Celeron vs. Pentium 4 - ???

[Thread Bear]

Is it worth paying extra for a Pentium 4? What would I actually be paying for?

Has the Celeron improved to such an extent that it offers parallel performance at a cheaper cost? I've heard they (Intel) have actually stopped making it - anyone know if this is true? Was told that the computer shops are trying to get rid of stock so will encourage buying a Celeron.

Which one should I go for... use in a laptop where it will be primarily used for mail, internet, MS Office applications, Photoshop applications.

All help is MUCH appreciated.

[ck4707]

Yoy say you use Photoshop. If you intend to carry out some serious graphics work go for the Pentium or an AMD XP. The Celeron is good but performance is weak when undertaking the heavy processing some graphical applications need.

Hope this helps

CK

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Thread Bear,

The PIV based Celerons are low yield crippled PIVs. When the Celerons were made from the PIII this was not a big deal and the performance between the PIII and the PIII based Celeron were very close.

The PIV, do to IMHO the lousy design and the compromises Intel made in order to get the higher clock speeds, it heavily relies on its L2 cache. The PIV based Celeron is a PIV where the die was not good enough to have the full L2 cache and was turned in to a Celeron.

Celeron core is only outfitted with a 128KB L2 cache instead of the 256KB cache present on the original PIV, much less than the 512KB on the current PIVs.

There are a few situations where the Celeron would clearly benefit from a 256KB L2 cache; the two areas that immediately come to mind are general usage/office productivity and 3D games, both of which are in desperate need of more cache in order to gain better performance on the Celeron platform. With that said, the Celeron in its current shape does perform well as a general use desktop processor and brings an appropriate level of performance at a very cheap price.

Still the best price/performance is the Athlon XP line. When talking desktops, for the price of a 2.4Ghz Celeron you can get an AthlonXP 2500+ with a Barton Core, which will run circles around the celeron.

When talking notebooks, it all comes down to what you plan on doing with the notebook, whether you should go PIV or Celeron.

Take Care,

Richard

[Front_Seat_Dreamer]

Have to agree (again) with Naples.

I would always personally go for P4 but it really depends on how much heavy (graphical) work you intend doing, not just viewing digital pictures. However I have found that using the faster celerons they do manage the job.

Look at the AMD Xp options as in the past I have found that a few months down the line you can usually swap the processor for something newer, Intel chips have caused more problems in this area, so again it depends on how into your computer you are going to get.

Have you considered building your own PC as this can also save you a few coppers in the long run, though it is sometimes a better idea to get the shop to do it. Though there is nothing more satisfying than transforming that pile of bits into a working PC. That does make me sound quite sad - wife is right I need to get out more.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Front_Seat_Dreamer,

I think it is great fun building your own PC, but I think Thread Bear should buy the Notebook instead of trying to build one. Notebooks are not for the first time builders.

Take Care,

Richard

[amanoffewwords]

I install PCs for a major manufacturer of PCs - that will remain nameless -- but suffice to say that I can always tell that a notebook/laptop has a Celeron inside 'cause it has a tendency to st...st..stu..stutt...stutter a little as it chugs along - I'd stay away from Cs if I were you - if only 'cause once you got it it ain't exactly easy to slip in another board or different CPU to speed things up.

P4 for me thanks.

Cheers

[Thread Bear]

Thanks so much for your feedback.

Front Seat, no I don't think I've got the expertise to put together my own machine. I'm happy for it to come already made from the shop.

Richard, thanks for the breakdown. There is so much information on the net regards celeron vs. pentium but it requires reading loads and loads of screen type that hardly makes any sense to me.

ck4707, as far as my Photoshop use goes it is creating multi layer graphics etc. Wouldn't say heavy usage but potential to be busy at times.

amanoffew, your comment just about has me sold on the P4.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts.

Cheers... TB

[fobotcso]

Three-penn'orth to add to the above informed comments.

Why laptop? Will it be mostly mains-powered and is preferred for its portability?

Or will it be used in the field and on batteries? If so, consider the battery life and whether the processor can benefit from the sort of power management used by Sony on the Transmeta Crusoe in my Vaios. CPU frequency (and power consumption) can be made adaptive to the processes running. This feature can be seen to be working and be irritating but it can also be disabled for static use on mains power allowing the processor to run at full speed.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

fobotcso,

To add to your point. A desktop machine will have greater performance. The notebook uses slower graphics, hard drives, etc. in order to save on power and heat output. You will get a better bang for the buck out of a desktop, and Mhz per Mhz the desktop will outperform the notebook every time.

Take Care,

Richard