“This ain’t your grandma’s Celeron”
Summary:
I thought I would mix things up today and review a processor from the often loathed and despised Intel Celeron lineup. I recently purchased a new budget laptop (Gateway ML6230) which among other things featured an Intel Celeron M 520 processor running at 1.6GHz. Generally, I used to advise people not to buy Celerons, regarding them as grotesquely inferior and if not already, soon to be obsolete. For the most part, my apprehensions have turned out to be unwarrented. Straight out of the box performance was very soggy and multi-tasking was definitly an exercise in patience . After testing the laptop with the installed 512 MB of memory and then again with 2 GB, I can honestly say that it was like night and day in terms of responsivness and productivity. Before the upgrade just loading the operating system and anti-virus took 5 or 6 mins. After the memory boost, programs loaded 5x quicker and the amount of programs I could open simultaneously without any percieved degradation in speed went up exponentially(From around 3-4 to 20-25). This is not to say that the entire line of Celeron processors perform equally. Apparently, under the hood the 520’s implement Intel’s ”Core” based technology. In other words you could say it’s an Intel Core 2 Uno or single cored Core 2 Duo.
In short, the Celeron M 520 is an excellent processor for web browsing, text, 2d games, desktop publishing, heck it even runs Google Earth flawlessly. My attitude towards the Celeron and possibly Sempron processors has definitly done a 180. The real problem now seems to be that budget computers are generally sold RAM starved. For manufactuers to ship a computer with a meagre 512MB of RAM *especially* with Vista is just plain criminal.
Bottom Line : If you aren’t a gamer who needs massive amounts of processing power, then I encourage you to give the next budget computer you see a second look; just make sure to upgrade the memory.
As always comments,questions, or suggestions are always appreciated.
Filed under: Tech Reviews | 10 Comments
Tags: 1.6ghz, 520, celeron, ram starved, Review, snappy
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Can you tell us what the battery runtime is on this laptop? Thanks for the review. I agree celerons get a bad rep…my experience is that they perform fine but you have to be careful of other cheap components that are likely to be bundled with celerons, e.g., power supplies, motherboards, etc.
Thanks for the informative post. I was wondering to buy the acer or not.
Hey MJ, glad you enjoyed the review. I agree with you as well about maker’s bundling the celeron with other junk components. When will they learn that Intel’s GMA isn’t safe at any speed =X.
The battery life isn’t great but it isn’t bad either. Light tasks you can expect little over 2hrs give or take. I havent tried but it should make it through 1 dvd .. probably clipping off the end,do’h.
Leo, looks like a decent enough machine. good price, gigantic rebates ,oye! =X
I believe the actual name for the single core “Core” chip is “Core Solo”.
Nice review. I just bought an MSI VR320X with same processor and 512 ram. I was wondering if a memory upgrade would do any good, but your review convinced me to upgrade it. Thanx again
Hi! I’m planning to buy a budgetlaptop (HP COMPAQ). Specifications are:
Intel celeron M560, 2.133 GHz, 1MB L2 cache,1GB DDR2,120 GB SATA HDD,Intel 960GL Express Chipset, Intel Graphics media accelerato X3100.
What is your opinion?
Anoop, Thanks for visiting. Unfortunatly I haven’t had any experience with Intel’s 3100 video chipsets yet. I’ve read that they are exponentially better performance wise than the older GMA 950 line. That being said, I can’t tell you if the 3100 are battery killers. My guess is no. Like I said in my review celerons are fine.. just don’t expect hardcore gaming. Web based.. and 2d games seem to get along just fine. Don’t forget to pick up more memory. The only potential choke point I see with the machine you are considering is the RAM. 1 GB with Vista isn’t terrible, so try it. But there’s a good chance you’ll want to pick up more, unless you plan on just typing up papers and web browsing only.
Huzzah!
- Baxtor
i find Celeron m processor520 extremly wel,wit sum gud inbuilt features.its speed z very gud dat helps in quick functioning of numerous progammes including browser.it work like Core2Uno r Pentium M processor.it wil work even more faster if d memory of system z upgraded from 512mb to 2 r 3gb…i hope evry1 wil like 2 try it n w’ll get a great benefit of using it apart from using other new processor’s.
Your review is quite confusing to m e. Can you please tell me whether HP Compaq pressario C765TU laptop is a good buy for a architecture student? If not why? Can I do something with the configuration and make it usable?
Regards
Banerjee, To be honest I really don’t know if it would be a good buy for an architecture student. If he or she really needed a lot of graphical and processor power than I would say that most mid range laptops aren’t up for that work profile. Get a good idea what types of programs the student will be using then check on what system requirements they need to run smoothly. That’s really the only way to know. Makes no sense to over buy nor under buy , it all depends on what kind of programs the user “uses”. Thanks for stopping by