Celeron 2.80GHz vs. Northwood 2.60GHz

Hi all,

Google searching this group didn't really give me anything useful, but
maybe somebody here can answer this question anyways:

Which CPU is likely to be more powerful when overclocked to a point
where it's still rock solid: A 2.60Ghz/512/400 Northwood Pentium 4 or
a 2.80Ghz/128/400 Celeron?

'Cause I'm not yet planning to get a new MB; I have an Asus P4B (which
allows turning up the main system bus in 1Mhz increments, and which
uses SDRAM by the way... I couldn't afford a better one when I got
it.)

I know the 2.60GHz Northwood is sort of hard to get, but it appears on
eBay at least every couple of days... of course it fetches about
150-170 Euros while I can get a new, boxed 2.80 Celeron including
cooler for 116 Euros.

Currently I'm running a 1.7GHz Celeron at 2.04GHz on this same
Motherboard and it is completely stable (at least it completed a day
of Prime95 torture test without trouble and I've never had strange
crashes or similar at this speed.)

Thanks for any hints,

--
Linards Ticmanis

the northwood will smoke the celeron, unless you get the celeron up to
beyond 4GHz (this is unlikely)



"Linards Ticmanis" wrote in message
m...
Hi all,

Google searching this group didn't really give me anything useful, but
maybe somebody here can answer this question anyways:

Which CPU is likely to be more powerful when overclocked to a point
where it's still rock solid: A 2.60Ghz/512/400 Northwood Pentium 4 or
a 2.80Ghz/128/400 Celeron?

'Cause I'm not yet planning to get a new MB; I have an Asus P4B (which
allows turning up the main system bus in 1Mhz increments, and which
uses SDRAM by the way... I couldn't afford a better one when I got
it.)

I know the 2.60GHz Northwood is sort of hard to get, but it appears on
eBay at least every couple of days... of course it fetches about
150-170 Euros while I can get a new, boxed 2.80 Celeron including
cooler for 116 Euros.

Currently I'm running a 1.7GHz Celeron at 2.04GHz on this same
Motherboard and it is completely stable (at least it completed a day
of Prime95 torture test without trouble and I've never had strange
crashes or similar at this speed.)

Thanks for any hints,

--
Linards Ticmanis

The answer is dictated by the size of the L2 cache.

The Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood has a 512 KByte L2 cache. The Celeron 2.8 has a
128 KByte L2 cache. I doubt that ANY attainable overclock of a Celeron 2.8
would equal the performance of a Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood running a stock
speed (except on a benchmark that executed a code segment that would fit
completely in a 128 KByte L2 cache. And then there is the fact that the
Pentium 4 2.6 using an 800 MHz FSB gives much better memory system
performance than a Celeron 2.8 using a 400 MHz FSB even if you discount the
effect of the smaller L2 cache on the Celeron.

The overclock you are getting on your Celeron 1.7 is poor because it uses
the older 0.18 micron core as did the Williamette Pentium 4.

Don't even consider a Celeron 2.8 if you want to overclock, but save money.
Even a Pentium 4 1.6a, an easy overclock to 2.4 GHz, should beat any
overclock of a Celeron 2.8 because the 4 times as large L2 cache is
ESPECIALLY helpful with the much slower SDRAM you use.

As for a price comparison in US dollars (because those will be the best
prices, and resellers in the USA are the ones I have have used), these
prices are current for in stock CPU's at
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/ .

Celeron 2.8 boxed, retail $126
Celeron 2.7 boxed, retail $106
Celeron 2.6 boxed, retail $ 91
Pentium 4 1.8 Northwood, boxed retail $114.50
Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood 400 MHz FSB $139

As you can see, the price differential between the Celeron 2.8 boxed, retail
and the Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood boxed, retail is only + 10%. Even though
prices are quite a bit higher in the EU, surely the price differential ought
to hold


--
Phil Weldon, pweldonatmindjumpdotcom
For communication,
replace "at" with the 'at sign'
replace "mindjump" with "mindspring."
replace "dot" with "."

"Linards Ticmanis" wrote in message
m...
Hi all,

Google searching this group didn't really give me anything useful, but
maybe somebody here can answer this question anyways:

Which CPU is likely to be more powerful when overclocked to a point
where it's still rock solid: A 2.60Ghz/512/400 Northwood Pentium 4 or
a 2.80Ghz/128/400 Celeron?

'Cause I'm not yet planning to get a new MB; I have an Asus P4B (which
allows turning up the main system bus in 1Mhz increments, and which
uses SDRAM by the way... I couldn't afford a better one when I got
it.)

I know the 2.60GHz Northwood is sort of hard to get, but it appears on
eBay at least every couple of days... of course it fetches about
150-170 Euros while I can get a new, boxed 2.80 Celeron including
cooler for 116 Euros.

Currently I'm running a 1.7GHz Celeron at 2.04GHz on this same
Motherboard and it is completely stable (at least it completed a day
of Prime95 torture test without trouble and I've never had strange
crashes or similar at this speed.)

Thanks for any hints,

--
Linards Ticmanis

Hi Linards,
As usual Phil nailed it - by all means go for the P4, 2.8C it will be light
years ahead of the Celeron (well almost BG). Good luck.
--
Tally Ho!
Ed
"Linards Ticmanis" wrote in message
m...
Hi all,

Google searching this group didn't really give me anything useful, but
maybe somebody here can answer this question anyways:

Which CPU is likely to be more powerful when overclocked to a point
where it's still rock solid: A 2.60Ghz/512/400 Northwood Pentium 4 or
a 2.80Ghz/128/400 Celeron?

'Cause I'm not yet planning to get a new MB; I have an Asus P4B (which
allows turning up the main system bus in 1Mhz increments, and which
uses SDRAM by the way... I couldn't afford a better one when I got
it.)

I know the 2.60GHz Northwood is sort of hard to get, but it appears on
eBay at least every couple of days... of course it fetches about
150-170 Euros while I can get a new, boxed 2.80 Celeron including
cooler for 116 Euros.

Currently I'm running a 1.7GHz Celeron at 2.04GHz on this same
Motherboard and it is completely stable (at least it completed a day
of Prime95 torture test without trouble and I've never had strange
crashes or similar at this speed.)

Thanks for any hints,

--
Linards Ticmanis

In line with everyone else - don't even think about going with a Celeron! Go
for the "best" 400MHz Northwood P4 your budget will allow.

Anandtech did a really thorough comparison of budget processors recently:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpu/showdoc.html?i=1927

It shows that on balance that a 1.8 P4 just about always beats a 2.6
Celeron.... so does that answer your question?

Interestingly - they're both beaten by (even) the 1.6 Applebred Duron )

Pete


"Linards Ticmanis" wrote in message
m...
Hi all,

Google searching this group didn't really give me anything useful, but
maybe somebody here can answer this question anyways:

Which CPU is likely to be more powerful when overclocked to a point
where it's still rock solid: A 2.60Ghz/512/400 Northwood Pentium 4 or
a 2.80Ghz/128/400 Celeron?

'Cause I'm not yet planning to get a new MB; I have an Asus P4B (which
allows turning up the main system bus in 1Mhz increments, and which
uses SDRAM by the way... I couldn't afford a better one when I got
it.)

I know the 2.60GHz Northwood is sort of hard to get, but it appears on
eBay at least every couple of days... of course it fetches about
150-170 Euros while I can get a new, boxed 2.80 Celeron including
cooler for 116 Euros.

Currently I'm running a 1.7GHz Celeron at 2.04GHz on this same
Motherboard and it is completely stable (at least it completed a day
of Prime95 torture test without trouble and I've never had strange
crashes or similar at this speed.)

Thanks for any hints,

--
Linards Ticmanis

Another note, particularly if buying used, is that a Celeron 2.8
goes peculiarly for nearly the same price as a 1.8P4 or 2.0P4.

Which tells me the Cel2.8 is only starting the depreciation curve,
peculiarly not because of performance but because it is "new". The
P4 is suffering from the many upgrades by P4 owners to higher,
and in particular to 800FSB processors & boards from 400/533.

Taking UK prices, Cel-2.8 is ~85ukp, a P4-2.8-533 is ~120ukp
yet the performance difference outweighs the financial difference.

Only Celeron worth buying is the 1.7 for *.net 24/7 SOHO servers,
simply because "it's a S478 chip" at around 25ukp. Yes the Duron
is exceptional value for money re performance compared to Celeron.

I can see a P4-Celeron-Prescott, with say 256KB cache, but if the
deeper pipeline is anything to go by it might need to be painted yellow.
--
Dorothy Bradbury
www.stores.ebay.co.uk/panaflofan for fans, books & other items
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dorothy...ry/panaflo.htm (Direct)

Actually, in the world of competitive pricing, the Celeron 2.8 and the
Pentium 4 2.4 533 MHz FSB are a close match in price; the differential is
less than 7%. There is another reason for the relatively high price for the
Celeron 2.8 is the 400 MHz FSB. Pentium 4 CPU's that use a 400 MHz FSB
command a premium because they can be used in older motherboards with no
other upgrade route without the high cost (in a business environment) of
replacing the motherboard and reconfiguring or reinstalling the operating
system. A Pentium 4 2.4 400 MHz FSB consequently rates a higher price than
a Pentium 4 2.4 533 MHz FSB.
--
Phil Weldon, pweldonatmindjumpdotcom
For communication,
replace "at" with the 'at sign'
replace "mindjump" with "mindspring."
replace "dot" with "."

The Northwood has zero cache latency. Intel has intentionally added cache
latency to the Celerons to make sure they are a total dog.

Get the Northwood.

There are benchmarks on the net somewhere showing a P4 1.8 at a mere 1800mhz
outperforming a Celeron 2.0 at 3000mhz in about half the benchmarks. I don't
have the link handy.



"Phil Weldon" wrote in message
ink.net...
The answer is dictated by the size of the L2 cache.

The Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood has a 512 KByte L2 cache. The Celeron 2.8 has
a
128 KByte L2 cache. I doubt that ANY attainable overclock of a Celeron
2.8
would equal the performance of a Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood running a stock
speed (except on a benchmark that executed a code segment that would fit
completely in a 128 KByte L2 cache. And then there is the fact that the
Pentium 4 2.6 using an 800 MHz FSB gives much better memory system
performance than a Celeron 2.8 using a 400 MHz FSB even if you discount
the
effect of the smaller L2 cache on the Celeron.

The overclock you are getting on your Celeron 1.7 is poor because it uses
the older 0.18 micron core as did the Williamette Pentium 4.

Don't even consider a Celeron 2.8 if you want to overclock, but save
money.
Even a Pentium 4 1.6a, an easy overclock to 2.4 GHz, should beat any
overclock of a Celeron 2.8 because the 4 times as large L2 cache is
ESPECIALLY helpful with the much slower SDRAM you use.

As for a price comparison in US dollars (because those will be the best
prices, and resellers in the USA are the ones I have have used), these
prices are current for in stock CPU's at
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/ .

Celeron 2.8 boxed, retail $126
Celeron 2.7 boxed, retail $106
Celeron 2.6 boxed, retail $ 91
Pentium 4 1.8 Northwood, boxed retail $114.50
Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood 400 MHz FSB $139

As you can see, the price differential between the Celeron 2.8 boxed, reta
il
and the Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood boxed, retail is only + 10%. Even though
prices are quite a bit higher in the EU, surely the price differential
ought
to hold


--
Phil Weldon, pweldonatmindjumpdotcom
For communication,
replace "at" with the 'at sign'
replace "mindjump" with "mindspring."
replace "dot" with "."

"Linards Ticmanis" wrote in message
m...
Hi all,

Google searching this group didn't really give me anything useful, but
maybe somebody here can answer this question anyways:

Which CPU is likely to be more powerful when overclocked to a point
where it's still rock solid: A 2.60Ghz/512/400 Northwood Pentium 4 or
a 2.80Ghz/128/400 Celeron?

'Cause I'm not yet planning to get a new MB; I have an Asus P4B (which
allows turning up the main system bus in 1Mhz increments, and which
uses SDRAM by the way... I couldn't afford a better one when I got
it.)

I know the 2.60GHz Northwood is sort of hard to get, but it appears on
eBay at least every couple of days... of course it fetches about
150-170 Euros while I can get a new, boxed 2.80 Celeron including
cooler for 116 Euros.

Currently I'm running a 1.7GHz Celeron at 2.04GHz on this same
Motherboard and it is completely stable (at least it completed a day
of Prime95 torture test without trouble and I've never had strange
crashes or similar at this speed.)

Thanks for any hints,

--
Linards Ticmanis

I think you meant this as a reply to the original post.

By the way, Intel did not "intentionally" add a cycle to the L2 cache delay.
That additional latency is caused by change in tuning required by the
cutting the L2 cache size to 1/4. Anyway, increasing the L2 cache delay by
one cycle is a small factor in memory system performance compared to cutting
the L2 cache size by 75%.

--
Phil Weldon, pweldonatmindjumpdotcom
For communication,
replace "at" with the 'at sign'
replace "mindjump" with "mindspring."
replace "dot" with "."

Phil Weldon wrote:

Actually, in the world of competitive pricing, the Celeron 2.8 and the
Pentium 4 2.4 533 MHz FSB are a close match in price; the
differential is less than 7%. There is another reason for the
relatively high price for the Celeron 2.8 is the 400 MHz FSB.
Pentium 4 CPU's that use a 400 MHz FSB command a premium because they
can be used in older motherboards with no other upgrade route without
the high cost (in a business environment) of replacing the
motherboard and reconfiguring or reinstalling the operating system.
A Pentium 4 2.4 400 MHz FSB consequently rates a higher price than a
Pentium 4 2.4 533 MHz FSB. --
Phil Weldon, pweldonatmindjumpdotcom
For communication,
replace "at" with the 'at sign'
replace "mindjump" with "mindspring."
replace "dot" with "."




Partially true. Older 400Mhz FSB P4s are usually packaged with RDRAM,
which is MORE expensive than DDR ram.

Most business environments that are doing light paperwork, databases,
word processing, and 2D imagery opt for Pentium III's or iMacs.
Rarely will you see an office that is working with 3D
rendering/animation and video editing software. So you're just as
likely to see them boasting brand new P4 boxes.


Notebooks featuring Celerons also run comparative to the new Pentium M,
are at least $400 cheaper, and boast equal performance.




Phil Weldon wrote:

The answer is dictated by the size of the L2 cache.

The Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood has a 512 KByte L2 cache. The Celeron 2.8
has a
128 KByte L2 cache. I doubt that ANY attainable overclock of a Celeron
2.8
would equal the performance of a Pentium 4 2.6 Northwood running a stock
speed (except on a benchmark that executed a code segment that would fit
completely in a 128 KByte L2 cache. And then there is the fact that the
Pentium 4 2.6 using an 800 MHz FSB gives much better memory system
performance than a Celeron 2.8 using a 400 MHz FSB even if you discount
the
effect of the smaller L2 cache on the Celeron.

The overclock you are getting on your Celeron 1.7 is poor because it
uses
the older 0.18 micron core as did the Williamette Pentium 4.

Don't even consider a Celeron 2.8 if you want to overclock, but save
money.
Even a Pentium 4 1.6a, an easy overclock to 2.4 GHz, should beat any
overclock of a Celeron 2.8 because the 4 times as large L2 cache is
ESPECIALLY helpful with the much slower SDRAM you use.






First off, the Celeron 1.7 and 1.8 are the only two based on a 0.18nm
die.

The die size does NOT affect overclocking ability.

Die stepping, however, does.

If you have a B0 step 2.4 and a C1 step 2.0, you'll be able to attain
at least 2.9Ghz on the B0 and 3.2Ghz on the C1.




The P4's do NOT give better memory performance than a Celeron.

It's rather obvious that if your memory can only hit a maximum of
4.5-7.5Gb/s and your processor hits 22Gb/s, you're only able to have a
maximum bandwidth efficiency of ~60%.


A lower clocked processor matched with DDR550 that is able to reach
100% bandwidth efficiency would be a better combination than either the
fastest P4 or Celeron with the fastest memory.