Celeron (Conroe-L) vs Celeron D (Cedar Mill) for web browsing and gaming

[Cheesepie]

I'm putting together a low-budget rig for a friend. There are 2 options: Celeron D 352 3.2ghz (Cedar Mill) and a Celeron 420 1.6ghz (Conroe). He doesn't do much besides use word documents and browse the internet and such. Sometimes he plays games of counterstrike or league of legends. The Cedar Mill has twice the clockspeed of the Conroe, but I don't know how much better the IPC is on the conroe. It will be paired with an 8800GT for games. Which one would be better for said usages?

 

[Gigantopithecus]

Here's a comparison of a Celeron 440 (2GHz) vs Celeron D 365 (3.6GHz):
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/conroe-l-preview_3.html#sect1

Sorry I couldn't find benchmarks for the exact two chips you're considering, but I think it's reasonable to conclude from the xbitlabs benching that the Celeron 420 would be better.

That said, you can get used Conroe-based Pentium Dual Cores like the E2140/E2160/etc. for dirt, dirt cheap now - like less than $15-20 shipped. Stepping up to a dual core will help everything from internet browsing to gaming.

 

[jhu]

I'm putting together a low-budget rig for a friend. There are 2 options: Celeron D 352 3.2ghz (Cedar Mill) and a Celeron 420 1.6ghz (Conroe). He doesn't do much besides use word documents and browse the internet and such. Sometimes he plays games of counterstrike or league of legends. The Cedar Mill has twice the clockspeed of the Conroe, but I don't know how much better the IPC is on the conroe. It will be paired with an 8800GT for games. Which one would be better for said usages?

What's your budget? Are you recycling parts from older computers?

 

[Tuna-Fish]

The Conroe is considerably better. However, what's even better is that the Conroe Celerons are actually really good overclockers -- they have such low clock speeds that you can give them as much boost as the MB can take and they will still run cooler and with less juice the fans and the motherboards are designed to deal with. Basically, it's a factory underclocked part.

 

[Cheesepie]

What's your budget? Are you recycling parts from older computers?

I have no budget. Only the parts that I have are the ones available for the build. And yes these are all recycled parts from old PCs over the years.

The Conroe is considerably better. However, what's even better is that the Conroe Celerons are actually really good overclockers -- they have such low clock speeds that you can give them as much boost as the MB can take and they will still run cooler and with less juice the fans and the motherboards are designed to deal with. Basically, it's a factory underclocked part.

I have an Asus P5GC-MX mobo for this build. So far, I haven't seen any options for overclocking on the Celeron D 352. Should there magically be FSB changing options available when I switch to the Conroe?

 

[SPBHM]

Celeron 420 is clearly a better choice, but...
both are slow single core CPUs, not suitable for gaming, the 8800GT deserves a faster CPU, but maybe for CS it will be enough,

but make sure you try to OC the 420... with the right MB it's possible to achieve 100% overclock,

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Stay away from the Celeron D, those things are -slow- like you would not believe..

We had a couple Celeron D 347's at work, had to replace them quick as they were basically incapable of running modern software at anything approaching useful speed...

 

[pantsaregood]

I think it would only be fair to point out that the Celeron D will approach 5 GHz without much trouble.

 

[SPBHM]

I think it would only be fair to point out that the Celeron D will approach 5 GHz without much trouble.

with the same cooling the 420 will probably go over 3.2GHz
and I think it's faster than a 5GHz Celeron D (420 = Core 2, 352 = "Pentium D")

 

[Insert_Nickname]

with the same cooling the 420 will probably go over 3.2GHz
and I think it's faster than a 5GHz Celeron D (420 = Core 2, 352 = "Pentium D")

Not to nitpick, but the Pentium D is a dual core Pentium 4 Prescott, the Celeron D is a single core Prescott with an 8th (256KB) to a quarter (512KB) of the L2 cache. To compare the P4 Prescott has 1MB (5xx) or 2MB (6xx) L2 cache, and that seriously affect performance...

 

[sm625]

Try BSEL mod:

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=498167

 

[SPBHM]

Not to nitpick, but the Pentium D is a dual core Pentium 4 Prescott, the Celeron D is a single core Prescott with an 8th (256KB) to a quarter (512KB) of the L2 cache. To compare the P4 Prescott has 1MB (5xx) or 2MB (6xx) L2 cache, and that seriously affect performance...

Prescott was a 90nm CPU, Cedar Mill (his Celeron) is a 65nm part,

Pentium D Presler (also 65nm) was a dual core version, 4x the l2 per core,

I called it Pentium D (under ""), because the Core 2 (Duo) is also a dual core version and makes the comparison easier in my view,

I tested for a while a northwood Celeron (128k l2), and that thing was SO SLOW, even with an overclock from 2.1 to 2.8GHz, "Netburst" with small L2 was bad

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Prescott was a 90nm CPU, Cedar Mill (his Celeron) is a 65nm part,

Pentium D Presler (also 65nm) was a dual core version, 4x the l2 per core,

I called it Pentium D (under ""), because the Core 2 (Duo) is also a dual core version and makes the comparison easier in my view

Ooops, my mistake. Going on memory is fallible...

I tested for a while a northwood Celeron (128k l2), and that thing was SO SLOW, even with an overclock from 2.1 to 2.8GHz, "Netburst" with small L2 was bad

Agreed. When windows xp sp3 takes 15-30 minutes to start, you know something is wrong. And OEMs insisting on putting cr** hard drives in, its not getting any better...

 

[cganesh75]

conroe L hands down. runs cool and performs

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Conroe-L. Use the Celly-D for its intended purpose - as a heating element in your toaster oven

 

[OBLAMA2009]

i really dont get posts like this. when decent current chips are $65 why would you even consider building something old like that?

 

[dpk33]

So even if the Celly D has twice the clockspeed of the conroe, the conroe is still faster?

 

[Hubb1e]

i really dont get posts like this. when decent current chips are $65 why would you even consider building something old like that?

Yeah, I don't understand it either. I'd sell those parts and find him a more modern system. It isn't worth your time to even build out the system.

 

[Cheesepie]

Yeah, I don't understand it either. I'd sell those parts and find him a more modern system. It isn't worth your time to even build out the system.

The thing is, he barely has a budget. He may have $15-20 for a better cpu, but that's it.

 

[Blastman]

So even if the Celly D has twice the clockspeed of the conroe, the conroe is still faster?

Conroe is about 2x faster clock/clock over the old “P4” architecture, see … Anandtech … Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86GHz vs
Pentium D 960 3.6GHz.

So, with 1.6 vs 3.2 … performance wise it should be pretty close in applications. In gaming, the Conroe will be much faster even at half the clock rate. Conroe will be much better power wise, and should overclock a lot better if overclocking is in the cards.

 

[SPBHM]

The thing is, he barely has a budget. He may have $15-20 for a better cpu, but that's it.

try some used old core 2 duo (if the MB is compatible)

 

[SnooSnoo]

I can only say that from my experience, deploying an image on the 1.6 Celeron 420 took about 20-30 minutes more than on the older 3.2 Celeron d.
Those were HP 7800 SFF machines for the 1.6 and HP 7700 SFF machines for the 3.2 Celeron.

(using sccm for deploying xp sp3+office+random crap applications needed at work)

Thats the only data I got to compare those two.

 

[pantsaregood]

I have no idea how everyone here managed to get NetBurst Celerons to run so poorly. Yeah, they were definitely slow when they were released, but there's no reason for them to take 30 minutes to boot Windows XP - unless you were booting it on 4 MB of RAM, I guess.

A 1.7 GHz Celeron Northwood will actually run Windows 7 without any real trouble. Flash will cripple it, but that's because Flash is bloated.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I have no idea how everyone here managed to get NetBurst Celerons to run so poorly. Yeah, they were definitely slow when they were released, but there's no reason for them to take 30 minutes to boot Windows XP - unless you were booting it on 4 MB of RAM, I guess.

A 1.7 GHz Celeron Northwood will actually run Windows 7 without any real trouble. Flash will cripple it, but that's because Flash is bloated.

As I wrote the problem is not so much the celeron in itself, but cheap OEM computers. The celeron was very often platform limited with too little (64MB), too slow RAM (PC133 SD-RAM anyone...?), cheap chipsets (i845G/GE and the like) and really crappy hard drives. The other problem was Intels "Extreme" Graphics (1 and 2) architecture, witch used the main processor for some of the graphics pipeline. Needless to say, when you offload a portion of the graphics pipeline to an already overloaded processor, the result is not pretty... :whiste:

With an external graphics card and a good overclock, the celeron -could- perform decently for the times...

 

[Danimal1209]

We use those Celeron D's at work. TERRIBLY SLOW CPU'S. I would never ever ever use one.