Are Celeron prcessers any good. A colleague looked at the Laptop I am about to purchase and he said apart from the Celeron it looked good, but to get a second opinion. I will be doing a bit of CAD for pleasure and the kids will be using it for storing music and photos.

http://www.meshplc.co.uk/updated/spec_venture151a.htm


Thanks in advance

Celeron processors are basically pentium Lites - esentially the same core but with a few neutered features (to get people to buy pentiums!) and a smaller L2 cache which means you have to run off to system memory more frequently. For day to day use a Celeron should suit most people fine. Personally I run an old 800 MHz Duron (basically the AMD equivilent of a Celeron) which does most things I ask of it including some fairly heavy graphics processing. If you want more info on the whole Celeron thang take a look here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celeron).

Don't worry too much about the processor though - todays CPUs are usually vastly overspecced for what most people need (to give you an idea the processor in an XBOX is basically a 733 MHz Pentium 3 not the more usual GHz rated CPUs!) so unless you are into something like cryptography or other heavy number crunching then spend a bit less on an older/cheaper CPU and spend your money on more memory (at least 512 Meg would be good) and a nice screen / graphics card (it's the bit you look at most!)

Thanks evildrneil I'll bear that in mind.

all you need for internet surfing and word processing is a Pentium mmx... really can't understand these people who invest £1000 in a PC for surfing the net, emailing and doing a few documents... lol

CAD is generally more RAM dependant than CPU, anything over 1ghz is PLENTY for almost everything apart from the latest games... the only thing that makes sub 1ghz systems seem slow is the fact that windows XP is a serious resource hog... run windows 98se on anything under 1ghz and you'll be a lot happier!

And the Celeron 'D' has been given an overhaul recently too, to give it a bit more spice (probably to try and rival the AMD Sempron).

Although i know 'didly-squat' about them really so don't ask for details :suspect: .

What i do know, is that this laptop has a 2.8GB Celeron 'D' processor, 768mb RAM and it runs Dream weaver, Photo shop etc... No problem ;).
Just like is stated above. As long as you don't want to play games on it, the 'Celery' is fine, :thumbsup:

Originally posted by xafier
all you need for internet surfing and word processing is a Pentium mmx... really can't understand these people who invest £1000 in a PC for surfing the net, emailing and doing a few documents... lol

CAD is generally more RAM dependant than CPU, anything over 1ghz is PLENTY for almost everything apart from the latest games... the only thing that makes sub 1ghz systems seem slow is the fact that windows XP is a serious resource hog... run windows 98se on anything under 1ghz and you'll be a lot happier!

Hi Xafier,

Thans for this.

I need at least 2Ghz and 256 RAM for the CAD package and found the Laptop on Mesh. It has 512 RAM so thats a bonus and the reason I want a Laptop is space as we have a desktop already. So would you reccommend the one on Mesh with the Celeron?

Originally posted by vidster
And the Celeron 'D' has been given an overhaul recently too, to give it a bit more spice (probably to try and rival the AMD Sempron).

Although i know 'didly-squat' about them really so don't ask for details :suspect: .

What i do know, is that this laptop has a 2.8GB Celeron 'D' processor, 768mb RAM and it runs Dream weaver, Photo shop etc... No problem ;).
Just like is stated above. As long as you don't want to play games on it, the 'Celery' is fine, :thumbsup:

Thanks for the reply vidster, I take it you are happy with the Celery? Why does it not play games? Anty particular reason?

Originally posted by pinhead
Thanks for the reply vidster, I take it you are happy with the Celery? Why does it not play games? Anty particular reason?

The lightweight 'Celery' processor isn't really powerful enough to run games (although my desktop has a Celery and a better graphics card and this runs games quite well).

Also the graphics in this laptop are built in and nowhere near good enough for games. If you want a laptop far playing games on, you'll be paying a lot of money and it'll come with either a P4 or an Athlon anyway ;).

I personally wouldn't touch a Celeron and I give similar advice as your colleague gave to anybody who asks.

You would be suprised how processor intensive some of the tasks you mention are. For instance when you view photographs most image viewing packages will resample the photograph to resize it so it fits into the window. CAD packages can utilize alot of the processor. Ripping CDs to MP3s, again, uses a lot of processor power.

Whilst a Celeron will certainly run the type of things your talking about it won't do it anywhere near as well (read: quickly), as a Pentium or Athlon will.

On the site that you provided a link to there is an equivalent laptop with an Athlon (and faster memory) in it and it is only £100 more. That would be £100 well spent in my humble opinion.

I should also add that all the processors mentioned and all the processors in those mesh laptops are desktop processors. This is no problem if you are going to be using it constantly near a power supply but don't expect the battery to power them for very long.

You can get speed stepping mobile processors that will change speeds when running from a battery but these will probably push your budget up even more.

Originally posted by punk
I should also add that all the processors mentioned and all the processors in those mesh laptops are desktop processors. This is no problem if you are going to be using it constantly near a power supply but don't expect the battery to power them for very long.

You can get speed stepping mobile processors that will change speeds when running from a battery but these will probably push your budget up even more.

I agree!. My 2.8 'Celery' will kill this battery in less than 1 1/2 hours!. Not a problem for me because it's always plugged in. Also, the desktop processors seem to run a lot hotter. This means more noise from the fan ;)

Only thing I'd add to this is that for CAD, you can expect the processor to require a lot more time when it comes to rendering your models if you use a lower spec processor.

If you're not too worried about that aspect and time to mull over the meaning of life is welcomed then you should be fine.

Personally I wouldn't go for a Celeron based on the CAD side of things tho.

Thanks to all posters, lots of food for thought.