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New Celeron D Core gets a Speed Boost

qtothemax writes "The new Celeron core was released on the 25th. The processor, using Intel's new model number naming convention, looks to be quite a bit faster than the old core. The new core is based on the 90nm Prescott, which offers respectable performance, compared to the very slow Northwood based Celeron. It features a 256kB L2 cache, and a 533mhz FSB. Looks like Prescott's longer pipeline is more then offset by the better branch prediction and most importantly the doubled cache when it comes to the smaller cached Celeron. This Celeron may be able to compete with AMD's offerings based on more then name brand alone. Reviews and benchmarks are at Anandtech. I couldn't find any other good reviews, as budget chips rarely generate much excitement."

173 comments

  1. Core by rfernand79 · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Is this core closer to the P4 core or a completely different one? I'm not familiar with Intel's current family, but I seem to remember that Celerons were based one on the P2...

    1. Re:Core by strictnein · · Score: 5, Informative

      I'm not familiar with Intel's current family, but I seem to remember that Celerons were based one on the P2

      The first ones were based on the P2. Then they based them on the P3. And then the P4. And now this one is based on a newer P4. As any intelligent manufacturer would do, their cheaper product line is simply based upon older versions of their more expensive product line.

    2. Re:Core by Orgazmus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Looks like its close to the P4, like the old cellies were P2's with less cache, and then the coppermine cellies with P3 cores.

      Remember my old cellie 633 running rock stable at 950 mhz :D

      --
      The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
    3. Re:Core by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Redundant

      They're based on the P4 core. Celeron just means the budget range and is usually a cut down version of whatever Pentium is out at the moment.

      The first Celeron was based on the Pentium II and then it went to Pentium III cores and finally Pentium 4 cores.

    4. Re:Core by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In every case, with every Celeron I've ever worked with, I've found "regular" (i.e. non-crippled) chips running anything near half of the Celeron's posted speed, to be far far more capable.

      I'd rather be running an old PIII coppermine, or tualatin than any Celeron p.o.s. I've never seen any use for them except to snare uneducated consumers.

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
    5. Re:Core by drinkypoo · · Score: 2, Interesting
      More to the point, the oldest celerons were P2s with no L2 cache and only the usual (pitiful) amount of L1. Later celerons that got (128kB of) L2 cache had the cache running at full speed and so for tight loops they could execute faster than a P2 of the same clock rate, which had half speed cache.

      Incidentally AMD had some interesting cache speed stuff going on then as well. Systems had either half speed or third-speed cache memory on them, the 700 MHz being the last unit with half speed and the 733 and up having third-speed. Hence a 700 was usually faster than a 733 under load.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:Core by bhtooefr · · Score: 1

      The first Celerons were based on the Pentium II. These were the Slot I Celerons at 266 and 300MHz. They were essentially a Pentium II core, and no cache on the board. Next was the Mendocino core, another Pentium II derived core. It had a small amount of cache on the core itself (running at full speed). It was available in Slot 1 at 300A MHz and up, and Socket 370 from 300A to 533MHz. Then, the Coppermine (second Pentium III core) was released, and a Celeron version was made. This went from 533 to 1100MHz. Next, the Tualatin (0.13 P3 core) came out, and again a Celery was made. 1.1 to 1.4GHz here. Williamette and Northwood Celerons were made, and now a Prescott Celeron exists. Socket 423 Celerons are cut-down Williamettes, most S478 Celerons (until now) are cut-down Northwoods, and the new Celerons are cut-down Preshotts.

    7. Re:Core by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      The old Celeron "A"s, when overclocked to the 100Mhz FSB (instead of the 66Mhz FSB) were as fast or slightly faster than the corresponding pentium II at the same clock speed. In otherwords, a 300Mhz Celeron A, overclocked to 450 Mhz, was about as fast as a 450 Mhz PII. The reason - the PII had its L2 cache external, and running at 1/2 the processor speed. The Celery A had a much smaller L2 cache but it was onchip, so it ran at the processor speed.


      The Celerys made from the PIII coppermine were slower than the PIII when overclocked - part due to the L2 cache of the PIII being onchip, and part due to Intel adding an additional two clock latency to the PIII Celeron L2 (relative to the PIII). So a 566 Mhz Celery Coppermine overclocked to 850 Mhz (by upping the FSB to 100 Mhz) was about as fast as a 700 Mhz PIII.

    8. Re:Core by bhtooefr · · Score: 1

      There are two reasons for this. The Celeron (in most cases - exceptions are early Pentium IIs, early P4s, P-Ms) runs on a slower bus than an identically clocked Pentium (whatever). However, there was a case when a Mendocino Celeron was faster than an identically clocked Pentium II (with a 66MHz bus). If the processor was working on a dataset that was small enough to fit in the Celeron's cache, it was faster, as the Celeron cache was full speed, whereas the Pentium II cache was half speed.

  2. What's The Point? by monkeyman_67156 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Does anyone at slashdot actually use a Celeron, rather than, say, some variant of an Athalon XP?

    1. Re:What's The Point? by mOoZik · · Score: 3, Informative

      It gets me when people write "Athalon" instead of "Athlon." Is it so damn hard?

      I still use the Celeron, because at the time, it was a good option. It is perfect for an average PC for an average user, but the prices on the ATHLONS have fallen so much so that it wouldn't make sense to get a Celeron.

    2. Re:What's The Point? by MindStalker · · Score: 1

      Well the Celeron M's are pretty good, but really they are a totally different product, just witht he Celeron name for some reason.

    3. Re:What's The Point? by GreatDrok · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My father-in-law is still using a dual 400Mhz Celeron BP6 based system. I set it up as his NFS/YP/SMB server recently as it had been gathering dust for a while. Turns out that it is really snappy (running RH8 with yum updates via fedora legacy). A pair of 400s in a server seems to be quite nice compared with a single 800Mhz processor.

      Ah, the BP6, those were the days :-)

      --
      "I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
    4. Re:What's The Point? by prescot6 · · Score: 1

      It gets me when people write "Athalon" instead of "Athlon." Is it so damn hard?

      I still use the Celeron...

      I think you mean "Celron"...

    5. Re:What's The Point? by Tiggan · · Score: 1

      I suppose you were trying to be funny, but you missed. According to Intel, it's Celeron.

      On another offtopic note, the word is THAN, not THEN. Why is that one so hard for people to get right?

    6. Re:What's The Point? by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Even more so, WHY do people insist on correcting spelling, especially on the internet? If we did the same for grammer, both typed and spoken, all we would be doing is having flame wars about it. You KNOW what he meant... so leave it at that.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    7. Re:What's The Point? by Enigma_Man · · Score: 3, Funny

      GRAMMAR :D

      -Jesse

      --
      Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
    8. Re:What's The Point? by callipygian-showsyst · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes! I use Celerons when I need to put a rack of 1/2U machines up to serve web pages. As long as I can keep the ethernet adapter saturated with a good server like thpptd, there's no need for a faster or more expensive processor.

    9. Re:What's The Point? by GoldMace · · Score: 1

      I'm still using a Celeron, a 600 MHz one. I still don't see a point in upgrading. I can still run the newest web browsers, office suites, etc, and there is no noticeable difference in speed compared to the new ones out now.

      The only thing it can't do well is games, but that's what games consoles are for. $150 for a console to play the latest games vs. $1000+ for a computer to play the latest games.

    10. Re:What's The Point? by bhtooefr · · Score: 2, Informative

      Celeron D means that it is the D revision of the Celeron. If you look at the alphabet, D is the fourth letter. Look at it this way:

      Covington (Cacheless P2): Celeron
      Mendocino (P2 with less, but faster cache): Celeron A
      Coppermine-128/Tualatin-128 (P3 with less cache, slower FSB): Celeron B
      Williamette-128/Northwood-128 (P4 with a LOT less cache, slower FSB): Celeron C
      Prescott-256 (P4E with less cache, slower FSB): Celeron D

      The Celeron M is another story. It's a Celeron of the Pentium M. Half the cache, and less power management. And no, the M does not mean that it's the 1000th Celeron - it actually came before the Tualatin-128, NW-128, and Prescott-256. It's the Banias-512 core, if you were wondering.

    11. Re:What's The Point? by The+Conductor · · Score: 1

      Does anyone at slashdot actually use a Celeron, rather than, say, some variant of an Athalon XP?

      In my case, it was simply a matter of what they had in stock at the store. The small-form motherboard/case took either Celeron or P4, and the P4 was a pure waste of electricity for the intended use. Would've preferred a Duron, but not enough to wait for a special order.

    12. Re:What's The Point? by homer_ca · · Score: 1

      My extra system still has a Coppermine Celeron 700Mhz overclocked to 1050Mhz. It was cheap at the time, $40, and fast enough for what I needed. The P4 Celerons are a terrible value for the money with Athlon XPs selling for under $100. The only geeks who'd have one were probably the ones who bought a sub-$300 Dell 400SC server to use for a desktop.

    13. Re:What's The Point? by Anhaedra · · Score: 0

      The only thing it can't do well is games, but that's what games consoles are for. $150 for a console to play the latest games vs. $1000+ for a computer to play the latest games.

      Consider the fact that PCs have the image quality of HDTV with CRT monitors and LCD/TFT displays, where as on a TV things can get fuzzy. I know you can buy a VGA adapter for consoles, but well, they can be expensive. Consoles wear out too. My PS2 now only plays CD-ROM based games, it cannot read DVDs whatsoever. I have never experienced this sort of problem with computers. Another thing is that there are exclusive games for PC like MMORPGs like Vanguard: Saga of Heros, Fallout 2 (Old but fantastic game), The Fall: Last Days of Gaia, Eve Online: The Second Genesis, Neverwinter Nights, Unreal Tournament 2004 and also the Ultima games. We also get to make mods for games, they usually show up whether official or fan-made, and we get the precise control of the mouse as well as gamepads if we wish. There are actually settings in the preferences menus in games... And lastly, we can send messages in games with the keyboard.

      --
      Please flee in terror in an orderly manner.
    14. Re:What's The Point? by GoldMace · · Score: 1

      I'm not saying PC games don't have some advantages, you described them fairly well, it's still not worth buying a new PC for, when I have a PS2 that works.

      There are some PS2 only games also, so that point is moot, and there's GC and XBox exclusive games also, and even though I haven't and probably won't ever buy one of those...

  3. Celeron 2.6GHz by strictnein · · Score: 5, Informative

    What Anandtech's review really seems to show is what an absolute piece of shit the 2.6GHz celeron was. In most of the benchmarks it was beat by the 1.6GHz Duron for fuck sakes. It was also beaten by a P4 1.8GHz, which wasn't too suprising, and even an AMD Athlon 1700+ (which runs at 1.47GHz - we're talking a 1.13GHz gap here).

    Of course, last time a celeron interested me was when the good old Abit BP6 board was out.

    1. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by Orgazmus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The cellies lost their value when P3 became outdated.
      The Celerons with coppermine cores were kinda fun ;)

      --
      The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
    2. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Last fall I was checking out a notebook with a Celery 2.x GHz chip in it. The damn thing couldn't even play a Divx-encoded movie fullscreen without stuttering like crazy. Pretty pathetic for any chip over 1 GHz. (Hell, even my P3 650 does better)

    3. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agreed. I sell computers for a living and I seem to spend all my time explaining to people why an Athlon 2.0GHz (2400+) out performs the Celeron 2.6GHz.

      Intel's insanely high clock frequencies with comparably lower performance are slowly driving me mad from people with questions about the competing Athlon models.

      Perhaps I should just raise my prices, use shitty mainboards, less RAM, less HDD space, shared onboard graphics and install 3.2GHz Pentium 4's in all my computers. The scary thing is they'll probably sell better. :-/

    4. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by afidel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not only that but the Prescott P4 2.4Ghz is only $10 more than the Celeron 2.8, and the P4 part will wipe the floor with the Celeron even giving up 400Mhz. The worst thing you can do to a P4 core is make it stall waiting for reads, and quartering the cache is guarenteed to do that, so why anyone would consider the Celeron for anything other than a web browsing box I can't fathom (and even then you would have to be stupid to use the fastest part).

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    5. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by DrEldarion · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While that is pathetic, most people who buy a computer with a Celeron in it probably wouldn't notice much of a difference. Even a 1GHz processor is enough for what most people do - web browsing, word processing, listening to music, playing solitaire, etc.

    6. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by BigBir3d · · Score: 1

      the 2.x gen celerons were for people like me... sales drone working at a small office. i don't need high video playing capabilities... as long as i can use word, excel, mozilla firefox, setiathome, norton anti-virus and our accounting app, i am good to go. plus they were cheal dell bpxes with good warranties. if i wanted performance i would have gotten us P4's or AMD's nicer stuff.

    7. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by Fweeky · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sounds more like a graphics driver problem than anything CPU related. Pathetic, yes, but not (just) because of the CPU.

    8. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by sglane81 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      When trying to teach people about computers, I think it's best to use analogies from things they have at least a partial understanding of. When it comes to CPUs like the Celerons vs P4s, I use the analogy of a Formula 1 car to a school bus. I make it quite clear both vehicles run at the same speed (top end and acceleration). Considering this, you can move more people in the bus than the F1 car. Everyone I've talked to understands this. When it comes to stuff like ports (as in TCP and UDP), I use the analogy of a house with windows and doors.

      --
      This is the Internet. You can say "fuck" here. - AC
    9. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 1

      It was a CompUSA "special" de jour and I'm sure it either had a crummy graphics board, driver issue, or both.. We were looking for a notebook to replace my sister's ailing Acer, and I hastily steered her away from this lemon. It's good to try before you buy. :)

    10. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by magarity · · Score: 1

      Last fall I was checking out a notebook with a Celery 2.x GHz chip in it. The damn thing couldn't even play a Divx-encoded movie

      If you were testing it in the store, keep in mind that the default install from the factory will have absurd amounts of preinstalled software, all of which is set to 'fast start' mode where it's already running. So that laptop might not have been as bad as you think.

    11. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 1

      Hmm, good point. I tend to build my own systems, and that possibility didn't occur to me. Pretty sorry state of affairs that a fresh-from-the-store PC is loaded with junk already!

    12. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by blair1q · · Score: 2, Insightful

      >why an Athlon 2.0GHz (2400+) out performs the Celeron 2.6GHz.

      Because the Celeron is a deliberately crippled version of the Pentium designed to run slower than the Athlon to attract the same price point while carrying Intel's goodwill, while the Athlon is the best AMD can market?

      What's inside the machine doesn't matter any more. There are so many configurations of pipeline, cache, core, memory i/o, etc. that nobody should give the first thought to the numbers of the chip.

      Especially when the rest of the mobo and i/o and MII and video disk system are bottlenecking those theoretical burst-rates.

      We should be working towards a benchmark of a whole computer, that gauges how all of those parts add up to "hot" or "value" or everything in between.

      Instead we have corporate-empire sycophants on all sides whining at each other about the semantics of the flim rate on the franistan.

    13. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by blair1q · · Score: 1

      I'm going to come to regret leaving out the "and" I accidentally just left out, but first, I'm going to enjoy the noobs it trolls up...

    14. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem with celerons isn't that they're slow, it's that they're helluva expensive.

      I'm sure you don't need much, but AMD chips aren't only faster but they were also waaaaay cheaper.

      But I guess it doesn't matter as long as you don't get them in a box that has "Dell"-ticker.

    15. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by general_re · · Score: 1
      he damn thing couldn't even play a Divx-encoded movie fullscreen without stuttering like crazy.

      Naaahhh, come on. Something else musta been going on, because I have an old Celery 667 currently acting as a print server here that played DiVX-encoded movies just fine back when it was still on the desktop. Encoding is another story, though - just for shits, I set it loose doing a two-pass DiVX-encoding of a 110 minute movie a while back. Took it about 48 hours to grind through the thing....

      --
      ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
    16. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Athlon XP-M 2500+ the new 300A

    17. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by general_re · · Score: 1
      When trying to teach people about computers, I think it's best to use analogies from things they have at least a partial understanding of.

      When my non-techie friends or relatives ask me about things like this, I tell them that a P4 is like a shoebox, whereas the Celeron is more like a dust mop, and then I nod sagely. It confuses the hell out of them, and they never really know what it means, but they don't inquire further. Which is good, because then they leave me alone and I can get some fucking work done...

      --
      ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
    18. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 1

      Eh, I think the video was one of those MS "HD" videos or something. At least, it was a MS disc (provided by the sales clerk). Still a 2+ GHz processor should have no difficulty playing back fricking video, HD or no..

      Took it about 48 hours to grind through the thing

      Heh, reminds me of the time I was Divx encoding on my spare K6-3 450, and after letting it crunch overnight, realized it would be faster to just start over on my other machine with an Athlon 1.2 GHz..

  4. In Other News... by Apocalypse111 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...AMD has recently announced that they will be producing a dual-processor board for its own low-end CPU's. Computers built with this hardware will specialize in playing 80's MP3's.

    They're calling it the Duron-Duron.

    --
    There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
    1. Re:In Other News... by Orgazmus · · Score: 0, Troll

      They're calling it the Duron-Duron.

      That line kinda gives away the joke, but its sorely needed when you look at the slashmods :p

      --
      The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
    2. Re:In Other News... by PD · · Score: 5, Funny

      That line kinda gives away the joke

      Rather typical of punchlines, wouldn't you say?

    3. Re:In Other News... by Orgazmus · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Well...
      A really good joke is only funny until someone tells you why ;)

      --
      The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
    4. Re:In Other News... by Ed+Avis · · Score: 4, Funny

      They're also announcing a monster 5-processor workstation board, to be called the Pentathlon.

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    5. Re:In Other News... by Luveno · · Score: 2, Funny

      I bet you've been saving that joke for the right occasion for a loooooooong time.

    6. Re:In Other News... by Phurd+Phlegm · · Score: 1
      I bet you've been saving that joke for the right occasion for a loooooooong time. Probably since 708 B.C., hmm?
    7. Re:In Other News... by Apocalypse111 · · Score: 1

      No, I've only been holding on to that one for about a week, since I read it on bash.org.

      --
      There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
    8. Re:In Other News... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!

      Isn't the lameness filter supposed to catch this kind of stuff?

    9. Re:In Other News... by Apocalypse111 · · Score: 1

      AAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!

      Isn't the lameness filter supposed to catch this kind of stuff?

      -------
      You must have forgotten to set your viewing options to give Funny a -6 modifier. I suggest you set that up now...

      Meanwhile, I shall go check on that lameness filter and see if I can set it up to filter out the lameness that is you.

      --
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  5. Market Statistics by artlu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does anyone have a good website which outlines just how many low-end processors are sold every year? From my POV, I cannot understand how the low-end processors survive. Granted, they use less power for mobile applications, but I would rather spend an extra $30-$50 on a processor then most other components of the system.

    Or is it all just marketing?
    Aj

    GroupShares Inc. - An Interactive Stock Market Community

    --
    -------
    artlu.net
    1. Re:Market Statistics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Its all the P.O.S. Hp's and compaqs that keep celerons going. I see celerons all the time and its usually the PC's that make me want to rip my hair out. XP is just not made to runs on a celeron with 128 megs of ram.

    2. Re:Market Statistics by Zorilla · · Score: 2, Informative

      I cannot understand how the low-end processors survive.

      Several years ago, it used to that Celeronswere known for their great overclocking capability, although I doubt that's as much the case anymore. When you could get a 20% speed boost, it was worth it. Now, it seems to be more economical to just buy a higher rated processor than to spend even more money on a water cooling system, since that's the kind of effort it takes.

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
    3. Re:Market Statistics by Zorilla · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It seems the usual OEM tactic is to put together a really fast-looking PC and then put a Pic N' Save version of a current generation video card in - one that will be outperformed by a previous generation card that costs less and has more features. A lot of the Dells I've seen recently had GeForce FX 5200s in them, for example.

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
    4. Re:Market Statistics by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Interesting

      with a celeron big names like compaq & etc can build a box that's both cheap and has a 2.8ghz sticker. who cares about what the box can do, it's 2.8ghz baby!

      another reason is that they're good enough for office work by a wide margin.. and cheap..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    5. Re:Market Statistics by mrchaotica · · Score: 1

      Of course, the water cooling system will last through several computers (well, except for the waterblock if the shape/size/attachment mechanism of the CPU changes)

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    6. Re:Market Statistics by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The original 300MHz Celerons were very overclockable. Intel had a much higher yield than they expected, and most of them could run at 450MHz with no extra cooling. The same thing happened with the AXIA T-Birds (Athlons), where the 1GHz version could be pushed to 1.33GHz (again, with no extra cooling). The yields on 90nm chips are such that this kind of thing probably won't happen again for a while.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    7. Re:Market Statistics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      good job amd fanboy. p4 celerons cost less than half of a regular p4. since most people don't need all the fancy things the p4 has, a celeron is just perfect for them.

    8. Re:Market Statistics by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      whats wrong with the GeForce FX 5200? what would you recommend from nvidia, for the same price range?

    9. Re:Market Statistics by Zorilla · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Although I have no firsthand information about it, the comments I usually saw about it showed that it was outperformed by the Geforce4 Ti 4600. It also seems to be the OEM card of choice. Previous cards I usually saw in OEMs included the Geforce2 MX and RIVA TNT2 M64, which were also budget cards.

      It's probably true that the performance of the 5200 wasn't neutered as much as it was the case in earlier generation. I don't really think there's anything "wrong" with the 5200, but I very much disliked the TNT2 M64, especially when I saw it get outperformed by my Voodoo 1 (in games that weren't 3dfx biased, like Unreal).

      If I turn out to be right about the performance, perhaps the price for a GeForce4 Ti 4600 is less?

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
    10. Re:Market Statistics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wondered the exact same thing, but I keep seeing people buying celeron based PC's everywhere. But it also depends on what you consider to be a low end processor. Where I work we're building new PC's with Athlon XP 2200 which run around $60 - about the same as a 2.2 Ghz Celeron. And they are VERY capable machines compaired to the Celeron counterparts, but not exactly high end.

      In the end the biggest difference will probably be the mainboard and ammount of RAM. And most PC makers that use Celerons also skimp on everything else so the processor really doesn't matter much.

    11. Re:Market Statistics by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 0

      i thought gforce was just a nutered riva, and the riva a high end card

      ive never researched it though

    12. Re:Market Statistics by bhtooefr · · Score: 2, Informative

      The ORIGINAL 300MHz Celerons were the Covington core, which only ramped to 300MHz, from 266, and had no L2 cache. At all.

      You're referring to the Celeron 300A. Most of the earlier Mendocino (300A to 533 in 33MHz increments) Celerons could take an overclock to (whatever their multi was) * 100MHz. It's not uncommon to see a 366 upped to 550.

    13. Re:Market Statistics by toughluck · · Score: 1

      my celron 300a is still running at 450, has be almost 24/7 for 5+ years now. possibly the best 200 or dollars have spent.

    14. Re:Market Statistics by glsunder · · Score: 1

      Have you actually looked at an HP system lately? I mean their business line, not their bestbuy/home consumer line. They're pretty solid machines with excellent airflow. If you want an athlon xp system with an nforce2 board, you can get that too. I was skeptical at first, but they've been very nice machines.

  6. celeron's are terrible by wyldeone · · Score: 2, Informative

    Never will buy another celeron, having had some very bad experiances with them. If you want a good, cheap proccessor it's always better to go with AMD, becuase their Duron series is much better than the celeron series.

    --
    In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
    1. Re:celeron's are terrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Care to explain?

    2. Re:celeron's are terrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I really don't think this is flamebait. Whats up with the moderators & their negative mod crusade today? Someone piss in your cornflakes? This is NEWS...not censorship. Read the damn moderator guidelines.

    3. Re:celeron's are terrible by Bishop · · Score: 4, Informative
      Start reading here or here, and be enlightened.

      From a December 2003 article:

      When we can find a 1.6GHz Duron for just over half the price of a 2.6GHz Celeron and get better performance consistently in almost every test we ran, the choice is clear.

    4. Re:celeron's are terrible by sirGullible · · Score: 1

      well, you don't even have to buy a duron.
      IIRC, some of the athlons are competitively priced against the celerons.

    5. Re:celeron's are terrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, I would agree with you but this person didn't bother posting any sort of evidence to back up his claims, hence flamebait or troll would be more than appropriate.

    6. Re:celeron's are terrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That doesnt explain the "bad experiences" the original poster talked about.

    7. Re:celeron's are terrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You shouldn't have to evidence facts. Just don't mod up then if it irks you, but stay off the fucking troll/flamebait buttons.

    8. Re:celeron's are terrible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      4500?

      Did you sign up during ice age?

  7. Duron's success by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Budget chips CAN create excitement. At least they should. I remember when Duron was a new thing. I bought the 750MHz model and got 1/3 to 1/2 more speed with the same amount of money..

    I was really suspicious about the Duron but later on I learned that it was just a rather cool hack at the time. They removed some expensive gate (or something alike) from the cpu and replaced the same function with some very clever engineering.

    They gained some speed and lost one of the most expensive parts of the cpu with one strike. Someone else might be able to recall the details better.

    Anyways the point is: The fact that it is a budget chip means nothing. Some budget chips can wipe the floor with some more expensive "premium chips" if they fit your application. I am always interested in the budget versions since that's where you see what the basic technology tweaked to maximum can do.

    Budget chips are also a huge market since lots of embed stuff and alike (terminals etc) will in time utilize that. Many people also want to read their email and do their banking and do not care wether it takes 3.5 or 3.2 seconds for the page to render.

    1. Re:Duron's success by Neil+Watson · · Score: 2, Insightful
      It is also important to note that the average user would not notice any difference between the performance of a budget vs a premium CPU. How much speed does one need to send an email to mom?

      If you are buying 300 PCs for an office and can save $20 each buy buying a Celeron or Duron that makes you look good.

    2. Re:Duron's success by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      if it takes 3.anything seconds to render a page you need to put away your TRS-80 and get a new machine

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    3. Re:Duron's success by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or maybe someone needs to learn how to code a web page correctly and shrink the actual image instead in the html.

    4. Re:Duron's success by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A warning to the wise (though if you need this warning perhaps wisdom is in question):

      If you are in charge of purchasing for your organization and, like myself, have to support them to, do not - I repeat DO NOT purchase celerons or you will never hear the end of "I need more memory" or "my computer seems slow - are you sure it's new?"

      The previous admin before me purchased ALL celerons. I purchase P4s but drop the fancy video card. Guess who never complains? (P4 for those of you who seem to think that a celeron is ok for word processing - when you have 6 docs and 4 spread sheets and 2 access dbs and the internet open.)

      Sure, tell me to close some stuff. Tell that to the users.

    5. Re:Duron's success by Ziviyr · · Score: 1

      AFAIK the main difference was less cache. Computed as well as its big brother, but had a smaller short term memory. So it might ask the memory banks about the figures its working on more often.

      --

      Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
  8. Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Vellmont · · Score: 5, Insightful


    This Celeron may be able to compete with AMD's offerings based on more then name brand alone

    Ummm.. what? The fastest $117 2.8ghz celeron got the shit kicked out of it by a lowly $55 Athlon 2400XP. Who in their right mind would buy one of these chips? I guess if you really want SSE3 or the only game you play is Quake3 it's a good deal, but otherwise there's no point.

    --
    AccountKiller
    1. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >Who in their right mind would buy one of these chips?

      people who don't visit slashdot? people who's never heard of AMD? and believe me, there are many of them out there.

      i'd bet that you yourself own many, many things of which there are cheaper and better alternatives than what you have - and you bought what you bought because of lack of research, reliance on brand names, indifference, etc. the same can happen with the general public when it comes to computer chips.

    2. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 1

      I guess if you really want SSE3 or the only game you play is Quake3 it's a good deal, but otherwise there's no point.

      Actually, SSE2, too - AthlonXP has only SSE. However, these being budget chips, you really shouldn't care too much about SSE stuff.

      the outstanding question is what happens to the Durons next?

    3. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Neil+Watson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are many vendors and buyers out there that honestly believe that one should only buy Intel as AMD is unstable. I once had a vendor tell me that. I asked them to cite proof of their claim. They could not.

    4. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Tenebrious1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ummm.. what? The fastest $117 2.8ghz celeron got the shit kicked out of it by a lowly $55 Athlon 2400XP. Who in their right mind would buy one of these chips?

      That "Intel Inside" sticker on the case is worth $62... I hear it adds 50 gigahorses of torque to the hard drive.

      --
      -- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
    5. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ever stop to THINK that maybe the submitter was referring to budget chip offerings from AMD? NOT the Athlon that you make reference to? Who the crap modded this AMD fanboy insightful? BTW I've been buying AMDs exclusively for my last 3 machines so I'm not just exchanging 'fanboy' flak.

    6. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by ImpTech · · Score: 1

      Well, 'got the shit kicked out of it' is a bit of a stretch. The 2.8GHz did compete well in at least half the tests. Of course, one can't help but notice that the fastest Athlon tested was the 2600+. My suspicion is that if you throw the 2700+ and 2800+ into the fray, the picture will look quite different for the Celeron D. And since you can get either for less than $117, I can't imagine why they weren't included except to skew the results.

      Oh, and I was amused to see my lowly 2500+ come out on top in several of the tests, it being only a $75 processor these days. AND they typically overclock to 3200+ (2.2GHz) quite nicely.

    7. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by line.at.infinity · · Score: 1

      Who in their right mind would buy one of these chips?

      I am thinking of maybe buying the Celeron that is being mentioned in the article. Lower cost ($65-ish as opposed to the $117 Celeron that you mention), lower energy consumption than Athlons, plus my current CPU sucks. Then again my PC with the slow CPU is only being used for bittorrent leeching/seeding so maybe an upgrade isn't really necessary.

      BTW, Intel's celeron d page is here:
      http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/proce ssors/c eleron_d/

    8. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by qtothemax · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Disclaimer: I'm the submitter. I AM NOT an intel fanboy. If I was going to buy a budget processor today it would DEFIATELY be an Athlon. I think a new processor core is always somthing that should be discussed on slashdot. Also, Intel is moving in the right direction by not screwing people who buy Dell and nothing else, or don't know better and think AMD is crap. My girlfriend wants to buy a laptop, and when I told her to get an AMD she kinda sneered because it isn't the intel she is used to. Funny thing is that her desktop is an AMD K6-II, but she doesn't even know it. Like it or not the vast majority of people who don't know better have NO IDEA that the celeron sucks comapred to the Athlon, and that the intel chip is more expensive. This is at least a break to everyone out there who would buy a celeron over an Athlon just because of the vision that intel is the "trusted name brand." Think of it like toothpaste or somthing similar. Do you read up on toothpaste before you go to the store and buy it? I seriously doubt it, but I guarantee there is a dentist somewhere who is seriously pissed off about Crest's poor quality. Most people just want a computer that works, and they buy Intel, because that's what they had before, especially in the budget PC market, just like probably >90% of you just buy the same brand of toothpaste you always get. Woulden't it be nice if they improved Crest with really not much reason to do so, since you're going to buy it anyway? So consider this new celeron as less of a screwing of budget PC buyers, who generally have no clue what they are getting. People who actually follow processor preformance can probably scrape together the extra $100 to get an Athlon64. I personally would still definately go with AMD, but I woulden't have to get in a fight with my GF anymore if she insists on getting a Dell with a celeron in it. I would actually almost consider myself an AMD fanboy, but I found this interesting, and see it as intel throwing to bone to the ignorant.

    9. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by biz0r · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I had a friend of mine that has consistently told me this...or rather he 'warned' me and cautioned against using them in my servers at work. Well thats interesting as I've got SEVERAL AMD machines that have been up for almost 2 years now (running linux, of course). And the only reason any of them ever get shutdown is for hardware failure (I should note I never have had a CPU related issue) or a kernel update that I just can't avoid.

      --
      /* sig */
    10. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by teg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Who in their right mind would buy one of these chips?

      End users buying the CPU itself (a very minor part of the market)? Not at lot. As part of a system? Quite a few more

      One reason is that Dell, the #1 PC manufacturer only ships Intel. And their systems are usually priced pretty competively, at least if you want to use quality components. For companies and non-techies, reliability, support and other parts of the "total" package adds up to be far more important than a few percent performance they wouldn't even notice.

      Also, I'd take Intel chipsets over Via or SIS anyday. Nvidia can be painful too, they don't even have an open networking driver (although a reverse engineered one exists for at least the NForce 2).

    11. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Funny
      There are many vendors and buyers out there that honestly believe that one should only buy Intel as AMD is unstable.

      Well, Intel has been making x86 CPUs since 1978, but AMD didn't start making them until 1979. Obviously, AMD has had less time to iron out any stability problems with their products.

    12. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by qtothemax · · Score: 3, Interesting

      One more point: I thought it was an interesting oddity that the Prescott architecture actually IMPROVED preforamance by a decent margin in a Celeron, while it caused a slight decline in the P4. It shows how the preformance gain from cache really is logarathmic, more then offsetting the preformance loss of the extra pipeline stages. Intel just made an interesting statement about the P4 extreme edition.

    13. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Epistax · · Score: 1

      I hear it adds 50 gigahorses of torque to the hard drive.

      As a former Intel intern I can vouch that what this man says is completely true.

    14. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by the+quick+brown+fox · · Score: 1
      who is seriously pissed off about Crest's poor quality

      Submitter is Colgate fanboy?

    15. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1
      I used to feel the same way about VIA chipsets as you do but they really have improved dramatically. The rule used to be never use a first-generation VIA chipset, but I know several people who have done just that and with good results.

      Incidentally SiS is making very nice chipsets now. I have an Athlon XP system with one of their higher end chipsets (with the MultiOL PCI) and I think it's fantastic.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    16. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no but i bet it gives it a killer refresh rate..

    17. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by confused+one · · Score: 2, Informative
      This FUD comes from experience with the combination of AMD processors and some early VIA chipsets. It was the VIA chipset that was buggy.

      I owned one of these; it did run for two years without problem before the chipset started to flake out.

      As far as I can tell, VIA has fixed it's problems.

    18. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by EMH_Mark3 · · Score: 1

      It's not just the chip, it has a PCI bus... But you knew that already.

      --
      Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
    19. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by teg · · Score: 1

      Funny thing is that her desktop is an AMD K6-II, but she doesn't even know it

      The K6 series were pretty bad performancewise, but oh so cheap. Until Athlon, FPU performance and AMD was a tragic story.

    20. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by nelsonal · · Score: 1

      It's mostly VIA's fault, while Intel delivers, normally, rock solid motherboard chipsets. AMD usually ends up with SiS and VIA's chipset of the quarter. Sometimes its good and sometimes its crash happy, so AMD gets a rap for being crash happy. The last really bad VIA chipset I recall was in the K6III/Early Athlon days, and my SiS 735 has been running like a champ for almost three years (not straight).

      --
      Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
    21. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, FPU performance wasn't top-of the line, but then again, K6-2 WAS a solid CPU in integer math, I think it even trounced P2's at the same clock speed in that category.

      Thus, it was a lousy gamer CPU, but pretty good for everything else.

    22. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by juhaz · · Score: 1

      Two years without a hitch and then quick decline doesn't really sound like a chipset problem, but a capacitor problem.

      I had a KT7-RAID that worked fine for 2½ years and then blew a cap too, was fixed quicky enough, though, and AFAIK it's still working though not in my possession any more.

    23. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by LWATCDR · · Score: 1

      It is called marketing.
      Why the heck did anyone buy MS-DOS machines in the 80s at all when both the Amiga and Atari ST ran circles around them. Heck even the Macs at the time where not too much more expensive and had very good software.
      Why did people buy Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 when OS/2 was available?
      Why do companies buy Windows Servers when they could use Linux or a flavor of BSD?
      Why do people pay more for a Lexus than a Toyota when they are made in the same factory!
      MARKETING!!!!
      It all comes down to maketing. I can get a cool Dell for $400 with a 2.8 Gigwhatzit or a this other computer with a only a 2.0 Gigamajiger for just about the same price. Well 2.8 is better than 2.0 and it has a sticker that says Intel. I have see the Intel ads so that is the one I am going to get. Most people know as much about computers as they do about their cars. They just want to turn it on and have it work.

      --
      See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
    24. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by bhtooefr · · Score: 1

      The lineup was like this at first (on price):

      Pentium 4 vs. top-end Athlon XP
      Celeron vs. low, mid-end Athlon XP, Duron

      Now it's become like this:

      Pentium 4 EE vs. Athlon 64 FX
      Pentium 4 vs. Athlon 64
      Celeron vs. Athlon XP
      NOTHING vs. Duron

      The Duron's been discontinued, and replaced by the processor that it was a crippled version of (even though in many cases it's better than the processor it competed against, even now at 1.8GHz).

      They're going to be replaced by the Sempron, though, Real Soon Now(TM).

    25. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > "Think of it like toothpaste or somthing similar. Do you read up on toothpaste before you go to the store and buy it? I seriously doubt it"

      Yes, I do actually, and I do so with everything else I purchase. However, I don't purchase much, which allows me the conenvience of finding items of quality.

    26. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by bluGill · · Score: 1

      Overall I prefer the AMD on a desktop, but why reccomend a AMD over the Intel Pentium-M? Sure the Centrino chipset doesn't have great linux support yet (or has that changed, rumor is it is coming soon and I've not kept up). Still the Pentium-M used much less power, and in a laptop that is worth the price. Mind the Pentium-M is not a budget processor.

    27. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by qtothemax · · Score: 1

      Price is a big factor to some people. We are poor college students. She isn't very interested in computers and doesn't want to spend more than $800, plus she isn't planning on doing anything with it that actually needs any computing power. Mostly just e-mail, spreadsheets, word processing and the like. If the (3 or 4 year old?) K6 is doing the job now with only mild complaints about speed, I really think the pentium M isn't worth the price to her. The cheapest Pentium M complete systems i usually see are in the $1200 range, which is way more than she wants to spend, making Athlon/Celeron the obvious choice. More speed for the price is always welcome though, in case some day she does decide she wants to play unreal with me.

    28. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Mesaeus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The biggest factor for these kinds of perpetuating myths about AMD instability seems to be errors in mainboard chipsets. The thing is, Intel makes their own chipsets and even a lot of their own mainboards, while AMD has (almost) always left this up to third parties like VIA, Sis etc. Now while these firms do their best, they occasionally blunder and the result will be less than stable mainboards. And ofcourse uninformed people will always blame the cpu when it's in fact the mainboard/chipset that's the culprit.

    29. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Vellmont · · Score: 1

      Toothpaste is a commodity and there's very little difference among the major name brands. As long as it's ADA approved I bet any sane dentist couldn't care less which toothpaste you chose.

      As far as the "Athlon vs Celeron" discussion goes, people will buy on price 9 times out of 10, and don't even have any idea what Celeron or AMD IS, much less the difference between them. The problem is your summary made the Celeron look like it was a viable choice for anyone that isn't brainwashed into branding. It's quite clear the Celeron is a POS (and I don't mean point of sale). Try to remember this is Slashdot, where the majority of readers understand benchmarks and value. Hiding behing what the majority of people look for just doesn't cut it, since slashdot is NOT the majority of people.

      --
      AccountKiller
    30. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by robnauta · · Score: 1
      It's quite clear the Celeron is a POS (and I don't mean point of sale). Try to remember this is Slashdot, where the majority of readers understand benchmarks and value.

      Nice troll. This is Slashdot, where the majority of readers base their opinion on gut feeling, whether a company is 'cool' or not, and behave like fanboys. They push benchmarks that support their favourite, and ignore those that are not in their favour.

      Also, if you say that it's clear that the Celeron is shit, you seem to have formed an opinion already regardless of facts. A $40 CPU can be competitive compared to a recent $200 pentium 4, if you aren't a power user and just want to browse, chat and run Office. Sure, the first Celeron 266 was shit, the 300A and 333 were cool because of their full-speed cache. Coppermine Celerons that could be run at 100 MHz FSB were incredible because of very low price and decent performance. Some Pentium IV based ones were mediocre performers, yes. But if this one burns the Athlon XP 2400+, shouldn't you form a honest benchmarked-based opinion that includes price/performance, instead of denouncing it as 'shit' without arguments ? That just exposes you as an AMD fanboy who will manipulate the facts just to badmouth Intel.

    31. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Vellmont · · Score: 1

      Read the benchmarks for the proof. The price/performance is a giant loser. Buy a low end Athlon instead of this junk.

      --
      AccountKiller
    32. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by confused+one · · Score: 1

      It was definitely the northbridge chip. It may have been flakey since day one; but, it was intermittent enough that I could get work done and assumed it was a Windows problem. After about two years, it became seriously screwed up. I ran a bunch of diagnostics and found the memory controller in the northbridge seemed to be flakey. If I kept it artificially cool (read as spraying freon on the chip) it would get better...

  9. Celeron 2.6GHz (better oveclocked) by IYagami · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can find a very good review at

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cel er on-d.html

    . They show that a Celeron D overclocked to 3.8 Ghz (yes, really) can outperform even a Pentium4 3.2E (Ok, only sometimes ;-) )

    Sorry about my english

  10. Also released: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Intel has announced their new Xeon line will now incorporate an additional 4 hamster bus. The Xeon line is well known for having quick hamsters parse data in a quick, while adorable manner...

  11. Bad Moderation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why was this post modded down? It is a perfectly valid post with a valid opinion.

  12. Well, think about who buys them... by sirGullible · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not everyone is a geek, and i know plenty of non-geek regular people buy Celerons. From any, say...Best Buy ad, you can see cheap celeron based pc's aimed at families buying their (possibly first) computers. All they need is to browse the internet, listen to some mp3's, instant message, and thats about all. Celerons can accomplish that. They don't really care about overclocking or playing doom 3 or benchmarks or much of that. Also, dell likes to use celeron processors for its lower end systems, so i'm sure dell contributes alot to that.

    1. Re:Well, think about who buys them... by mattyrobinson69 · · Score: 1

      i have a mate who's starting a higher ed computing course next year with me - he bought a dell because the box was black (he liked the box!) and he bought a 2.1ghz celleron (roughly). He recons its "shit-hot" because its 2.1ghz.

      also, he runs windows XP with no firewall and suprise suprise, port 25 is open.

      he makes me doubt the 'higher' part of higher education.

    2. Re:Well, think about who buys them... by bhtooefr · · Score: 1

      Well, when fifty MALWARE processes alone are eating up CPU time (from all that browsing with IE, listening to "MP3s" that are really viral code in WMP, and exploits in MSN Messenger), along with the 128-256MB RAM in these things, you need a 3.6GHz Preshott Pentium 4 and 2 or 3 GB of RAM.

      Oh, did I go into a rant? I'll get back on topic.

      I'm using a 233MHz Pentium MMX with 96MB RAM, and it's more than enough to browse the Internet (with Opera 7.51, and don't suggest Firefox, it's too slow on this), listen to mp3s (with XMMS), and IM (with Kopete). Just don't ask me to browse and play MP3s at the same time without the browser dragging. You don't need that much horsepower if you know what you're doing.

    3. Re:Well, think about who buys them... by drsmithy · · Score: 1
      Just don't ask me to browse and play MP3s at the same time without the browser dragging. You don't need that much horsepower if you know what you're doing.

      From the sound of that, it's more like "you don't need that much horsepower if you're not doing anything".

  13. Nice by marnargulus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A speed boost is always nice, but is it really necessary? I think faster RAM would be a better advance, and faster bus speeds for harddrives as well. While the processor might be able to handle more data, we still are having trouble getting data there in the first place. Bring on the 2 gig on-die cache where I run all of my current apps and OS straight on the proc. That is what I'm looking forward to.

    1. Re:Nice by twbecker · · Score: 1

      Actually the Athlon64 is not starved for memory bandwidth like Prescott is, as evidenced by the new socket 939 dual channel CPUs performing pretty much on par with the old socket 754 single channel ones. As for hard drives, existing ones can't even saturate the 133MB/s UDMA PATA interface, let alone the 150MB/s SATA. The problem is the drives themselves need higher rotational speeds/lower latencies.

      --
      "The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
    2. Re:Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I for one would really like to know what you could get out of an old P1 MMX core @90nm.

      I dont think the possible clock speed nor the overall performance would be that bad. I mean look what VIA can do with the old single pipelined C3 core. Now imaging a double pipelined P1 core at around 1Ghz with 128KB 1st and 256Kb 2nd level cache on-die.

      Sometimes enough is enough.

  14. Especially when... by artemis67 · · Score: 1

    that same $117 will buy you an Athlon XP 3000, why even both with Celeron?

  15. It's accumaltive not just CPU by msgmonkey · · Score: 1

    When putting together a PC based around a budget CPU most PC builders also go for a slightly lower spec'd mother board, memory, hard drive, graphics card, etc.

    Eventually that $30-$50 saving becomes $150-$200.

  16. But they run cooler by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Northwood based Celerons were perfect for low powered reliable integrated solutions.

  17. I don't understand... by The+Hobo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From TFA:

    Holding in the middle of the pack is definitely not a disgrace for these budget processors.

    I don't understand, a chip that costs less, has more cache, and has been a proven good chip (the Athlons) beat this new processor which is considered budget...
    I myself bought a Duron 650 3 years ago, it lasted me that long. When my PSU died, I decided to upgrade to a 2500+, and left my old computer alone. Last Christmas I went home and set up some new Dell PCs my family bought with 2.4 Celerons, and just from watching a fresh install of XP running (which is usually fast) I almost swore that the 2.4 Ghz Celerons were slower than my rebuilt Duron 650 Mhz, and this is without benchmarks.. it probably wasn't 'factual' by a stopwatch's perspective, but it shows just how bad these chips inherently are.

    --
    There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
    1. Re:I don't understand... by Cat_Byte · · Score: 2, Insightful

      With less than 256M of RAM, XP *will* run that slow. I don't know how much RAM they had, just a thought to keep in mind.

      --
      Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
  18. Flappers by bobblebob · · Score: 0

    The core is now going to extent the XPTS subsystems of FLAPPER. This has to be a good thing for page swapping as the registes will now be as fast as a ferrit.

  19. SPEEK NGLESH?? by xgamer04 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Do Slashdot editors feel the need to edit submissions at all?

    The new core is based on the 90nm Prescott, which offers respectable performance, compared to the very slow Northwood based Celeron.


    This needs to be "Northwood-based." The way you state it, dear qtothemax, will have less intelligent parsers thinking the Northwood core is slow, which it is not.


    Looks like Prescott's longer pipeline is more then offset by the better branch prediction and most importantly the doubled cache when it comes to the smaller cached Celeron.


    This is not a sentence. Also, it's than.


    This Celeron may be able to compete with AMD's offerings based on more then name brand alone.


    Please use the word THAN.

    --
    When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
    1. Re:SPEEK NGLESH?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes, i also felt this was a great oversight on the part of kbn!

    2. Re:SPEEK NGLESH?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thankfully someone said this - I was considering going to the trouble of posting a similar message.

      For the sake of being geeks people, learn how to use "then" and "than" and "too" and "to".

    3. Re:SPEEK NGLESH?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      can you add "compatability" to your list as well? :P

  20. Of course we use Celerons. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Tualatin-core Celerons from 1.0 thru 1.4GHz with 256k cache were some of the best bang for the buck processors in that clock speed range for Linux servers. They overclock quite nicely too. I'm running a pair of servers based on these chips that cost me only about $100-150 per server to build. And that was with brand new compact micro-ATX cases too! They made for me the perfect "server appliances" to be my Internet firewall, web, email and general purpose fileservers.

    1. Re:Of course we use Celerons. by Humorously_Inept · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This is definitely true. While Celerons are processors to avoid, as a rule, you can get a great deal out of a Celeron if you know exactly which one(s) to shop for. I decided to build my passively cooled (well, there's the PSU fan which I dare not remove...) around a Celeron 1.1A simply because it would have been impossible with a Duron. In my case I was willing to sacrifice performance for silence and as it happens, the Tualatin-based Celeron has been a pretty good performer! It's no Duron, but it's also only a 30W chip - no Duron can match that. I love all my AMDs, but for this application it simply had to be a Celeron! The new Celerons look like very compelling budget chips. Assuming they don't suffer from Prescott's thermal power issues, they appear to have a lot to offer in competition against Durons and low-end AXPs. You just need to know exactly what Celeron you're buying and you could end up with a good deal. That said, the budget marketspace will change when AMD releases its Sempron.

      --

      ~Someday, I hope to be an aspiring author.
  21. NX command in the Celeron? by BLKMGK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AMD is putting the NX processor command into it's low end CPUs, I didn't see any mention of this in the article. Does anyone know if Intel is following suit with it's low end CPUs? Anyone tested the effectiveness of the NX command on an AMD CPU with Linux or the beta SP for XP? IMO if it's as good at stopping overflows as claimed this could provide a competitive edge to the company that has it if the other doesn't....

    --
    Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    1. Re:NX command in the Celeron? by smurf975 · · Score: 1

      Its probably a good an idea to implement these things on desktop CPU's as well as they tend to be implemented on Linux/BSD first (fastest if the manufacturer wants to) and this gives embedded devices developers a chance to see how it works (in practice and software) without an expensive embedded device prototype.

      --
      -- I don't buy it, I grow it.
  22. "Budget chips rarely generate much excitement" by an0nymous · · Score: 0

    Blunt warning from the submitter and yet SD editors consider this 'News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters'? Maybe SD management should reconsider their audience, and reword their mission/logo statement, from "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters" to "Sometimes News for Nerds but at all times stuff that generates a lot of traffic."

  23. Speed Bump, er B oost. by ayeco · · Score: 2, Funny

    See, it's called a "speed boost", not a "speed bump". The Celeron is a Pentium witha speed bump built in.

    1. Re:Speed Bump, er B oost. by Murf_E · · Score: 1

      please get a keyboard with a working spacebar

      --
      this sig intentionally left blank
    2. Re:Speed Bump, er B oost. by smash · · Score: 1
      Please get a keyboard with a working shift key, and period key.

      :)

      smash.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
  24. Wow, twice burnt in one paragraph, by an0nymous · · Score: 0

    but at least (s)he gave an accurate warning on the newsworthiness of the review.

  25. then vs. than by hshana · · Score: 1

    C'mon people, it's not that hard. Hate to be the grammar Nazi, but the poster did it several times...

  26. Re:my god by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dunno. Is that what your mom said as well?

  27. Duron is dead by Kerre · · Score: 1

    or at least, it sits in the corner of the pc store and doesn't eat very much.

    The athlonXP is the new duron. Later on, the XP will be replaced by another budged chip (probably called the Sempron)

    http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressR oo m/0,,51_104_608,00.html

    Another reson to completely ignore the celery imho.

  28. Budget chips.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What part of $117 vs. $55 you didn't understand?

  29. celery cpus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    are for ppl who like to talk in msn and check their hotmail email, FEMALE!

  30. Name Brand? by DongleFondle · · Score: 1

    "This Celeron may be able to compete with AMD's offerings based on more then name brand alone."

    I know they are probably referring to the brand, intel, but does anyone else find that a little ironic. Celeron's reputation is horrible. When I'm looking at systems, that is possibly the one word that will turn me away without a second consideration. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say, "This Celeron may be able to compete with AMD's offerings based on more than price alone"?

    1. Re:Name Brand? by Moocowsia · · Score: 1

      No, it would be more accurate to say: This chip could possibly compete with AMD's offerings in performance, not just if the buyer has no clue about what they're doing.

      --
      Moo!
  31. I assume you mean a "Not Executable" bit... by Benanov · · Score: 1

    It's useful at stopping buffer overflows--you can put executable code in pages marked as writable, but you can set the NX bit, and it can be executable, but it's not going to be executed. OpenBSD uses a scheme called W^X (write xor execute) which is basically what I stated above. However, AFAIK Windows doesn't support usage of the NX instruction (the new SP may...) And Intel's new chips certainly don't as of last I heard (today), so that gives Microsoft less incentive to implement it. OSes like OpenBSD who absolutely thrive on this sort of instruction (hell, they implemented a decent W^X function on chips that DIDN'T have it built in because they wanted it that badly.) will immediately snatch it up and praise it, and there will be some market share gains. OTOH, You can build all the greatest functionality in the world but if no one uses it, there isn't much point. Of course, when people start adopting usage of those instructions, they're glad it's there. --Benanov

    1. Re:I assume you mean a "Not Executable" bit... by BLKMGK · · Score: 1

      As of the next service pack XP will indeed support this, release candidates are floating about already I believe. Intel supposedly supports it in their XEON CPUs and their 64BIT CPUs. AMD has it in their 64BIT CPUs and is supposed to be putting it in their new line of CPUs that are going to supercede the DURON CPUs (think that's right). I ASSume the Athlon line of CPUs or whatever is about to be released in addition to the DURON replacement will support it as well which completes AMD's support across the line.

      AMD appears to be making this mainstream, Intel hasn't yet done this. Microsoft has a security problem on their hands so certainly has some incentive to support it if possible. Just seemed odd to me that Intel didn't appear to be responding in kind to AMD's support of this CPU instruction...

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
  32. Celerons have their place by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You have had people tell you why they don't buy Celerons. Let me tell you why I just bought one. I have a friend on a very tight budget who really wanted a faster computer. All he could budget was $250. He had a good sized hard disk already and we moved his copy of Windows to the new machine and retired the old computer. He is not a computer guru and I don't want to be taking free support calls. For $250, the best I could find was an Intel D845GVSR motherboard, a Celeron 2.4 GHz, an Enlight case and power supply and 256 MB of RAM. It is not an ideal system, but it should be extremely stable, moderately fast and it met his budget.

  33. I call bullshit by benzapp · · Score: 2, Informative

    I have a Celeron 600mhz Sony Vaio laptop I got for $900 nearly 3 years ago. At the time, it was the cheapest laptop I could find from a name brand manufacturer at the time.

    I was watching DivX movies on it the moment I got it. These days, I watch Xvid encoded movies no problem as well.

    While I obviously have no idea if the laptop you were using was defective, I can tell you without a doubt that if a Celeron 600 can play DivX movies, then a Celeron 2000 can as well.

    --
    I don't read or respond to AC posts
    1. Re:I call bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I obviously have no idea if the laptop you were using was defective, I can tell you without a doubt that if a Celeron 600 can play DivX movies, then a Celeron 2000 can as well.

      There's other difference between those two than 3x the clock speed, another is based on pretty decent P3, and the another is piece-of-shit P4.

      "without a doubt" does not apply since they are not directly comparable by clockspeed in any sensible way.

    2. Re:I call bullshit by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 1

      Your Celeron 600 is based on a P6 core, and thus completely different from the PIV based Celerons. The PIV arch. will suffer severly from a cache miss, eg that's why the P4 chip has 1MB of L2 cache on it. With a measly 128 KB of L2 cache, the PIV-based Celeron is continually having to flush and reload the cache as a miss is much more likely. (especially as another poster pointed out, the machine likely was loaded down running unnecessary preloaded crap)

      So, to recap: all Celerons are not created equal :) This new chip sounds ok, however.

  34. Market it as a P4 derivative ? by billcopc · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Being near-jobless (as in, I work long hours at non-tech jobs because my home town sucks), most of my coworkers are tech illiterate. They know what a Pentium is, at least they know the bigger the number, the better it is. They still don't know the clock speed, but if they say it's a P2, then I can safely assume it's between 233 and 450 mhz, faster than their brains, at any rate.

    Now comes Celeron. First of all these people will have a hell of a time remembering that name, because it is gibberish. At least "Pentium" sounds like "Uranium", and they all learned THAT word watching Back To The Future movies. Now consider that Celerons aren't adorned by a model ID (Celeron 2 wasn't an official name), and these people won't tell the diff between a Coppermine 300a and a Prescott 2.8ghz. These are people who paid to get an 8meg ATI Rage Pro installed because they heard "sideways monitor plugs are bad".

    So why not just call it a Pentium IV Lite or something cute like that ? Or just make the older P4's cheaper and begone with the whole Celeron debacle.

    Last time I checked, AMD Durons had vanished from the market. Now that you can get an Athlon XP for about $80 canadian ($60 USD), they've pretty much trumped the whole point of budget cpus. Now I still can't grok how Intel gets away with charging 2-3x the price for roughly equivalent performance, but it's probably thanks to Compaq, HP and Dell who have their established clientele of rich ignorants, not all of them, but with all the government and fortune 500 contracts they've got their steak well covered.

    --
    -Billco, Fnarg.com
    1. Re:Market it as a P4 derivative ? by dj245 · · Score: 1
      At least "Pentium" sounds like "Uranium", and they all learned THAT word watching Back To The Future movies.

      I hate to nitpick but Uranium (and the Word "Uranium") was never used in the Back to the Future trilogy. The time machines either used Plutonium, fusion, or steam to power themselves.

      --
      Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
    2. Re:Market it as a P4 derivative ? by billcopc · · Score: 1

      I stand corrected.

      My point was that anything with a -ium suffix sounds high tech to most ignoramuses.

      Plutonium
      Iridium (hah!)
      Einsteinium "genius matter!" :P
      Slashium (worth a try =)

      --
      -Billco, Fnarg.com
  35. I saw some benchmarks... by Silverlancer · · Score: 0

    The Celeron D 2.8Ghz beat the XP 2600+. Pretty amazing considering that the previous celeron series was about as slow as pentium 3s.

  36. old skool celeron? by chunkwhite86 · · Score: 1

    anyone here remember the old celeron 300A? You could overclock it to 550 and that was with normal air cooling? And Abit came out with the BP6 that allowed a dual CPU celeron system?

    I feel old.

    --
    I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
  37. Vellmont is AMD fanboy? by MojoStan · · Score: 1
    The fastest $117 2.8ghz celeron got the shit kicked out of it by a lowly $55 Athlon 2400XP. Who in their right mind would buy one of these chips?
    Looking at Anandtech's performance tests, who in their right mind would conclude that the Celeron D 335 (2.8GHz) "got the shit kicked out of it" by the Athlon XP 2400+? The new Celeron seemed pretty competitive to me.

    Here's how the Celeron D 335 actually performed against the XP 2400+:

    Business Winstone 2004 2400+: 19.1 Celeron: 18.8 2400+ 1.6% faster Content Creation Winstone 2004 2400+: 24.8 Celeron: 24.5 2400+ 1.2% faster DivX 5.1 Encoding 2400+: 31.7 Celeron: 32.9 Celeron 3.8% faster Aquamark 3 2400+: 36.2 Celeron: 38.0 Celeron 5% faster Gunmetal Benchmark 2 2400+: 32.9 Celeron: 33.5 Celeron 1.8% faster Halo 2400+: 48.2 Celeron: 49.9 Celeron 3.5% faster Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour 2400+: 27.5 Celeron: 31.0 Celeron 1.3% faster Simcity 4 2400+: 63.5 Celeron: 63.5 even Warcraft III: Frozen Throne 2400+: 34.6 Celeron: 43.4 Celeron 2.5% faster Unreal Tournament 2003 Flyby 2400+: 178.8 Celeron: 191.5 Celeron 7.1% faster Unreal Tournament 2003 Botmatch 2400+: 58.9 Celeron: 57.7 2400+ 2.1% faster Quake III Arena 2400+: 255.1 Celeron: 289.4 Celeron 13.4% faster Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory 2400+: 64.5 Celeron: 62.1 2400+ 3.9% faster 3D Studio Max Render Time 2400+: 249 Celeron: 287 2400+ 13.2% faster Quake III Compile Times 2400+: 18.9 Celeron: 22.2 2400+ 14.9% faster The Northwood-based Celeron sucked, but the new Prescott-based Celeron D is a good performer for a budget CPU. Athlon XP is a dying platform (to be replaced by Sempron). The Celeron D 335 will drop in price as faster models are released. Let's do another comparison when the Celeron D gets its first speed bumps.

    What I'm really waiting for is Celeron D on LGA775 and Sempron on Socket 939.

    --
    TO START
    PRESS ANY KEY

    Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...

  38. Insightful? ehh by daft_one · · Score: 1

    2 gigs of on-die cache would be... less than a good thing. Aside from that much cache costing an asinine amount of money, it'd probably reduce performance. Yup, I said reduce. Why? It takes time to FIND things in cache. If you have 2 gigs of it, then it may well take so long to locate what you were looking for, that you lose any speed benefit of having it in cache at all. Check out Patterson & Hennessy's "Computer Organization & Design." Roundabout chapter 7. Just thought I'd share.

  39. Does it support No Execute pages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does it support No Execute pages in all steppings / versions?