Why does 1.4Ghz Celeron-M run faster than 2.8Ghz Celeron-D?

[Super Warrior]

Just curious is all. My last Pc was a desktop(self-built) with a 2.8Ghz Celeron D, 512MB ram, and 40GB HDD.

After long since wanting a more compact Pc solution and with prices coming down nicely, i sold my desktop and got a Dell B120 laptop. It has 1.4Ghz Celeron-M, 512MB ram, and 40GB HDD.

Now dispite the Dell only having a 1.4Ghz CPU as opposed to my desktops 2.8Ghz, my laptop comp is definitly faster than my desktop.

So far the only difference i see is L2 cache. My laptop CPU has 1MB and the desktop CPU had 256k. Does L2 cache really make THAT much of a difference dispite the CPU Ghz speed being half that of the other one?

Why would my new laptop be faster?

[Abbadon]

Perhaps your desktop machine was infected with so much Spywares, malwares and viruses that all the resources were used to run those little friends.

Another possibility is that your laptop comes with a better motherboard, CD-Rom and hard disk with faster transfer speed, including an Intel Bus Chip, updated drivers and fine tuned.

[jagabo]

Because Celeron-M is a completely different architecture than Celeron-D and Pentium-4. And the rest of the components have probably improved too.

[Super Warrior]

Perhaps your desktop machine was infected with so much Spywares, malwares and viruses that all the resources were used to run those little friends.

Nope, i KNOW how to use a comp and can easily avoid viruses, spyware, etc.

[JerryB]

Super[/url] Warrior]Just curious is all. My last Pc was a desktop(self-built) with a 2.8Ghz Celeron D, 512MB ram, and 40GB HDD.

After long since wanting a more compact Pc solution and with prices coming down nicely, i sold my desktop and got a Dell B120 laptop. It has 1.4Ghz Celeron-M, 512MB ram, and 40GB HDD.

Now dispite the Dell only having a 1.4Ghz CPU as opposed to my desktops 2.8Ghz, my laptop comp is definitly faster than my desktop.

So far the only difference i see is L2 cache. My laptop CPU has 1MB and the desktop CPU had 256k. Does L2 cache really make THAT much of a difference dispite the CPU Ghz speed being half that of the other one?

Why would my new laptop be faster?

HI,
there can be a lot of different reasons and we know very little about either system... to say why...
1. the motherboard bus speed could be different.
2. how much graphic ram makes a difference
3. Hardrive..ie the rpm and also if sata or ata
4. color and screen reolutions
5. number and type of startup programs could be different...
6. in the old system the configruation.. something could be wrong with it but you never noticed...
7. the chip itself although with that much difference in cpu speeds... a D or M I wouldn't think would make that much of a difference...
these are a few things I can think of that would make a difference....

[CrayonEater]

BIOS could be configured improperly, too.

Can you clarify what you mean by "faster"? Are you judging based solely on processor speed, or are you considering disk access and other things? Drive configurations (DMA versus PIO) make a big difference, among other possibilities.

[terjeber]

Super[/url] Warrior]

Perhaps your desktop machine was infected with so much Spywares, malwares and viruses that all the resources were used to run those little friends.

Nope, i KNOW how to use a comp and can easily avoid viruses, spyware, etc.

Actually, nobody does. I am a computer expert, have worked in the field since PCs came at the wonderful speed of 4.77MHz with one (or two if you were lucky) 4.5" floppy drives. I can not keep my PC clean at all times, not unless I disconnect it from the net and never install any software on it.

On the other hand, if you know how to keep your PC reasonably clean, that does help, but it isn't enough. Almost all commercial software installs some junk these days. That includes. but is not limited to, Microsoft Office, any Adobe software, Yahoo Messsenger, Quicktime etc. All of this software throws some junk into your startup folder, to your "services" to the startup of your PC (not in the startup folder) etc. Run 'msconfig' and check under 'Services' and 'Startup' to see some of the junk that is there. Compare that to your PC in about 6 months, and you will understand some of the reason it slows down.

So, your 1.4GHz PC is faster than your 2.8GHz PC for the reasons listed, the architecture is better, RAM is probably faster etc. It is also faster because it hasn't been "blessed" with all the junk it will have in 6 months though. That also helps. A lot.

Solution? Complete wipe of harddrive and re-installation of the OS and essential apps every now and then. I would recommend about once every 6 months or so.

[Super Warrior]

Super[/url] Warrior]

Perhaps your desktop machine was infected with so much Spywares, malwares and viruses that all the resources were used to run those little friends.

Nope, i KNOW how to use a comp and can easily avoid viruses, spyware, etc.

Actually, nobody does. I am a computer expert, have worked in the field since PCs came at the wonderful speed of 4.77MHz with one (or two if you were lucky) 4.5" floppy drives. I can not keep my PC clean at all times, not unless I disconnect it from the net and never install any software on it.

On the other hand, if you know how to keep your PC reasonably clean, that does help, but it isn't enough. Almost all commercial software installs some junk these days. That includes. but is not limited to, Microsoft Office, any Adobe software, Yahoo Messsenger, Quicktime etc. All of this software throws some junk into your startup folder, to your "services" to the startup of your PC (not in the startup folder) etc. Run 'msconfig' and check under 'Services' and 'Startup' to see some of the junk that is there. Compare that to your PC in about 6 months, and you will understand some of the reason it slows down.

So, your 1.4GHz PC is faster than your 2.8GHz PC for the reasons listed, the architecture is better, RAM is probably faster etc. It is also faster because it hasn't been "blessed" with all the junk it will have in 6 months though. That also helps. A lot.

Solution? Complete wipe of harddrive and re-installation of the OS and essential apps every now and then. I would recommend about once every 6 months or so.

I disagree. I *NEVER* get viruses and rarely if ever get spyware/adware. Using firefox over the vulnerable IE helped a lot in that area.

Also being a Pc geek and all, with my desktop i would regularly wipe my HDD clean and reinstall XP after awhile just to do it. Got pretty good at doing a full reformat and having my Pc up&running exactly like it was in an hour or less(all my stuff such as programs, settings, and even internet favorites are completly backed up to disc).

Also to answer the other guys question about the bios: Heh I learned my lesson a long time ago never to mess with them, so i didn't screw up anything there.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Please provide more details for each system:

Operating System
RAM (inc speed, type and configuration)
Video Card
Hard Drives (inc speed, size)
Examples of applications/tasks that run faster on the laptop.

As far as L2 cache goes, it depends on what you are doing. Back in the heady days of when the Pentium II was all the rage and expensive, you could get a Celeron equivalent without the L2 cache - made it a lot cheaper. I tested a PII 400MHz against an overclocked Celeron 266 at 400MHz in the same system. The only difference being presence/absence of L2 cache. For intensive stuff - like rendering video from Premiere etc - it made absolutely NO DIFFERENCE (if anything, the Celeron was about 1% faster).

For general stuff, the bigger cache WILL make a lot of difference (e.g., word processing, surfing etc)

For the current Celeron D (confusing name, since D also refers to dual core), it derives its architecture from the Pentium 4 with the Prescott core. The Celeron M, on the other hand, derives its architecture from the Pentium III.

Clock-for-clock, the Pentium 4 was always slower than the Pentium III. Even Intel's benchmarks agree. At the tiime, the PIII couldn't go much above 1.1GHz due to thermal problems. That's been resolved and Intel resurrected the basic architecture, added SSE2 and SSE3 etc and rebranded it the Pentium M. The Prescott core in the P4 is even slower than the older Northwood due to its longer pipeline. This is also why AMD use peculiar names like 3200+ even though the frequency is nearer 2GHz - the 3200+ is what the equivalent P4 would have to run at!

I used to use a Thinkpad T30 with a P4 @ 1.8GHz. I now use a T40 with a Pentium M at 1.5GHz. The T40 is much faster.

BOTTOM LINE - avoid P4-derived processors and use PIII-derived

( OOPS - (see jagabo's correction) such as the Pentium D 8xx - the 805 is dual core and can be overclocked to 4GHz - not bad for $130).

[jagabo]

The Pentium D 8xx series are all Netburst P4 based. It's the Core 2 Duo series (E6x00 series, to be released late in July) that will be based on the P3-like cores similar to those used in the Pentium M.

[Bjs]

Biggest problem is due to the factor of buss speed x multiplication number .

Bios is next ... big difference's can be found between chipset manufacturer's .

Finally ... software ... some setup's work better than other's ... it's a matter of tweaking system setup to get best performance ... even when there are no major difference's between two similar system's .

Older system's can prove to be faster ... it is high time manufacturer's stopped stuffing about with "x?" to ramp up the system buss speed and use true value's ... only then will new system's seriously perform as expected by end user's who are not knowledgable in this technical area .

And return clock speed to cpu's ... a pain in the butt explaining to customer's what it is they are actually purchasing ... and showing them the spec sheet ... pointing the clock speed out .

Go to most online center's ... they say what model cpu is ... but most do not note cpu's actual speed ... you need to visit the cpu manufacturer's site and track that down yourself .

[SingSing]

Based on computer design basic, the thru put is depend on how fast a CPU can consume data and instruction. Intel put in 4 times the amount of cache memory in Celeron M vs Celeron D, so the laptop runs faster with out cosuming power due to higher clock rate.

[lenti_75]

beacuse Intel D series, is a BIG JUNK cpu, either pentium or worse, celeron.

I recenlty sold my asus mobo with amd athlon xp on ebay, and I got this Intel D... what a joke, is not fatser than my amd at all, sometimes is even slower, and the cconfiguration is the same, except that I upgraded the hdd to a 10000 rpm WD raptor.

the ideea is that the cpu's made for laptops are a lot more faster than a desktop one, and easier to overclock. probably my next desktop will be based on an laptop cpu.

[US Guy]

... I am a computer expert, have worked in the field since PCs came at the wonderful speed of 4.77MHz with one (or two if you were lucky) 4.5" floppy drives. ...

It is actually 5 1/4 inch floppy, single density at 180KB, later Double density at 360KB... then the 3.5 inch came out in about 1986 - 1987 at 720KB, and later 1.44MB, 2.88MB ...

[Nelson37]

Geez, you wanna have a geek contest, what is g=c800:5?

[SingSing]

g=c800:5 is Low level formating.

[greymalkin]

ha!

Nelson,

you called...and they answered :P

I believe Nelson was making a point of how silly everyone's pc jargon is becoming..especially when you are just spouting it out as if you are going to impress someone. Relax guys, I don't think the hots chicks are watching you right now

besides..everyone knows the reason your pc is running faster is because of voodoo.

[Nelson37]

I would have added "from the ROM chip on an MFM controller" but close enough. Now that I know roughly how old SingSing is, back to the OP.

You are comparing apples and orange crates; there is no valid comparison here. Swap motherboard, cpu, RAM, and nothing else and then you can make a few tests.

The OP knows what he is doing but is afraid to mess with the BIOS? Re-installs XP with all drivers plus all software in under an hour? Extremely unlikely. This is most probably an image restore, NOT a re-install, and if he knew what he was doing he would know that this is not a solution, this is not a re-install. Registry is not re-created, files are not restored from original. Invalid entries and corrupted or out-of-date files are preserved.

Take both PC's, format the drives and install XP, NOTHING else. Then start copying files, burning disks, transferring over network, downloading large files, etc. Install ONE benchmark prog and run all tests, then ONE real-world prog such as an encoder and run some more tests.
Note that many of these tests will simply show a dramatically faster hard drive, also probably a faster video card. You could put the old hard drive in the new case for a more accurate comparison.

"My new PC is much slower than my old one. It runs DOOM like crap". "What version of doom?" "Why version 3, of course." "You ran doom3 on your old machine?" "No, that was Doom2. But it was much faster." This is not a joke, this is an actual conversation which I have had, among many, many very similar ones.

[CrayonEater]

Ah, the memories! Anybody remember 8" disks?

Back to the subject, though - why not run Sandra and benchmark your machines? Then you may be able to determine where the bottlenecks are.

http://www.sisoftware.net/index.html?dir=&location=downandbuy&langx=en&a=

[terjeber]

Super[/url] Warrior]

Super[/url] Warrior]

Perhaps your desktop machine was infected with so much Spywares, malwares and viruses that all the resources were used to run those little friends.

Nope, i KNOW how to use a comp and can easily avoid viruses, spyware, etc.

Actually, nobody does.

I disagree. I *NEVER* get viruses and rarely if ever get spyware/adware.

Neither do I, but still, after having the PC up for a while, it is still "infested" with a ton of junk, so is yours. That is unless you never install software on it. Do you have Quicktime installed? Did you clean up manually after installing it? QT drops junk into your computer startup (not the startup folder). Do you have Microsoft Office installed? Same thing. How about Yahoo Messenger? Adobe Acrobat? Macromedia Flash?

If you have no software that slows your PC down, you have either not installed any real software on it it, or you have manually removed junk using the registry editor and/or msconfig.

Using firefox over the vulnerable IE helped a lot in that area.

For what I am talking about here? No, actually, not at all. Not installing Office, Quicktime etc helps a little, but Firefox has no bearing on what software Apple installs with QT.

Also being a Pc geek and al...

...to answer the other guys question about the bios: Heh I learned my lesson a long time ago never to mess with them, so i didn't screw up anything there.

Those two statements are mutually exclusive. A PC geek messes with his BIOS all the time. Most of them are set in such a way that you get sub-optimal performance for your PC. You should mess with your BIOS. if you know what you are doing that is.

[terjeber]

... I am a computer expert, have worked in the field since PCs came at the wonderful speed of 4.77MHz with one (or two if you were lucky) 4.5" floppy drives. ...

It is actually 5 1/4 inch floppy, single density at 180KB, later Double density at 360KB... then the 3.5 inch came out in about 1986 - 1987 at 720KB, and later 1.44MB, 2.88MB ...

I have absolutely no idea why I wrote 4.5, I know I was thinking 5 1/4"... Ah well. Dumb late at night...

I even had "Unix" running on my 4.77MHz, two 5.25" floppy, PC. Minix from Andy Tannenbaum. I had a terminal connected to my serial port and could do multi-user, which I think only came out in 1.2 or 1.3.

[terjeber]

Ah, the memories! Anybody remember 8" disks?

No, but in the late 90s I had the pleasure of replacing (do not ask me where my employer got the replacement, I have no idea) a 5M (I think it was) harddrive on a customers PDP-11 machine. The machine was being used as a climate controller (including elevators) in an office building.

We had to give the original harddrive a good hard kick to spin the platters up so that we could copy data off it onto the new disk.

The 5M harddrive was as big as a file drawer.

[Super Warrior]

Please provide more details for each system:

Operating System
RAM (inc speed, type and configuration)
Video Card
Hard Drives (inc speed, size)
Examples of applications/tasks that run faster on the laptop.

Alrighty...

Previous Desktop which i built myself:

Windows XP Home
Gigabyte Motherboard
Intel Celeron-D 2.8Ghz w/256K L2 Cache
Kingston 512MB DDR Ram
Intergrated Intel Graphics
Intergrated Audio
HDD: Seagate 40GB 7200rpm
Asus DVD-Rom Drive
Lite-On DVD-RW

Primary/current computer:

Dell InSpiron B120 Laptop
Windows XP Home
Motherboard: Dell?
Intel Celeron-M 1.4Ghz w/1MB L2 Cache
Transcend 512MB DDR2 533 Ram
Intergrated Intel Graphics
Intergrated Audio
HDD: Toshiba 40GB 5400rpm
Pioneer DVD-RW


As for the differences: In programs like DVDshrink with deep analysis and sharp filter turned on, my old desktop took almost 3 hours to finish. My laptop with the same settings takes about an hour and 15 minutes.

In DVD2One: processing something big, about 7GB down to 4.36GB, took at least 40-50 minutes for the desktop. The laptop does it in around 28 minutes.

Also doing stuff in DVDremakepro: there was usually always a 2-3 second lag-time after doing something for the editing to take effect. Now its fairly instant.

[deadrats]

Super[/url] Warrior]Just curious is all. My last Pc was a desktop(self-built) with a 2.8Ghz Celeron D, 512MB ram, and 40GB HDD.

After long since wanting a more compact Pc solution and with prices coming down nicely, i sold my desktop and got a Dell B120 laptop. It has 1.4Ghz Celeron-M, 512MB ram, and 40GB HDD.

Now dispite the Dell only having a 1.4Ghz CPU as opposed to my desktops 2.8Ghz, my laptop comp is definitly faster than my desktop.

So far the only difference i see is L2 cache. My laptop CPU has 1MB and the desktop CPU had 256k. Does L2 cache really make THAT much of a difference dispite the CPU Ghz speed being half that of the other one?

Why would my new laptop be faster?

you have just stumbled on a perfect example of why pure clockspeed isn't the best measure of a cpu's ability.

the 2.8 Ghz Celeron D is based on the Prescott P4 architecture, which is a 31 stage pipeline, but has 1/4 the L2 cache, is only capable of processing 2 instructions per cycle and is coupled with DDR ram.

your Celeron M, on the other hand, has a full 1MB of fast L2 cache, has a much more effiecent 12-14 stage pipeline (it's based on the Pentium M which is the predecesor to the Core 2 Duo), is capable of processing 3 instructions per cycle and is coupled with faster DDR2.

the question isn't why the Celeron M is faster than the Celeron D but rather why you find it suprising? personally, i would be shocked if the Celeron M wasn't faster than the Celeron D.

[oldandinthe way]

Nelson37 and singsing

Hate to pick nits but the command is particular to the extended bios rom on Western Digital controllers. The IBM and Xebec controllers did not implement low-level format in ROM. Prefering to rely upon the system diagnostics to format.

Western Digital did not limit this ROM start address to MFM controllers but used it in all of their ISA hard disk controllers.

Crayoneater

I not only remember 8" floppy disks (there's probably some media in my garage), I remember 14" hard disks.

[Nelson37]

Damn you ARE old!

[oldandinthe way]

Old and able to remember things 25 years ago, but not 25 minutes ago.

And remember that command was typed into debug

[JohnnyMalaria]

Super[/url] Warrior]

Alrighty...

Previous Desktop which i built myself:

Kingston 512MB DDR Ram

Primary/current computer:

Transcend 512MB DDR2 533 Ram

DDR vs DDR2! Though DDR2 has a higher latency, once data are flowing, the bandwidth is much greater. Hence, for memory-intensive apps accessing contiguous blocks, you'll get a boost.

Coupled with the faster CPU architecture and larger L2 cache, your gains seem about right.

[trossin]

Floppy disks? I only dreamed of using those. I used audio cassette tape as well as pencil and paper for data storage. I couldn't afford those expensive floppy disk drives back in 1978 when I soldered together my first computer using perf board and wire.

[Super Warrior]

Oh well guess you're right. My laptop having DDR2 ram, 4x the L2 cache for the CPU, and more modern Comp architecture must be why its faster than my desktop was.

Making me glad i got the laptop, not only is everything now in a sweet compact package but it beats out my previous desktop in performence too!

Thanks guys.