Duo chip question

[happyhero]

Hi my daughter went to PC World yesterday and this PC http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/product/seo/859051 was on offer for £399 and she bought it.

When she got it home we were checking things and noticed that it displayed Celeron. As I understand it, the Dual core processors are twin processor machines and it looked to me like one of the chips was a Celeron yet there was no mention of that in the sale ticket.

I had told her not to buy a Celeron although I know there will be many people on here who find Celerons great, but personally I choose to avoid them. Anyway so she bought this dual core processor and I think it looks like she has one cpu that is ok and one that is a Celeron, does that sound right, ie is that what it probably is?

Also bearing in mind that it was cheap is that how they reduce costs by making one chip a cheaper Celeron?

And if you pay more will you then get two good chips?

If so how can you tell when you are buying, what chips are inside if the ticket just says dual core, or are you at the mercy of the assistant most of the time?

If I was buying I would want the two fastest best chips I could afford and I would prefer that there was nothing Celeron-ish in it.

Any help appreciated.

 

[pheonix]

From what I've read I think that the notebook has got a budget version of Intel Core Duo processors, like Celeron Processors were to Pentium 4 Processors.

From Wkipedia -

Pentium Dual-Core

The Intel Pentium Dual Core is a new brand of Intel Processor that first appeared in selected base model notebook computers from Dell,[4] Acer,[5] HP,[6] and Toshiba in early 2007. These processors are identified by the model numbers T2060 or T2080, indicating it is related to the Intel Core family of processors and may be a variant of the Intel Core T2050 chip. Early research reveals the processor to be similar to Core processors but with only a 1MB L2 Cache, whereas Core processors feature 2MB caches.[7]

It is not known why, after announcing the retirement of the Pentium brand name, Intel has brought it back, although Intel did announce possible plans to return the Pentium brand to the market as an alias for low cost Core 2 chips based on the Conroe-L architecture. The planned numbers for those processors to carry the Pentium brand were to be prefixed by the letter E, not T as the Pentium Dual Core uses.[8]

[edit] Specifications

* T2060
o 1.60GHz clock
* T2080
o 1.73GHz clock
* 533MHz Front Side Bus (FSB)
* 1MB L2 cache (shared, meaning both cores use this single 1MB cache. This equates to 512kb per core)
* 65nm process

Wikipedia - Click Here

 

[Igorian]

There is only one chip, however it has two computational cores in one package.

Where did you see Celeron displayed? It's possible that whatever is reporting the CPU type is out of date with regard to it's processor database.

 

[happyhero]

I have gone to Device manager and clicked on Processors. It shows two entries first one is

Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2080 @ 1.73GHz

and the next says

Intel(R) Celeron(R) M CPU 420 @ 1.60GHz

and they are two seperate entries not one long one or anything silly like that.

 

[Igorian]

I have gone to Device manager and clicked on Processors. It shows two entries first one is

Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2080 @ 1.73GHz

and the next says

Intel(R) Celeron(R) M CPU 420 @ 1.60GHz

and they are two seperate entries not one long one or anything silly like that.

The processors section will show each core as a separate processor. I would suggest that it's not identifying the second one correctly.

A possible resolution at the end of this article.

 

[happyhero]

Thanks pheonix you were spot on with your info and thanks Igorian you were spot on with your post and the link you gave me as I tried it and it sorted out the processors.

It now shows two entries under processors, both of which are the 1.73GHz entries. Brilliant when you can get a problem completely sorted out on here.

 

[Steve]

Key Specification
• Vista Home Basic • 512MB RAM

Ohhh deeear
I am running vista ultimate on an intel core2 duo with 2 GB RAM. currently using 907MB RAM. With explorer, messenger, norton IS, itunes running. All basic stuff. expect your laptop to be slow.

 

[FredFlintstone]

Key Specification
• Vista Home Basic • 512MB RAM

Ohhh deeear
I am running vista ultimate on an intel core2 duo with 2 GB RAM. currently using 907MB RAM. With explorer, messenger, norton IS, itunes running. All basic stuff. expect your laptop to be slow.

Aye, but it's Vista Basic crafty. Basic doesn't need much power really although it will be slower than if running XP.

Regards

Fred