P4 or Celeron for developers?

[ugh]

Hi folks,

My company will be upgrading the workstations to a "newer" generation to be XP compatible. Current PC config:

CPU: P4 1.8-2.0Ghz
Memory: 256 DDR
All the rest Dell standard

However, initial configs for the "new" PCs aren't too rosy:

CPU: Celeron 2.4Ghz
Memory: 512MB 266Mhz DDR (2 * 256MB)
All the rest Dell standard

I'm not too concerned on the RAM, but it's the CPU which is bugging me. Since we're a development house using J2EE to .NET stuff and relying a lot on MSOffice for "collaboration", I was wondering how the Celery will fare compared to a similar speed P4. I noticed that the new P4 2.4Ghz comes with 1MB L2 and I'm sure that'll make a LOT of difference.

Should I suggest them to go for the P4 instead? BTW, I would love for them to take the Athlon path, but Dell doesn't offer it... Blech...

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[MercenaryForHire]

*vomit*

Your older machines will be faster. By a lot.

Observe here the Celeron, even at 2.6GHz, getting massacred by a Duron.

Either they buy P4s, or they die.

- M4H

 

[DaveSimmons]

Read the celery reviews on the main anandtech site and/or tomshardware.com, the celery is a dog, slower than the P4 2.0 for many tasks.

Sure it's faster than the P3-933 that I was using for VC++ 6 development until 6 months ago, but a P4 at any speed above 2 GHz is a smarter buy, even at 533 MHz bus instead of 800.

 

[ugh]

MercenaryForHire/DaveSimmons: VOMIT indeed after reading the article you posted. Thanks for the heads up. Now I have some evidence to back my argument up

 

[mechBgon]

If they're getting Dells, then get 400SC's with 2.8C's and dual-channel DDR400. The secret kicker is they've got CSA Gigabit ethernet, so if they get an all-gigabit switch between them and the server(s), they'll have smokin' network performance. Price it up against an Optiplex GX270 at the same spec. You'll need to buy WinXP OEM separately since Dell won't be selling their "server" with WinXP. Or maybe you can talk the Dell rep into it.

If you just want desktop systems, you might also look at the HP d325's (nForce2/AthlonXP). For the price of the Dell Optiplex GX270, I think you can get the d325 with Office Basic included. Just a thought. I'm happy with our nForce-classic / AthlonXP rigs where I work.

 

[stevty2889]

The pc's they already have will work good with windows xp, and 2.4ghz celerons are hardly a "newer" generation, as they run on the same FSB and are a lot slower. Maybe you can convince them to just upgrade the ram in the current pc's to 512mb instead of replacing them with slower pc's.

 

[VirtualLarry]

WOW... that's all I can say.

Who the heck is in charge of the PC purchasing for the devs? Certainly not a dev nor a "tech person", that's for sure. Was it a secretary browsing through the newest mail-order catalog, and the "head boss" walked by, and saw a cheap celly system, and said, "hey, that's a good idea, I'll buy the devs news shiny-new machines, and improve their productivity and morale!" (I'm guessing.)

I don't have a lot to add, as it seems like most of the major points have been covered. I really like mechBgon's idea, CSA Gigabit ethernet and dual-channel DDR would be really nice things to have.

If your dev place is anything like the one I worked at, being able to run CVS over a gigabit link would be sweet. If there's one thing that compiling and development work uses though, it's a lot of CPU power and RAM (and reasonably fast disks too). I cannot believe that your existing machines are only running 256MB of RAM for XP in a business setting, nevermind a *development* setting. I wouldn't set up any dev machiines nowadays with less than 1GB of RAM, and that's probably a bit on the low side for most professional devs.

Have you considered any AMD64 workstations? (Obviously not available from Dell) I've heard that they are incredible for doing development work on. A 1MB L2-cache Prescott chip probably wouldn't be a bad choice either. More CPU cache == good.

Whatever you do, at least make sure to upgrade the RAM, pref. to 1GB or more.

 

[Sunner]

That would be the stupidest upgrade ever IMO.
I don't know about the devs at your place, but for the ones around here, RAM is the biggest bottleneck, so we've gotten everyone 1 Gig, and noone's complaining anymore.
How about just upping the RAM in the current boxes to 1 gig?

 

[SearchMaster]

Originally posted by: Sunner
That would be the stupidest upgrade ever IMO.
I don't know about the devs at your place, but for the ones around here, RAM is the biggest bottleneck, so we've gotten everyone 1 Gig, and noone's complaining anymore.
How about just upping the RAM in the current boxes to 1 gig?

Agreed. We're a .NET development shop, and our workstations have HT 3.0GHz P4's w/1GB RAM. They STILL drag at times. But our previous config had 512MB RAM, and they REALLY dragged then.

 

[ugh]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
The pc's they already have will work good with windows xp, and 2.4ghz celerons are hardly a "newer" generation, as they run on the same FSB and are a lot slower. Maybe you can convince them to just upgrade the ram in the current pc's to 512mb instead of replacing them with slower pc's.

That's what I'm thinking too. If I can convince those pple up there that they're being ripped off by the vendor, I wouldn't mind having an upgrade

 

[ugh]

VirtualLarry: Believe it or not, the machine which mechBgon recommended has nearly the same spec as a "server". I just can't believe where they get these "experts" from..

 

[0roo0roo]

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article169-page1.html

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: ugh
VirtualLarry: Believe it or not, the machine which mechBgon recommended has nearly the same spec as a "server". I just can't believe where they get these "experts" from..

Well, yes, the 400SC's are "servers" according to Dell, but they make decent workstation machines too, and Dell often runs a deep-discount promotion on them, making them a decent deal, as I understand it. (And from reading about several long threads in the Hot Deals forum about them in the past.) I've not worked with a 400SC model myself though.

 

[jacktesterson]

VOMIT ALL OVER


when a $35 AMD processor (1.4 ghz) can stop and take a crap during a quater mile race, and still beat mr.celeron, we have a problem

please keep your P4 and save me from sacrificing a dog

 

[ugh]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Originally posted by: ugh
VirtualLarry: Believe it or not, the machine which mechBgon recommended has nearly the same spec as a "server". I just can't believe where they get these "experts" from..

Well, yes, the 400SC's are "servers" according to Dell, but they make decent workstation machines too, and Dell often runs a deep-discount promotion on them, making them a decent deal, as I understand it. (And from reading about several long threads in the Hot Deals forum about them in the past.) I've not worked with a 400SC model myself though.

I would expect servers to be Xeon based. Unless I'm getting old in Intel technology {g}

AMDHardcoreFan: Since we're buying from Dell, I don't think we can get any AMD based systems from them. Which sux eggs...

 

[MDE]

It would never hurt to ask Dell. Probably won't happen but if they know their customers will consider AMD...

 

[Mik3y]

its like spendin money to degrade the current systems!

 

[nick1985]

BARF!!! slap those guys in charge of PC buying...

whoever buys a celeron processor and is a companies "techie" needs to be fired and left to be eaten by hungry mice.

 

[Bovinicus]

It's a good thing you are questioning this purchase. Someone would feel pretty stupid when the application developers started complaining that compiling the latest software project was taking longer on the new systems than it did on the older systems. In a review of the P4 Celeron done by Anandtech, the 1.8GHz P4 compiled Quake 3 in approximately 14% less time than an equally equipped Celeron 2.4GHz.

 

[bluewall21]

I sometimes dev on a celeron. *cringe*

 

[darkswordsman17]

Yes, do whatever you can to make sure that they don't buy Celerons. I wish Intel had to put a disclaimer on anything that has a Celeron, saying that it has been known to cause headaches due to unbelievably bad performance.

 

[bcassell]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article169-page1.html

I wrote the above mentioned article, and since it probably isn't obvious at first, I thought I'd mention what 0roo0roo was probably trying to point out:

The same C++ code that takes 15 minutes to compile on my P4 2.8ghz machine at work takes less than 8 minutes to compile on my A64 3000+ machine at home. It's almost twice as fast. These machines are almost identical except for the cpus. Honestly, the P4 sucks for compiling.

Now that that's been said, let me argue the other side too. There is definitely some benifit for a business in going with Dell =). Also, the P4, in a lot of situations, is "good enough". Hell, we use them at my company and get by, and we're compiling some pretty complicated software.

Anyway, just make sure you don't get the celeron--you'd be better off with what you have now.

Bryan

 

[Mavrick007]

Like everyone is saying, the Celeron is not the option here. I would just put more ram in the machines cause your present P4s are decent for now. A Celery with a higher clockspeed doesn't equal a faster computer

 

[ugh]

darkswordsman17: As long as they're in the megahurtz game, I doubt that'll happen

bcassell: Thanks for pointing that out. Even though the machines are good enough now, we need to look 2-3 years ahead. That's their normal "PC recycle" period.

Mavrick007: Unfortunately, a LOT of pple perceive so. That's why we get such stoopid quotes

 

[Abhi]

Celeron for NO one...