Any new Celeron Benchmarks?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Libras Renholder
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Libras Renholder

I want to upgrade my Celeron 1.7Ghz to possibly Celeron D 335 or P4 2.8B-GHz
(my mobo supports 533 FSB). The P4 is more expensive but I wonder how much
faster it is then the new celerons. But I guess its too early for
benchmarks?
 
Libras Renholder said:
I want to upgrade my Celeron 1.7Ghz to possibly Celeron D 335 or
P4 2.8B-GHz (my mobo supports 533 FSB). The P4 is more expensive
but I wonder how much faster it is then the new celerons. But I
guess its too early for benchmarks?
Click to expand...

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=2093

You will get more and better changing platform to AMD. Just look at the
prices and performance. Celeron wins only in useless benchmarks (Q3
640x480) and loses in every reasonable ones (wolf 1024x768).


Pozdrawiam.
 
RusH said:
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=2093

You will get more and better changing platform to AMD. Just look at the
prices and performance. Celeron wins only in useless benchmarks (Q3
640x480) and loses in every reasonable ones (wolf 1024x768).
Click to expand...

Thanks for that link.

The method used to estimate the performance improvement of Celeron D
over Celeron--running at an unrealistically slow 2GHz--systematically
underestimates the performance improvement to be expected from running
at more like 2.6GHz with larger cache. The direct comparison chart
shows a performance improvement of 11.7% for Business Winstone 2004; I
get an estimated improvement of over 24% by pulling numbers off the next
chart, where the processors are run at full speed.

As to performance relative to AMD, the improvement seems to get Celeron
D out of the embarassing category. Someone considering purchase of an
OEM system might be tempted to consider a P4 Celeron for the right price
and the right application; the likely buyer that comes to mind is a
penny-pinching volume buyer for business. As always, we don't know what
price Dell or HP will be paying.

RM
 
Robert Myers said:
As to performance relative to AMD, the improvement seems to get
Celeron D out of the embarassing category.
Click to expand...

Yes, looks like those Celerons are now only ~200MHz behind full P4.



Pozdrawiam.
 
RusH wrote:
The method used to estimate the performance improvement of Celeron D
over Celeron--running at an unrealistically slow 2GHz--systematically
underestimates the performance improvement to be expected from running
at more like 2.6GHz with larger cache. The direct comparison chart
shows a performance improvement of 11.7% for Business Winstone 2004; I
get an estimated improvement of over 24% by pulling numbers off the next
chart, where the processors are run at full speed.
Click to expand...

Much more important that the clock speed is the bus speed. In the
2.0GHz comparison both Celeron chips were run with a 400MT/s bus
speed. The idea behind this was clearly to test the differences that
the cache and core make, which is interesting in it's own right, but
not entirely applicable to determining what chip to purchase.
Comparing the old Celeron 2.6GHz to the new Celeron 330 you are
looking at the effects of a new core, doubles L1 cache, doubled L2
cache and a higher bus speed all combined together.
As to performance relative to AMD, the improvement seems to get Celeron
D out of the embarassing category. Someone considering purchase of an
OEM system might be tempted to consider a P4 Celeron for the right price
and the right application; the likely buyer that comes to mind is a
penny-pinching volume buyer for business. As always, we don't know what
price Dell or HP will be paying.
Click to expand...

Actually it finally makes the chip halfway reasonable for those who
are limited to Intel platforms. AMD processors still offer much
better bang for your buck. A new Celeron 330 in retail box will set
you back $99 from Newegg.com, while the AthlonXP 2500+, offering
better performance, is only $80 from the same store.

However as you mention, most OEMs systems are limited to an Intel-only
platform for whatever reasons (95%+ marketing), these new Celerons
make some sense. HP and Dell get these chips for DIRT-CHEAP. I would
hazard a guess that they pay somewhere on the order of $30-$40 for
these Celeron processors, so really there is no real price advantage
for going for an AMD chip. You end up with somewhat lower
performance, but it's close enough that no one will notice.
 
Tony said:
Much more important that the clock speed is the bus speed. In the
2.0GHz comparison both Celeron chips were run with a 400MT/s bus
speed. The idea behind this was clearly to test the differences that
the cache and core make, which is interesting in it's own right, but
not entirely applicable to determining what chip to purchase.
Comparing the old Celeron 2.6GHz to the new Celeron 330 you are
looking at the effects of a new core, doubles L1 cache, doubled L2
cache and a higher bus speed all combined together.
Click to expand...

Double, double toil and trouble...mutter, grumble...details of memory
operation and latency...

I guess I just don't really understand the point of the 2.0GHz test.
When the processor runs at the higher FSB speed, the memory latency
doesn't change because it's still the same memory running at the same
conditions (2 x 256MB DDR400 @ 2:3:3:6).

With fixed memory latency, processor frequency, memory bandwidth
requirements, and cache size requirements all scale together. A one
third reduction in processor frequency is like, all other things being
equal, a one third reduction in required cache size and memory bandwidth
for equal performance. Things don't scale quite that neatly, but such a
simple-minded theory goes a long way toward explaining 11.7% gain vs.
24% gain for doubling the cache size, with the processor frequency being
reduced by one third for the lower of the two estimates.

There's little point in having extra cache if you don't have the
bandwidth to get the data in...but there's very little point in having
the extra bandwidth if there's nowhere to put the data. The more
meaningful comparison is the 2.66GHz Celeron D against the 2.6GHz
Celeron. The discrepancy between 2.66GHz and 2.6GHz can be fixed with a
little systems engineer's body english.

What this little diversion highlights is that, as Intel pushed the clock
on Celeron from 1.7GHz, the cache situation, not very good to begin
with, got more and more dire, and the Celeron D is an inevitable course
correction.

However as you mention, most OEMs systems are limited to an Intel-only
platform for whatever reasons (95%+ marketing), these new Celerons
make some sense. HP and Dell get these chips for DIRT-CHEAP. I would
hazard a guess that they pay somewhere on the order of $30-$40 for
these Celeron processors, so really there is no real price advantage
for going for an AMD chip. You end up with somewhat lower
performance, but it's close enough that no one will notice.
Click to expand...

I mentioned the actual economic realities because one could come away
from a discussion like this wondering how it is that Intel ever sells
processors. Some buyers, it is true, are gullible shoppers at a place
like CompUSA, but not all of them are by any means. Intel hardware
commands a modest brand premium, but not as much for buyers of OEM
hardware as for home-builders.

RM
 
Tony Hill said:
Comparing the old Celeron 2.6GHz to the new Celeron 330 you are
looking at the effects of a new core, doubles L1 cache, doubled L2
cache and a higher bus speed all combined together.
Click to expand...

Hey, will those (Celeron 330/2.66D) work in older motherboards? For $99,
if it would work in them, it looks like a dynamite upgrade for some of the
1.8-2.4ghz 400FSB P4s and Celerons we've had kicking around here. Most are
i845 chipset boards, and they've all got PC2100 DDR.
 
Double, double toil and trouble...mutter, grumble...details of memory
operation and latency...

I guess I just don't really understand the point of the 2.0GHz test.
Click to expand...

It's admittedly not the most useful test in the real world. I believe
the main idea was to contrast this to the Northwood vs. Prescott P4
comparisons, where the latter was usually somewhat slower given
identical clock speed and bus speed. With these Celerons that trend
is noticeably reversed, the Prescott-esk Celeron D is almost always
faster (often by a margin of over 10%) than the Northwood derived
Celeron of old.
When the processor runs at the higher FSB speed, the memory latency
doesn't change because it's still the same memory running at the same
conditions (2 x 256MB DDR400 @ 2:3:3:6).
Click to expand...

To a rough approximation, yes.
With fixed memory latency, processor frequency, memory bandwidth
requirements, and cache size requirements all scale together. A one
third reduction in processor frequency is like, all other things being
equal, a one third reduction in required cache size and memory bandwidth
for equal performance. Things don't scale quite that neatly, but such a
simple-minded theory goes a long way toward explaining 11.7% gain vs.
24% gain for doubling the cache size, with the processor frequency being
reduced by one third for the lower of the two estimates.
Click to expand...

Err, I think that might be a bit of an oversimplification of things
here!
There's little point in having extra cache if you don't have the
bandwidth to get the data in...but there's very little point in having
the extra bandwidth if there's nowhere to put the data. The more
meaningful comparison is the 2.66GHz Celeron D against the 2.6GHz
Celeron. The discrepancy between 2.66GHz and 2.6GHz can be fixed with a
little systems engineer's body english.
Click to expand...

What's perhaps most applicable would be a dollar for dollar
comparisons, ie probably a Celeron D at 2.53GHz vs. a Celeron at 2.6
or 2.7GHz for the time being. After all, the real reason for looking
at the Celeron in the first place is low cost.
What this little diversion highlights is that, as Intel pushed the clock
on Celeron from 1.7GHz, the cache situation, not very good to begin
with, got more and more dire, and the Celeron D is an inevitable course
correction.
Click to expand...

Combine that with somewhat restricted bandwidth and the whole memory
subsystem of the old Northwood-style Celeron pretty much blew. The
increased bus speed and doubled cache are rather obvious solutions
and, not surprisingly, they result in a fairly noticeable increase in
performance.

What I found funny was that some people were surprised by this fact!
I mentioned the actual economic realities because one could come away
from a discussion like this wondering how it is that Intel ever sells
processors. Some buyers, it is true, are gullible shoppers at a place
like CompUSA, but not all of them are by any means. Intel hardware
commands a modest brand premium, but not as much for buyers of OEM
hardware as for home-builders.
Click to expand...

Definitely not. I've had the chance to get some exposure to the inner
workings of computer building and whatnot at large OEMs recently, and
basically the hardware itself seems to be a pretty much non-issue
cost-wise (the one exception to this rule seems to be motherboards...
perhaps not by coincidence since there is TONS of competition in the
retail market pushing prices down). The cost all seems to come from
support and all the extras like management, marketing and logistics.

As a interesting side note, I now finally understand Dell's thinking
behind their "white box" systems. I'm sure that they are able to
churn out the hardware for next to nothing as long as they have zero
support costs associated with it. Offload the support to some other
company (the retailer in this case) and Dell's per-unit cost are tiny.
I'm still not sure that the idea will actually translate into a
commercially viable product, but at least I understand where they're
coming from now.
 
Hey, will those (Celeron 330/2.66D) work in older motherboards? For $99,
if it would work in them, it looks like a dynamite upgrade for some of the
1.8-2.4ghz 400FSB P4s and Celerons we've had kicking around here. Most are
i845 chipset boards, and they've all got PC2100 DDR.
Click to expand...

That's a definite maybe. Some boards will work with them just fine,
some will need a BIOS update, others won't work at all. As usual,
check with the board or system manufacturer.
 
Tony Hill said:
That's a definite maybe. Some boards will work with them just fine,
some will need a BIOS update, others won't work at all. As usual,
check with the board or system manufacturer.
Click to expand...

With the exception of some Dells (notoriously hard to upgrade), I don't
think we have two systems with the same motherboard in them. Time to start
hitting manufacturer web sites, I guess.

Thanks, though! Better than a definite no.
 
Tony said:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 03:57:11 GMT, Robert Myers



Err, I think that might be a bit of an oversimplification of things
here!
Click to expand...

You make it sound as if it were something I came up with after staying
up too late. :-).

It's little more than Little's law, which is the intuitively obvious
result from queuing theory that queue depth is the product of the
average wait times arrival rate into the queue, or, in cs-ese,
concurrency = latency x bandwidth, connected to the (admittedly
non-trivial) assumption that average residence time in cache is
proportional to memory latency.
What's perhaps most applicable would be a dollar for dollar
comparisons, ie probably a Celeron D at 2.53GHz vs. a Celeron at 2.6
or 2.7GHz for the time being. After all, the real reason for looking
at the Celeron in the first place is low cost.
Click to expand...

These discussions always get off the highway once price comes into the
discussion. Price isn't irrelevant, but it's pretty arbitrary. The
non-trivial part is to understand what you're buying. What you've paid
can be read off your sales receipt. ;-).
Combine that with somewhat restricted bandwidth and the whole memory
subsystem of the old Northwood-style Celeron pretty much blew. The
increased bus speed and doubled cache are rather obvious solutions
and, not surprisingly, they result in a fairly noticeable increase in
performance.

What I found funny was that some people were surprised by this fact!
Click to expand...

After the misdirection of seeing the disappointing performance of P4E.
P4 Northwood wasn't desperately starved for cache to begin with, and
increasing cache by itself doesn't necessarily make up for the
deleterious effects of a deeper pipeline, but you knew that.

RM
 
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