E1200 Versus E2160

The E2160 performs a lot better than the dual Celeron at the same clock rate, due to difference in architecture. Not all "ghz" are equal. Get it.

And will it bottleneck a Geforce 7950 GX2?

Just how much better will it perform?

PS: Still think your wrong on the architecture thing.

it has half the cache disabled, and is probably a lower binned chip. without an imc, the cache really matters significantly.

Here's the straight answer: For gaming, get the Pentium. That Celeron e1200 is a great buy for general usage and multimedia/encoding applications. The low L2 cache on the Celeron severely hampers gaming though. The Pentium e2160 is significantly stronger is gaming because of it's larger L2 cache. If you just wanted to get a cpu for encoding work, I would recommend the Celeron, but for gaming, you need to go for the Pentium.

Benchmarks I'm sure you've already seen:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/c [...] e1200.html
In this review you see that on overage it takes a Celeron dual core running at 2.4 GHz to match the gaming performance of the Pentium e2160, running at stock 1.8GHz.

2nd review giving "different" results:
http://computermonger.com/intel-ce [...] eview.html
please note that in this review the person used a 7300GT. Obviously the graphics card bottlenecked the CPUs, allowing the Celeron to appear similar to the Pentium in games. Since you're using a better graphics card, expect to see better performance with the Pentium, like xbitlabs reports.

About architecture:

E1200
http://processorfinder.intel.com/d [...] pec=SLAQW#

E2160
http://processorfinder.intel.com/d [...] spec=sla3h

Looking under "VID" . You would notice that the E2160 can tolerate higher voltages meaning more OC. Also not sure why, but Intel doesn't list the multiplier for the E1200.

shadow, you really have to understand that the dual core celeron is the same chip as a dual core Pentium, with half the cache disabled. That means, it'll have the same vid range (I see the s-specs show different, but the white papers reveal they're actually the same), and same overclcock potential as a Pentium e2140. Also, a Celeron e1200 is just fine for encoding. YOU may not prefer it, but the difference in performance between a Celeron at 3.0GHz and an E6850 at stock for encoding work is less than 10%. You would know all of this if you would just bother to look at the xbitlabs link I posted.

2.4GHz max overclock? lol....where did you come up with that?

celerons are the most crappy cpus ever made. it is a budget cpu. once i had a celeron (of socket 478) and it was terrible. i would prefer a pentium II than a celeron. even if it comes with 2 cores it's the same philosophy, otherwise why would they name it like that. maybe they're build with the same core 2 architecture but i think you'll be disappointed if you'll get one. gaming is their "enemy".

from the experience i got with my old computer i would never go with a celeron even if i'll have to live without a computer

yes it is better to go with E2160 they belong to different family, different architectures
oh, no i am not sure if the new E1200 is the same architecture as the E2160
but i am sure E2160 performs better

oh cool it seems that l2 cache is the main difference so can any one tell me the relationship between L2 cache and overclocking potential?

Anyone know the pipeline depth on both (obviously the same if they're on tthe same architecture...lol)

Thanks!

I second the necro nomination award. Should have been a new thread. Anyway, the pipeline depth of the Allendale (which the the arch that these two cpus are based on) should be the same as that of Conroe. A very simple google search with the terms "Conroe" "Stage" and "pipeline" will tell you that it is a 14 stage pipeline. Welcome to googling.