Over much discussion, it seems that people simply love to hate Celerons, for no valid reason.

So, I thought I would break down the facts of the difference. This is not opinion, these are spec sheets, and common sense. You can go over to Intel and run comparions as well.

The thing that people tend to forget is the a Celeron is based on Pentium technology.

The difference between the two are bus speed and cache size.

Here's the rundown......

Pentium's have larger cache size but only run at half the speed of the cpu. While Celerons are built with half the cache size but run at the full speed of the CPU.

Celerons are cheaper, and there really is not much difference in performance, because of the limits placed on the Pentium chip (running at half speed).

The larger cache of the Pentium however, will however make it seem to run a bit faster because it can store more information that is readily retrievable and reusable.

So basically, if you have a Pentium with the same MHz as the a Celeron, you're going to get about equal performance.

Celerons simply got a bad rep because when they first came out they had no cache at all, which of course made it perform slower, and gave it a bad name.

true...

but offer someone a p4 2.4ghz or a celeron 2.4 we know they will go for the p4.
the celerons were never mass marketed by intel the way the p4s were.

Exactly.

It's amusing to see people so strongly disputing the power of Celerons, without know much about the actual difference. They generally see the name, not the functionality or power.

It stems from people knowing more about Pentium. It's more of a household name. Thus gets qualified as better.

I never cared much for Intel and I've never bought an Intel CPU. I owned one once - I won it at a tombola.

Now, I don't have anything against Intel. It just so happens that I believe (and I'm not the only one) that AMD offers equally good products at lower prices.

That said, I find it funny that both AMD and Intel offer the stripped down versions of their processors at a fraction of the cost, even though they're virtually identical to their "bigger brothers" (with the exception of some arguably minor, cheap details). It is obviously a marketing tactic. Both AMD and Intel make sure that people will see a bigger value in the higher end solutions that are considerably more expensive.

I wouldn't say they're minor details. Cache is a major factor in the performance of a CPU; an old p4-based celeron has 1/4 the L2 cache of a standard P4-C. (128k l 512k). Even the latest and greatest celeron D has only 256k L2 cache. The thing that's able to make up for the celeron's performance is its clockspeed. Intel's 31 stage architecture enables it to go up to very high clockspeeds. But you're right, they are almost identical. P4s and celerons both have exactly the same architecture. And NO, a celeron D at the same speed of a Prescott P4 simply cannot compare. The P4 would smoke it, hands down. Now don't get me wrong, the NEW celeron seems very promising, but it definitely CANNOT compare with the P4.

Sorry, I might have made a mistake. Were you referring to ALL pentiums?

There ARE no limits on current PENTIUMs. Their architecture is just as scalable as a celeron would be. Both have 31 stage pipelines.

OK, fair enough as I wasn't expressing the whole idea. They're certainly not minor in terms of influence on performance. I meant minor details in terms of manufacturing. As you said, it's the same architecture, just that for some they put a smaller cache and name them Celerons. Now, for some applications a Celeron and a Pentium perform similarly, but for others the Pentium will make use of its larger cache and that will make a big difference.

OK... I reread your post Mark and this is not what I knew about P4s. Where did you read this?

1. I majored in computer science, while in the US Army (computer communications) and this was standard textbook knowledge.

2. You can easily compare specifications on Intel's site as well, and within that comparison the figures spell themselves out.

It's not that the Pentiums have limitations, but more so the limitations set on them by PC manufactures.

You're right though about both Intel and AMD releasing two standards of the same product. Intel will never come straight out and say that they are pretty much identical, because they want to sell the higher priced item.

And as you can see it's working.

I agree with ANMMark Celerons is more ecomic than Pentiums.

we will never use celerons because of the issue of cache - it is not a server class chip and has to run faster to do the same thing . also - it is not that much more expensive in the overall cost of the server to go with a real server class chip.

I like the P4 3.0with ht myself.

I think that is the best bang for the buck right now.

I agree. Celerons are not really for servers. While Celerons "can be" a nice low cost alternative, for general server use, as there really is not much difference. What one lacks it makes up for, with the other.

Where you will run into trouble however, is when the server begins to work twice as hard, when you have clients that use a lot of resources, etc.

I personally have no preference, but Pentium is a safe bet, for the "just in case" scenerio.

Hi ,

some thing to add...In my experience pentium gives more performance and reliability.But for those going for desktop computers..may choose celeron .

OH MY... GOD. i have never seen a bunch of people so severely misinformed as yourselves.

first of all, the first poster is ___COMPLETELY WRONG___. i can't stress this enough. it's COMPLETELY FALSE INFORMATION. i'm referring to this:

"Pentium's have larger cache size but only run at half the speed of the cpu."

WHO TOLD YOU THIS??? ARE YOU INSANE???? this is completely wrong, and it's very frightening that noone has pointed this out yet. i can agree that celeron chips have a smaller cache size. as much is obvious. but..

""Pentium's have larger cache size but only run at half the speed of the cpu."

by "half the speed of the CPU", what do you mean exactly? the pentium IS the CPU. how can it run at half the speed of itself? what are you talking about?
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/img/200...tium4_pres.jpg
http://images.google.ca/images?q=cpu+pentium&hl=en
pictures of CPUs for you.

the matter of performance is an entirely different one..

i belong to the hardware enthusiast community, so naturally i do hate celerons, along with all other low-end chips. this does not put me in a position of bias, but rather at an advantage - i look at the benchmark results all the time. celerons are underperforming, overpriced pieces of garbage.

a friend of a friend recently bought a dell celeron (piece of GARBAGE) because he read this forum (this is what inspired me to post), and trusted you, in saying that there's no difference between celeron and pentium. now he has a brand new computer that actually gets OUTPERFORMED by his old 2ghz P4.

don't get me wrong, he's also utterly retarded for trusting you in the first place.

i pity whoever buys a celeron, or a dell for that matter.

Not only do you have a problem with the comprehension of text, but you really should ask questions before ranting like you have and making yourself look foolish.

A Pentium has a larger cache, and runs at only half of it's available capacity, compared to the Celeron built to run at it's full capacity, but having a quarter - half of the cache size as a Pentium.

Not only can you look this up on the chip's very own website, but as it being a well known fact, I'm sure a lot of people are glad you are simply an enthusiast, and not a hardware professional.

Even though your friend seems to have misunderstood my post as well, in the same manner you have, it's not my fault or problem that your friend took this thread as the Pentium/Celeron Bible without doing their own research, and furthermore had your friend understood the post, and researched the matter, they would have found that my post was not only FACT, but extremely accurate.

In any case, for future reference, read, reread, and if you don't understand, ask, before flying off the handle. The attitude you displayed was ludicrous, and childish, not to mention your misunderstanding of factual information, then ranting as if you knew what you were talking about......well....I'll just leave it at that.