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Notebook processors explained

2004/11/24 13:47:13

Question

I'm about to buy a notebook and I'm confused about what kind of processor to get: Pentium or Celeron? I've always understood that Pentium is the better of the two, but I don't really understand why. Can you please explain the difference?

-- Submitted by: Valeve, via email

The processor, or CPU, is the brains of the computer.

Although there are several different processors in the Intel Pentium family, you're right--they're generally more powerful than Celeron processors, which are also made by Intel.

In a nutshell, the most significant differences between the Pentium and Celeron are: the Pentiums' superior L2 cache (how much data they can hold for quick access) and frontside bus speed (how fast they can retrieve data from the main memory).

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