Is the celeron e1200 faster than the pentium 4 516 processor

Here is as close of a comparison as I could find.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/71?vs=92

So yes.

MUCH faster actually, it will also run much cooler and use less power; considering the P4 516 is a 90nm 3Ghz 1M HT-less part.

No,Never,The celeron is 1.6Ghz is a dual core with low clocks and the P4 is 2.93Ghz which is a high clocked single core !I think still the p4 wins in most place due to its higher clock speed!

my friend has a p4 2.8 lga 775 single core and a pentium d 2.8 dual core,the only difference i felt was in vista experience index, p4 scored 4.2 and penium d scored 4.3!  

You could not be more wrong. Clockspeed means nothing when comparing different uArch.