Celeron 333mhz vs. VIA C3 900mhz

[Gerbil333]

A friend of mine gave me a bunch of parts:

Soyo SY-7IS2
VIA C3 900mhz CPU
Intel Celeron 333mhz CPU
Generic 512mb PC133 CL3 (but it's only showing up as 256mb...)
Trident 2mb PCI video card
Aureal Vortex PCI sound card

I started with the VIA C3 900mhz chip and hooked everthing up with a junk PSU, an IBM 20gb Deathstar, and a CD-ROM. Windows XP is running fine. After running some benchmarks, I decided to try the Celeron 333. Now I can't decide. In some cases, the Celeron doubles the performance of the C3, but in other cases, the VIA wins:

[winning scores highlighted]
SiSoft 2004:
CPU Arithmetic Drystone ALU: Celeron = 885 MIPS, VIA = 1149 MIPS
CPU Arithmetic Whetstone FPU: Celeron = 439 MFLOPS, VIA = 264 MFLOPS
CPU Multi-Media Integer MMX: Celeron = 2185 it/s, VIA = 2639 it/s
CPU Multi-Media Float FPU: Celeron = 824 it/s, VIA = 2843 it/s
Memory Bandwidth Int MMX: Celeron = 258 mb/s, VIA = 210 mb/s
Memory Bandwidth Float FPU: Celeron = 249 mb/s, VIA = 180 mb/s

Super Pi:
Celeron = 6 minutes 8 seconds
Via = 13 minutes 28 seconds

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Which one should I go with? What other tests would be helpful? I can't run any 3D tests...the video card can't do it.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Which one is cooler? Which one uses less power? Which one does what you want the fastest?

 

[Gerbil333]

I don't know which is cooler because the CPU heat sensor is busted. It says both chips are at 74-75C all the time...I know they're not. They're stable :laugh:

I'm sure the VIA uses less power. That's what it was designed to do (low power consumption). I'd rather have more performance than less power consumption.

It's mostly going to be for browsing, MSN Messenger 6, file storage across the network, possibly print serving, and other simple tasks. Maybe a little Paint Shop Pro 8 and Winamp 5...

 

[stevty2889]

The 333 Celeron will probalby overclock pretty well, and then it will completely blow away the VIA.

 

[ugh]

I bet that Celery is a 333A with full speed L2 cache. If so, it'll blow the VIA away like the others said.

 

[Gerbil333]

What other benchmarks could I run?

I'm thinking about buying a P3 700mhz from someone in the FS forums here...that should blow both the chips away.

 

[Ryoga]

Generic 512mb PC133 CL3 (but it's only showing up as 256mb...)

Probably nothing you can do about this. Most BIOSes from this age can't completely address ICs with more than 16 MB on them. A stick of 512 would have to have 16 individual 32 MB ICs. Check for a BIOS update, but don't expect anything.

 

[Gerbil333]

Yep...that was what I guessed. The board is already running the most recent BIOS. I'm going to try putting the 512mb stick in another computer I have, which is currently running 2 or 3 sticks that total 512mb's. If it can use the entire stick of 512 in that, then I'll be able to put the other RAM in this socket 370 system

I've decided to stick with the Celeron 333 for now. It is indeed a 333A with full speed L2 cache

 

[VirtualLarry]

Gerbil333: Good choice. Some of the Via C3 chips actually have opcode bugs with the P6-class opcode "CMOV", if used with certain operands, the CPU hangs, I believe. The Intel does not have that problem.

The Via CPU's architecture is nothing more than an overclocked 486 with a larger cache. The P6 is a full superscalar RISC-like pipeline, like all P6-class Intel CPUs. The Intel also (clearly) has a much better FPU. Interesting comparison, though. I can imagine that the benchmarks might look the same between a hypothetical 486DX overclocked to 800Mhz, and a Celly 333A.

PS. You might be able to OC that celly, some of them would do 500Mhz+.

 

[PricklyPete]

Dude...at that systems state...I really don't think it is going to matter what CPU you use.

 

[Gerbil333]

I thought it would be painfully slow too, but I've been surprised so far. For browsing, it's not that bad. Sure, my 2500+ with 1gb of PC3200 makes IE load instantly, but the Celeron 333A can still load a browser quick enough to not be annoying.

 

[TerryMathews]

I've got this tremendous idea.

Sell (or throw away) the 333A Celeron and 900 C3 and buy a faster Celeron. They're cheap enough - I just picked up a 1.3GHz Celeron Tualatin from the FS/T forum for $30 shipped.

 

[Gerbil333]

I was considering doing just that.

However, this socket 370 computer may be history next week...a friend of mine is having me build a high end computer (an A64), and I'll probably get his old socket A board, Athlon XP 1900+, and RAM