cpu competition

[yokosi]

We all know about the intel pentium and amd athlon competition out there and everyone has opinions and such about both processors but there's always people saying amd is better or pentium is better.  To me I think both are pretty much equal and the same, I don't think any of the 2 are better than each other and people will agree or disagree.  After learning how the Amd team got to where they are, which is pretty much copying the pentium prossesor with the exception of a few things here and there that Amd changed around to make it look and run differently which is why the amd processors have slightly a bit more problems than the pentium cpu b/c of the technology they used in recreating the processor differently from Intels.  
BTW I got this from a teacher in my school.

Anyway with that said, I was wondering what you guys think about the Intel Celeron cpus.  There's never any chat about this processor and I rarely see it around in any systems out there.  Is this processor any good as to qualitly and efficiency as the Pentium and Amd processors.  Do they perform as good as the 2 top processors at the same rating?

[seiferoth10]

the celeron is like the Duron

second-gen cpus that intel and amd are still pumping out.

[query]

Well, what you learned is only partially correct.  Until the advent of the Athlon CPU, AMD did effectively copy and in some ways improve on Intel's designs - they did this beginning with the 8088, through the 80286, 80386 and Pentium eras.

Intel once licensed AMD as a second source manufacturer and had cross-licensing agreements.  Those ended in the Pentium era.

The Athlon is an AMD design that owes more to the Digital Alpha chip than it does to Intel's PentiumII/III.  AMD went its own way with the Athlon, coming up with a CPU that was more efficient than Intel's at routine tasks.

As for the Celeron, it has always been a way for Intel to sell chips that it had already produced, but which were defective or sub-par in some way.  The first Celerons were simply PII CPUs with defective L2 caches - Intel cut out the L2 cache and sold the chips as Celerons.  Later, the L2 was re-introduced, but in a smaller quantity than the concurrent PII/PIII/P4s - and in fact, the P4 Celeron resurrected Intel's use of chips with faulty L2 cache maskings - the first P4 Celerons were chips where the L2 cache was faulty, so it was cut back from 256 or 512K to 128, and the chips were sold as Celerons.

How far behind the "mainstream" and "performance" processors the Celerons are, depends on the application.  The P4 isn't an optimal design for running 32-bit code in the first place, and the loss of half or 3/4 of the L2 cache does hamper the processor significantly.  For browsing the web or word processing, the differences are minimal - but for multimedia, graphics/video, spreadsheet and database work - and gaming - the differences become more apparent.

[yokosi]

Quite interersting info here, I just read an article on tomshardware and noticed a lot of info that was just posted by query and the first processor by intel which came with an integrated l2 cache into the processor core was the celeron with 128 K and then came out with the P4 at 256 mb cache which im pretty sure was a big influence during the days they came out but reading on I noticed that the new celerons have the exact same processor as the p4's with the exception of the L2 cache which is doubled or even tripled by the P4 and the fsb speed is a bit higher for the Northwood p4 which im not sure what that means.  

Intel pretty much kept this processor alive to compete with Amd's low costing processors but it seems like no one cares b/c not many people have them but I did notice them in pc's from future shop or bestbuy under the name dell.

Article also says that a P4 2.0 gh/z cpu produces the same speed as an amd athlon 2000 + (1.6 gh/z) which shocked me a bit.

I guess if your building a system which doesen't require a lot of graphics and you want to save some money on the processor then celeron is the way to go but for an extra $20 cdn anyone can get the same processor made by amd with the same rates and get more so maybe that's why no one bothers with the celerons

[query]

No, Intel has had L2 cache on processors since the original design of the Pentium Pro.  The PentiumII moved it off the core and onto the cartridge, but the PIII returned it to the core of the CPU.

[yokosi]

So celerons are pretty much good for just minimal computer tasks like word documents and surfing and for a hardcore gamer or even a graphical designer which uses photoshop, dreamweaver, etc would the amd cpu be best to use or the p4.  
I even heard Mac computers are good for this type of stuff, like graphic designers use such a machine for their work.  Is this true?

[query]

Yes, though given a choice between a Celeron and an Athlon at the same price, take the Athlon.

Yes, many graphics and video people use Macs - despite the advances, that type of work is still best done on an Apple, not on a Windows PC.

Quite a few web designers still use Mac as well.

[MXi]

Article also says that a P4 2.0 gh/z cpu produces the same speed as an amd athlon 2000 + (1.6 gh/z) which shocked me a bit.

the thing that confuses alot of people is the reasons that amd athlon Xps are named as they are.  Rather than naming them at their speed, they name them by their p4 equivilant.  2400+ (which runs at 2ghz) it the equilavant of a p4 2.4ghz, a 2800+ the 2.8ghz equivilant, the 3200+, well there is no 3.2ghz p4 yet (at least not in aus) so it is the best CPU for a home PC out at the mo, and will be the equivilant of the p4 3.2ghz

This may explain the reason for releasing the "g" models of the p4 processers, which have a 800mhz fsb, just to confuse people to make them think they are a lot faster (when they're not).

[MXi]

with regards to MACs, the idea being that they are a far more stable platform for graphic and web design, and run more effeciantly.  also, Djs use either macs or linux for hooking their pcs to there turntables (yes, it can be done) so they can scratch mp3 samples, cos if ur runnung windows, chances are it'll crash half way through the song.

this is more of a software thing than a hardware thing...

[iansl]

Article also says that a P4 2.0 gh/z cpu produces the same speed as an amd athlon 2000 + (1.6 gh/z) which shocked me a bit.

the thing that confuses alot of people is the reasons that amd athlon Xps are named as they are.  Rather than naming them at their speed, they name them by their p4 equivilant.  2400+ (which runs at 2ghz) it the equilavant of a p4 2.4ghz, a 2800+ the 2.8ghz equivilant, the 3200+, well there is no 3.2ghz p4 yet (at least not in aus) so it is the best CPU for a home PC out at the mo, and will be the equivilant of the p4 3.2ghz

This may explain the reason for releasing the "g" models of the p4 processers, which have a 800mhz fsb, just to confuse people to make them think they are a lot faster (when they're not).

The P4s...the new ones...are indeed faster than the athlons, but only if you use dual-channel DDR memory. This is why I'm trying to get a Compaq with an HT p4.

[MXi]

Sure, they may be more powerfull, but in the "Bangs for buck" area, AMDs are superior.

I heard somewhere that by use of clock-multiplyer settings, you can get a 2400 to run at 3ghz speed? has anyone done this in practice?