Celeron 2.2GHz or Intel P4 2.4 or 2.6 GHz?

[petdan]

I'm thinking of buying a Dell Dimension 2400.
Intel® 845-GV chipset, Integrated 4MB Intel 3D AGP.

And I can't decide which of the following to choose:

Intel® Celeron® processor 2400 MHz (standard)
Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 2400 MHz (+$150)
Intel® Pentium® 4 processor 2600 MHz (+$167)

Is it worth $150 to upgrade from Celeron 2400MHz to P4 2400MHz or 2600MHz ?

I'm going to use it surfing, doing office work etc, no gaming, burn cd's, dvds, watch some movies, play mp3s etc.

And run it with a Win XP with 256mb RAM and 40gigs harddrive or bigger.
Does "intel 3d AGP" mean I can replace that with a other graphiccard if I wanted to?

Thanks for any advice here!

 

[oldfart]

I dont think the Dell 2400 has an AGP slot. You would be limited to a PCI card if you wanted to upgrade. If you dont game, thats not a big deal really. The Celeron 2.4 is ~ = to maybe a P4 1.6 - 1.7 range CPU. Kinda slow these days, but is adequate for normal web surfing, office, etc. Worth $150 to upgrade? That's really your call. 256 Meg of ram is a bit on the light side for WinXP. You can always put in another stick. Its cheaper if you do that yourself afterwords. 40 Gig HD is fine for most people.

 

[tallman45]

Brand new 2.6c P4's go for less than $170, Dell is essentially giving you a Celeron for free. The onboard video will not offer as good a solution for DVD playback and 2d graphics as well as 3D. Remember also that onboard video resources come from the CPU and system mem. 256 is light you will notice a big difference w/512.

 

[petdan]

thanks. i need to add that im in Sweden so im sure Dell is a bit cheaper in the US.
according to the swedish webpage it says "AGP" dont know if this is something they've recently changed? i recall seeing pci previously as well.

from 256mb to 512 is more than $100 which is pretty expensive upgrade, so if there's room in it ill probably uppgrade myself and put a bigger harddrive in as well (asuming this can be done).

would 512mb with celeron 2400 make a bigger difference in everyday surfing, officework in windows xp etc than 256mb and intel p4 2400 ?

 

[myocardia]

Well, the Dell 2400 doesn't have an AGP slot, so I would recommend buying something else, for this reason: even though you aren't going to be using it for gaming, you'd get much better video image quality with a decent AGP video card. Are you sure that it doesn't have 64MB of graphics power? That sounds alot more reasonable to me. Anyway, if you decide to buy it, I'd personally go with the 2.6 P4, and wait on buying more memory. I know I'd rather have a P4 2.6 and 256 ram, than a Celeron 2.4 with 512 mb of ram. You'd get twice the performance with the 2.6... And since you can't overclock the Dell's, get the 2.6 P4, not the 2.4 P4, because that's a huge performance jump for only $17!

edit: Okay, the Dell homepage gives specifications for the 2400 series here. It says that the only one with a DVD-burner is the P4, if having a DVD-burner makes a difference to you.

 

[oldfart]

Originally posted by: petdan
thanks. i need to add that im in Sweden so im sure Dell is a bit cheaper in the US.
according to the swedish webpage it says "AGP" dont know if this is something they've recently changed? i recall seeing pci previously as well.

from 256mb to 512 is more than $100 which is pretty expensive upgrade, so if there's room in it ill probably uppgrade myself and put a bigger harddrive in as well (asuming this can be done).

would 512mb with celeron 2400 make a bigger difference in everyday surfing, officework in windows xp etc than 256mb and intel p4 2400 ?

How much can you buy a 256M stick of DDR for? In the US, you can get it very cheaply (~$25 with a rebate). You can add that in yourself instead of paying the high Dell price for it. It is a very simple install.

The"AGP" is built in AGP graphics, not an AGP slot. Again, if you need a better card, and dont game (much), a PCI card will work just fine. There is no diference in video image quality from PCI to AGP. It's just speed.