Budget CPU Shootout: Clash of the 'rons
by Derek Wilson on December 4, 2003 10:55 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Test Setup
As many factors as possible were kept the same on both systems in order to help give a fair comparison. Of course, the exception is the motherboard. For the Intel system, we used an Intel D865PERL (865PE) board, while we employed an ASUS A7N8X (nForce2) for the AMD system. The common elements in the systems were:ATI Radeon 9800Pro 256MB
2 x 256MB DDR400 at 2-3-3-6 (frequency chosen by the BIOS)
2 x Western Digital Special Edition Hard Disk Drive
Our systems were configured with on drive set up specifically for the Business and Content Creation Winstone tests, in order to minimize the impact of other system files on the performance of the benchmark.
For our AMD system, we installed the 3.13 nForce drivers. Intel's 5.00.1009 chipset drivers were used on the 865 board. Both systems ran with ATI's Catalyst 3.9 drivers.
In the BIOS of each system, we disabled USB, IEEE1394, onboard audio, and just about everything, but the parallel port. Our goal in doing this was to eliminate factors other than the processor in performance.
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Keeksy - Thursday, December 4, 2003 - link
Great article. I never knew the Celeron was such a bad performer. If I had to build a new machine on budget, I'd definitely go with a Barton Athlon.Hey, what's with the freaking huge ads at the top of every page? Really annoying.
pxc - Thursday, December 4, 2003 - link
I'm a little happier about the Duron 1.8GHz/motherboard combo I purchased now for $60 on black Friday. :D As a bonus, it's a 1.5v core and came unlocked. With 2 pencil traces and a short wire, it's an 11.5x 333MHz FSB Duron which still performs great without the rest of the cache enabled and has headroom for overclocking.The Celerons are really affected by the low speed memory (@ PC2100 on the test system) more than any other processors. Those processors would still lag in this review, the Celerons would have scaled better on other chipsets that allow better memory/FSB ratios. For example, PC3200 on single channel to match the bandwidth of the 400MHz FSB (SiS and VIA) or dual channel PC2100 (SiS648).
FishTankX - Thursday, December 4, 2003 - link
..Why does it say 'It is clear which *card* 'offers the better performance'??Pandaren - Thursday, December 4, 2003 - link
Is anyone suprised at all by these test results? THG OC'ed a Celeron to 3 GHz a few months ago and even then, the Pentium 4 2.0A beat the pants off the Celeron.Fact is that most consumers don't give a rats @ss if they will get half the FPS in a game they will never buy or play. For email, Microsoft Word, and AOHell, a 2.6 GHz Celeron will seem the same as a 1.6 GHz Duron to the average person.
I am sure that Compaq and other retail companies are well aware of the current Celeron's shortcomings. I am also sure that they will pay this article no heed and that they really don't care. The Celeron is mediocre enough.
What I'd like to see is Celeron M (Banias-512) based desktops in the budget segment. This 800 MHz wonder provides all the office firepower most people need, and probably doesn't even need a fan to keep it cool.
Boonesmi - Thursday, December 4, 2003 - link
and whats is really pitiful is that the 1.6ghz duron is faster then the P4 1.8A in most testsand the duron only costs $41 LOL
Boonesmi - Thursday, December 4, 2003 - link
dang!!celerons suck more then i though!!
mattsaccount - Thursday, December 4, 2003 - link
The message is clear! Celerons are even worse than I thought...