Pentium, Celleron, Athalon... ?

Factual Questions
1

I am a Mac user. I just want to get that out of the way up front.

Of course, I am also a genius whose wisdom is heralded far and wide. I am. Just ask me.

Anyway, people come to me with all sorts of computer questions. Today, a friend asked me to help him pick out a computer. I steered him toward a 500ish MhZ Pentium III, while he eyed the 700 MhZ Athalon.

Aside from the manufacturer, what’s the difference between these processors? I mean, on the Mac side, processors came in obvious steps. The 68030 wasn’t as good as the 68040 which wasn’t as good as the G3 which wasn’t as good as the G4, etc.

Things seem (to me) to be fuzzier on the PC side. Am I correct in my Pro-Pentium prejudice?

The truth of the matter is that my friend is going to be using a word processor, Internet explorer and Quicken (and solitaire, of course). He’s not going to be taxing his system, so it really doesn’t matter.

But, there -has got to be a difference in the models. Anyone?

2

First off, here’s a link that might help you understand the differences in the different CPUs.

Yes, the Pentium III is better than a Celeron, but the AMD Athalon has benchmarked better than the PIII. It’s a tough call IMO on the Athalon and PIII, but I’d rather stick with a PIII only because it’s more widely supported.
My experience has shown me that when someone has a celeron or less, if something goes wrong on their machine, there’s no reason to bother trying to fix it, and you can’t really upgrade it. The PIII is versatile IMO, moreso than any other chip.

You did well in steering you pal the towards a Pentium IMO.

3

I thought this was going to be a question on the 4th, 5th, and 6th Musketeers.

4

No, you are incorrect in your pro-pentium prejudice. The Athlon is an extremely fast processor, comparable with a P3 at the same clock in Integer, and superior to the P3 in floating point ops. Also, they run very reliably at their released speed of 1.2GHz, (200MHz higher than the P3). An Athlon 1 GHz is only $255. The 1GHz P3 is $489. That’s an enormous price difference for 2 processors that perform almost identically. A 700MHz Athlon (make sure you get the thunderbird…it has full core speed L2 cache) costs only $99. That’s $30 LESS than the P3 500, and it’s considerably faster than the P3 500. Go with the Athlon.

Jman

5

This is just wrong. The Athlon is no less compatible than a P3 for ANYTHING. This is Intel hype and that’s all. AMDs past chips have not been as good, but they hit a home run with the Athlon. PC Magazine even named the Athlon the “product of the year.” There are some old, defunct motherboard chipsets that caused some AGP problems in the early days of the athlon, but they have long been fixed. There’s no reason not to get the Athlon…unless you LOVE throwing $150 down the toilet. Check out the Duron too…it absolutely SMOKES a Celeron at the same clock speed and it’s so damn cheap.

Jman

6

How is my opinion of my wanting to stick with a PIII wrong in that my reasoning is that it’s more widely supported. The Athalon, as I did mention above, has benchmarked better, but is not AS WIDELY SUPPORTED as the Pentiums. This has nothing to do with whats better, or compatible, this has to do with what companies test their products on and agree to support should there be any problems later on. The AMD Athalon is not supported as widely as the Pentium chips are, meaning that if I had a PIII and ran into some issues with some software/hardware by certain major companies, especially when dealing with servers and server technology, I would have a much more likely chance of getting ready tech support (like any tech support is ever really that helpfull… j/k) then I would if I had an AMD.

Cool your britches Jman, no need to get your panties in a bunch over my opinion on a CPU… :rolleyes:

7

somehow i’m guessing Jman either works for AMD, or has extensive stock in their corporation, or is one of those “Intel is in alliance with Microsoft! Down with Microsoft!” people my mother warned me about. :smiley:

8

No…actually, I’m running an Intel processor right now…I have a P2-350. My point was not that your opinion was wrong…it’s that AMD’s are no less supported than Intel chips. If you buy just the chip, AMD will support the chip. If you buy it in a system from any vendor, they’ll support that machine just as well as they would with any Intel chip. Software does not run significantly differently on the Athlon than it does on the P3. I fail to see where your “unsupported” argument is actually valid.

I’m not saying the P3 is a bad chip…far from it. But people have a preconceived notion that AMD chips are unstable, or too slow, or not compatible, or unsupported, or less reliable, and it’s not true. Right now, Intel is relying on that bias to sell chips. It’s the only reason they can rip you off without the consumer thinking twice. I’m not against Intel, and I’d buy a P3 if it was cheaper, at the same speed…but it’s not, and it’s not by a very, very large margin. I just don’t see it as good advice to tell someone to spend up to $200 more for a same speed processor, or spend the same amount of money for a considerably slower chip.

Look, I’m not trying to be a jerk, or be a huge AMD fan, or anything…it’s just that I’ve done a LOT of research on computer components, and there’s no way to actually evaluate both chips if you get misleading info like they’re not supported.

Jman

BTW…there’s no A in the middle of “Athlon”

9

AMD and Intel chips use the same instruction set and are code compatable. Both are equally supported. Dell use only Intel but thats about it. AMD has a better floating point unit than Intel while Intel has a slight lead over AMD in integer math. Price per performance AMD wins hands down. With the same amount of money you can get a much faster AMD chip compared to Intel. Now this is just the main chips. There are numerous other factors in computer performance. The first being FSB (front side bus) speed. Intel is maxed at 133Mhz while AMD is now available at 266Mhz. Intel will be moving to 400Mhz FSB and AMD will too, but right now AMD has the fastest. Now to take advantage of this you need Double data rate RAM. Only AMD supports this right now. Intel can only support Rambus RAM until 18 months from now. Rambus RAM is MUCH more expensive than DDR and DDR is a lot cheaper adding more to the price/performance ratio.

The next processors ar the Intel Celeron and the AMD Duron. Both of these are disabled versions of their big brothers. But the Duron blows the Celeron away. If you do not believe me look at these web sites.

http://www.tomshardware.com

10

Gotcha Jman,
The unsupported claim comes from experience with companies like microsoft on servers such as SmallBusiness and NT, Micron on one of my servers at work, some Maxtor drives we’ve gotten for a few workstations that the vendor specifically warned us about using along with anything but PentiumII or higher, ??? because if something went wrong, the company wouldn’t be able to help.

My take on this is that many companies such as Micron in my case, test their components out and write up some kind trouble shooting guide specifically geared towards using only what they tested on, and if you are doing anything differently, then you can’t be helped in their opinion, and it’s a total user fault issue.

Trust me, if sdimbert mentioned the guy knew anything really significant about computers, I’d say go with the Athlon, but he doesn’t, and what do you do if you don’t know anything about computers, and somebody offers to help you choose something you know little about, and then later theres a problem. You being the common layman in the computer world thinking, theyr’e all the same, and because Pentium has become practically a household name, keep insisting to a tech support guy it’s a pentium, meanwhile it’s not.
This has happened to me plenty of times. A user has a problem, I ask, what type of machine do you have, what’s the CPU, whats the RAM and what’s the make and model of the computer… Pentium every time, and you know what, when I get there? Celerons.
Just experience with folk out there that prompts me to suggest to someone with no knowledge to either learn about the CPU’s himself before he buys, or spend the money to safegaurd himself.
sdimberts pal could have saved money for sure with the Athlon, but would he know really by how much, and what the difference was? I commend him for suggesting that to his friend. It’s sort of a name brand issue, but then again, yes, the Athlon is winning hands down in performance, it’s just not getting the play it should, and so like Microsoft being the household name these days, Pentium becomes popular, and the only thing the common folk understand. Thank god Macs at least stick to one common upgrade at a time… Much easier to manage and administer then PC’s IMO.

Hey sdimbert, why didn’t you suggest a Mac? Same software for it really, and you know about it well enough, howcome?

11

Fair question.

The fact of the matter is that, for virgin computer users, a Mac is easier to learn. But, if you’ve already been subjected to Windows (at work, school, a friend’s house, etc) than the differences between the two make the Mac just as challenging to learn as the PC; there’s a lot of junk to unlearn.

These friends of mine are not computer people; they will never be comfortable with their PC. They are the kinds of folks that never even wonder why all of their Word documents are in 10pt Times New Roman. That’s just the way it comes and they never think of changing it.

Since I don’t want to be their babysitter/only help in times of trouble, I will point them to the more popular choice: a PC, not a Mac.

Make sense?

12

The truth is, unless your friends need a real power machine, it isn’t going to make much difference. The AMD chips are slightly cheaper for the same performance, the Intel chips have more available motherboards with established chipsets. Many of the motherboards for Intel chips have integrated sound/graphics which reduce the system cost, compensating for a more expensive processor.

Try http://www.hardwareguys.com/guides/basic-celeron.html for a bit of detail - otherwise, if your friend just likes the word “Athlon” more than “Pentium”, let him go for it.

13

Athalon’s work just fine. A newbie computer user probably would never know the difference between a Pentium or an Athalon under the hood. Occasionally I’ve run into patches for software specifically geared to AMD users but that’s really pretty rare. AMD is big enough now that software developers consider any issues an Athalon may have when writing their software. Certainly any mainstream app you’re likely to find at Best Buy will work fine with an Athalon.

The Issues:

Intel makes a perfectly good product. Unfortunately they got into bed with Rambus Inc. and they are hurting big time for it and trying to squirm out of the relationship. RDRAM, licensed by Rambus, is MUCH more expensive than the standard RAM (SDRAM) used in most PC’s up till this point. In addition, the i840 and especially the i820 chipsets used for this memory setup stink.

So, we have an Intel chip that costs more than its comparably clocked AMD counterpart, we have memory that costs a LOT more than standard RAM and we have motherboard chipsets that cost more than most any AMD based motherboard. This might be ok if the Intel stuff worked better and faster but the sad fact of the matter is that NONE of the items listed above beat their AMD counterparts.

The result, a system that costs noticeably more than AMD and performs either just as well or a little worse.

That said AMD has a problem with motherboards. That is to say, they simply aren’t the equals of the offerings from Intel–at least till the introduction of the i820 chipset (I can’t begin to stress how lousy that motherboard is). The Athalon should smoke the Pentium in most cases based on what it looks like on paper. Unfortuantely, the motherboards for the Athalon seem to inhibit performance a bit thus allowing what should be the slower Pentium to catch up some.

To fight off the dismal i820 chipset Intel released the i815 which will accept regular SDRAM. This motherboard is quite good and easily the equal, maybe even the better, of any AMD based chipset out there. NOTE: It is possible to get an i820 motherboard that takes regular SDRAM with the addition of a memory translator hub (MTH)…avoid this like the plague…the MTH causes a SERIOUS performance hit and isn’t worth anybody’s time. My guess is ‘cheap’ systems or unscrupulous manufacturers will quietly stick this in their systems to get rid of their stock. The outside of the box will read well but the actual performance won’t be near what you think you’re getting.
What to buy?

If you’re not a power user looking to tweak and upgrade your system continuously buy the best deal you can find. Quite frankly if all it’ll be used for is surfing the internet and running Word most anything will work for you just fine and you’ll never know the difference.

If you are a power user or want to tweak your system to no end so you can run bleeding edge 3-D games at 100 FPS then I’d say give AMD/Athalon a close look. Especially now that they just released a chipset with support for Double Data Rate (DDR) memory (effectively doubling the speed of memory with only a 10% or so price premium).

Your upgrade path with Intel isn’t so good. The P-III processor is at about its limit for clock speed (1.2Ghz or so). The next step will be taken with the Pentium 4 but as it stands now that chip will only work on RDRAM systems which, as I’ve already said, suck. Intel is working to get around the RDRAM issue they’re facing but Rambus will hang on to them like a leech and not let go. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this.
Good Luck!

14

Techies, need your help

[Hijack alert]
Are processors with a higher “denomination” but a lower clock speed better than “inferior” processors with a faster clock speed? For example, is a PIII, 350 MHz better than a PII 400 MHz?

Also, what exactly is clock speed? How does it contribute to a particular processor’s performance? By the same token, assuming equal clock speeds, what makes a PIII better than a PII. I believe it is the “transistor density” but have also heard about chip architecture, which is a concept I don’t fully comprehend.

Could any of you tech wizards enlighten me and exorcise the ignorance that, pertaining to this subject, plagues the 286 10 MHz processor that I have for a brain. Actually, that is an obvious overestimation of my brain’s processing capacity. In any case, I think you get that idea. :slight_smile:
[Hijack concluded]

15

Yes, a PIII-400 is better than a PII-500. Think of it like an automobile engine. Equate clock-speed to RPM’s.

A PII-500 maxes out at 5000 RPM’s while the PIII-maxes out at 4000 RPM’s. BUT…the PIII is a bigger engine overall, more cubic inches in the cylinders (i.e. 8 cylinders vs. 4 cylinders, bigger cylinders and so on). So, while it has a lower overall RPM each cylinder provides more power and you have more cylinders. In the end the V8 at 4000 RPM gives you more horsepower than the smaller 4-banger at 5000 RPM.

In addition (and this goes to your architecture question) the newer engine is designed better. It’s more efficient than the 4-banger thus it gets more oomph on each stroke of the piston (i.e. fuel injection vs. a carbeurator(sp?)).

As to what clock speed is think of a metronome (you know…those things that swing back and forth keeping the pace for you while you play the piano). Basically, one clock tick is one ‘spin’ of the gears. Everything moves forward one step, stops and waits for the next tick of the clock. Without this pacing a computer processor would go haywire as different instructions finshed at different rates and got all jumbled and out of order.

So, a 400 Mhz processor spins its gears 400,000 times (or cycles) per second. A 500 Mhz processor can do it 500,000 times per second.

The reality is that a LOT of things are happening in a processor. So, in general a higher clock speed is better but if other pieces of your system are slow these clock cycles can be wasted (i.e. still waiting for data from slow memory). At some point it is necessary to keep other pieces in the system up to spec or you lose most of the extra power of a processor. For instance, I could put an Indy racing engine in my Chrysler. However, if I don’t upgrade my tranmission, suspension and what not I still won’t get much faster than I do with my current 160HP engine (at least not without killing myself or shredding my existing transmission).

Hope that helps.

16

Quasar wrote:

If there was any overlap between the clock speeds of the Pentium II and Pentium III line (actually, there is, at 450 Mhz), then a III with the same clock as a II would run some benchmarks faster. However, there’s no hard and fast rule, especially since there are different versions of Pentium III, even within the same clock speed. For example, the 600 Mhz III is available in four different flavors: regular, E, B, and EB. The regular runs a 100 Mhz bus with a 512K off-chip cache; the E is a 100 Mhz bus with a 256K on-chip cache; the B is a 133 Mhz bus with 512K off-chip cache, and the EB is (can you guess?) a 133 Mhz bus with a 256K on-chip cache. All three can correctly be referred to as a Pentium III-600. However, the best performing one is the EB.

Between different types of processors the lines get even more fuzzy. Don’t even bother trying to compare Mac performance to PC performance by comparing speed ratings - the chip architecture is completely different, and for a given Mhz rating a PowerPC chip (what the Mac is based on) is much more powerful than an equivalently rated PC chip. This is why we have benchmarks. If it were just a simple case of looking at the CPU’s speed rating we wouldn’t need them.

Even if you compare, say Duron to Pentium III, for many (possibly even most) benchmarks, you’ll find that the Duron outperforms the PIII, even though the Duron is considered an “entry-level” processor and the PIII is “state-of-the-art”. Even though both chips are 100% compatible with each other at the code level, they are implemented completely differently.

While previewing this I notice that Jeff_42 already gave a nice reply, but I figured that I put all this effort into this, so I may as well post it anyway. :slight_smile:

17

Also, the Pentium IV is a completely different processor. In order to maintain very high speeds, the P IV has had to make some compromises. It will be particularly “weak” in floating-point operations as they are written today. Intel is counting on software developers to rely heavily on optimization for the use of Intel’s proprietary iSSE instruction set, which will serve the double purpose of making the P IV perform better and possibly make AMD chips perform less well.

(When one considers AMD’s large gains in the market, the high cost and questionable performance of Rambus, and the requirement that software developers must now make a special exception for the P IV when writing their software, things seem to look problematic for the initial success of the Pentium IV. That remains to be seen.)

Early tests of the P IV show it to be considerably less efficient than either the PIII or the Athlon–but they are just that: early tests, without “optimized” benchmarks (which I won’t go into). My guess is that a Pentium IV will require about a one-third greater clock speed to perform at an equivalent level to the current top-of-the-line x86 chips. In other words, A P IV will need to pull about 1.6 GHz to match the performance of the current 1.2 GHz Athlon. But that’s just what the P IV is designed to do: sustain a very, very high clock speed, eventually reaching and going beyond 2 GHz.

As a result, I think the P IV will be a bum steer for several months: expensive, slow, and perhaps buggy. That will change if Intel can ramp up speeds (and score that 400 MHz front-side bus). And if their Israel fab doesn’t get blown up.