"Lo-cost Duel:..." missed the boat

[Guest]

Greetings. I was a little disappointed in the article today comparing Duron (aka dindo=turkey) vs. Celeron (celery). The authors would have us believe that one "...can't get more performance for so little money." Unfortunately, they neglected to include the most interesting cpu out there, in the category of getting the most computing for the lowest cost: Via C3. The article should have compared C3 (FSB 133) with celery and dindo (both FSB 100). Comparing SiSoft Sandra Cpu bench on all three at 833 would have been interesting and informative. If the costs included not only the cpu cost, but also the heat sink and fan needed for celery and dindo, but not C3, then the authors could have meaningfully discussed price performance. Overclocking could have addressed not simply increasing the multiplier, but also problems associated with raising FSB to 133 in celery and dindo. The real benchmark for performance ought to include price not only for motherboard (as the authors introduced), cpu & cooling fan, but also operational costs for electricity extrapolated over a three year lifetime. Sure, this is irrelevant for a single machine, but how about the savings for institutions that have hundreds of machines in small rooms, with cooling requirements for those rooms added in as additional costs to be considered. If the authors want to present a meaningful comparison of the price/performance ratio of cpu's available today, then they ought to address the question: How much POWER does one require to achieve a comparable performance, not simply How much POWER does cpu 1 exhibit when performing shootem dukem killem nukem compared with cpu 2. I will not accept the author's conclusions--"You just don't get more POWER for your money." until they include the performance and costs, all of the costs, of the C3, celery and dindo. Cheers, HDNB

 

[SammyBoy]

I think the point of the review was to show the fastest, newest offerings in the low cost section, and while including a VIA CPU may have been an admirable feat, the review tone would have to be completely changed. Both Intel and AMD just released their low-cost CPUs, so, a comparison was needed, since for the last quarter or two, Duron had a sizeable lead over the Celeron.

-SammyBoy

 

[Guest]

Did I miss something? How can we be talking about the Duron 1100 being the best power/cost solution for $103 when you can buy a full-blown Athlon 1200 for $83? Did the Duron pass the Athlon's performance when I wasn't looking? I'm confused.

 

[SammyBoy]

Good catch. I'd have to say, that unless you were planning on a 1GHz machine or less, it'd be better to go Athlon than Duron. Unless of course, you really want the Morgan core. But, as for the Intel side of things, that's a nice CPU they have there. Too bad the multiplier is locked, or you could drop that, raise the FSB to 133, and have a heck of a CPU for a low price. But, maybe as the core is refined, you'll be able to bump up the FSB to 133, and end up with a 1600 Celery. Not too shabby, eh?

-SammyBoy