Processors

Karla

I'll be getting a new computer soon but I'm kinda out of touch with the newer processors.

My budget is up to £1000, and I'll be able to get the computer built to my specs, so no wasting money on useless software packages.

I just want to know what the basic differences are between the PII, PIII, Celeron, AMD, Cyrix etc.

Which one should I buy?
I'll be using the computer on LAN, with Windows and Linux, and for playing games.

Cheers
Karla

SickBoy

A PII or a celeron 300a. Make sure you dont get an older celeron as they have no cache and are ****e basically. I know the subject it processors but you might want to know this: If your building the system a good combination is the ABit BH6 or BX6.2 with a celeron 300a overclocked to 450 and a TNT card. With about 256mgs RAM you would have an awesome system for the bones of £1000 give or take. Oh BTW stay away from those peskey PIII's for the moment, there only 50MHz faster then the top PII's and as for the extra KNI instructions in them well a big for Intel (MMX all over again???)

hope this helps,


SB...

Fiend

Get a celeron-a processor. Their full clock speed L2 cache makes them just as good as pentium2s. You'll never find a 300mhz celeron-a now at this stage (just happen to have one sitting in me drawer here muhaha ). Intel stopped shipping them and they're pretty hot items anyway.

Go for the 400mhz celeron-a instead. It's still dirt cheap compared to pentium2s and it'll overclock to 450mhz easy if you're into that kinda thing. Make sure you read up on overclocking and get the appropriate motherboard and ram. If you happy with the 400mhz celeron-a running at 400mhz then just get any bx-chipset motherboard that supports celeron-a and get some pc-66 rams.

Koopa

get the cheapest celeron you can, and o/c the sh!te out of it (you may need an extra fan, 5-10 quid).
the technology used to make celerons currently (0.25µ) is supposed to reach its limits somewhere around 550mhz.. so you wont get more than about 500mhz out of youre celeron unless youre lucky, no matter what speed its rated at.

krinDar

I wouldn't suggest attempting to OverClock a
400 Mhz Celeron.Why??

(The whole celeron thing is a long story).

The Celeron 300a has the PII core and is Multiplier Locked (??). It was meant to run at a
Front Side Bus (FSB) of 66 Mhz and to get
say 300 Mhz the multiplier was locked to 4.5
Cos the Celeron has a PII core it can do a lot
more than 300 Mhz, so increase the FSB to
100 Mhz and you have a chip of 450 Mhz (100 * 4.5)

Now why not do it to a 400 Mhz celeron.
Well their Multiplier is locked at 6 (FSB still
at 66 Mhz), so increasing their FSB will result
in a chip that is doin 600 Mhz (100 * 6) which
will kill it fairly quickly.

BTW this is a link to a page which covers this:
http://www.ars-technica.com/paedia/celeron_oc_faq.html

Other good chips that are easily overclockable
are AMD chips, they are also quite cheap and
fit into super 7 boards so it might suit your
old machine.

BadKarmaBoy

Fiend

krinDar:
you obviously are not aware of the fact that a lot of the new motherboards alows you to select Front Side Bus speeds other than 66mhz and 100mhz. 75mhz and 82mhz is available in between those 2. Set the FSB to 75mhz on a celeron-a 400 and you'll overlock it to 450mhz etc. You should read that overclocking faq, am sure it tells you all that.

The celeron-a 400mhz is a fast enough cheap and dirt cheap compared to the other stuff out there and overclocking it to 450 has 99% success rate. You can always try to overclock it using a higher FSB. And most FAQs will tell you the chip will stop lock up ages before it has a chance to burn up so it's not that unsafe. Of course you'll be pretty stupid to try it without some good cooling.

Anyway, like what Koopa said, get the cheapest celeron-a and overlock the crap out of it. Just got my new system last friday and my celeron-a 300mhz running at 450mhz



[This message has been edited by Fiend (edited 26-04-99).]

Creeper

Check out www.tomshardware.com
He got a Celeron 400 clocked up to 618 (103*6) with the help of some Kryotech cooling stuff (basically a fridge). Keeps the chip at -20 or something.
The reason Celeron 300As are so good is because Intel used PII 450 cores to meet the demand for Celerons.

krinDar

Fiend:
(Re: FSB at 75 and 83 Mhz )

I am well aware of thses FSB speeds. However I am also aware of the problems they cause.

If you use 75 or 83 you are in fact also over/under clocking the PCI and AGP slots
which would be unstable/wasteful.You see the PCI/AGP is a fraction of the FSB.

At FSB of 66 Mhz PCI is 0.5 , i.e 33Mhz
At FSB of 100Mhz , PCI is 0.3, again 33 Mhz

However at FSB of 75, PCI @ 0.5 is 37.5 which is over clocking and fairly unstable,
or PCI @ 0.3 which is 25 Mhz and a waste.

Also at FSB or 83, PCI @ 0.5 is 41.5 (say bye the you PCI card)
or PCI @ 0.3 is about 25 again a waste.

So after all that what I mean is it is possible to use 75 and 83 but for stability
you better off with peace of mind and stick to 66 or 100

BTW Fiend did you buy the system altogether or as parts. If as parts where you get the
Celeron 300-a and what price ??

Pantopon

Fiend

krinDar:
yes, there are potential problems with the PCI and AGP bus when running the FSB at settings other than 66 or 100. That's really only if you use older parts in the overclocked systems. Most of the newer PCI devices out there runs very well with the PCI bus overclocked. Check the many hardware forums out there or just ask people there and they'll tell you what's good and what's bad. Running the PCI and AGP bus overclocked is not as unstable as you'd think...

Got most of the system from www.scan.co.uk, some stuff from Europoint but got my Celeron-A 300mhz from the states (know a friend who knew someone was going to be in the states about 2 months ago and asked him to grab one for me )

Koopa

i used to have a celeron 333 which i ran at 416 mhz permanently.. 83.3 mhz bus speed.. 41.6 mhz pci bus speed
never had any problems with it.

i now run a p2-350 at 112 mhz bus speed, which i change in windows using SoftFSB to 124 mhz when i play quake.. never had any problems with my setup except for occasional distortion of screen text after i play quake (probably cos i have no fans in my system at all.. graphics card is overheating).Changing desktop resolution fixes this.

gfx card is approx 3 year old, stb virge vx card..

i even overclock the college PC's to 112mhz bus speed occasionally, never had any problems(college motherboards dont support 124 mhz).

oh yeah, that 550mhz limit thing is for normal temperatures (most VLSI chips are designed to work at a temperature of +27 Celsius)


[This message has been edited by Koopa (edited 07-05-99).]

Fiend

Koopa:
You getting a TNT2 or you staying with that excuse for a graphics card?

Koopa

getting a TNT2