OT: P4 1.5Ghz vs Celeron 2.0Ghz

[MiKman]

I have a chance to upgrade? to a Celeron 2.0Ghz from a P4 1.5Ghz (same FSB 400Mhz). Am I gonna get much more out of the celeron, if any, than I am out of the P4?  how can one measure this really?

Thanks for any insight. and I apologize if I posted in the wrong place.

MiKman

[paigeoliver]

That is not an upgrade. Keep your P4.

[Matt Berry]

Keep the P4, celerons are junk.

[Wienerdog]

Keep the P4, celerons are junk.

That's not good information.  Celerons were junk six years ago, they are an okay budget solution now.  The real question here that you are ignorig is, (assuming there is a game that needs a 2ghz clock speed) does MAME make use of any of the upgraded features of the P4 over the Celeron (extra cache, etc).

I say keep your P4, especially if you would be paying anything for th upgrade.

[paigeoliver]

Keep the P4, celerons are junk.

That's not good information.  Celerons were junk six years ago, they are an okay budget solution now.  The real question here that you are ignorig is, (assuming there is a game that needs a 2ghz clock speed) does MAME make use of any of the upgraded features of the P4 over the Celeron (extra cache, etc).

I say keep your P4, especially if you would be paying anything for th upgrade.

I agree, but overall a Celeron 2.0 is still a downgrade for a P4 1.5.

But I still really don't see them as even a good budget solution, they underperform every other chip available at the same price point. We have a few Celeron 2.0 systems at work that can't even seem to hang with my old P3 733 laptop, much less a REAL P4.

[dabone]

Celerons and p4 even with the same fsb have major internal differences.

Your p4 is a Willamette core processor with the following specs.

8KB data (4-way)
12k &##181;ops trace instruction (8-way)
256KB on-Die unified L2 (8-way)
* 4GB cacheable

A 2.0Ghz celeron has roughly the same specs, except it chopped down the cache to 128k and that is only 4 way.

A 2.0ghz celeron is based off the northwood core, So for noncache related the celeron would be a hair faster, but overall the p4 1.5 will still beat it for overall performance because of the larger cache and double the bandwidth to get to it.

Also, most boards that can run the old 1.5ghz cpus are not compatible with the new chips you would buy today. Same socket but very different voltage requirements.

Later,
dabone

[Wienerdog]

<edit>I like dabone's answer better, listen to him</edit>

I agree, but overall a Celeron 2.0 is still a downgrade for a P4 1.5.

But I still really don't see them as even a good budget solution, they underperform every other chip available at the same price point. We have a few Celeron 2.0 systems at work that can't even seem to hang with my old P3 733 laptop, much less a REAL P4.

Yes, we're in agreement on the P4 1.5 to Cel 2.0 decision.

[paigeoliver]

This is going completely by feel of course. Remember, a system with a Celeron also tends to have crappy EVERYTHING. When you have shared memory video, 128 MB of ram for Windows XP and whatever the smallest slowest hard drive available when Dell was shipping that computer, well, an honest to goodness P3 733 MHZ with 512 RAM an actual video chipset with actual video ram and a hard drive that cost more than $29.95 seems darn good.

[MonitorGuru]

> "Celerons are junk"

Wrong ---- Depends on the series of chip. Celeron D's are much improved....compare for yourself.

Go to this extensive review to see a comparsion of most every major AMD and Intel chip released in the last 10 years. WELL worth reading the perf charts:

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20041221/cpu_charts-13.html

Page through all the comparisons, dont just read that one chart.



Edit: Removed my opinions... Everyone should review all the charts above and make their own decisions.

[Wienerdog]

MG,
Sure, but what monitor would you use?

[tommy]

I have a 1.70celeron are these able to be upgraded , im not sure if its hard wired of not.

[Wienerdog]

MG, I respect your opinion on this topic, but didn't you just break all your rules?

Page through all the comparisons, dont just read that one chart.

As a reference on just the first chart above, a P4 1.5 performs FASTER than a Celeron Northwood at 2.6  !!!

------

P4 1.5 performs FASTER than a Celeron Northwood at 2.6

You left out the fact that that was a Willamette P4 compared to a Northwood Celeron.  That same Northwood Celeron outperformed a Northwood P4 1.6 on that chart. 

Back to my earlier comment, I'm not sure the Quake III Arena 1.16 benchmark is a good benchmark for MAME use. 

Don't get me wrong, you know more about this than I do.  I agree with the notion that there is more to this that the Celeron name.

[Matt Berry]

First off I'm very familiar with Toms hardware, that article and the poor performance shown through out the years by the celeron core. Lets look at a few performance vs price comparisons for the celeron processors. Lets look at the Direct x numbers, the 2.6 celeron received super low numbers, and wasn't even a contender, the 2.8 celeron did better but still was outpaced by the AMD Barton 2500+. Price wise the celeron is around 80-100 where as the faster AMD 2500+ runs the same price. I have built numerous systems and have had to fix a lot of numerous PC's through out the years. I usually use the Pacman test to see how the machine is running, and every time the Celerons have returned sub par numbers. So in the end you can buy the cheap processor with less cache (because you think it doesn't make a difference) or you can buy a processor with lots of cache and see, hey this extra cache does make a difference.

[Lilwolf]

DON'T GO CELERYS....

why?  They are usually about 10% slower then their big brothers...  And about 15% cheaper...

Well thats all good... So whats the problem?

The speed difference shows up even MORE in emulation.  Every graph you show up might be double the difference in terms of emulation...  The lack of cache really really shows up when your dealing with very low level code... and emulating a cpu core seems to push it.

btw, I haven't tried the -D chips... But unless the redesigned whats cheapa bout their cheap line... I would stay away.


btw, for the price... Athlons at those prices are usually MUCH better then intels... Assuming that you have the motherboard..

[AceTKK]

If you have a Fry's electronics in your area your best bet is to watch their sales ad for an Athlon/Motherboard combo deal.  For around $100 you can get a very nice mid-range solution.  Add a stick of ram and the hard drive from your old system and you'll have a system that will run circles around what you're used to.

-Ace-

[drunkatuw]

I replaced my athlon T-bird 1.4 (overclocked to 1.5) with the $199 black friday emachine special which I believe was a celeron D 2.6ghz and the difference is day and night, the new machine is a ton faster and games which were choppy and annoying now play very smoothly.  My old athlon also had I believe a 133mhz fsb vs. the celeron's 266, and DDR ram vs. SDRAM, so there were many differences, so I can't contribute the performance increase only to the CPU, but games are definitely faster now.

[Matt Berry]

Cpu wise in some aspects the celeron 2.6 out performs the Amd 1.4 ghz. As for a night and day difference I don't think it has much to do with the processor, it probably stems more from the different video card, memory, motherboard and hard drive.
This may not be a popular view, but when building for speed and stability the cpu should be your last concearn. In order of importance.
1. Power Supply - Key for stability
2. Memory - Everything uses memory, buy quality low latancy
3. Hard Drive - Needs cooling - Fast hard drive = faster system (Try a Raptor)
4. Motherboard - A bad design will slow your system dramaticly
5. Video card (not as important to Mame)
6. Cpu - if you ignored the first items your system may be running slower then you expect.
On another note, Operating System also plays a huge factor in speed. If your computer was cluttered with junk then a new computer would seem faster. Xp also runs slower then 98 untill you tweak it.