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They are both based on same sandybridge architecture, i5-2415M has 3MB L2 versus celeron B840's 2MB. i5 also has 4 threads.

So Clock frequency IS the main differentiator here, 1.9Ghz vs 2.3-2.9Ghz (with turbo), which probably corresponds to 30% to 60% difference in general.

Specs of both processors:

Celeron B840: http://ark.intel.com/products/59801/Intel-Celeron-Processor-...

i5-2415M: http://ark.intel.com/products/53449/Intel-Core-i5-2415M-Proc...

Oh interesting. The desktop I was referring to has a 4 year old Celeron at 1.9Ghz, so possibly its older architecture makes it more different, but not sure.

The Ars article said it's a sandy-bridge celeron, which are actually halfway decent.

It's not the same graphics card either, although they're both bad enough that you probably won't be playing intensive 3D games on them.

The main difference is that the Chromebox is limited to 4GB of RAM, whereas you can put upto 16GB in the Mini.

See the spec links I posted above, Graphics technologies are also similar. Seems like Intel disabled some extras on Celeron's GPU.