Celeron Vs Duo

[farruinn]

Hi,

My iBook recently ran into some trouble and I'm looking to replace it with a 100% Ubuntu supported pc laptop. My budget isn't big though, so I'm wondering if it would be worth it to get the Core Duo processor on the Gazelle value model? It's only $190 more, but are the Core Duos truly dual core? I vaguely remember reading from Intel's website that this may be somewhat ambiguous due to marketing names.

Has anyone else gotten a Gazelle with the Celeron processor instead? Are there any benchmarks available so I can see exactly how much is gained by a Duo?

Thanks!
-Nathan

[jdong]

Core Duos are really dual core, yes, and the performance gain over a celeron is very significant. I'd highly recommend going Core Duo :)

[crichell]

You will get a snappier computer with a Dual Core processor. It's really noticible when your compiling apps. The Celeron's are also good however, and perfect for someone on a budget.

[newlinux]

I have the gazelle with the celeron. I do primarily web surfing and multimdea file manipulation. The web surfing and multimedia listening, viewing, etc., and 95% of everything I do is pretty snappy with the celeron. Some of the multimedia stuff takes some time.

If you are going to do a lot of compiling, image and multimedia processing, and other processor intensive applications a duo-core is probably worth it. but for most everything else a celeron is plenty fast enough.

[kostkon]

Yes, with Core Duo you really get two processors. If you do simple things a Celeron is OK. On the other hand, with Core Duo you will be able to easily run many apps at the same time, without any lagging; browsing, IMing, playing music, p2p downloading, etc. will be more easy to do at the same time.

You will have to try hard to put the system low on resources...

[jdong]

I'd just like to add, I own two laptops: One is a Core Duo T2300, the other is a Celeron M 1.4GHz.

Both currently run Kubuntu Edgy, and have run Kubuntu/Ubuntu Dapper in the past. For almost all desktop oriented tasks -- web browsing, word processing, movie watching, music listening, CD burning, and even home DV editing, both laptops have never failed me. I won't lie -- the Core Duo does feel snappier and it takes A LOT more simultaneous tasks running before you can feel any kind of slowdown with the two cores chugging away, but my trusty Celeron still got the job done.


As you note, the price difference between the two laptops is around 200 bucks, and for that 200 bucks you are more than doubling your CPU performance (one core of the Core Duo is significantly faster than that of a Celeron), not to mention putting much higher-speed motherboard components in your hands.

But then again, spend money. If you can redirect that 200 bucks towards more RAM or disk space, you may end up even happier :)


The reason I typically recommend the Core Duo / Centrino Duo over the Celeron is because, in general, you seem to get a higher quality laptop overall -- hardware, build quality, etc -- with the Centrino/Core Duo / Pentium M line than with the Celeron line. However, given all the positive feedback I've heard from system76, I don't think this manufacturer will try to rip off its customers with poor quality hardware.