Pentium vs Celeron

[Suka]

Ok i need some advice here from people that know a little bit more than i do. I have got 2 Dell compters, each slightly different from each other, and i am going to coble together the best spec out of the two that i can. What i need to know is which machine to use. One is a Pentium 4 HT machine and the other a Celeron D machine. I have attached the screenshots from CPU-Z to help the situation

So which one?

[Zytek_Fan]

The P4 one.
The Celeron has castrated L2 cache which is going to slow stuff down sometimes.

[aiasib]

ya, what he said.

[Suka]

Ok, technical hitch. The Pentium PC has less RAM and the sticks in the Celeron machine wont fit in the Pentium machine. Haw easy is it to switch the processors over?

[Gt1Street]

P4 HT, as mentioned above has more L2 Cache and faster buses

regarding the swapping, you'll need to check the MB support for the other CPU.

Also, RAM is rather cheap these days especially if you're not too picky with it.
I suggest to go with the P4 and max out the RAM depending on the support of the MB that supports the faster RAM and the most RAM.

[Suka]

Originally Posted by Gt1Street

P4 HT, as mentioned above has more L2 Cache and faster buses

regarding the swapping, you'll need to check the MB support for the other CPU.

Also, RAM is rather cheap these days especially if you're not too picky with it.
I suggest to go with the P4 and max out the RAM depending on the support of the MB that supports the faster RAM and the most RAM.

I understand about MB support for the processor but i figured they are both codenamed Prescott so likely hood they are based on each other. As for buying new RAM, i have £0 which is why i have acquired this new pc from a friend throwing it out.

I can't even get the Heat Sink off the top of the frigging processors...

[Suka]

Ok sod it. After a bit more investigation the processors can't be swapped. I will use the Celeron PC because it has more RAM and if i have the money in future i will buy more ram for the Pentium PC and use that instead.
All i have got out of this little bit of excitement is a new sound card.

Might aswell lock this thread now, unless anyone wants to hand it over to the Brotherhood...

[adamfraser]

Ram isnt expensive, £15/gb about now if you are on DDR2.

[fisetdavid26]

If the Celeron D uses DDR2 definitely go with it, DDR2 RAM is faster AND cheaper than DDR. If you have more RAM then you won't really notice the fact the processor has 4 times less L2 cache than the P4. As for the faster bus speed you can always overclock the Celeron D and call it a day.

[Gt1Street]

Originally Posted by fisetdavid26

If the Celeron D uses DDR2 definitely go with it, DDR2 RAM is faster AND cheaper than DDR. If you have more RAM then you won't really notice the fact the processor has 4 times less L2 cache than the P4. As for the faster bus speed you can always overclock the Celeron D and call it a day.

the RAM really depends on the MB, which BTW wont solve the L2 cache problem which manifests in mathematical calculation speeds.
clocking a celeron is never a good idea, you'll end up with a frying pan instead of a pc.

what MB's do you have on these PC's Suka ?

[fisetdavid26]

Originally Posted by Gt1Street

the RAM really depends on the MB, which BTW wont solve the L2 cache problem which manifests in mathematical calculation speeds.
clocking a celeron is never a good idea, you'll end up with a frying pan instead of a pc.

what MB's do you have on these PC's Suka ?

Yeah I was about to ask what were the motherboards. It'd make things easier. Of course RAM depends on the motherboard first, but you can't use SDRAM with a Core 2 Quad, for example... it does depend on the processor too. And the northbridge on the motherboard. However DDR and DDR2 (and perhaps DDR3 one day if prices can go down damnit) being the two common types of memory in use are both supported by both processors we have here, so it's all good. I just thought the Celeron D was more incline to come with DDR2, although there aren't many boards with a 478 socket that supports DDR2... LGA 775 boards generally do however, and there are LGA 775 Celeron D's. Cache will be a problem if the processor is heavily used, a decent amount of RAM with a small cache is not a problem for everyday use. My parents' computer has a Northwood Celeron 2.5 with a dodgy 128KiB L2 cache, but has 1GB of memory and never experienced any twitch for normal use, i.e. MSN, listening to music and browsing the Internet. With Windows XP of course... Vista would be a nightmare. Gaming with that system is another story though.

As for overclocking a Celeron, depends. Northwood was notorious to die without warnings, but I think a Prescott core will do just fine... anyway it runs hot to begin with. My parents have been running a Northwood Celeron 2.5GHz at 3.0GHz since 2003 and never had any problems, temperature at full load is around 59 degrees C.

[digitalcraft]

What are you using this computer for anyways?

[Suka]

I think using the Celeron is the best bet right about now.
I have £0 so no amount of upgrades can be catered for.
The Celeron machine has 1GB of DDR RAM.
Both computers are Dell machines so both have a locked BIOS so overclocking is out of the question.
The Celeron MoBo has Dell REV A00 on it and the Pentium has Dell REV A01 on it...
Oh and the computer is used for movie watching, music, web, wlm and the occasional LFS or GPL which it can manage at a decent 30fps. Unless i have upward of 10 cars in LFS when it begins to really struggle, if i Hot Lap it can stay just below 80fps.

[digitalcraft]

Yeah just go with the celeron. Keep the other, and if you can afford more ram later, you can always do the swap whenever.