Celeron vs Hi10p
 

Can somebody please tell me if a laptop running with a Celeron M 743 running at 1.3Ghz is capable of playing a 720p 10-bit h264 video? The graphics chip is an integrated Intel 4500, but there's no hardware 10-bit decoder anyway, so I'm guessing everything is up to the CPU. Somebody mentioned that a M 550 could manage it, but the benchmarks from notebookcheck indicate the M 743 is somewhat worse (still far above an Atom though).

I would say no. The dual core Atoms are a bit faster than the Celery M 743 and still drop frames at normal bitrates from what it sounds like.

Okay thank you. What about a Core i3-330UM running at 1.2Ghz? Shall I assume it's much better despite the lower clockrate?

It should handle 720p Hi10p fine.

btw, buying a laptop or something?

Yeah, I'm trying. My current Dell Vostro 1500 is effectively stuck on my desk, and I want a small machine (<12") that I can actually carry around. So I'm stuck sorting through a bunch of underpowered and overpriced ones, and a whole lot of similarly-named processors that give no indication of actual ability. The other limitation is that any computer more powerful than my current one will replace it on my desk... and I won't be able to take it anywhere. :heh:

So it can't be faster than a Vostro 1500. Interesting performance requirement lol.

Why can't the laptop leave your desk? Seems weird.

The Vostro 1500 weighs ~7lbs, and I have it connected to too many things so it's annoying to have to connect and disconnect everything (and any wires not connected will fall to the back of my desk and have to be retrieved from there.) For now, all I can do is stare at older laptops which are ironically enough more powerful than all the subnotebooks and netbooks. Thanks for your help anyway.

You're looking at the wrong subnotebooks then. My Thinkpad X220 has the same CPU that larger laptops have. The EliteBook 2560p can even be modded to fit a quad core.

Anyways, budget?

As for your problem with having to plug and unplug things. Have you considered a docking station?

Wow, those are way out of my budget, $300 at most. Anyway, I've been looking on eBay and found some other Vostro models, so I think I'll just go for those if I see a good price. Thanks.

yes
Basically, it's not at all unreasonable to assume that for most applications, any i3/i5/i7 CPU will perform at the very least twice as well as a Celeron or Atom running at the same clock frequency; in some specific cases you're probably going to get absurd results on the order of 8-10 times better performance.

Clock frequency stopped being relevant as a comparison metric between different CPU models many years ago.

My suggestion would be a used Lenovo Thinkpad X200, X200s, or HP EliteBook 2530p. They can both be had for under $300 and have excellent build quality. You might be able to find one with a docking station.

Some very rough performance per clock numbers from H.264 decoding testing a while back (if my memory is right):

Core i7/i5/i3: ~1.25
Core 2 Penryn: 1.0
Pentium 4 and Atom: ~0.40
Cortex A8 (iPad/iPhone chip): ~0.28

Well, I just went and got a Fujitsu LifeBook T4220 off eBay for ~$300. With a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, 4gb RAM, and 160gb HDD, except for the graphics it's slightly better than my Vostro 1500, so I'm sure it's up to the task. Thanks for the help, everybody.