Hello everyone!

I hope somebody can help me with this: Performance-wise, which processor is better? I know people say the celeron is a budget variant of the pentium, but is the difference neglegible? Im talking about processor speeds of 2.8 ghz and higher. Or should I go for athlon?

Reason I´m asking is that I have a tight budget, and the Celeron would allow me to get 1024mb ddr-ram instead of 512... Go figure!

What Kinda Budget, and What Tasks are you doing with your comp..?

General household multimedia, i.e. gaming (on- and off-line, music, accounting and so on)

Maybe my 600US$ will get you a lot in the States, but here in Sweden it will get me a good motherboard, a 2.8-3 Ghz processor and ddr rams of up to 1024mb (depending on which kind of processor). No more, no less.

Thus my question is more aimed at the quality of the different kinds of processors. Intel has a reputation of higher quality than athlon, Pentium is generally percieved as faster then Celeron. So, which choice would you make, if money was not a diciding factor?

Hi Gallow. A couple of years back I built a similar box around an Athlon 1.2GHz (can't remember the codename... Thunderbird?) I think that was around about the time AMD were starting to be taken seriously next to Intel. Had no problems with it - 512MB DDR Ram with an Asus motherboard (M7-something-spec, new for that time) under Win98 - it flew along. Played a lot of UT online. No problem. Not very recent experience I suppose, but if buying AMD can get you a bit more for less, I'd recommend it.

Thanks a lot! I see your point. I´m using athlon now, a 1ghz Thunderbird, and i´ve never had any problems with the processor. I´ll ponder my dilemma, and we´ll see...

tata

Gallow

Good luck. Your CPU choice is tied in with your motherboard choice, so you need to think about both together: when you've narrowed your CPU choice down, have a look at what the compatible motherboards can do - a few more features and possibilities to consider!

I haven't used a Celeron, but I would say stay away - they make 'em cheap by cutting down the cache. So don't be fooled by the quoted speed; for gaming/multimedia, I think you would definitely see poorer performance (Duron is the AMD equivalent - or was, when I was looking).

Another reason for choosing a good motherboard is that the newer better ones hav many integrated components, like qiute superb soundcards, lanports and soo on.

So it takes a lot thinking about the right choices...

Thanks yet again!

Gallow

I somewhat agree with Conrad on staying away from the Celeron. I have a 700 Mhz Celeron and a 600Mhz P3. The P3 works better. There's not that much difference though and at the speed your talking about is probably not much of an issue as far as processing, where as memory makes a lot of difference. I have also had AMD chips in the past and never had any problems with them.

Gallow

WHATEVER YOU DO DON'T BUY A CELERON! Old celerons were okay but current Celerons are an insult to humanity!