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PENTIUM & CELERON

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cheekyboo

IS-IT--Management
Dec 2, 2002
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What's the difference between Pentium 1/2/3/4, Celeron and Duron?

[ponytails2]
 
DURON is an AMD Processor and works on some ATHLON motherboards. The duron was an attempt by AMD to compete with the Celeron CPU'S made by Intel.

Celeron is a generic term for processors made by Intel for budget computers. They were not as powerful as their full P2/3/4 counterparts because they had a smaller L2 Cache which limited their performance. They were the same processor basically as the P2/3/4 with the only exception of the L2 Cache being smaller. This made them a little slower, but they were still ideal for business computers.

I am not sure when they made the first Celeron Processor's, but these processors were aimed at the low budget computer market and were favorites of consumer's wishing to overclock their processors due to price. If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.
 
Indeed, if you were willing to pay a tenner more for a hefty fan and heat sink the earlier celerons actually outperformed the more expensive brother by a decent amount.
 
Early celeron's came in at around 333mhz (1998) and were as dodgy as blazes. They were stabilized by 400mhz and have since become a vital part of the intel family. Here's my opinions on the chips:

Pentium 1: Ancient, released again as Pentium Pro with MMX, barely reach 200mhz

Pentium 2: Good stable chip but with competition from Cyrix (remember them?) and AMD. Good speeds reached before being phased out at up to 700/800mhz.

Pentium 3: The longest running CPU in the intel family (apart from the 486) and a goodun' to be sure. Is still used widely in portable computers as the PIII-M, and got past the 1ghz mark.

Pentium 4: In my opinion, the most annoying of all CPU's to date. Comes in 2 varieties, 478 and 423 pins, which is confusing to say the least. The mobile version sucks way too much electricity to be effective. The Athlon is a much better alternative.

Celeron: A budget processor created as a cheaper alternative to the Pentium. Generally the same thing with less L2 cache. First models failed abysmally, but are now quite reliable. Still more expensive the the Athlon.

Duron: AMD's alternative to the Celeron. Not a big price, but not much performance either. Wasn't very popular and buried by Athlon and P4 hype.

Athlon: First released as the K7 and now in XP and MP models, the best CPU to date. The processor easily outperforms its P4 sibling, and costs virtually nothing in comparison. The only downfall is the heat generation. Without a heatsink the almost the size of your head they'll burn in about one minute. Beware of the wrong fan as some can be quite noisy and obnoxious.

There. That's my knowledge and opinions on all your mentioned processors. Hope you find it useful. (Buy an Athlon)

Sam
 
The first Pentium [never was officially tagged as a Pentium I] was a 60MHz and 66MHz in a Socket 4 board. Next came several Socket 5 and Socket 7 Pentiums from 75MHz to 233MHz, MMX was 166MHz to 233MHz and non-MMX quit at 200MHz. The Pentium Pro was a Socket 8 CPU and topped out at 200MHz, never had MMX. Pentium II was a Slot 1 and Slot 2 module. Pentium III went back to the socket along with the Celeron.
 
gargouille; good chart!

wassup393;

The first Celerons were slower than 333Mhz - I used to have a 300A - which was one of the most stable processors of its time, and the overclocking king at a whopping 66% (it would run at 504Mhz stably).

Pentium Pros were a completely different processor to the older Pentiums, and had far more in common with Pentium IIs, with their true 32-bit architecture. They were the best processors for servers until the introduction of the Pentium II Xeons.

Cyrix were never competition for Pentiums, except in terms of price, and neither were AMD. Intel would not license the FPU, so Cyrix and AMD were stuck with the old, slow 80387.

It's debatable that the P!!! is the "longest-running", as many companies still use PPros in their servers. A Dual or Quad PPro server with 1Gb RAM makes a great Windows NT/2000 server, and an even better Linux server :) Ordinary Pentiums, PIIs, P!!!s and P4s are not capable of SMP - apart from the new P4 3.06Gb with Hyperthreading, which does "virtual" SMP.

Not really true about early Celerons "failing abysmally" - they were popular because they were made by Intel and cheap. It's true about the crippled cache, though. This made Celerons undesirable at the "Bang for Buck" level, since they are noticeably slower than their Px equivalents, for not much less.

Durons were very popular among overclockers, because AMD decided to lock Athlons down. Duron 500s still are good, solid chips and a lot of people still own them. Duron 850s are legendary for their overclockability, and a second-hand one will cost almost as much as a newer, faster Athlon - because they are so good.

Athlon XP and P4 are the latest processors on the market, and there is little competition. Athlon XPs won't last as long as a minute without a heatsink - but, as you say, for the money, they are the best - for less than the price of a Celeron, you get the performance of a lower high-end P4. The required maintenance (heat control) is minimal, and part of the enjoyment of Athlon owning, IMO.

Athlon MP is the Multi-processing equivalent of the XP, similar to the Xeon/PPro in that respect.

AMD have come a long way in the last couple of years, and it is only relatively recently, with the introduction of the XP that I have become aware of them as serious competition to Intel.
CitrixEngineer@yahoo.co.uk
 
The Celeron uses the same core as its bigger brother (P2/P3/P4) but usually only has 128K L2 cache, and a slower FSB. The exception to this is the Tualatin P3 Celeron which has 256K L2 cache (but still the slower 100Mhz FSB).

But, where there is a minus...there is a plus:)

The 100Mhz FSB on the chip is actually a plus. I set it to run 14 * 110mhz for 1540mhz and because I have some cheapo pc133/CAS 3 I underclock it and run it at CAS 2:)

This is a $62 chip that replaced my aging P3 800 coppermine and it is noticably faster.... x::0:0::::
 
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