Intel CPU Comparison

[Iam8up]

I'm building a Linux Dedicated server, and I got a Mini ITX case/board. It is Socket 478 so it's got to be an Intel inside =/ I'm more familiar with AMD processors, so I don't know how to compare these.

I'm strongly looking at two products. I was told that Celeron D is similar to Pentium 4, with a 256KB cache (as opposed to the P4's 1MB), is this true?

The two I'm looking at...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819112199
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819116178

I've got this motherboard...
CF-EG65
It runs on the 865G chipset, so it can support both Prescott and Northwood CPUs. Is hyper threading even as good as it is said to be? Between these two processors, can you tell me the advantages and disadvantages between their different designs?

 

[Scout]

The only difference between these two chips is the cache size and the CPU speed. Both run on the 533 FSB and both are Prescott cores (sans cache)

I would think the 3.06 GHz. speed advantage of the CeleronD would make up for the larger 1M cache of the P4 in most applications, but I'm not really sure if a Linux server would be more sensitive to CPU speed or cache size...

Both chips put out quite a bit of heat so you may have some fan noise keeping it cool. I built a SFF PC for a guy using a 2.53 GHz. CeleronD and he still complains about the fan noise!

 

[Iam8up]

Well...the fact that I could get a CPU that has a 3.06GHz is just...hawt secks...

I'm going to go look around and see if anyone knows the uncertainties you had. Thank you for the reply.

 

[CompGeek]

I'd go for Northwood,a 3+ Ghz one.
No heating problems and excelent performance.

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

The 2.4A PreScott has hyperthreading disabled.

However, as the 31 stage pipeline is memory and cache hungry (Celerons don't scale well), the 2.4A will be the better choice, esp if working with compression / archiving applications like (Win)RAR / www.rarsoft.com

Ditto for several web requests at once.

Ironically the Celeron D will do better in Video Encoding though

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Note: And because your board is a Socket 478 you may need to get a Northwood as mentioned above anyway.... unless it has Socket 478 PreScott core support.

 

[Iam8up]

Are you saying that the 3.06GHz Celeron D will run cooler (and better) then the 2.4GHz Pentium 4?

 

[Iam8up]

The board supports both chipsets. I contacted them personally.

I am hosting a Linux dedicated game server, so which CPU would be better for that?

 

[TabrisDarkPeace]

Then my answer is: The PreScott 2.4A for sure.

You don't want HyperThreading enabled in the BIOS for a game server, unless running 2 game servers at once using just 1 core with HT - which is a bad idea anyway, as the instuction look ahead suffers when HT is enabled unless the code benefits from it. (Long story short: Xbitlabs and/or Anandtech have several technically excellent, in depth, articles regarding this issue.)

That and the 2.4A lacks HT anyway from memory.

The extra L2 cache will help in a dedicated game server as most DediGameServers are:

1 - ALU/FPU intensive
2 - Memory SubSystem / L2 Cache sustained throughput (includes prefetching and branch prediction) intensive
3 - Memory / Cache latency sensitive

In that order.

If the 20% of the code that does 80% of the work (common procedure) will fit within the processors cache, the performance will scale far better, as the cache hit rate will be in the 80-90% range, if it doesn't (Celeron D) the cache hit rate will drop under 60-70% at times.... and that is bad for performance when the action gets heavier in multiplayer games, even when playing on a LAN you'll feel it.

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Suspect that CompGeek was implying that the Northwood core Pentium 4 (with 512 KB L2 cache) actually run cooler than the PreScotts and will perform better at equal clockspeeds even only with said 512 KB L2 cache.

ie: A 3.0 GHz Northwood will outperform a 3.2 GHz PreScott on the same mainboard (assuming it supports both processors).

 

[CompGeek]

Oh,i didn't see that you were going for Celeron. In that case go for 2.4. It'll heat up more but it'll be a much better choice due to performance.

 

[Iam8up]

Thank you both for the excellent information. I really appreciate the effort you've put forth into explaining this to me.

I'm off to grab my gig of ram and Intel CPU =)