Difference in Performance between a P4 and a celeron.

[Zaysen]

Honorable Members and Experts,
I have a rather foolish and stupid query as i am a system assembler myself as knowledge is a ocean and i believe in asking others also who may know more than me.

1)When i decide to go for a cpu like pentium rather than celeron even though the price difference is just Rs 1300/- will the pentium be more capable of delivering better performance in day to day office and internet surfing applications over a celeron cpu?

2)Does a pentium have a better advantage in running other hardware more efficiently like cd writers, dvd roms,internal modems and also the on-board graphics over a celeron processor assuming both are of same speed ,same socket ,same fsb, and L2 cache.

3) Is On Board Graphics Sufficient for Day to day office work and internet surfing assuming that the user never plays a single 3d game or a agp/pci-e card is essential even for office e mail internet applications just to take the load off the cpu and chipset and to run the system faster?

Please Clarify these doubts.

Thanks in advance

Zaysen.

[dIgItaL_BrAt]

The Celeron is basically a Pentium 4 with a smaller cache and lower clock and bus speeds,so there will be quite a performance gap between the two,though that difference will not be that discernable in activities like running office apps or net surfing.

About ur 3rd question,onboard graphics is more than enough for the activities u have mentioned,infact one can even do some low-end gaming on the onboard graphics.

[d]

well, IF, as you say, you find a pentium and a celeron with same clock speeds, same cache size, then perfomance shld be the same, as these two are the important factors tht affect the perfomance.........but the chances of finding such a pair is very very rare....because for a difference of 1-1.5k, usually the celeron will be a lower performer....in which case, it would be more important to focus on cache memory...rather than clock speed...because a pentium with lower clock speed and higher cache will perform better than a celeron with higher clock speed and lower cache memory

[Ravi+ish]

Well... yes i agree with that.... pentium performance is much higher than the celeron...
But hey, where did u find that... celeron with the same cache and clock speed... i didn't ...!!!!!!!...... but still i suppose even then the celeron won't match the P4!!!!!!

If you're looking for a cheap processor?!! y not AMD??? it's better than celeron!!!!! MUCH BETTER!!!

[Zaysen]

Originally Posted by Ravi+ish

Well... yes i agree with that.... pentium performance is much higher than the celeron...
But hey, where did u find that... celeron with the same cache and clock speed... i didn't ...!!!!!!!...... but still i suppose even then the celeron won't match the P4!!!!!!

If you're looking for a cheap processor?!! y not AMD??? it's better than celeron!!!!! MUCH BETTER!!!

Sirs,
On 8th Dec 2005 i assembled a computer.it was a celeron 2.66 ghz lga 775 533mhz fsb and 256kb L2 Cache and it costed me Rs 3700/-.the shop also had a identical pentium 4 with the same clock speed,L2 Cache and also the FSB was 533mhz and it was costing Rs 5000/-.For this small difference only i asked if both were the same in peformance.

Thanks
Zaysen

[Ravi+ish]

yeah... and that diff of cache... is ... i mean quite decisive to the performance... And... i think you wud not find that 512 KB cache too many... many wud be 1MB cache! nowadays!!
The cache with the processor is much more important than ANY other cache on the system!!!

[Ravi+ish]

Now, the Pentium 4 640 is available with 2 MB L2 cache!!!!

[manmay]

let me mention a case here....
i and my frind have laptops
he has a compaq presario 2517. pentium 4 2.8 ghz. 128+256mb ram (333 mhz). 512 kb l2 cache

i have a compaq 2514 . celeron 2.8 ghz 128+256 mb ram (333 mhz). 256 kb l2 cache.

we both have allocated 64 mb to graphics

the performance diff is so much that he plays nfs ug1 at 20-25 fps while i play at 5-7 fps.

i believe the entire architectutre of the two processors have a vast diff.

i dont know much details but the above mentioned details are correct.

the laptops were purchased almost during te same time. with a purchase time gap of 2-3 months.

what do u guys have to say.....

manmay
peace

[d]

yea it means the pentium processor is able to get its hands on twice the amount of data as ur celeron processor to process, n naturally it is quicker....dude! tht's the point i'm tryin to make.



cheers

[Ravi+ish]

Originally Posted by manmay

i believe the entire architectutre of the two processors have a vast diff.

what do u guys have to say.....

manmay
peace

well... i did think there must be a difference in architectures of celeron and P4 .... when i tried to find out... i saw... i was wrong.. they both use same architecture.... NetBurst...

If anyone of you who want to know more about the architecture... visit... http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/235

[manmay]

@d:
i dont think the cache memory can cause such a big diff.
because if that was so then instead of increasing the clock speeds the intel guys would have started the cache war. and would have created processors with huge cache mem instead of 2 mB till date.

@ravish
boss.....if there's no diff bet the architectures of the celerons and the pentiums then how should we explain the performance diff between the 2 laptops that i mentioned before.

[siriusb]

Cache can cause a lot of difference. There's something called a 'cache miss' which happens more with a smaller cache than with a larger one. A cache miss will result in accessing the slower memory. Bundle this with the slow bus speeds of celerons, you have one slow system.

And the reason they can't put 4 or more MB of cache is that:
-it takes a large amnount of real-estate on chip
-It costs more.

[manmay]

i got your point abt y they cant put more of cache but i didnt understant the funda abt cache miss.....
please elaborate

[siriusb]

Hmmm.. let's see. A cpu cache is a high speed memory which operates at, or amost at, the speed of the cpu core itself. Whereas a main memory module's frequency depends on the dram module. It's typically around 400 or 600MHz.
If the cpu has to process data, it checks to see if it is in the cache. This operation takes 1 cpu clock cycle. If the data is there, the condition is a 'cache hit'. The data may be transfered to the cpu in the next clock cycle. But in the case that the cache does not contain the required data, the cpu goes on idle while the cache is filled with the missing data. This situation is a 'cache miss'.
The data must be accessed from main memory via the system/front-side bus. The time taken to find the data missing plus the inherent latency of the bus and the memory module (DRAM) adds up with the slower frequency of the ram.

So cache miss bad. Cache hit good.

[manmay]

ok ...got your point...
thanks for the info....funda cleared.

manmay
peace