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Intel Celeron 2.2GHz Reviewed
Detonator 3:16 writes "Black-Ash.net has posted a review of Intels Celeron 2.2GHz Budget CPU; interestingly they have compared it to a common older CPU (PIII-700MHz) to see whether it would be worth using this CPU as an upgrade." Celerons have usually a been a decent processor for the money, and this one looks to continue the trend. It's not the fastest chip ever, but for spending less than $100, it's a good bargain.
the review points out that an upgrade requires an atx case with a p4 psu. in this case, wouldn't it make more sense to upgrade to an athlon?
When you can pick up an AMD AXP 2400+ for $92, why even goof with some budget celeron CPU? If you are in the mood for an upgrade and don't want to wait for A64 in September, then pick up a pretty nForce2 board like the Asus A7V8X-DX or just the A7V8X. Great board with great features (dual lan, serial ATA) and be happy!
Seriously - celeron = waste of time and money.
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
The problem that MOST people don't realize is clock speed has very little to do with performance. There was just that article where the 1.4Ghz Opteron was killing the P4 3Ghz in many benchmarks.
An Athlon 2200 is $71.04 on Pricewatch right now. Pardon my feigned ignorance, but how exactly are you saving money while still buying an inferior CPU?
-theGreater Sarcasmic.
The tests used in the review are two Quake III based tests and 3d Mark 2001. Part of the reason for such a small increase (23-48%) with 300% of the processor is not just the difference between PIII and Celeron architectures, but because the 3D Card is a more important consideration then the processor in these types of tests. Some office benchmarks or video encoding speed would have been valuable metrics for comparing processors.
ok. So option one:
buy a 2.2 ghz celeron for $70 and get a computer that performs like a 1.5ghz p4
Option two:
buy an AMD for $70 and get a 1.8ghz chip that performs like a 2.2ghz p4
I think he should have mentioned this in his article. AMD affors excellent alternatives if price is an issue!
Pardon my ignorance here but why the 3d tests? It says right in the article that this is not the CPU to get for gaming. Wouldn't it make more sense to compile some software or something of that nature and see the differences? Anyone know of a hardware review site that has useful benchmarks for those of us who don't care about pc gaming? I want to see kernel compile times or something. Something I can relate to.
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"Any frame rate that exceeds the refresh rate of your display is effectively wasted. You just won't see the extra frames. A 23% improvement just means that many more frames you won't see."
So what? Are you saying people should never buy video cards that can exceed their refresh rates? More fps give the experienced palyer the edge. I'd much rather have a card that plays rtcw from 80-120fps than one that can only do 60-90.
Also most gamers don't buy a card and then only play one game on it forever. So There is definitely a need for a card which can play any game above your refresh rate. Just because a ATI 9800 can play CS with a frame rate above the refresh rate for any game going doesn't mean when doom 3 comes out that's going to be the case.
By your line of thinking every second your CPU isn't being used 100% its being wasted. So why not just use and older slower cpu and max it out every second? Afterall the new cpu's are just being "effectively wasted" most of the time.
Why do people insist on comparing a celeron to a P4 or athlon?
These cpus are targeted to different markets. Thats like comparing a P4 to a Xeon.
A 2.2ghz celeron is definately a good thing, and the performance is quite good for the price. These are entry level economical chips. My experience is all celerons work on pentium boards of the same class. So if you burn out a P4, why bother spending more money on a P4 when you could cheaply limp your computer on a celeron till the P5 comes out? Then spend the money you saved and get a P5 board too.
The other thing to note here too is that I know for a lot of people who don't have much money, especially kids on student loans, or perhaps even low income families, without the celeron chips, they couldn't get into modern computing. I aplaud intel and amd for coming out with cheaper chips. So what it doesn't compare to a P4? who cares, the consumer is buying it for the price and performance of THAT chip, not because it is slower than a P4.
In my most biased of opinions, the athlon is by FAR the better purchase. The celeron, however, isn't aimed at consumers like me, who look at every benchmark, calculate the pcmarkpoint:dollar ratio, and calcuate in the expense of the other gear (MB, RAM). No, it is aimed at the lackluster $700 dell buyer, who sees the word "Intel" and sees the numbers "2.2Ghz" and is thus satisfied, not quite realizing what they are really getting.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Seriously, if the point is an upgrade for cheap and the applications you want to run are similar to those in the review, why not just pop out the old "slow" 700 Mhz P3 and pop in a faster one? A 1.2 Ghz P3 goes for $99 on pricewatch which is going to be far cheaper than any other upgrade (providing your MB will take it of course). It seems that if the 2.2 Ghz Celeron was only about a third faster on the applications tested then a 1.2 Ghz P3 with its near doubling of the old P3's clock speed should be slightly faster than the Celeron, at least for these applications.
Of course I think shelling out a couple hundred bucks for a 1/3 performance boost in Quake is asinine, but then I also just retired my P120 after seven years of regular use.
This had to be one of the very worst reviews I've ever read. The lack of critical thinking is astounding.
First, if you're going to have to replace the motherboard to use a Celeron, you're going to have to replace the memory to avoid regressing in performance. Run that Celeron on the same SDRAM that you had from the P3, if you can even find a motherboard to do that, will result in a substantial performance DOWNGRADE.
But since the author is presenting the idiotic scenario of upgrading by getting a $100 budget processor, along with $200-$300 in new motherboard and new PC133 memory (since PC133 costs more than DDR these days), why not consider other alternatives?
As many others have pointed out, if you're going through the trouble of replacing a motherboard, and therefore, the memory, too, why not just go AMD? Clearly a much better value.
Even better yet - why not just get a faster P3 off of eBay or a clearance outfit, and get a speed boost past the Celeron without the expense and difficulty of pulling the motherboard, reinstalling operating system and/or drivers, etc?
And hey, you'd have enough left over to buy a really hot video card, too.
Bad enough that you have these sites that are trying to be the next Anandtech without the brains. Worse that Slashdot would link to this drek and therefore help support it.
jonathan
First and foremost, I have to say that I'm very much opposed to small copycat hardware sites getting free hits and advertising bucks because their submission slips through the slashdot nets. Note that the submitter is affiliated with the site :-/
Second, the comparison of a p4 with an older cpu is not a new thing, and has in fact been done very poorly here via choice of benchmarks. If you want to see a real old-->new cpu comparison, check out the all encompassing 100MHz-3.06GHz roundup at tomshardware. They've tested 65 cpus in a RANGE of systems, not just one system with an inadequate video card and two widely separated CPUs.
Just because this junior reviewer finally saved up enough allowance to upgrade to a 2.2GHz celeron from a p3 700 doesn't mean we should then finance that switch for him in ad revenue.
Any frame rate that exceeds the refresh rate of your display is effectively wasted. You just won't see the extra frames. A 23% improvement just means that many more frames you won't see.
>>>>>>
This is a stupid arguement. If you're frame rate is exceeding your refresh rate then why not just turn the detail up? Or are you somehow running Unreal II at 1600x1200 with full detail on a 2GHz Celeron?
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