cts6288

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I have heard many different opinions and really need some facts. I have believed that a Pentium III is a higher performance machine than a Celeron. But at what processor speed, if any, does the Celeron out perform, lets say, a PIII 550MHz? Differences? Are these cheap Dell and HP boxes that have a Celeron 2GHz+ on them really worth it? Clients have recently been asking me why they are so cheap and that they could probably 'settle' for a cheaper machine. Rebuttles? Thank you.
 

peteroy

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Celerons are always based on the core of their Pentiums brothers. The only difference is that Celerons die is smaller thus it is cheaper to manufacturer them hence the reason why they have less L2 cache.

So, a <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-112-172&depa=1" target="_new">Willamette based Celeron at 1.8Ghz</A> will probably outperform a Pentium 3 550Mhz, for the simple reason of clockspeed and the SSE2 extension that the Pentium 3 is missing.

Today Celerons based on Prescott are called <A HREF="http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=19-112-196&depa=1" target="_new">Celeron D</A> and they are very fast compared to Willimette Celerons, they have 256KB of L2 cache instead of 128KB of L2 cache on Willimette Celeron. They also have the SSE3 extension which Willimette Celerons don't have.


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endyen

Splendid
If they want cheaper, you should steer them to the xp/sempron products. These make even the resonable celeronD chips look bad when it comes to price performance.
You might also want to point out that the celerons get bogged down easily, so, without a careful selection of software, and regular cleaning, the celeron's performance will fall very quickly.
 

Flinx

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If you are referring to the old <b>P3</b> and <b>NOT</b> the <b>P4's</b> then the approximate measure I used to use was that the Celeron was 80% of the P3.

The Willamette based Celerons, as PeteRoy was allude to, suck(ed) big time. Don't dare get those.

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2139&p=6" target="_new"> Some Celerons</A>
<A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/sempron.html" target="_new">Celeron D vs Semprons</A>

Integrate with this information.

<A HREF="http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-27.html" target="_new"> Synthetic Benchmarks - Big Range </A>

<A HREF="http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041019/athlon64_4000-15.html#other" target="_new">Synthetic Benchies - High End 1</A>

<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2275&p=6" target="_new"> Synthetic Benchies - High End 2</A>

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Crashman

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I've told you once, now I'm telling you again: <b>THE COPPERMINE CELLERON AND COPPERMINE PIII USED THE <font color=red>SAME</font color=red> CORE.</b> The Celeron core was <b>NOT SMALLER</b> than the PIII core, and it was <b>NOT CHEAPER TO MAKE.</b> Rather, the core was the SAME and Intel disabled half the cache on the Celeron. <b>THE FULL AMOUNT OF CACHE IS STILL PHYSICALLY PRESENT ON THE CELERON</b>, it was simply disabled.

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Crashman

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Your clients likely don't need much CPU power at all. Most of the applications they're using will probably run on a PIII 550 with 512MB of RAM. Certainly office apps don't need more than a PIII 1000EB and a gig of RAM. And that's good, because many cheap Celeron 2GHz systems have similar performance to a top end PIII 1000EB system of 4 years ago.

So of course the performance sucks, but for most users that doesn't matter.

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cts6288

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So you're saying that they made the same for both, but just disabled it? Now that doesn't make much sense...I mean ok from a performance POV but not from a savings in mass production POV... So the new Celeron D's actually keep up with the old PIII's...damn. Well, anymore comments are always welcome, but thanks for all the advice so far. How about some ratings from best in performance to lowest ranging from PIV's top one down to PIII's 550MHz and the Celerons. Thanks...I'm a visual learner. ;-)
 

Flinx

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Celeron D's are much better than P3's.

What exactly are you looking at. It is not clear what your alternative proposals/solutions were/are?

What alternatives do you have in the price range you're looking at?

Are you into the recycle market? PC that corporations dump cause they are off lease?

Can you please clarify. And did you bother to click the links I gave u?

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cts6288

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Sorry I did look at the links...got a little ahead of myself there. Actually I got a couple PIII's laying around and it used to be that a PIII kicked the old Celeron, but now the new Celeron D's (which I assume are the ones Dell, HP, etc are using with the 2GHz processors) just tear them up. I'm just trying to figure out why and how those companies can sell Celeron systems so cheaply...are they cutting corners in the CPU quality? I just figured they were taking old Celerons and pumping them up.
 

endyen

Splendid
I dont think the celeronD comes in 2ghz. The slowest is 2.4, I think.
The reason they can sell them so cheaply is because they are getting a great deal on all the hardware. They are paying <$40 for the mobo, are buying old stock from intel, etc. Anyone who is interested in one of those, gets what they paid for. Just the same, a P3 is pretty old tech as well.
 

Crashman

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Former Staff
The Celeron 2.0GHz is a P4 with half the cache disabled. A Celeron 1.0GHz is a PIII with half the cache disabled.

Intel gets their greatest number of defects in the cache area, but they can take a P4 with a cache error on one bank, disable that bank, and sell it as a Celeron. That's why they used to do with PIII's too.

Now, it's unlikely Intel produces exactly the right number of chips with cache defects to fill the Celeron market. So it's likely that they're screwing up good chips on purpose to fill orders when they don't have enough screwed up chips to start with.

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RichPLS

Champion
Actually, it makes perfect sense. They only produce one line of P4's. The top ones are the highest speeds. With the rest filling in lower speeds, and then disabling out the cache on the chips which did not meet the critera for P4's into Celerons for the lower end market.
Less waste=more profits and market share

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 

RichPLS

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All chip and RAM companies do this if they can.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 

Flinx

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To expand on Endyen's comments, there area couple of additional reasons.

They buy in huge quantities of 10,000->100,000->??????.

The motherboards tend to have integrated graphics and other design criteria that keeps them inexpensive but maintain reliability. The motherboards tend to be custom made or tweaked designs. The memory provided is minimal, say 256MB. Relatively bare sound. Small disk drives (though plenty big compared to yesterday's). Etc Etc.

Another advantage they have is that they don't have to market individual components. The configurations are standard, try messing with a configuration that's on special and see how fast the price goes up.

For an internet machine, business applications and basic typewriter (WORD, EXCEL) they are priced right and perform adequately. You'll have a hard time matching their price. They also throw in service. Your kid sticks a pencil in the diskette drive. No problem, next day a new one is being shipped to you. Tough act to follow if the machine on special suits your needs.



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Crashman

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Graphics card companies do it too! They often use the same chip to produce many versions: The 6800 Ultra, 6800GT, and 6800 all come from the same chip. People try to enable the disabled pipelines on the cheaper cards to get the performance of the greater cards.

The Radeon 9700 and 9500 used the same chip, the 9500 had half the pipes disabled. The Radeon 9800SE is a Radeon 9800 with half the pipes disabled.

What seems irresponsible is that AMD throws away Athlons with one bank of defective cache and produces the Duron on a separate line (this is more wastefull).

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cts6288

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well I guess you guys do have a good point...just never really thought of it that way. Rebuttles on why clients should not purchase the Dell/HP cheap Celerons?
 

RichPLS

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It depends on what you need the PC for. For office admin, a 1000mhz PC is plenty for correspondence, email, you know, receptionist type work. And HP/Dell are perfect for corporate suppliers, offering stability, flexibility, bulk and good service/support. And they also offer workstation models for the designers, engineers, programmers, etc. and servers for connecting them all up.

But when you are dealing with individuals who may wish to overclock and tweak thier systems for the most bang for the buck, then DIY PC's offer flexibility/performance that Dell/HP do not offer.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 

Flinx

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Rebuttals

TANSTAAFL, There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.

You get what you pay for. Don't expect much and you'll be happy.

======================================================

My company buys lots of "Laptops" instead of "Desktops" and allows people to take them home. Also allows them to connect to work to do things. A laptop costs maybe $1,500 Cdn.. At $100/hr recharge for a persons time it doesn't take much to pay for it. If a person does a few hours of work at home during a year, will pay not only for the purchase but also for the slight extra hassle of managing it, never mind that its only an increamental cost. And the PC's get obsoleted every three years.

Note, however, that people do not have "Admin" rights on the PC. The installed software images are as "standard" as possible for ease of admin.

I feel that you should give this idea serious consideration.

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peteroy

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Crashman, how do you know what Intel and AMD use for Celerons and Durons? How you know that AMD throws away bad Athlons and Intel makes their bad Pentiums Celerons?

Where did you get all this "insider" info?

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RichPLS

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You question the authority of Crash?!? :eek:

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 

peteroy

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I don't really know him so I wonder how can he possibilly know all what he says? how can I know it true?

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peteroy

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Did I say I think he is incorrect?

I can't prove him wrong because I don't know myself whether what he said is right or wrong, what is interesting me is how he know what he said.

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