Which is better.. Celeron 1.8GHz or P4 1.7 GHz

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The title sums it up pretty well :) The computer I'm typing on right now currently has a 1.8 GHz Celeron, but I'm dissatisfied with its performance and was wondering if the P4 1.7 GHz I've got would be any faster. All we do with this computer is web surfing and the occasional Word document, no programming or CAD.

[Ken Moore]

Most likely the P4 will have faster performance, even with a slightly lower clock speed. Intel came out with the Celeron for the low end market, to make the chip cheaper to make, they reduced the amount of L2 cache memory. If I remember correctly the Celeron has 128 kilobytes and the P4 you mentioned has 512, later P4's have upto 2 megs. I do not have the specs for either processor, but many times the Celeron has a slower bus, and uses slower memory modules. One thing that I've noticed from personal experience, is that the amount of RAM in a WINXP system is a big factor. Many times the low end systems only ship with 256 megabytes, increasing the RAM to 512 is the most cost effective upgrade. 512 is sort of a sweet spot for WINXP. My wife uses a P4 2.2 Ghz machine for about the same type of thing you're doing and by increasing the RAM to 512, there was a noticeble performance boost.

[TimWilborne]

Wow I would be happy with either for web surfing. Heck I would be happy with it for my work computer. I want a cool computer

[gravitar]

Well, this one is pretty much a "frankenstein" computer put together from misc. free or cheap parts. I probably have about $25 in it altogether :) The P4 chip was free too, it was in a non-working Dell from a "free" craigslist post. The computer this replaces was free as well, from a few years ago. If you stay alert to deals in your area, you can find stuff like this too! BTW.. the computer I do "work" stuff on is just an old P3-500 HP Vectra. It does the job, and for whatever reason seems to be pretty powerful!

[TimWilborne]

Actually besides my work computers I have never had a new computer. All of mine have been Frankensteins. Maybe one day I'll breakdown and buy a new computer

[BobLfoot]

It has been my experience that peripheral items {Ram, Startup and Background Programs} have more effect most times than processor speed when not drastically dispartite.

[panic mode]

I agree with Bob, Shared video memory is biggest performance killer. And don't call it computer unless it has 512Mb of RAM, or 1Gb if you run progrmas with big appetite. There are many things that affect performance and celerons are meant to be cheap, they are cut down version of pentiums just like Duron was cut down version of Athlon etc. CPU makers have noticed that most of the errors in new cpus ware in cache isnce cache is largest part of the die. by selectively disabling portions of it they could still run cpu but with obviously lower performance. overal performance difference will not be great unless you do intensive calcs etc. where P4 will be able to use it's cache. P4 and it's celeron brother C4 are much slower than other common processors with same clock speed. performancewise 1.7GHz version pcompares performance should be more or less as fast as PIII or AMD chips at only 1GHz or so. Intel was always cranking clock speed up to make AMD look bad but it didn't work too well. It worked for a while with lot's of people believing that clock speed alone is most significant performance indicator, but eventualy everyone smartened up and P4 (and C4) are history, AMD was performance winner for a while. Decent P4 these days run above 3GHz. This compares roughly to 2GHz Pentium M. New generations of Intel CPUs doesn't clock as high as P4 but they are faster performancewise thanks to different architecture (more cores, more cache etc.). Core Duo and Core 2 Duo are currently in hot spot as newest and fastest CPUs from Intel. Intels new server CPUs have up to 24Mb of cache! I wonder what are the yield rates and i hope they are better than what IBM makes with their cell processor. There ware articles quoting IBM that they are lucky to only get some 10% (it is common to get 80-90% yield for other types of CPU). Computer prices are falling down every day. It is expensive to stay up to date with latest and greatest hardware since changes are so frequent. Here are some decent machines: nice $500 laptop http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...p;Sku=A180-1240 nice $500 desktop http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...=SYXS-DB-988868 nicer $600 desktop http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/Se...p;Sku=A180-2058

[gravitar]

Well I replaced the celeron 1.8 with the P4-1.7, and replaced the 256MB simm with a 512, and it is a completely different machine now. I didn't realize this until I pulled it but the 256MB was PC100 and this 512 is PC133, so maybe that had some effect too. Anyway, the wife's happy, it is now at least as fast as the old P3-500 :)