Cache vs. Clock Speed

[xxTurbonium]

At what point does a Northwood Celeron (128K L2) overtake a Northwood Pentium 4 (512K L2)?

Or more specifically: at what point does a Northwood Celeron overtake a P4 1.8A ?

Assume both are running on identical platforms with identical RAM (say, 2x1GB of DDR200).

If you want to get even more specific, assume the CPU is being used for a Source-based game server.

My own research tells me that a Northwood Celeron of around 2.4-2.6 GHz would surpass the P4 1.8A in performance. I have a feeling I could be wrong though.

Any thoughts? The more technical, the better.

 

[alyarb]

the architecture really is wretched without cache. i don't think you'll need 800 MHz to make up for a lousy 384 kilobytes, though. but maybe 400.

 

[Fox5]

A celeron may overtake the northwood in average performance, but it will still have stuttering lows that it can never overcome. The P4 1.8A would be better I think
There is a P4 Prescott 3Ghz on newegg for $80 though, if the motherboard can take it. You'd probably be better off looking for a socket 754 or socket 939 board and an old athlon64/x2 if an upgrade is in the picture, though ddr2 is cheap enough that you may be able to find a ddr2 platform cheaper + ddr2 memory.

http://www.tomshardware.com/ch...urnament-2004,455.html
If you look here, the northwood celeron doesn't even beat a 1.5Ghz willamette.

 

[xxTurbonium]

Originally posted by: Fox5http://www.tomshardware.com/ch...urnament-2004,455.html
If you look here, the northwood celeron doesn't even beat a 1.5Ghz willamette.

Then, based on those charts, the P4 1.8A should handily beat a 2.6GHz Celeron in most tasks (assuming UT2004 is a good representation of what a Source-based server demands in terms of computing power).

I already have a P4 1.8A and motherboard on hand, but am trying to determine whether it's worth picking up a higher clocked Northwood Celeron for the task (being a Source-based game server). The Celerons can be found for 10 dollars or less, so I would go ahead with the "upgrade" if it weren't for the fact that holding onto the 1.8A seems to be the better choice.

Of course, the other option would be to get a more modern system from the ground up (even a Celeron-based one), which would no doubt outperform the P4 1.8A. I would do this if it weren't for the fact that I'm looking to spend as little as possible, even at the expense of performance (within reason).

 

[alyarb]

i don't understand why you can't overclock the 1.8A.

 

[xxTurbonium]

Originally posted by: alyarb
i don't understand why you can't overclock the 1.8A.

Intel motherboards are all I have on-hand. And again, I'm looking to spend as little as possible.

Also: I value system stability and peace of mind, so I'm not much of an overclocker to begin with. And the fact is that system stability is a important thing for a server of any type; perhaps even more important than performance, depending on what kind of server we're talking about.

 

[SonicIce]

dude you can get 478 P4 cpus like dirt cheap now. i've personally bought from geeks, used-pcs, and starmicro and they're all great.

http://www.geeks.com/
http://www.pacificgeek.com/
http://www.used-pcs.com/
http://www.starmicro.net/
http://3btech.net/

 

[xxTurbonium]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
dude you can get 478 P4 cpus like dirt cheap now. i've personally bought from geeks, used-pcs, and starmicro and they're all great.

http://www.geeks.com/
http://www.pacificgeek.com/
http://www.used-pcs.com/
http://www.starmicro.net/
http://3btech.net/

Eh?

And let's face it, no online deal beats a $0 P4 1.8A.

 

[alyarb]

alright, he tried. enjoy your 1.8A.

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: Turbonium

Originally posted by: SonicIce
dude you can get 478 P4 cpus like dirt cheap now. i've personally bought from geeks, used-pcs, and starmicro and they're all great.

http://www.geeks.com/
http://www.pacificgeek.com/
http://www.used-pcs.com/
http://www.starmicro.net/
http://3btech.net/

Eh?

And let's face it, no online deal beats a $0 P4 1.8A.

LOL sorry. I have a big list of Canadian stores too if you want. Alot around Toronto.

But looks like P4 would be faster except for encoding and some synthetic benchmarks. P4 wins in all gaming tests.

Heres the specs from that bench:
Willamette,1500/100,850,RD800
Northwood,2600/100,845GD,DDR200

 

[xxTurbonium]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
LOL sorry. I have a big list of Canadian stores too if you want. Alot around Toronto.

Would appreciate links.

 

[formulav8]

I have a couple northwood P4's I could sell you one for like $30-$40 shipped.


2.0a P4 512kb l2 cache on the 100mz (quad pumped = 400mhz)

Northwood about 2.40? ghz 512kb L2 cache on the 133mhz (533 quadpumped) fsb

Either way they will usually run a northwood celeron into the ground even when the celeron has a decent clockspeed advantage.

Shoot me a pm if you want one.


Jason

 

[SonicIce]

Originally posted by: Turbonium

Originally posted by: SonicIce
LOL sorry. I have a big list of Canadian stores too if you want. Alot around Toronto.

Would appreciate links.

Ok. Well I had all these sites from a text file from like 4 or 5 years ago when my friend in Toronto was gunna build a computer. I just checked them all for 478 CPU's and they're all pretty hard to find now. I found a few though.

http://www.cty.ca/ProductDetails.asp?pid=3136
http://www.sonnam.com/parts.as...sortBy=2&sortOrder=asc

He used to tell me there was a ton of computer stores on College St. near Spadina Ave. Not sure where you live but could check it out if u wanted. You should put your city in profile.

 

[xxTurbonium]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
http://www.cty.ca/ProductDetails.asp?pid=3136
http://www.sonnam.com/parts.as...sortBy=2&sortOrder=asc

He used to tell me there was a ton of computer stores on College St. near Spadina Ave. Not sure where you live but could check it out if u wanted. You should put your city in profile.

Thanks for the posts.

If I could actually find a 478-pin P4 or Celeron that was faster than this 1.8A, for 10CAD or less, only then would I go for it. Otherwise, it's just a waste of money imo. And, needless to say, it's a stretch to find a faster chip for that little.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: Turbonium

Originally posted by: Fox5http://www.tomshardware.com/ch...urnament-2004,455.html
If you look here, the northwood celeron doesn't even beat a 1.5Ghz willamette.

Then, based on those charts, the P4 1.8A should handily beat a 2.6GHz Celeron in most tasks (assuming UT2004 is a good representation of what a Source-based server demands in terms of computing power).

I already have a P4 1.8A and motherboard on hand, but am trying to determine whether it's worth picking up a higher clocked Northwood Celeron for the task (being a Source-based game server). The Celerons can be found for 10 dollars or less, so I would go ahead with the "upgrade" if it weren't for the fact that holding onto the 1.8A seems to be the better choice.

Of course, the other option would be to get a more modern system from the ground up (even a Celeron-based one), which would no doubt outperform the P4 1.8A. I would do this if it weren't for the fact that I'm looking to spend as little as possible, even at the expense of performance (within reason).

Agree.

I specifically recall a benchmark which pitted budget processors against each other....processor my friend had at the time (2.8Ghz Celeron) against one that I had (AMD Barton 2500+). On average mine was 1.5-2x as fast. In some Sim City game (whichever was the latest incarnation at that time), mine was 3x as fast as his cache-starved Celeron.

The Barton 2500+ was evenly matched against a 2.5Ghz P4 across the boards.

So my conclusion would be that the P4 would be better for your needs.

 

[xxTurbonium]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux
Agree.

I specifically recall a benchmark which pitted budget processors against each other....processor my friend had at the time (2.8Ghz Celeron) against one that I had (AMD Barton 2500+). On average mine was 1.5-2x as fast. In some Sim City game (whichever was the latest incarnation at that time), mine was 3x as fast as his cache-starved Celeron.

The Barton 2500+ was evenly matched against a 2.5Ghz P4 across the boards.

So my conclusion would be that the P4 would be better for your needs.

Thanks for the reply, especially considering it further confirms that the P4 is indeed the better choice.

 

[betasub]

Originally posted by: SonicIce
But looks like P4 would be faster except for encoding and some synthetic benchmarks. P4 wins in all gaming tests.

:thumbsup: Agreed - all that extra clock speed is wasted if the cache can't supply those deep Netburst pipelines. Not so much a problem for linear stuff like streaming simd and encoding, but important for gaming etc.