Celeron chips - the biggest dog yet

[calahans]

My company rolled out a test phase of new computers. They are high spec - good disk space, high processort speed, 128 mb memory etc & cheap (!!) . However, they are celeron chips. Not being closed minded I said fair enough.<br>
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That was about 2 months ago - since then I have become closed minded! I would say that a 500mhz celeron is like a good spec pentium at best and no amount of extra memory will help.<br>
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If the boss suggests using these as a cheap alternative, just say no. They are ok for word users but not power users.<br>
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What do others think?<br>

 

[Zelandakh]

I rolled out C300A's across the company. Even our power users were happy.<br>
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I put in a few C433s recently for some power users with SQL7 who had been using the same computer for nearly a year and therefore felt they needed new machines. They are gobsmacked at the speed.<br>
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I compared them to my PIII and the difference is not great. That is why Celeron chips are not all that much cheaper these days.<br>
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Example power users: C433, 4Gb, 64Mb, CD, 4Mb AGP, 17 inch monitor showing 800 x 600 in 16 bit colour. Apps running on Win95 via TCPIP are Outlook (Exchange Server), Excel, Word, at least 2 instances of SQL 7 and maybe a couple of legacy apps.<br>
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That is CONCURRENT! Are you running 98? I remove it and put 95 on. Upgrade the IP stack with the DUN patch, put IE5 on and away you go.<br>
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Two things to note cos I did have a crap batch (excuse the language please). Only use pucker 3COM network cards. Make sure you have a &quot;proper&quot; motherboard and not an inferior cheap one. We only use Gigabyte boards now. A few extra pounds on the board makes the speed and reliability increase by leaps and bounds...

 

[calahans]

We run 95 and NT server. In relation to the number of aplications running on it - I don't have a beef. Its the response time I have the problem with. We used it with SS7 and thought it was very slow.<br>
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I'll check the other things with IT support when I get back in the office.<br>
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Thanks,<br>
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C

 

[MasterRacker]

In raw processor speed, the Celeron beats an equivalent speed PII and is very close to the PIII. However, Intel is downmarketing the Celeron. They're putting them in systems with inferior components. Like Zel said, be especially careful about your motherboard. Systems makers like to put Celerons on boards using a shared memory architecture (some system RAM is used for the video which is also integrated on the MB.) The shared memory will destroy video performance. Use a real motherboard, good video card and other components and you should get performance that equals or exceeds the &quot;real&quot; pentiums. <p> Jeff<br><a href=mailto: masterracker@hotmail.com> masterracker@hotmail.com</a><br><a href= > </a><br>

 

[Zelandakh]

SS7 was run out in our office recently after 3 years with 6.x. We were happy with 6 but were told that 7 was just peachy. Installed it and it runs like a dog...<br>
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It should work at least 50% faster on the desktop. We eventually found the reason why - Norton Anti Virus slows it down. If you remove auto protect for .exe files it runs fast. Shovels were mentioned.<br>
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Is this your problem?

 

[calahans]

No, we had that issue with SS6.5 alright but we have sorted out this time. I'm not in the office at the moment - maybe I need to look at the configuration of the machines in more detail, given that you guys seem to think that the chip performance is very good.<br>
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Thanks,<br>
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C

 

[tonykerr]

I bought a bunch of celerons, they worked great for a while, then crashed often, I found out that you must have a gold contact adapter for the PGA to socket 1 connector, mine were all tin, now they are screamers!