Y
Y
Is the Celeron that's being sold today just a P4 with less cache or are
there other differences?
TIA
there other differences?
TIA
T
Tony Hill
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.
R
Rob Stow
Tony said:
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.
C
chris
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
T
Tony Hill
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! :>
R
RusH
Rob Stow said:
my cat would LOVE to scratch his neck with this toy
Pozdrawiam.
R
Rob Stow
RusH said:
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.
D
Dorothy Bradbury
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.
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.
T
Tony Hill
The Pricewatch bottom feeders list the 1.7GHz Celeron for $54.
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!
D
Dorothy Bradbury
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.
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.
T
Tony Hill
Sorry I listed typical Ebay price - but didn't type "Ebay"
Ahh EBay, the one and only place where you can find even sketchier
dealers than the Pricewatch bottom-feeders!
D
Dorothy Bradbury
Ahh EBay, the one and only place where you can find even sketchier
Has its uses for "CPU to fill a seat" - at least where P4-Cel are concerned.
I wish Intel hadn't ramped clock speed on the P4-Cel without doubling
the cache - or do we have to suffer a future P4-Cel based on Prescott
with a doubling of cache but in total more castrated than the present one?
Would it be so anti-P4 to stick a 533 bus on the thing too?
At least a light bulb offers some *light* as well as heat
Has its uses for "CPU to fill a seat" - at least where P4-Cel are concerned.
I wish Intel hadn't ramped clock speed on the P4-Cel without doubling
the cache - or do we have to suffer a future P4-Cel based on Prescott
with a doubling of cache but in total more castrated than the present one?
Would it be so anti-P4 to stick a 533 bus on the thing too?
At least a light bulb offers some *light* as well as heat
T
Tony Hill
My understanding is that the plan is to move the P4-Celeron to the
Prescott core with a 533MT/s bus and 256KB of L2 cache. This should
improve performance over the current Celerons by a fair bit, though I
expect that they will still stink.
At least a light bulb offers some *light* as well as heat
A 103W light bulb offers a LOT of light!
D
Dorothy Bradbury
My understanding is that the plan is to move the P4-Celeron to the
The 533 bus will help, but the Prescott core went nowhere with a move
from 512KB to 1024KB - so undoubtedly yes performance will still sink.
It does indeed
Perhaps a better future is lavatx, where we merge lava lamps & atx.
That way you get some more entertainment value out of the chips.
The 533 bus will help, but the Prescott core went nowhere with a move
from 512KB to 1024KB - so undoubtedly yes performance will still sink.
It does indeed
Perhaps a better future is lavatx, where we merge lava lamps & atx.
That way you get some more entertainment value out of the chips.
T
Tony Hill
I suspect that the Celeron will do a lot better going from 128K to
256K when compared to the P4 going from 512K to 1024K. It's a bit of
a guesstimation of performance on my part, but usually your hit rates
goes up a lot with the first 256K of cache before leveling off a lot
for larger cache sizes.
It does indeed
Perhaps a better future is lavatx, where we merge lava lamps & atx.
That way you get some more entertainment value out of the chips.
Hmm, I'd buy one! :>
C
Crazy Horse
I've read all the articles in this thread and they've left me thinking I
may have made a big mistake with a recent purchase; i.e., the new DELL
Inspiron 1000, which (I think) uses the P4-Celeron under discussion. I
don't know if anyone reading this thread is at all familiar with DELL
laptops in general, or the Inspiron 1000 in particular, but could anyone
venture a guess as to whether or not I might be able to upgrade this
laptop's processor?
BTW- my decision to get this laptop was made (albeit with less pre-
purchase research than might have been advisable) on the basis of the
following criteria in order of prioritiy:
1. low price
2. reputable manufacturer
3. reliable customer support
All in all, it appears (from this thread) that the P4 Celerons are
relatively inefficient in terms of both CPU and price performance.
Still, I wonder if it's worth getting worked up about, given what I'm
upgrading from (get ready for some laughs):
-----------------------
Processor: Cyrix 486 Chip (comparable to a Pentium-I/150-MHz)
DRAM: 48 MB
Harddrive: 2.4 GB
O/S: Win'95
------------------------
On the other hand, if anyone thinks I could make a better decision by
spending, say another $300 (max) on top of the $800 already spent, I'd be
interested to hear your suggestions.
___________
-Joseph
N
Never anonymous Bud
Fresh from an Iraqi prisoner interrogation Crazy Horse said:
Yes, it uses a Celeron 2.2ghz.
Street price for that CPU is about $70.
For about twice that, you could have gotten a P4 2.4ghz CPU,
but replacing a CPU in a notebook isn't someone for the
faint-hearted or technically-challenged.
T
Tony Hill
Yup, it does indeed seem to use a Celeron.
You can almost never upgrade laptop processors, and as best as I can
tell this model of Dell is no exception.
Fair enough
So you chose Dell?!? :>
Actually I'm not sure that there are any reputable manufacturers of
notebooks left, except maybe IBM and their extremely expensive
notebooks (typically 40-75% more expensive then the competition for
the same features).
I'm still not sure that I'd pick Dell as a reseller. Note: Dell
doesn't make the notebooks, much like HPaq and Gateway they contract
out all their notebooks to the lowest bidder, Arima, Compal and Quanta
make the vast bulk of the world's notebooks. This doesn't necessarily
mean that Dell is any worse than the others, more just that they're
usually the same laptops with someone else's badge thrown on the
cover. Generally speaking though the quality has suffered pretty
badly in this lowest-cost outsourcing war.
From what I've seen, about the only company left with good customer
service is Apple.
Well, they are cheap chips, but when you look at it from a whole
laptop view of things, they do rather stink. A Mobile Celeron might
get you a $700 laptop vs. a $850 laptop with a Mobile P4, but it will
probably be about 30-50% slower.
The upside to this is that at least the maximum power consumption of
these things is only 35W. Compare that to the Mobile P4, with a
maximum power consumption of 70W+ for the top-end models and you
should see slightly longer battery life. Mind you, that 35W of power
is still rather pathetic, especially when you consider Intel has
disabled the dynamic power saving features from this chip (the "Mobile
P4" has this deficiency as well). Sadly the "Mobile P4-M" has
basically disappeared from actual products, as it offered respectable
power consumption, good performance and decent price along with
dynamic power management, but I guess the extra $20 wasn't seen as a
worthwhile cost vs. the "Mobile P4".... but I digress.
The long story short is that I'm not at all impressed with the current
state of low-cost laptops. Clock speed and price seem to be the only
two considerations, things like actual performance, power
consumption/battery life and most of all quality have been TOTALLY
thrown out the window in this market. A Pentium4-M 2.0GHz chip should
cost less, consume less power and perform MUCH better than a Mobile
Celeron 2.6GHz. However, while everybody+dog seems to be selling
those Celeron 2.6GHz laptops, no one is selling laptops using 2.0GHz
P4-M chips. The Pentium-M chip is a good solution for the high-end
and is being sold a lot, but it hasn't been pushed down into the lower
cost market and the fairly respectable Celeron-M chip is almost
impossible to find. Worst of all though, AMD's rather excellent
line-up of low-cost mobile processors are pretty much a no-show.
As you can probably guess, you're new laptop should be a couple orders
of magnitude faster than what you've got now! Talking about this
Celeron as being "slow" is a very relative term. It's quite a bit
slower than all it's current competitors, particularly the AthlonXP-M.
A similarly priced AthlonXP-M will perform 25-50% faster than a Mobile
Celeron in most applications. However as compared to what you're
coming from, this Celeron is a HUGE step forward.
As mentioned above, upgrading a processor in a laptop is almost never
an option, even if you can manage to find someone selling a laptop
chip to begin with. Usually they are rather inaccessible and
sometimes are soldered onto the board.
N
Nate Edel
Tony Hill said:
Manufacturers rarely support it, but it's usually been doable since the
later Pentium-classic models. I've upgraded several laptops; notably
including a Toshiba Tecra 8000 and a Dell Inspiron 4150.
Both, however, were to processor models at the high end of the range when
the machines were purchased (P-II 266mhz to 400mhz, P-4M 1.7ghz to 2.4ghz)
so neither one was pushing the thermal designs of the machines.
And the additional competition for the (presumably) higher-margin
Pentium-M/Centrino systems.
M
Malam
Can you plug-in a P4 3.4 with FSB @800MHZ into a mboard that is
designedwith an FSB of 400/533MHZ ??
designedwith an FSB of 400/533MHZ ??