Which processor to buy 2.4 celeron or 1800-2000 AMD XP (1 Viewer)

[JasonRuiz]

I've been looking at basing my HTPC on an AthlonXP, but it seems ATX motherboards are more expensive than ATX counterparts. I've been thinking of building a two part solution a 2.5 on a full ATX mobo that would be set away and a smaller MATX that would be built to fit in my componant system. I just happened to find really good deals on some motherboard/cpu bundles. First there's a 2.4ghz Celeron AND ANxp1800+ (EACH WAS RIGHT AROUND $100) I currently run an Athlon1900 oc to 1680ghz(a bit faster than an XP2000+) and so I know how it performs (with CorsairXMS ememory, it runs faster than any xp200+ I've seen...and does a pretty good job with everything I throw at it), but I haven't had any experiance with post 1ghz Celerons so I have no idea how they run. I know the older 1.0,1.1,1.2etc.Celerons based to the Taulatin core are pretty much like PIII's (esp. if overclocked to 133fsb's) but I heard the newer ones are pretty poor performers. I'm just wondering if the speed differance would make up the differance.
BTW. Has anyone heard of the GigaPRO processors?? It looked interesting on it's face because it was a RISC processor, ran cool enough not to need active cooling BUT it only runs at 650mhz (I have no ide how a 650mhz RISC compares to CISC processors..I assume that it's similar to a 1ghz x86 cpu). THe few reviews I read were along the lines that it wasn't very good at 3d but did things like video display pretty well. I have no plans on using this cip in my current project but it might be interesting to consider it for something that needs to be extermely quiet, and cool. Since It was selling for less than $70 w/ a socket370 mobo, it's also quite cheap. (I was thinking an MP3 server for the car project..)

 

[Max Leung]

Celerons in my experience are quite slow. I'd rather have a (much) more pricey P4! Or, just grab an AMD XP2700 instead!

The Celerons basically have a crippled FSB. What's the point unless you want a cheap PC for playing movies or MP3s...3D video games will suck on it.

 

[Ken Chui]

IIRC, Intel Celerons and AMD Durons are extremely weak with floating point calculations, which makes them poor performers with 3-D games. They're acceptable for running office productivity software, web surfing and some multimedia, but that's about it. Any Athlon XP processor in this range will outperform the Celeron, even without overclocking. From one AMD user to another, stick with the Athlons (or better yet, spring for a Barton )

 

[Colin Dunn]

Stay away from the new Celerons. They are way, way, way slower than Pentium 4s of the same clock speed. I see a lot of low-end Celeron business PCs at work, and their performance is pathetic.

I'm not quite sure why the new Celerons are so slow. With a 100MHz FSB, they should be at least as fast as the 100FSB Pentium III processors. Real-world performance seems to suffer, though, with the average P3-500 to P3-733 performing at least as well. Maybe the chipsets used with the latest Celerons also aren't up to snuff...

My recommendation: Get either an Athlon XP or Pentium 4 processor. Even the lowest-end Pentium 4 processors drastically outperform the higher-end Celerons ... especially when you get away from CPU benchmarks and look at total system performance.

 

[JamesHl]

I'm not quite sure why the new Celerons are so slow.

It's not so much the fsb as the lack of l2 cache, which in the past was often the only defining characteristic between a pentium and a celeron.

 

[videobruce]

Another reason to go with AMD..........

It's not a Wintel product! Doesn't support the Wintel machine.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

It's not a Wintel product! Doesn't support the Wintel machine.

yawn, enough. i have an amd cpu and i like it very much, but the 'down with wintel' and micro$haft mentality is getting old.

anyway, i'd get an amd xp.

CJ

 

[Shane S.]

yawn, enough. i have an amd cpu and i like it very much, but the 'down with wintel' and micro$haft mentality is getting old.

couldn't agree more. If Linux and AMD were the big boys on the block people would cry about that as well, Its terrible. If you don't like it use something else.

Given your examples I'd say go with the XP if you plan on gaming otherwise you could be just as happy with the celeron.