropping a bunch of $ on a new cpu only to find out that you can't really tell the difference in your day to day computing.

do yourself a favor and don't do it. save your $ and get a new computer later on.

 

I agree, completely. You will not feel any performance increase by upgrading to another celeron M. While the performance increase may be benchmarkable, you will not feel it.

 

What model of the Pentium M were you looking at?

I think the hardest part about upgrading the Pentium M, Dothan CPU @ 400 Mhz bus is finding one. I upgraded mine to a 2.1 P-M not to long ago and it took me a while to find one (retail). I finally got mine off of Ebay for only 200 US dollars brand new, thats roughly 150-160 Euros I believe. If you do not mind, maybe check out the CPUs on Ebay.

And yes I agree with the others, upgrading from one Celeron to another slightly faster Celeron I don't think is worth it. Upgrading to a P-M (Pentium-M), you may feel the upgrade depending which one you get, 2MB cache definetly will help, as will the power saving functions for your battery life. (If you do upgrade, can get a CPU voltage reducing program to increase battery life even more on a P-M)

 

Hmm i see what u guys mean.. So uz are all saying that if i was to go through the trouble of upgrading my cpu, i should only do it if i was making a significant leap to a fast Pentium M. The 2.1Ghz PentiumM is available to me but its quite expensive (€240)..
I am upgrading my laptop to 1.2Gb ram for just €100 which i would say would make a significant difference to the 256mb it has now!
But you see, i was planning on upgrading the cpu in about a months time to round everything off. The main issue is that the only thing that would let the laptop down is the cpu after the RAM upgrade. It has DDR2 533Mhz PC4200 RAM which is excellent and a good 5400rpm 60Gb HD.
So i would have liked to have a cpu of a significant speed jst for the sake of having an overall superior machine.

The main thing i want to ask is u guys is, will the €90-100 id spend on a faster 1.7 Celeron M really be a waste?. And if i chose to get the equivelent 'PentiumM' thats a dearer €190, would that be worth the extra money over its CeleronM counterpart??

 

i'm saying don't waste your money upgrading your cpu.

you will not notice the difference in speed.

the ONLY time you would is when you have very long tasks for the cpu to do; i.e. a video render that takes 100 hours. if you have a cpu that is 25% faster, than it would take 25 hours less to do the render.

however, you never max out your cpu in day to day use for more than a couple milliseconds. hence, you will never notice the speed increase.

trust me

save your money

then buy a new notebook when it's time

it's a waste; no matter if you upgrade to another celeron or a pentium M.

 

I don't think you need to get the top of the line P-M 2.1 GHz.

That being said, I would really recommend a P-M over a Celeron, esp since it is an upgrade and you have upgraded the ram. Personally I think you would be fine with a 1.7-2.0. But it really depends on what prices you see for the CPUs, I know the 1.8 and 2.0 should still be reasonable price wise but the 2.1 is generally going to be expensive because its the top of the line for the 400 Mhz bus series.

From what you said, the Celeron M @ 1.7 is 90-100 Euros, the P-M @ 1.7 is 190 Euros? And yet the P-M @ 2.1 is 240 Euros? Although it is still not cheap, the jump from 1.7 to 2.1 is not that expensive. In the states the difference between the 1.7 and 2.1 is around 150 Euros I believe, significant price difference.

Although you may have already done this and I mentioned it before. Have you tried shopping around more for cheaper prices and possibly taken a look at Ebay?

And there is what drumfu has said, just to save your money and don't upgrade. What it comes down to is do you feel your system is fine the way it is or do you feel you need it to be faster?

 

If you are now using only 256MB RAM upgrading to anything over 512MB will give you a HUGE boost in performance. A CPU upgrade, even to PM, will not even compare to the RAM upgrade boost.

I also agree on sticking with your current celeron, and maybe upgrade if you can find a great deal on a PM, or maybe get a used one of an auction site for a low price.

 

Oh yeah, just noticed you said you are upgrading the RAM, I would definetly do that first, that is more significant then upgrading the CPU.

 

I think the CPU upgrade is worth doing. You will notice a nice bit of performance improvement and better battery life with a Pentium M. If you can find a 1.7 or 1.8ghz Pentium M, that would be a serious jump im processing power.

Here is a 1.7ghz for $150 US on ebay.

 

I upgraded a celeron-m 1.3 to a pentium-m 1.5.

Battery life went from 2:15 to 3:00, which is a 33% increase.

Don't upgrade to a celeron-m, you will regret it, no doubt.

 

Oh yeah i know absolutaly that upgrading the RAM has by far the bigger effect on performance!.. that why i said i was gonna do that first.. My 256mb Ram is acting like a major bottle-neck.
Im gonna wait to see how the performacne differs which i expect to be huge! But as some of you were saying, the upgrade in the cpu will not be noticed unless im using the laptop for intensive purposes.. well i will be doing a fair bit of gaming and do be doing a fair bit of processor intensive tasks from day to day.. nothing major, but something that will allow me to notice a little difference in cpu power..
Some of u have me convinced that i should go for the PentiumM over he CeleronM which would be nice as i would simply like the idea of knowing that i have a very decend CPU in my laptop as well as the obvious possible performance increase.. It will be easier to sell my laptop in a few months time also, with a PentiumM instead of a Celeron for a decent price as well..

In terms of the price and range of cpu's...heres wher the problem is... As i said b4 that i was choosing between, say a CeleronM 1.7 and PentiumM 1.7..well wait till u see the price difference..(taking into account that i can get these at way below retail price:

1.7 CeleronM: €124 (retail) Can get for €80-90 (excellent price i think)
1.7 PentiumM:€238 (retail) Can get for €170-190
Is the small battery/performance difference worth the extra €100??

PentiumM 1.8:€272 (retail)
PentiumM 2.0:€348 (retail)

The PM 1.8 may be the one most worth the money if i was gonna commit to getting a new Cpu and spending a fair bit..
What u guys think??

 

if you are really trying to make your notebook the best it can be..upgrade the ram..most times, the upgraded CPU will not give you the boost in performance that you want. it will most likely not even be noticeable. it will result in higher benchmarks, but in day to day task you wont know that you have a better processor.

if you ARE going to upgrade regardless of what we say, my vote goes for the pentium M.

pb,out.

 

i am wanting to upgrade my sony vaio FS centrino dothan (740) 1.73GHz CPU to a 2.xxGHz (intel centrino sonama 2.26GHz 780). i am pretty sure i can remove the CPU because of the upgrade stuff. the system is using a 915PM express with DDR (not DDR2) and a 533mhz bus.

am i going to have any difficulties with the system compatibility if i upgrade it?

the main concern i have for upgrading is the poor FPS i am getting for games and looking at the CPU usage, the 100% isnt helping. my notebook has a 6200 geforce go with 128mb. will a faster cpu help the FPS very much in this case? usually using the res. for games at 1028x768 still getting too choppy. i want to use the full 16:10 1280 x 800 res.

basic specs for my notebook is:

1.73GHz dothan centrino
1GB DDR memory
4300rpm 80gb hdd
geforce go 6200 128MB
1680 x 1050 res 15.4"

 

The cpu upgrade isnt gonna make a slight bit of a difference with your gaming.. The Geforce 6200 is a pretty poor GPU...not the worst but poor. What games are u trying to play?
If u have only 512mb RAM which u should have if its the older Sony FS..upgrading it to 1 GB WILL make an impact on ur gaming performance as the 6200 is using a nice chunk of ur RAM to run the game.. Dont waste ur money on upgrading to such an expensice cpu as the PM 780 as u will be very disappointed!
If u already have 1Gb ram then i would recommend overclocking ur 6200.. They are very well suited to overclocking as the 6400 has the same core and is jst an overclocked version of the 6200 with a little more dedicated memory..
Im most interested in hearing what games u are trying to play though...?
If u are trying to play something on par with DOOM3/Quake4..u simply dont have a good enough GPU to handle it.. But if its something like FarCry etc.. u should get a noticable performance increase with what the modifications i described above..

 

Compatibility wise your system should work fine if you upgraded the CPU. But just to point out, you refer to the Intel P-M 780 as Sonoma which it is not. Sonoma is actually the name for the combination of the 915 Chipset (Alviso chipset), P-M CPU and Intel Wi-Fi chip, a newer codename or update to the Centrino package line. The P-M CPU whether it is based on the 400 Bus or 533 Bus, is still called Dothan.

I agree with what fishy has said, upgrading the CPU may not really affect your FPS much. It comes down to what games you play, but a majority of games today are not CPU limited... rather they are GPU (video) limited. You may get a few more FPS with the faster CPU but I think as fishy has said, you're best bet is to first try overclocking the Nvidia 6200. Just be cautious when you do it and do it in small increments.

 

the only 2 games i play on this notebook is world of warcraft (which runs quite ok) and counter-strike:source. i usually get a 40-70fps playing at 1028x768 but it does drop significantly when there are many objects to be rendered. then i get a small pause or a really low fps (10-12).

 

Don't forget the hard drive which is often the bottleneck of notebook performance. A faster hard drive will give you a bigger performance boost than the CPU if you can live with the lower battery life and noise of a Celeron.

 

Yes Zazonz is absolutaly right! Alot of the sony's are crippled with 4200rpm hard drives! That would be your best bet, but if you wanted to get a fast hard drive to match ur 100gb capacity, you will have to spend alot of money and will probably have to settle for a 60-80gb as the 7200rpm HD's are very expensive.. A 5400rpm HD would make a difference but it wont be cheap.
Iv seen testing done on Sony Vaio FS' and they seem to perform very poorly on all benchmarks and in real life usage despite them having good Gpu's. I cant understand why Sony get such a nice model like the FS series, put a big price tag on it and fit it with inferior DDR PC2700 RAM and a very slow HD!...? Those components are acting like a total bottle neck for your good 1.73ghz centrino!..believe me!..
And as well as that, sony's included software affects system performance as well,as HAS been proven.
You should have seen the performacne boost a reviewer got when he removed all the sony included software on the Vaio A series he was testing!HUGE!

Heres my advice..

Try to remove any sony software you dont really use..(If you really want the machine feeling like new and get rid of all of that sony software that acts like an insect, reinstall windows..although this may be a bit extreme..
Upgrade the HD to a 5400rpm if u want a noticable overall performance increase ...
Overclock ur 6200 and try to find new drivers for it on the Nvidia website..

Take my advice DONT UPGRADE ur GPU! Its not the problem...

Finally.. Counter Strike source should play beautifully on a 6200 as its easily able for it. Even inferior ATI x200m's play Counter strike source without any probs!

Hope this helps!