Battle at 500MHz: Athlon vs P3 vs Celeron

Price

In order to compare the three processors based on price, we did a little bargain hunting and came up with some interesting results. The first thing that you have to keep in mind is the difference between an OEM or Tray processor and a Retail or Boxed processor.

An OEM (Tray) processor is shipped by the manufacturer to distributors in trays (hence the name Tray) and generally carries a 15 to 30 day warranty on the CPU itself. The OEM processors do not come with a heatsink or fan and, depending on who you ask, are less overclockable than their Retail/Boxed counterparts. OEM processors also have the disadvantage of potentially being remarked as they do not come prepackaged or sealed from the manufacturer for sale. This could pose a problem with Athlon processors as they are not clock locked. With the 500MHz Athlon being compared here the problem isn't a problem at all since the Athlon 500 is the slowest Athlon available but it may be a much bigger problem with the faster 600 and 650MHz parts. The Intel CPUs are less likely to be the victims of remarking (especially the socketed Celerons) as they are shipped directly from Intel as clock locked CPUs, meaning their clock multiplier cannot be modified by the usual means. As of now, no one has been able to break the clock multiplier lock on the Celeron/Pentium III and publicly disclose their methodology.

On the up side, an advantage of an OEM processor is that it is sold anywhere from 5% to 20% below that of a Retail/Boxed part because of the shorter warranty period as well as the lack of a bundled heatsink/fan combo.

A Retail/Boxed part comes boxed from the manufacturer to the distributors and carries a much longer warranty from the manufacturers themselves. These processors are arguably more overclockable than their OEM counterparts (there was quite a bit of debate as to whether or not the retail Celeron 300As made it up to 450MHz more reliably than the OEM Celeron 300As) and do ship with a retail heatsink/fan combo. The only problem here is that these processors obviously cost more due to the two factors we just mentioned, but some users are willing to pay the added cost to get the longer warranty and lesser chance of their processor being remarked.

AMD currently does not offer a retail/boxed Athlon processor, so only the Intel Celeron/Pentium III were available as Retail/Boxed processors when we tallied up the prices of the processors from the ten cheapest vendors on Price Watch.

We took an informal survey of the ten cheapest vendors on Price Watch and averaged their prices together for all three CPUs. We separated Retail and OEM prices into two different categories.

Unsurprisingly, the Celeron 500 is the obvious winner. The physically smaller chip costs less to manufacturer than its bigger Slot-1 counterpart, and it is sold as a "low-end" CPU from Intel so it makes perfect sense that the Celeron would be priced considerably lower than either of the two competitors.

The OEM Celeron 500 seems to be a very good buy at an average price of $145.50 especially since the retail chip won't buy you much more than a heatsink/fan at an added $25.50. It is interesting to note is that the price of the OEM Athlon 500 is less than that of a Retail Pentium III 500. It seems that although AMD never intended to compete with Intel on price with the Athlon they are doing quite well.

It should also be mentioned that the OEM Pentium III 500 has no problem coming in a full $20 cheaper than the OEM Athlon 500. The true question here is, does the Athlon 500 outperform the Pentium III 500 by a large enough margin to warrant the $20 price difference? Better yet, do both the Athlon 500 and the Pentium III 500 outperform the Celeron 500 by a large enough margin to warrant the $85 - $100 difference?

Look at the performance numbers once again. Is an extra 20 fps in Quake 3 worth another $100? Is an extra 10 fps worth $85? If you realistically look at what you're getting for your money and what you truly need, the Celeron 500 seems to cut it just fine. Then again, there are those that have already set aside $300 for a CPU that have no problem going after the Athlon or the Pentium III. Do you have that extra $85 - $100 to kill?

Also keep in mind that the cost of owning the Athlon 500 involves a bit more than buying a $250 chip, the current crop of Athlon motherboards on the market are generally $40 - $60 more than the Slot-1/Socket-370 boards.