[Ham-Computers] Seleron Vs Pentium

[Philip Atchley]

Duane,

This is from "How Stuff Works".

***************************
Here are the most important similarities and differences between the 
Pentium 4 and the Celeron chips coming out today:

    * *Core* - The Celeron chip is based on a Pentium 4 core.

    * *Cache* - Celeron chips have less cache memory
      <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cache.htm> than Pentium 4 chips
      do. A Celeron might have 128 kilobytes of L2 cache, while a
      Pentium 4 can have four times that. The amount of L2 Cache memory
      can have a big effect on performance.

    * *Clock speed* - Intel manufactures the Pentium 4 chips to run at a
      higher clock speed than Celeron chips. The fastest Pentium 4 might
      be 60 percent faster than the fastest Celeron.

    * *Bus speed* - There are differences in the maximum bus speeds that
      the processors allow. Pentium 4s tend to be about 30 percent
      faster than Celerons.

When you sort all this out and compare the two chips side by side, it 
turns out that a Celeron and a Pentium 4 chip running at the same speed 
are different beasts. The smaller L2 cache size and slower bus speeds 
can mean serious performance differences depending on what you want to 
do with your computer <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/pc.htm>. If all 
you do is check e-mail and browse the Web, the Celeron is fine, and the 
price difference can save you a lot of money. If you want the fastest 
machine you can buy, then you need to go with the Pentium 4 to get the 
highest clock speeds and the fastest system bus.
*************************************************

And, from the "Computer Processor" website.

******************************************


Intel's Celeron processor gained a bad reputation among overclocking 
enthusiasts even before the first one hit the market. It was designed 
for easy computer tasks, not for gaming. The latest generation, however 
-- the Celeron D -- just might inspire overclockers to take another look 
at this Rodney Dangerfield of CPUs.

If you have been looking at processors prices lately, you may notice 
that they aren’t cheap by any means. Pentium 4s start at $150 and range 
over $640, and those aren't even their fastest chips. The Pentium 4 
Extreme Editions can go for $1,000 easy. Who has that kind of money to 
burn on a CPU alone? On the other end of Intel’s shelf are the Celerons. 
These are their cheap CPU solutions. Today we will take a look at their 
newest Celerons.

Have you ever gone to a LAN party and saw everyone packing water cooled 
Celerons? Most likely not; many people consider Celerons to be garbage. 
Why is that? Well, Intel even treats the Celerons as below par. Here is 
what Intel’s site says about the Celeron:

/The Intel® Celeron® D processor delivers a balanced level of proven 
technology and exceptional value for desktop PCs./

Here’s what they say about the Pentium 4:

/The latest Pentium 4 Processor <http://www.devhardware.com/#> 
supporting Hyper-Threading Technology † includes 2 MB of L2 cache to 
provide performance and flexibility for your content creation needs now 
and supports Intel® EM64T for flexibility for future software that 
support increased memory addressability. /

Which one sounds more interesting to you?

Intel hasn’t really been challenged in the budget market until the 
Celeron. Some say the previous generation of Celerons were terrible 
compared to this generations Celeron D. The Celeron Ds aren’t going to 
compare with the Pentium 4 EEs, or many of the Pentium 4s for that 
matter, but they should give respectable scores, and who knows, may even 
keep up with the big boys.

What does the “D” mean? The “D” doesn’t stand for anything. It is merely 
a way of distinguishing the current generation of Celerons from past 
generations. The Celeron and Celeron D are two totally different CPUs. 
The Celeron uses the Northwood core built on 130nm, and has 128k L2 
cache. The default FSB is 100 MHz. The Celeron D uses the newer, but not 
always better, Prescott core built on 90nm, and has 256k L2 cache. The 
default FSB is slightly higher at 133 MHz.

The Celeron D adds support for SSE3. The higher FSB and more cache will 
help the performance of the newer Celerons, but the Prescott core won’t 
help much. The pipelines are longer on the Prescott, meaning that at the 
same speed, it takes longer for the data to travel through the Prescott 
core than the Northwood. The Prescott core does allow faster clock 
speeds, so you will be able to clock the Celeron D faster than the 
Celerons generally. At this point the Celeron seems obsolete; I wouldn’t 
go with anything but the Celeron D.

What’s the difference between the Pentium 4 and the Celeron D? Should I 
start with the $100 to $500 price difference? The Pentium 4 comes in 
both Northwood and Prescott Cores. They sport between 512k to 2 MB of L2 
Cache. The newer, high end Pentium 4s have 64-bit capability. Nearly all 
Pentium 4s have Hyper-Threading, which is missing from the Celeron Ds. 
This will impact multitasking, but if you don’t use many programs at the 
same time, the difference won’t be noticeable. There’s not a lot of 
difference, but what is different impacts the computer’s performance. We 
will see to what extent in the next section.

73 de Phil KO6BB

Duane Fischer, W8DBF wrote:

>	
>Hello All, 	
>	
>Forgive my spelling of the Seleron CPU, as being blind and having never 'seen'
>this word spelled anywhere, I have to guess. 		
>	
>Besides the obvious lower cost, what are the primary differences between this
>processor and the Pentium #4?  	
>	
>If I opt for a machine using one running at 2.6 GHZ, what am I losing out on?	
>	
>Thank you.	
>	
>Duane W8DBF 
>	
>
>_______________________________________________
>Ham-Computers mailing list
>Ham-Computers at mailman.qth.net
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>
>
>  
>


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