Speed of processor

[Chip]

In terms of speed of processor, is the MHz the only determination. For
example I have an old Celeron at 1200 MHz and an old Pentium 3 at 443MHz.
Which is faster? Thanks.

 

[R. McCarty]

A Celeron has less on-board cache memory, which makes it a slower.
Just based on pure Clock Speed the Celeron would be faster, but not
as effective with Multitasking. ( Multiple Apps open simultaneously ).
..

 

[philo]

In terms of speed of processor, is the MHz the only determination. For
example I have an old Celeron at 1200 MHz and an old Pentium 3 at 443MHz.
Which is faster? Thanks.

In terms of both clock speed and performance ..in your situation...the
Celeron is better
however the Celeron has a smaller internal cache than a Pentium.

So if you had a P-IV 1000 mhz it would probably outperform the Celeron 1.2
mhz for most tasks

BTW: you may want to physically have a look at your P-3 as it might be
underclocked in the bios.

If it's a 450 mhz then don't bother to fool with the bios...
but if it's faster, you may want to set your bios to the actual speed of the
CPU.

 

[JS]

Some time back I upgraded a P3 600MHz processor with
a 1.4GHz Celeron and without a doubt the Celeron was
noticeable faster for all my applications.

You should be aware however that there a several versions
of Celeron processors and some of the better Celeron models
available at that time were essentially P3 processors with
a smaller amount of internal cache memory.
(256MB for the Celeron vs 512MB of cache memory for the P3).

Because of the smaller cache size a 1.4GHz Celeron would not be
as fast as a 1.4GHz P3, but certainly faster than my 600MHz P3.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

In terms of speed of processor, is the MHz the only determination.
For example I have an old Celeron at 1200 MHz and an old Pentium 3
at 443MHz. Which is faster? Thanks.

MHz/GHz is not the only determination.

Processor cache memory, number of cores (and how the OS and software you use
handles multiple cores), generation of the processor, etc.

And the processor is one of the main factors in computer speed - but it will
not necessarily 'make up for' poor performance in other areas (BUS speed,
memory speed and size, hard disk drive speed, video card processor and
memory, etc...)

In terms of your questions:

No.

and

The celeron is faster but may choke running and swapping between several
applications.

 

[John]

Level 2 cache is also important. If I'm not mistaken, PIII 443MHz cache size
is the same as Celeron 1200MHz which is about 512KB. Therefore, in your
case, Celeron 1200MHz may be faster than your Pentium III.

Check it out yourself at:
http://processorfinder.intel.com

You might want to select Archived Processors to look at specs of your PIII
CPU.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

In terms of speed of processor, is the MHz the only determination.

No, it isn't.

For
example I have an old Celeron at 1200 MHz and an old Pentium 3 at 443MHz.
Which is faster? Thanks.

Generally, the celeron.

But the question is phrased poorly, and doesn't take into account other
system factors, such as buss speed.

HTH
-pk

 

[John John (MVP)]

No, not when the processors are from different families and especially
not if they are from different manufacturers. For example, you can't
compare similar competing AMD and Intel processors based on clock speed.
The clock speed is almost always faster on Intel but the AMD pipeline
is shorter, so with its shorter pipeline the data moves through the
pipeline faster and the AMD chip can process more data in the same clock
cycle.

John

 

[HeyBub]

No, it isn't.


Generally, the celeron.

But the question is phrased poorly, and doesn't take into account
other system factors, such as buss speed.

Right. Throughput is determined by the slowest link and all computers - from
a pocket calculator to a Cray - wait at the same speed. So if your
application spends 98% of its time waiting - waiting for you to press a key,
or the printer to advance a line, or blah-blah-blah - doubling the speed of
the processor won't even be noticeable.

 

[Leythos]

A Celeron has less on-board cache memory, which makes it a slower.

Not true.

Celeron had a FULL SPEED cache, non-Celeron CPU's had a half/slower
speed cache.

This meant that apps that needed less cache ran significantly faster on
a Celeron than same speed non-Celeron CPU>

To answer the question properly, you have to know more information about
what the computer is used for.

In general, any 1200mhz CPU is going to be faster than any same
generation 433mhz CPU.

Cores are another area where Ghz and number of cores can be a factor
instead of just Ghz.