This might be a stupid question, but I was wondering if its possible to replace a Celeron M with a Pentium M in a laptop? Both are Socket 479, right? Not sure how much difference they are heat-wise, and if you'd have to flash the bios somehow.. Anyone?
Depends. The chipset needs to take it (865 versus 915) and the BIOS needs to support it. But I dont see why not.
If you get a 400 FSB chip (7x5) then it should work fine FSB is the same, might not need a bios flash either...
Run CPU-Z or similar and post back what it reports. The Cele M could be Banias (0.13u, 512K L2) or Dothan (0.09u, 1MB L2) based - which would help decide how much of an upgrade a Pentium M would be over the Celeron M. IMO the best benefit of upgrading (aside from any potential clock speed boost) as speedstep (dynamic underclocking) = longer battery life and a boost in L2 cache (more so for an older Banias / 512K Celeron than a Dothan / 1 MB Celeron). As has sort of been said if the chipset it i855 based it can only take a 400MHz FSB chip. If it's i915 based it should (BIOS permitting) be able to take a 400MHz FSB or 533Mhz FSB chip. In theory anything should work but I believe some laptop manufacturers program the BIOS to only boot with the class of chip the laptop was 'designed' (marketed) to work with.
Thanks for the tips guys. I don't have any laptop to try it on at the moment, I was just wondering of getting a relatively cheap Celeron M based laptop that has been offered to me and replace the CPU, if that was possible. I'll post my findings if I get to try it out
i was thold that pentium m require less cooling thats why pentium m laptops tend to be lighter than celeron laptops
Celeron M's have EIST (speedstep) disabled so in theory the Pentium M might be able to run cooler at idle - same reason the Pentium M is better for battery life than the Celeron M too (though I haven't tested this). The increased cache probably makes some difference too (more cache = busier CPU at load = hotter I would have thought but I don't know for sure). TBH I doubt there's much in it and as IIRC all the 'M' chips are rated for ~30W max so most of the cooling solutions would be planned around that so that whoever is making the laptop can put a range of chips in it. I think the lighter / smaller / thinner laptops tend to be pentium not celeron based because they're higher end / more expensive and same goes for cheaper / lighter / celeron based lap tops.
