Celeron vs Pentium III

[ron4ld]

Hello all,

Forgive me if this is a newbie question, cos I am : )
This is my PC spec :

Aopen motherboard
Pentium III 600 Mhz
128 MB RAM
20 GB HD
Sound card: Diamond Monster MX400
Video card: Matrox Millenium G400
Afreey 10x DVD ROM drive
17" monitor
Altec Lansing ACS 45.1
OS: Windows 2000 Professional
Cable connection

Recently my PC was broken (I brought it to a computer shop), it turned out
that the motherboard, CPU, and power supply is not working.
Everything else is OK. Cos I'm on very tight budget and for the time being
I just want to fix it.

I planned to replace the motherboard with Gigabyte and the CPU with
Celeron 850. My question is: is replacing my current CPU with Cel 850
will improve the overall performance? Or should I go with higher speed
Celerons?

I use my computer mainly for: programming, email & internet, & sometimes
watching DVD.
My other question: if I replace my current CPU now w/ Cel 850 will it slow
down its performance when playing DVD (I use PowerDVD) and when
browsing websites with streaming video and flash content?

Thank you : )

Ronald


ps: I also would appreciate if you know any websites for performance comparison
between Pentium III with higher speed Celerons.

 

[oldfart]

If you can, replace it with a Tualatin capable mobo and a Tualatin based Celeron. It will be much faster and wont cost you barely any extra.

 

[ChurchOfSubgenius]

I bet ya there is only one of those componets that is "broken", you are most likely getting taken hard. Ask for the "broken" components back when they are done raping you and send them to another member for testing (if you don't want to do it)

 

[hollowman]

<< I bet ya there is only one of those componets that is "broken", you are most likely getting taken hard. Ask for the "broken" components back when they are done raping you and send them to another member for testing (if you don't want to do it) >>



that is exactly what i thought.
i highly doubt that all 3 parts gone bad at the same time.

 

[ron4ld]

Well, I think it is.
The reason why I took it to the computer shop is because a week ago
when I pressed the power button, the PC refused to turn on and
goes out a burned smell. I diagnosed it because of my power supply,
cos lately my power supply fan has been screwing up (emitting
loud noises), but I didn't do anything, until this happened.

 

[rogue1979]

Get yourself a cheap 300-watt power supply for about $15 and replace it yourself. Four screws in the back, one connection to the motherboard and simply plug in all your drives. If there is more wrong than just your power supply, then you haven't wasted any money. If you cpu is of the coppermine variety (256K full speed L2 cache) not a Katmai (512k half speed L2 cache), then it is begging to be run at 800MHz. Make sure your RAM is rated for 133MHz and change your fsb from 100 to 133. A better heatsink/fan and maybe a slight bump in core voltage is all that is needed. Take the plunge and learn how to work on your computer yourself, it is much easier then you think as well as more satisfying and a huge money saver. Post your questions here and we will be able to help.

Computer shops are notorious for taking advantage of people and charging outrageous prices. Like the other posters said, it is most unlikely that all three components went out at one time, rubbish! For example, a Morgan 1GHz $40 shipped, ECS K7S5A $60 shipped, and a 300-watt power supply $17 shipped for a total of $117 would give you a giant upgrade. You can use your existing memory and upgrade to DDR later without getting a new motherboard. This is what it would cost you to do it yourself if all three components had really failed. How much did those PC butchers quote you for the repairs?

 

[mrzed]

I don't want to completely contradict the posts that question the sincerity of the computer shop. They may in fact be fleecing you here. But it is quite possible for a catastrophic power supply failure to send a voltage spike that will fry the CPU and motherboard. Most of the other components are less likely to be zapped in this occasion.

I know this because it happened to one of our computers at work. It is possible the shop is telling the truth.

I also second the notion of not buying another PIII/Celeron mainboard CPU combo. If you want to stick with what you know, at least get a tualatin celeron 1 gig.

If you want the cheapest possible performance, a Duron of some description.

 

[Booster]

<< Celeron vs Pentium III >>



Believe it or not, I'd rather go with the P3 600 than with Celeron 850, coz the latter is slower, IMO. I actually conducted some tests with a PIII 600 and a Celeron 800 myself (not quite the 850, but close, IMO). The PIII was on a BX chipset mobo, and the Celeron 800 was installed in an i815 board. I used the ZDWinbench 99 benchmark (the only one I trust when measuring the CPU performance) and I got the following results:

CPUMark32 - PIII 600 - 1594 points, Celeron 800 - 1286 points. Believe it or not, they both run on the 100FSB and the Celeron is a lot slower! Strange, isn't it? The key to understanding the situation is not only the L2 Cache size, but also its associativity. While the PIII sports 8-way L2 cache, the Celeron only has a 4-way one, thus its bandwidth twice lower. That's not the case with Tualatin Celeron, b/c it offers 8-way L2 cache as well. IMO, these Tualatin Celerons offer incredible value. For $65 you effectively get a PIII of 1200 MHz, with 256kb L2 Cache and 8-way data path! It's incredible, IMO.

Thus, my guess is that you go for either the P4 or more cheaper Tualatin setup. You can't go wrong with either of two, IMO.