Celeron? or Pentium 4?

[Noodle Boy]

Hey everyone,

I'm looking to buy a processor for my computer, and I'm kind of torn between 2 processors. I am looking for an intel processor with a 400mhz fsb for socket 478. I went to newegg and i found a 2.8ghz celeron RETAIL and a 2.6Ghz Pentium 4 OEM. Should i get the p4 or the celeron? I know the logical choice is the p4, but I don't know if i should trust it being OEM, not having the warranty and the heatsink/fan. I'm installing the new processor on a dell, so i know i can just use the dell heatsink/fan for it. By the way the 2.8 retail is cheaper than the 2.6 oem, so in terms of price/performance/bang-for-your-buck, which processor would you recommend?

[ComputerBox34]

A P4 would be better but AMD is probably the best processor you can use for gaming.

I'm assuming this machine will be usued for gaming otherwise this is the wrong forum.

[Noodle Boy]

yeah it will b used for gaming but my mobo only supports socket 478 so im stuck with intel

[FanZ]

personally, for games: P4 is clearly better than a celeron of only 200MHz higher clocked. The P4 has higher cache, and it does clearly make a difference.

what games do you play?

[Killdozer]

The fastest celeron is slower than a P4 1.8Ghz

[peltman78]

Definetely a P4 out of those two, but I would also look at the socket 754 A64 2800+. It will spank both those chips easily.

[nst6563]

If you do ANY gaming at all...get the P4. the P4 2.6 will be better than the Celery 2.8 just because of the cache. There are some things that the celery would be faster at...but for most purposes the p4 will trounce it.

My friend has a celeron 2.6 and the ONLY thing it's decent for is a dedicated game server. We tried playing a game on it while running a server...choked....playing the game...choked....running a non-graphical dedicated server worked ok (SW: Battlefront is the game we were using at the time).

but it really depends on what you'll be doing with it. if you just want a cheap system for doing office/internet stuff on, the celery would work. but anything else I'd recommend the p4.

I wouldn't worry about the OEM either, if it's going in a Dell, you won't be overclocking it anyway.

[NeghVar]

you want to be careful of OEM CPUs. Warranties usually do not apply to OEM CPUs and some other components. Memory sometimes too. The P4 2.6GHz outperforms the celeron all the way. Either way though, avoid OEM. Find a full fledge P4 but make sure its retail

[NeghVar]

I wouldn't worry about the OEM either, if it's going in a Dell, you won't be overclocking it anyway.

If you're upgrading a Dell, you need to go through Dell. Dell is purely intel and Intel make a special set of CPUs made to work in Dell systems only. They have a certain signature inside them. If you upgrade a P4 dell to a higher P4 but buy retail instead of Dell, it won't work. Same if you move a Dell P4 to a non-dell motherboard

[Dan_D]

The Celeron has a castrated FSB (Only 400MHz) but even with Pentium 4's at 400MHz, you've got 512K cache instead of 128K. Makes a big difference.

I don't agree with the comment about a 2.8GHz Celery being as fast as a Pentium 4 1.8, clock speed makes more of a difference than that.

But still, I had a Celery running at 533FSB and running at 3.0GHz, and it couldn't best my Northwood 2.0A overclocked to 2.4GHz on the same motherboard and system. So that should tell you plenty right there.

[Noodle Boy]

personally, for games: P4 is clearly better than a celeron of only 200MHz higher clocked. The P4 has higher cache, and it does clearly make a difference.

what games do you play?

i play shooters mostly....CSS these days, and half life 2 soon

[Noodle Boy]

If you're upgrading a Dell, you need to go through Dell. Dell is purely intel and Intel make a special set of CPUs made to work in Dell systems only. They have a certain signature inside them. If you upgrade a P4 dell to a higher P4 but buy retail instead of Dell, it won't work. Same if you move a Dell P4 to a non-dell motherboard
Ill check that out right now, hopefully it won't cost more, or as much as a non dell p4 would.

edit: ahh i dont know how to order cpus off of dell. do i just call them up or what?

[Killdozer]

The Celeron has a castrated FSB (Only 400MHz) but even with Pentium 4's at 400MHz, you've got 512K cache instead of 128K. Makes a big difference.

I don't agree with the comment about a 2.8GHz Celery being as fast as a Pentium 4 1.8, clock speed makes more of a difference than that.

But still, I had a Celery running at 533FSB and running at 3.0GHz, and it couldn't best my Northwood 2.0A overclocked to 2.4GHz on the same motherboard and system. So that should tell you plenty right there.

Here you go.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=1927&p=10

P4 1.8Ghz smoking celeron 2.6, and the margin is big enough that a 2.8Celeron would still loose.

Even a Duron 1.6Ghz smokes the Celeron 2.6 in almost everything.

[nst6563]

If you're upgrading a Dell, you need to go through Dell. Dell is purely intel and Intel make a special set of CPUs made to work in Dell systems only. They have a certain signature inside them. If you upgrade a P4 dell to a higher P4 but buy retail instead of Dell, it won't work. Same if you move a Dell P4 to a non-dell motherboard

Where did you come up with this b/s???

We have about 150 Dell's at work and I've swapped cpus on them with no problem. Both 2.66ghz 533fsb and 2.8ghz 800fsb cpus in the same boards. Hell, I've even got my spare 3.0c which was bought off Newegg running in my GX270 at work that did have a 2.66 in it.

The cpu's are made by Intel, not Dell, and they all come off the same assembly line as the rest of them. If Intel was making "special" cpu's for dell, do you have any idea how much that would cost? To dedicate part of a fab to making ONLY dell cpus?? It would be expensive enough that you couldn't just go pick up a Dell for $400 including monitor...even if it was just a celeron.

[PersonMan]

You do realize that for the money you'd spend on a retail P4 you could get an XP and a new motherboard to go with it, right?

I personally would not worry about an OEM chip - the chance that you're going to get a bad one and need the warranty is very small, especially if you aren't overclocking. As for not coming with a heatsink/fan, you probably want to get something other than a stock heatsink anyway.

[NowhereMan]

Whatever you do, avoid Celerons for gaming. Go with P4 anytime.

[NeghVar]

Where did you come up with this b/s???

We have about 150 Dell's at work and I've swapped cpus on them with no problem. Both 2.66ghz 533fsb and 2.8ghz 800fsb cpus in the same boards. Hell, I've even got my spare 3.0c which was bought off Newegg running in my GX270 at work that did have a 2.66 in it.

The cpu's are made by Intel, not Dell, and they all come off the same assembly line as the rest of them. If Intel was making "special" cpu's for dell, do you have any idea how much that would cost? To dedicate part of a fab to making ONLY dell cpus?? It would be expensive enough that you couldn't just go pick up a Dell for $400 including monitor...even if it was just a celeron.

My experience as a PC tech says otherwise. Unless every such case I've had was purely coincidence

[Mr_Evil]

If you're upgrading a Dell, you need to go through Dell. Dell is purely intel and Intel make a special set of CPUs made to work in Dell systems only. They have a certain signature inside them. If you upgrade a P4 dell to a higher P4 but buy retail instead of Dell, it won't work. Same if you move a Dell P4 to a non-dell motherboard

Mr Evil is unavailable right now because he's too busy laughing hysterically at your bullshit post.

Seriously, I'm a Dell Certified Tech and I do warranty work for them. I receive Retail Boxed Intel Proceesors ALL THE TIME for notebooks and desktop systems as replacements. The BOX is Intel factory sealed and is the same damn thing you can buy from any vendor. Dell didn't doctor the processors, not even their motherboards. Hell if I'm not mistaken Intel makes Dell's motherboards. You probably couldn't get a processor swap to work due to an id-10-t error. (Yes, I know that joke is old, but it's just so applicable to this situation.)

[Nasty_Savage]

Untrue. Stock processor swaps work fine.

[nst6563]

My experience as a PC tech says otherwise. Unless every such case I've had was purely coincidence


I'd say something else was awry when you were working on them then. Before my current job I was Dell certified on their laptops, desktops, and server...and NONE of them EVER had any special cpu requirements other than the fact that for the Dual CPU server boards you needed a Processor Terminator board if you only had one cpu installed.

The days of that level of propriety are looooonnggg gone from the consumer market. It costs too much money to be that proprietary, and on top of that you end up losing customers because of the cost...Compaq, IBM and DEC learned this the hard way.

[BuSHyFr0]

Celerons suck...

[Syphon Filter]

Celerons suck...

They dont suck, they are just aimed at a different market.

If you are stuck with having to get an intel get a P4.

Otherwise, as others suggest...get a 754 board and a64.

[Staples]

No question about it, P4. AMD 64s are also a good choice but I'd wait till the NForce4 chipset comes out in 2-3 weeks.

[MatixWSTfoLiFE]

sadly but true i have a 2.4ghz celeron with a gig of ram a abit mobo and a gigabyte 9200 radeon vid card and i play day of defeat, hitman, need for speed underground, and battlefield no problem, im not saying get a celeron tho lol get a p4 for sure

[Noodle Boy]

Yeah I'll be going with the OEM 2.6Ghz intel. hopefully there should be no problem swapping out the cpus, oh and i gotta get some thermal paste. And a stick of 512 ram. I have a noob question: which is better, 512mb of ddr ram or 768mb of sdr ram?

[ComputerBox34]

Yeah I'll be going with the OEM 2.6Ghz intel. hopefully there should be no problem swapping out the cpus, oh and i gotta get some thermal paste. And a stick of 512 ram. I have a noob question: which is better, 512mb of ddr ram or 768mb of sdr ram?

You have to check your mobo's manual and make sure it can support that type of RAM.

My tip:

Buy the same exact stick that you got when you built the computer. That's what I did when I recently upgraded.

[Noodle Boy]

yeah i know, but i just want to know if 512ddr gives better performance than 768sdr, im gonna get the same memory as the one in my comp

[Warmonkey]

Celeron is pure weakness.

This is [H]. No weakness or budget cpu's allowed.

If you recommend a celeron for gaming, your not a gamer.

Cache is a major factor in performance. More is better, accept with the 478 prescotts, where the longer pipeline off sets the 1mb L2 cache.

I recommend a 2.4 to 2.8 P4 c. Great processors

[finalgt]

I don't get how people see this thread and think the logical thing to recommend is, "Get an Athlon 64, it's the fastest for games!" It's true...but he's deciding between a P4 2.6 and 2.8 Celly. Do you suppose he has the budget to just go ahead and upgrade his RAM, Mobo and Processor? If he did, wouldn't he have asked what the best gaming system he could get for the money is, rather than "which of these two processors would be best in my situation?" See, that's how the advice system works...some people have problems grasping that.

And yeah, as a few others have said the P4 would definitely be a better investment.

[nst6563]

yeah i know, but i just want to know if 512ddr gives better performance than 768sdr, im gonna get the same memory as the one in my comp

the 512ddr hands down will give better performance. There almost isn't a comparison really.

[MatixWSTfoLiFE]

eh...

[Nasty_Savage]

No P4 motherboard will support SDR. DDR and SDR are not the same. DDR hits twice per clock cycle. Even more SDR Ram will NOT give you the same performance. What model Dell are you trying to upgrade? If its an older Dell, it may not support a 2.6, you may need to be specific (and hopefully it isn't so old you need RDRam :eek: :D )

[texuspete00]

wow! I'm really saddenned this forum has gone downhill like this. Matix has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Standard DDR400 (200MHz) runs 1.5 times faster in MHz then old PC133 and to boot transfers twice per clock. 3 times faster is nothing to sneeze at. Add dual channel... 6 freaking times faster! Who even gives a shit because it's what the board takes that matters.

Digital signatures thing in Dell cpu's is also a big crook. I can see him saying from his personal experience it doesnt work.... fine... but the funny thing is with that digital signature thing maybe a noob would think he knew what he was talking about. I mean where in the hell was something like this learned? It's a straight up unexplainable pile of shit. I never get that. People so wrong, and so sure, then comes the um... "proof." It just seems odd, like someone is being intentionally misleading. Why do people talk like they know and back it up with something only god knows where the heck they got something like that from. How can something be backed up with "facts".. then conceeded well it just doesnt work for me. Only thing I can think of is somebody else that doesnt know a stick of ram from a harddrive told them this. To people that know, it sounds like saying porches are faster because they are red... it's like did he really just say that? I find it especially hilarious that after this they claim... I'm a PC tech! Yeah fucking right.

Anyways, the p4 architecture (yes, this means celerons based on it too... often called netburst arch.) thrive on cache. They need it to do well as they are meant to scale, not be the most efficent cpu, they need to keep the pipeline full and shoving shit through. Your current system may only support up to a certain cpu, if the system is a certain age, it might not support what you want. Often only a few step ups can be made and might not be all worth it. Let us know what you got... cause for instance if you currently have a celeron on a Dell decent board, then a P4 will fit in nicely.

[Bane]

wow! I'm really saddenned this forum has gone downhill like this. Matix has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Standard DDR400 (200MHz) runs 1.5 times faster in MHz then old PC133 and to boot transfers twice per clock. 3 times faster is nothing to sneeze at. Add dual channel... 6 freaking times faster! Who even gives a shit because it's what the board takes that matters.

Digital signatures thing in Dell cpu's is also a big crook. I can see him saying from his personal experience it doesnt work.... fine... but the funny thing is with that digital signature thing maybe a noob would think he knew what he was talking about. I mean where in the hell was something like this learned? It's a straight up unexplainable pile of shit. I never get that. People so wrong, and so sure, then comes the um... "proof." It just seems odd, like someone is being intentionally misleading. Why do people talk like they know and back it up with something only god knows where the heck they got something like that from. How can something be backed up with "facts".. then conceeded well it just doesnt work for me. Only thing I can think of is somebody else that doesnt know a stick of ram from a harddrive told them this. To people that know, it sounds like saying porches are faster because they are red... it's like did he really just say that? I find it especially hilarious that after this they claim... I'm a PC tech! Yeah fucking right.

Oh Snap!

All I know is that P4's are great processors.

[texuspete00]

I apologize for losing control but sheesh..

A participant to a thread unsure about something should say so when participating. Be realistic with what you know. Don't say when good advice is given "r u serious..."... insert bunk here. This is supposed to be a hang out for comp freaks and aspiring ones. If you don't know.... learn or ask like the thread starter is. Thats what these places are about.

[>WP< $lipKnot]

yeah it will b used for gaming but my mobo only supports socket 478 so im stuck with intel stuck with intel. sheesh. intel rocks. amd is very good I have had a couple of amd based systems but man you could very easily overclock that 2.6ghz p4 to 2.8ghz with stock cooling. if you bought a Coolermaster Jet4 you could get 2.9ghz to 3.0ghz. That is unless you have a stock intel motherboard. I would say upgrade your motherboard first. then get a new processor. It is all about the motherboard my young padawan learner. You will eventually be wise in the art of machine modification and overclocking if you listen to the machine master slipknot.

[>WP< $lipKnot]

Matrix you listen also my young padawan learner you are wrong my friend. sdr=singledatarate ddr=doubledata rate. get it str8. big big difference. has nothing to do with newer version. it isnt even the same at all.

quit bashing him guys we must learn him good. <!~~~~~~~~~~(said like redneck.) heeehaaaw. LOL

[>WP< $lipKnot]

Some people on here are lucky that I have an obsession with computers and the internet. I charge people for help in the real world.

But I guess it makes me feel good to help aspiring padawan learner tekkies.

And for the record in my opinion ASUS makes the best and most stable overclockable motherboards.

[Warmonkey]

I find it especially hilarious that after this they claim... I'm a PC tech! Yeah fucking right.



/agree.

To be a tech, all you need is a high school diploma, or maybe you went to Tech school for that "hard" test for A+ certs.

All I can say.....(this might hurt someone's feelings) Tech School is not the equivalent of a College Degree. No ifs, ands, or buts.

I find it hilarious to go to the local Best Buy or CompUSA and harrass the Techs, and make them look like idiots. I usually take a couple friends and then it turns into a real geek fight. (we all have / pursuing college degrees in Computer fields (like Computer Engineering))

[Noodle Boy]

well i have a dell dimension 4300 and I did some research, and the dell can take up to a 2.6ghz p4, as long as it has a 400mhz fsb on it. as for the ram, it only supports sdr ram. as for getting a new mobo/ new computer, i really cant use any money on a new computer at this point, cuz im goin to italy with my frends :D anyway i can only game like in the weekends now lol cuz of school. i just got a 9800 pro for my comp, so i'm going to outfit it with a 2.6ghzp4 and another 256mb of ram, just to breathe in another year or so of life into this thing.

[Riftgarde]

This is [H]. No weakness or budget cpu's allowed.

[H] is making a 300a celron do 450mhz
[H] is making a PIII550e do 825mhz
[H] is making a P4 2.8 do 3.5

[Killdozer]

Is Celeron 566@850 [H]?