Which old CPU is better?

[darkfoon]

I recently inherited some old hardware from a friend's kid brother, 5 old systems to be exact. Not every system works, so I am taking the working pieces from each to build a single good system. The system will be hosting Half-Life1 dedicated server (under Linux) for small LAN parties.

But I am having a hard time choosing among the CPUs. I have:
1x Slot 1 Pentium III 800MHz 512k L2 cache 133 FSB*
2x socket 370 Celeron 1.4GHz 256k L2 cahce 100 FSB* attached to Slot 1 adapter
2x socket 370 Celeron 900 128k L2 cache 100 FSB*

* clockspeed, L2 cache, and FSB(?) taken from the black Intel labels directly on the CPUs.

The best motherboard of the bunch, a VIA-based board, has only a Slot 1 connect. The other boards are all Intel i440<something> and have terrible proprietary designs.

So, my question is: should I use the Slot 1 (native) Pentium III, or should I use the Pentium IV Celeron (Willamette core if I'm not mistaken) with the Slot 1 adapter?
I'm asking this based on performance; I'll worry about stability later.

If anymore intformation is needed, I'll gladly provide it.
This is my first time posting here at these forums.
Thank you for your help.

 

[o1die]

I'd go with the celeron. It might even overclock on the via board. Via chipsets worked with a 133 bus if I remember correctly.

 

[adairusmc]

If it were me, I would go with the Pentium III. You might even be able to overclock it a bit. I ran a Pentium III 800 overclocked to 1133 for a long time.

 

[keeleysam]

See if you can overclock the PIII. If you can't get it past 1.05GHz, go for the Celeron.

If you don't want to overclock, go for the Celeron 1.4.

On second thought, the cache most likely won't make a difference for HLDS, so just go for the Celeron for stability.

 

[myocardia]

I actually know where you can get a dual slot 1 motherboard, so you could use both of those 1.4 Ghz Celerons, if that interests you. PM me if you want the link.

 

[Captante]

The Celeron 1.4's are the newer Tualatin core & also have all the same features as the P-III so they should make for a faster system.. I'd say go with one of them in the Via mb.

 

[darkfoon]

I have spent a long and frustrating night testing this board and the various configurations suggested here.
First of all, I discovered the board is not as great as previously thought. It is a Gainward 6VBA-133A.
AnandTech did a roundup with this board included; it doesn't get great reviews:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=1284&p=8

The overclocking capabilities are disappointing. The board has "presets" at 133, 138, 140, 150 MHZ for the FSB. It wont even turn on at 150MHz, so the maximum CPU clock is (140 * 6)= 840MHz, hardly worth the effort.

On top of that, it doesn't much care for the power adapter required for the Powerleap iP3/T slot 1 adapter
that the Celerons are conencted to. When all hooked up, I press the power button, and nothing. I release the power button, and the motherboard light blinks. No beep, no fans, no HDD, nothing happens. I put the PIII back in and it works just fine. The power adapter intercepts the motherboard power connector and draws off that, which is different from the adapter the site shows in their installation video; the adapter in the video intercepts a molex connection.

This leaves me with the following choices:
Use the measely overclocked (or not overclocked at all) pentium 3 coppermine.
Or I can take the celeron 1.4GHz out of the slot 1 adapter, and put it into one of the socket 370 gateway systems I got, hope that it is compatable, and use that as the server.

Either solution is not so great: I don't much like the layout of the gateway motherboard (if it even works with the celeron),
and the pentium III doesn't have enough oomph to host a server with many players/bots. (I have another PIII coppermine that I have used in the past as a dedicated server, and it doesn't do well with more than 1 bot, or a couple players)


@Captante
I assumed that the celerons were Willamette cores because:
1) I thought tualatin capped out at 1.3 GHz and
2) They have the large heatspreader that I've seen on Pentium IV (and all modern era CPUs) not the small exposed core like my personal PIII coppermine (which I am using the write this)

So, if what you say is true, then I could plug one of these 1.4GHz into my internet computer (dell, socket 370, i815 chipset) and improve it... hmm. An unforseen invenstment.

Thanks for all the help everybody, you've been great!

 

[Zap]

Here's all the info you need:

I don't think that P3 has 512k cache, but probably only 256k. Slowest CPU of the bunch would be the slower Celeron. The P3 is not a good candidate for overclocking because it is already at the highest official FSB of 133MHz. Overclocking these is not like more modern machines. Nothing was "locked" so as soon as you deviate from "official" FSB speeds, your AGP and PCI slots got over/underclocked. Tualatins were made up to 1.4GHz for both P3 and Celeron. The Tualatin Celerons were great chips because they basically were like the 100MHz FSB P3 chips. The "440" chipset boards if labeled "BX" probably has the best raw performance but only supports 66/100MHz FSB and no Tualatins (w/o adaptors). The VIA chipset board would be a 693 or 694. The 693 was a poor performer. Both supported 66/100/133MHz FSB. The Celerons do not support SMP for dual processor usage - only up to the Celeron 533 was SMP unofficially "supported" meaning Intel forgot to disable it. Starting with Celeron 533A, SMP was disabled and could not be enabled. The 815 chipset in your Dell is limited to 512MB RAM. Note that the VIA chipsets (and SiS) supported cheaper high density RAM, but the Intel chipsets do not.

The best bet, if it worked together, would be one of the 1.4GHz Celerons in a 440BX chipset board. Who cares if it is a proprietary board/PSU/case, as long as it works.

 

[Avalon]

The 1.4Ghz Celerons are definitely Tualatins, and are the fastest of your bunch. Willamette PIV's only had 256KB of L2, and their Celeron equivalents had 128KB. Celeron and PIII Tualatins had large heatspreaders.

 

[darkfoon]

your AGP and PCI slots got over/underclocked

Yeah I was worried about that happening. Especially since there is a NIC in one of the PCI slots.

The VIA chipset board would be a 693 or 694.

It's a 694. The motherboard manufacturer, on the other hand, is not so great. I couldn't find an online manual for it; the manufacturer's site doesn't even list that they make motherboards.

The 815 chipset in your Dell is limited to 512MB RAM

Indeed, but that doesn't answer my question if it supports Tualatin cores. (BTW, the dell manual says it goes up to 768MB, but I have 512 and am content)

I am off now to go test the Tualatin celeron in the i440BX board

 

[Conky]

Considering the original requirements for a HL1 server link only recommended a minimum of a P2-266, I think I would go with the P3-800 and not think twice about it.

 

[Brunnis]

The Tualatin Celeron is much faster than that old Slot 1 PIII. So, it pretty simple really: Try to get the 1.4GHz Celeron system to work, otherwise go for the PIII. But you really should try to avoid that if you can.

 

[darkfoon]

So, after much testing, I have finally settled on a working setup.
I put the Tualatin Celeron into a Dell GX1 (one of the boxes I got from the kid brother)that has a i440BX chipset (this is the system that I got the Tualatin Celeron out of originally, lol)
I put 2x 256MB and 1x 128MB (I dont have a third 256MB stick) of SDRAM into the system, totaling 640MB.

Interestingly enough, the system came with 2x 128MB sticks of ECC SDRAM. But, since I'm hosting a HL server, not calculating aerospace tolerances, I figure I need quantity over quality.


Thank you all for the help.

I'm thinking that I'll put the other celeron into my main system (another dell, but this one I bought) if it'll support it.

Thanks again