Is the Celeron that's being sold today just a P4 with less cache or are
there other differences?

TIA

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 13:41:51 +0100, Y <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Is the Celeron that's being sold today just a P4 with less cache or are
>there other differences?

Mostly, though it also runs at a lower bus speed (400MT/s vs. 533 or
800MT/s for the P4 chips). It's also a piece of crap. Seriously.

The P4 design is VERY cache dependant, so when you chop your cache
down to only 128KB as they do with the current Celeron chips,
performance suffers a LOT. What's even worse, doing this puts more
pressure on your memory interface, which is running slower on the
Celeron, further hurting performance.

The end result is that, clock for clock, the Celeron is SIGNIFICANTLY
slower than the P4. A Celeron running at 2.8GHz will almost always be
beaten solidly by a 2.0GHz P4, sometimes by a fairly large margin.
The performance of these chips is sometimes rather embarrassingly bad,
often to the point where the old 1.4GHz Celeron (the last of the
PIII-style Celerons) is faster than the 2.8GHz Celeron (the current
fastest of the P4-style Celerons). These chips are purely marketed at
those who don't bother looking into the performance characteristics of
the chips.

Anandtech published some tests a little while back comparing the
Celeron to a few other chips, including several AMD chips that are
quite a bit cheaper:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1927

The results pretty much speak for themselves. I can't think of any
situation at all where I could recommend the Celeron.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Tony Hill wrote:
> I can't think of any
> situation at all where I could recommend the Celeron.
>

Take several hundred Celerons and glue them to a 2 foot
by 3 foot piece of plywood with the pins facing outward.
Place plywood on kitchen counter or other surface.
Cats *hate* landing on those but it won't hurt them -
and they are quickly trained to stay off counters,
tables, etc.

Celerons are more cost effective for this purpose
than pretty much any processor currently available.

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 13:41:51 +0100, Y wrote:

> Is the Celeron that's being sold today just a P4 with less cache or are
> there other differences?
>
> TIA

L2 cache and much lower FSB (quad pumped 100MHz bus instead of quad pumped
200MHz bus IIRC). See the various hardware sites for benchmarks, and draw
the conclusion that if you want a budget system, get yourself an Athlon.
And if you require true performance, get yourself an Athlon64 ;-)

Regards,
Chris

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 14:21:04 -0600, Rob Stow <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:
>Tony Hill wrote:
> > I can't think of any
>> situation at all where I could recommend the Celeron.
>>
>
>Take several hundred Celerons and glue them to a 2 foot
>by 3 foot piece of plywood with the pins facing outward.
>Place plywood on kitchen counter or other surface.
>Cats *hate* landing on those but it won't hurt them -
>and they are quickly trained to stay off counters,
>tables, etc.
>
>Celerons are more cost effective for this purpose
>than pretty much any processor currently available.

Nahh, VIA's got 'em beat there. Sure, the VIA chips only have 370
pins vs. the 478 of the Celerons, but the extremely low price of the
VIA gives it an excellent price/pointy-pin ratio! :>

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

Rob Stow <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote :

> Take several hundred Celerons and glue them to a 2 foot
> by 3 foot piece of plywood with the pins facing outward.
> Place plywood on kitchen counter or other surface.
> Cats *hate* landing on those but it won't hurt them -
> and they are quickly trained to stay off counters,
> tables, etc.

my cat would LOVE to scratch his neck with this toy


Pozdrawiam.
--
RusH //
http://pulse.pdi.net/~rush/qv30/
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.

RusH wrote:

> Rob Stow <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote :
>
>
>>Take several hundred Celerons and glue them to a 2 foot
>>by 3 foot piece of plywood with the pins facing outward.
>>Place plywood on kitchen counter or other surface.
>>Cats *hate* landing on those but it won't hurt them -
>>and they are quickly trained to stay off counters,
>>tables, etc.
>
>
> my cat would LOVE to scratch his neck with this toy
>
>
> Pozdrawiam.

Believe it or don't, I wasn't making this up. I saw
exactly such a device at a garage sale last summer -
albeit made up from 386's, 486's, and Pentiums rather
than Celerons. I was going to buy it just for kicks
but a little old lady literally tore it out of my hands.

Unfortunately the P4-Celeron isn't the bargain the P3-Celeron was:
o P3-Celeron - shallow pipeline, with nice large 256KB cache
o P4-Celeron - deep pipeline, with sadly tiny 128KB cache

The deeper your pipeline, the more benefit a larger cache offers.
o P4-Northwood has 512KB cache
o P4-Prescott has 1,024KB cache - but deeper pipeline so little gain

There is a benefit to P4-Celerons however:
o Cheap -- 1.7Ghz P4-Celeron can be for ~30
o Upgradeable -- socket-478 allows plug-in P4-3.4-800-fsb someday

What is irritating is the P4-Celeron's power inefficiency, nearly twice
the wattage of a P3-Celeron-1.2Ghz and idle wattage isn't great either.

For general office & web use, a P4-Celeron is fine however.
--
Dorothy Bradbury
www.stores.ebay.co.uk/panaflofan for fans, books & other items
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dorothy...ry/panaflo.htm (Direct)

On Sun, 28 Mar 2004 16:12:03 +0100, "Dorothy Bradbury"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Unfortunately the P4-Celeron isn't the bargain the P3-Celeron was:
>o P3-Celeron - shallow pipeline, with nice large 256KB cache
>o P4-Celeron - deep pipeline, with sadly tiny 128KB cache
>
>The deeper your pipeline, the more benefit a larger cache offers.
>o P4-Northwood has 512KB cache
>o P4-Prescott has 1,024KB cache - but deeper pipeline so little gain
>
>There is a benefit to P4-Celerons however:
>o Cheap -- 1.7Ghz P4-Celeron can be for ~30

The Pricewatch bottom feeders list the 1.7GHz Celeron for $54.

>o Upgradeable -- socket-478 allows plug-in P4-3.4-800-fsb someday
>
>What is irritating is the P4-Celeron's power inefficiency, nearly twice
>the wattage of a P3-Celeron-1.2Ghz and idle wattage isn't great either.
>
>For general office & web use, a P4-Celeron is fine however.

Only problem with that is that you could get a 1.6GHz Duron ($37 from
Pricewatch bottom-feeders) for even less money and it would just mop
the floor with those P4-Celerons. In fact, the AthlonXP 1700+ is
listed for only $39, and it'll outperform a 2.8GHz Celeron any day of
the week.

In short, with the Celeron you spend more money and get less
performance. And now that there are very good, reliable and well
priced socket A motherboards using nVidia chipsets there is no longer
a big worry about drivers for that platform like there used to be when
VIA was the big chipset vendor. Hence, I really can't see any
possible reason to recommend a Celeron to anyone!

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

> The Pricewatch bottom feeders list the 1.7GHz Celeron for $54.

Sorry I listed typical Ebay price - but didn't type "Ebay" :-)
o Cel-1.7 via Ebay for ~30 is about tolerable re u/g path benefit
o You can u/g to a P4-3.4-800-fsb someday when cheaper

I would not buy a new P4-Celeron - it's just too expensive.

Original question was Celeron vs P4.
o Yes - the Duron is faster, cheaper & u/g path to Athlon-XP
o Athlon-XP is *still* underestimated - P4 entry pricing is *high*

I consider the P4 to be too expensive v the Athlon, but as a used
buy in a year or so things may be very different. A 2.8-P4 was £320
just over a year ago, now they are £120 and used are £85-95.
--
Dorothy Bradbury