Processors?
 

Compare and Contrast:

Celeron. Athalon. Pentium.



I'm in the market for a new computer.

Thank you

You've pretty much listed them in order of performance.
Celeron, Athlon, Pentium.

(I'm assuming you mean the latest out of each of those lines)

It all depends on your budget. You don't want to skimp on peripherals like drives, nor do you want to skimp on sound cards/video cards/ram just to get a faster processor, because the downfalls of these exceed the benefits of a faster processor.

Celeron is good for really low budgets. Might also want to check out the Duron for a performance edge.
Athlon is good for medium end budgets - in my opinion, the best bang for your buck at the moment.
Pentium 4s, however, perform the best, and would be the best one to go for if money is not a problem.

Might want to check out www.tomshardware.com - they used to be slightly biased towards Intel, but I think they are being more objective lately.

Good luck :)

AMD all the way for me - I only have one P4 out of four systems, and I forget why I even bought that one now rather than another athlon.

i have to say that Athlon's and P4's are the way to go for a new pc. I wouldn't recommend getting a celeron or Duron only because of the HUGE decrease in performance compared to an Athlon/P4. That said the P4 will perform better but it's gonna cost you, and the Athlon is still has the best price/performance ratio.

You also need to know what you plan on using this computer for and what your budget is. If you are playing most games, an Athlon or P4 will be about the same in performance. If you plan on doing video/multimedia tasks, the P4 is better.

Also, as Flippy said go with a slower processor and get better audio/video/ram, they will give you a better increase in performance compared to a slightly faster processor.

For a no-holds barred top of the line system, the fastest you can get is a P4 with the 875 chipset, but it will cost you alot.

If you can live with a bit less performane, an Athlon XP and the latest Nvidia chipset will give you close to that level for less cost.

Intel is the performance leader, but AMD has more bang for the buck.

Actually, if you look at any benchmarks of equally priced chips, P4 outclasses AMD.

$263 Pentium 4 2.8GHz 800
crushes the equally priced...
$275 - Athlon XP 3000 400

Key Benchmarks from Tomshardware.com:

Q3 Arena @ 640x480x16: (higher is better)
P4 - 375 fps
AMD - 321.2

Q3 Arena @ 1280x1024x32: (higher is better)
P4 - 292.2 fps
AMD - 274.1

DirectX8 in 3dMark 2001 SE @ 1024x768x32: (higher is better)
P4 - 15942 marks
AMD - 15591

DirectX9 in 3dMark 2003 @ 1024x768x32: (higher is better)
P4 - 4813
AMD - 4745

Mp3 Audio Encoding: Mp3 Maker Platinum 3.04: (faster is better)
P4 - 78 seconds
AMD - 109

Archiving - WinRar 3.11: (faster is better)
P4 - 48 seconds
AMD - 69

Distributed Computing - SETI 3.03: (faster is better)
P4 - 1 minute, 37 seconds
AMD - 2 minutes, 19 seconds

Office Applications - Sysmark2002: (higher is better)
P4 - 383 marks
AMD - 326

Ok, that's enough to clearly crown P4 as the champ. I didn't pick these numbers for the purpose of making P4 look better, all of the benchmarks between these two processors are in P4s favor. And don't give the price argument, because it's also slightly in Intel's favor. Another key thing I left out is AMD still has heat issues that Pentiums are pretty much free of. My last 3 computers were AMDs, but based on these numbers and some word of mouth, I switched with the new one. Works great. I'll put it to good use when Hl2 comes out (still need to upgrade the video, card though).

you left out a little bit there, my friend.

if your budget isnt in for the 200+$ processors then AMD does in fact perform a bit better.

a 50-70$ AthlonXP will out perform a pentium at the same price..

like what has been said before. The main difference is what you want. If you don't have the $$$ then go with a celeron or an AMD chip, but if money isnt an issue (or not as much of one) then go with Pentiums since they are a lot cooler.

I personally wouldnt buy a high end AMD chip just because the price difference between a high end and a midlevel amd chip is so enormous. I personally went from a pentium to an AMD and find it just fine. Just watch the heat a bit is all, but of course, I didnt want to spend more than 100$ on a chip so that limits one's options.

Question : When did the P4 3.06G processor come out ??

i would much rather go with amd's. i personally think it's more bang for the buck.

both of my systems run amd's (one a k6 and an athlon xp).

www.anandtech.com has better reviews than Toms imho.

I belive they think otherwise http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1783
AMD won some benchmarks and if you look at actual clock speeds AMD beats out the P4 almost every time.
They compare all the chip speeds at once for comparason.

AMD all the way for me.

1. Tom's Hardware is typically very Intel biased. Take their reviews with a grain of salt.

2. AMD does not have heat issues. In fact, Intel has heat issues. A Barton 3000+ produces about 75watts at stock, while a 3.06 P4 produces 100watts at stock. Just a heads up.

Take a look at thermal specs on the more recent procs and AMD actually comes out on top.

http://www.intel.com/support/process...Specifications
P4 3.0 is 81.9 watts.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/cont..._Rev04_ENG.pdf
Athlon 3000 is 74.3 watts.

Granted, the built in heat protection on the P4 is somewhat nicer than what the Athlon has, but the P4 still runs hotter.

about 3 months ago.

Way to use an article from February to back up your point.
Six months in the computing industry? Are you f'cking insane?

What's changed:

800 Mhz FSB. Intel has advanced several chipsets for motherboards, but most importantly, RAM has improved to the point where it can make use of the powerful intel chip. Direct X 9 is finding it's way into software.

But why do I even need to make these points? Most of the benchmarks in that link are still in Intel's favor. :)

YAWN. Taken from your own site:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1834

Now I know why you posted a six month old article.

Intel is by far better, for a price though. And about the heat, Um my p4 2.8GHz with 800 MHz front side bus runs at 35C with stock cooling whereas my 2500XP+ ran at at least 45C and there were mad fans in my old case.

If you can spend the money, get a p4. They are very very nice.

BTW i used to be like all you AMD fans out there and hated intel. That is until i saw my friends p4 2.0 GHz comp kick the shit out of my XP 2500+ in every benchmark and our systems were identical except mine was AMD his was intel. And his ran like 15 degrees cooler than mine. That completly changed my mind.

the only thing about getting the P4s to out preform the AMD chips, the expensive RDRAM it needs to get speed.

all i can really tell you is what i know from personal experience.

i ran a p3 450 chip for years and years, and was delighted with it. i also have a p4 1.7 chip that i put in a box for my family to use. i'm running an XP 1900+ which runs at about 1600mhz. and lastly i have a celeron 900 chip in another machine.

i'm more than happy with the AMD chip, as it's has never given me any problems, or reasons or reconsider my purchase. i'll also add that when i bought it, it was very, very well priced. i can't recall exactly, but something like 60 bucks CAD.

the p4 is fine, i have no complaints, but i also have nothing to say that would put it much higher up on the scale compared to the AMD.

now for the celeron... well at least it was inexpensive. it genuinely think that the p3 450 performs just as well as the celeron 900. i bought it because the box i was making was just a work horse, to be abused and speed wasn't really criucial, and the celeron does the job. mainly because it was cheap. but i would hate to use a celeron in a pc i used often.

now remember, these chips are all at least a year or so old right now, but if the performance means anything to you, well take it for what it's worth.

also, as the others have said, it truly does depend on your price range. but i personally would not reccomend a celeron. amd, or p4 would do you just fine. but i would never buy another celeron.

hope that helps.

Real world experience makes me lean to AMD. We've got four Dell P4 2.4's at work and I think my year-old+ Athlon XP 1900 at home kicks their asses (note: 256meg DDR ram in all systems). While they are all OK for their purposes, the Intels just "feel" a step slower.

In regard to the original poster's query: if the 800MHz FSB Intel fits your budget, buy it and love it. If not, buy the fastest AMD you can afford. Whichever you get, cool the hell out of it!

About this. From what i have seen, Dells run much slower than custom built computers. I think its the OS that is preinstalled on the pc. Every friend of mine who has boughten a prebuilt i have told to completely format the computer and install a fresh copy of Windows. My experience may be different than yours though.

My p4 3.2c with Abit Ic7 is obviously the fatest machine I've ever had the pleasure to deal with.

It really is a point of how much you are willing to spend. Back when I wanted to save money Amd was nicer. But now since I setup a solid foundation of reselling, I went Intel.

Something people forgot to mention is Intel also designs their own motherboards, so the motherboards you get from Intel make their cpu's run the greatest.

You guys gotta admit the Springdale and Canterwood chipsets are freaking amazing. Workstation performance for the desktop. That's what I'm talking about.

I love my Springdale.

Thank you for all the replies. I've always wondered what the differences were between the 3 in performance since there's such a difference in price.

I've been leaning towards a P4 but was wondering if an Athalon was worth it performance wise.

Thanks again.

To summarize, $150 and above for the CPU is the price where Intel simply dominates the market in terms of performance. I consider this the upper end of low-priced/low end of mid-priced computers.

This refers to the P4 2.4 ghz 533 fsb beating the slightly higher priced Athlon XP 2800+.

Everything under this price level is AMD's share of the market. As priced on pricewatch.com, the Athlon XP 2700+ is $126, which beats P4 2.0 Ghz chips and down (price and performance). Everything at this level is low to extremely low priced computing, not counting the second-hand market.

In case you're wondering how the $86 2.4 Ghz Celeron stacks up to the to XP 2400/2500+ (similarly priced), it doesn't, so don't bother.

what heyal256 said in their first post... other than that, I have nothing to contribute except for the fact that the only intel processor in my computers is a p3 600, the rest are amd's ranging from duron 800 to xp 2100.

the new P4 C's with the 800mhz FSB and dual channel DDR400 kick the shit out of all other processors...

Yep. It's a testament of the importance of the FSB.

You can expect a de-emphasis on sheer processor speeds in terms of clock cycles, faster FSBs in the near future. Let's just hope developments in memory can keep up.

If you are building a new machine, in the end either a P4 or Athlon will do you just fine. Do NOT buy Celeron if you are building something... they are just P.O.S. processors made to be cheap and keep the price down on new machines with making people believe that they are getting a good quality, fast Intel CPU.

Most people just prefer P4 or Athlon with what they have used before or which architecture they like better. One CPU is not better/worse than the other.

How many people think about a cpu's architecture when they're using a computer? If you were to have two computers of equivalent processing power without knowing which was an intel and which was an AMD it would be impossible to tell the difference without opening system properties, or something else with diagnostics.

I guess it all depends on your own experiences. At college, me and a few friends sit around and debate which is better: AMD or Intel, NVIDIA or ATI.

Well, someone above mentioned that after you start paying $150.00 for a CPU, then Intel wins. I'm a die-hard AMD fan, but I have to agree in most instances with that. There are other circumstances, however -- like the CPUs that cost less than $150.00. Me and my friend at ASU built two PCs. He bought an Asus mobo with a nForce 2 chipset while my current PC was a Gigabyte mobo with a VIA KT333 chipset.

We loaded both computers with 768 megabytes of DDR memory. My friend who bought the Asus mobo with the nForce 2 chipset bought a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4b CPU. My current PC had a Athlon XP 1900+ Palomino running at 1.61 GHz. Both PCs had a GeForce 4 TI4200 128 MB video card in them. The Asus/P4 PC had 8x AGP; mine had 4x.

On benchmark tests, the Gigabyte/Athlon XP PC (mine) did about 5% less than the Asus/P4. Remember, there is a 250 MHz FSB difference between the Athlon and P4, and nearly 800 MHz difference in actual clock speed. The Athlon XP had a FIVE PERCENT decrease in score in 3d Mark 2001 as well as UT2k3 and Q3 benchmarks.

Tests like these prove that it's not always a massive FSB and clock speed that equals performance. My CPU was about $70.00 when I bought it. My friend's was over $200.00. When it all boils down to it, there are a cubic shitlode of factors that determine how good a computer will be. The motherboard, chipset, graphics card, and definitely the RAM all contribute to overall performance. But when two PCs sharing the same specs except for mobo and CPU are tested and one is nearly equal with 800 MHz clock speed difference, something can be said.

If you don't want to speed over $100.00 on a CPU, I'd go AMD Athlon XP, all the way. As a matter of fact, I think NewEgg has a sale on AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Bartons that run at 1.83 GHz with a 333 FSB right now, only $90.00. It overclocks easily to 2.2 GHz with a regular CPU fan.

If you want to spend a shitlode of money on a CPU, and know that you'll have the best, then go Intel. But I strongly suggest only buying a Pentium 4 if you want to spend over $150-200 dollars.

-Lasereth

I used to love intel and their products, then switched to AMD, and now I dont know where to go from here. But I will say this, for the price and the overall value of it, I say go AMD. Plus, with good cooling, you can squeeze out an overclocked Athlon XP to perhaps a 500mhz overclock. So Ive read on [H]ardOCP anyway.

With really good cooling, you can make some of the freak Athlon XP's (1700+b core, 2100+, 2500+ Barton) do simply amazing things.

The written world record for overclocking an Athlon XP 2100+ is astounding. The 2100+ b cores start at 1.73 GHz. A tech forum I go to has a user that has liquid nitrogen cooling installed on his system with his 2100+ running at <B>3.3 GHz</B>. Yes, his 2100+ is overclocked nearly 1,600 megahertz. I shit you not. My Barton 2500+ will overclock 500 Mhz with a <B>good CPU fan</B>. That's why I suggest getting an Athlon XP if you want to spend less than $100.00.

<A HREF=http://www.vr-zone.com/guides/AMD/TBred/>Thoroughbred Overclocking Records</A>

-Lasereth

Nice try Lasereth, nForce boards only support AMD.

But again, nice try.

Oh no, anything but the overclocking argument!

Intel P4 3.2@5.13Ghz by TAM. (Almost 2 Ghz!)

Same website he posted.

What? I just talked to my friend, and it seems that he's not running an nForce 2 for obvious reasons. He last told me he had one; I'm not a big Intel fan so I have no idea what the hell their motherboards are equipped with. I checked into it, and as stupid as I feel right now, it looks like Intel makes most of the chipsets for P4 motherboards. There isn't even an nForce 2 chipset for P4s, much less nForces being used only for Pentium 4's like you said. He has an Intel 8 series chipset. Anyway, that's beside the point of my reply.

If you would have read my reply, then you wouldn't have posted that. I said that if you are going to spend under $100.00 on a CPU, then go AMD. If more, then go Intel. Let's see...a nice Pentium 4 at 3.2 GHz default running at 800 MHz FSB...add Hyper-Threading on to that...the cheapest one I found is <B>$650.00</B>. Wow. That's a good bit over $100.00. Hence me saying if you want the better processor and you're willing to spend over $100.00, then go Intel. If not, then I STILL say go AMD. The 2100+ overclocked so high costs...let's see, on average, <B>$60.00</B>. Please read my reply if you want to prove me wrong, because my post still makes sense.

Spending more than $100.00 on a CPU? Buy a Pentium 4.

Spending less than $100.00? Buy an Athlon XP.

That's all I have to say.

-Lasereth

if you have money, go for a nice hyper threading P4. if you are limited on the budget, go for an AMD Barton or something. it all depends on how much money you got. I particulary like AMD because you can spend half the money and usually get the same results, it just runs a bit hotter.

I'm a bit confused - who said that nForce boards only support P4 chips and were they serious? nForce boards support AMD chips.

nForce 2 mobo that supports AMD

i'd stay away from the celeron and duron unless $$$ absolutely necessitates it. I've always been a Pentium fan, but recently on my last major upgrade i went to an AMD mainly to save a few bucks. i've been very happy with the amd. only downfall i have seen compared to a pentium is the ability to multitask. the pentium just does a better job at multitasking. amd lags a lot when multiple programs are processing.