Asus Eee PC's Celeron is Clocked Down

From the Eeeuser forum comes an insightful observation by member NoeeePC4MeWellMaybe... regarding the Celeron chip in the Asus Eee PCs being clocked down -



Observation:

The reported 630Mhz CPU frequency in the above photo means that one of the below statements is true:

A) The Intel Celeron M CPU used in the Eee PC incorporates Intel's SpeedStep technology

B) Asus has downclocked the Front-Side Bus from 100 Mhz to 70 Mhz (translating into the effective FSB and RAM speeds being 280 Mhz instead of 400 Mhz).

Analysis:

Option "A" is highly unlikely due to the fact that there are no Celeron M chips that support SpeedStep or Enhanced SpeedStep.

Option "B" is very plausible. One of the CPU-Z screen shots from a russian 2G/700 Eee PC contained a 800Mhz Celeron M which ran at 570Mhz which was also derived from an approx. 70 Mhz FSB. I have no doubt that this is primary reason as to why Asus has not disclosed any information regarding the CPU specifications or operating frequency. This way, no one can be successful in legally forcing Asus to release a BIOS update which unlocks the processor's full potential by way of a 100 Mhz FSB. I know that some of the "tech geeks" here will get riled up on this one for sure , but keep in mind that there are many consumer devices which feature downclocked processors and ICs. If I remember correctly the PSP is/used to be one of them. Another thing to note is that there are no Non-Embedded Dothan based Celeron M's which operate at anything lower than 800 Mhz.

So, that being said the 2Gs possibly feature 800 Mhz Intel Celeron M chips downclocked to 570 Mhz, while the 4Gs possibly feature 900 Mhz Intel Celeron M chips downclocked to 630 Mhz.

Conclusion:

All things considered, I think the 4G model will offer a marginally to greatly perceivable difference in speed in various applications, but not because of the 60 Mhz difference. Why then? If the finalized 2G models come with the SL8XT Celeron M pictured in the Russian review, then it has ZERO L2 cache. I would gather that it would be about as fast as the PIII 733 EB in my miniature HP vectra dev server PC. Hopefully someone in Taiwan with a retail 2G can verify whether or not it has L2 cache.

L2 cache aside, I do not have any issue with the 230-270 Mhz decrease in processor frequency, since it will not have any detrimental impact on the usability of the applications and multimedia that I plan to make use of. The downclock is likely responsible for the above average battery life, and hopefully it has spawned a cool to mildly warm operating Eee PC.

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Incidentally, the above observation has been discussed in the Mobile01 forum Asus Eee PC thread as well. As usual, translated version of the forum can be viewed here.