As a casual user (internet, minor gaming, word processing, spread sheets, etc.) does it make any difference in which type CPU I get? The Celeron seems to be cheaper everywhere. Any input from knowledgable computer folks would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

If the games are the latest or heavy in graphics no other wise Celeron is fine for the above mentioned and maybe even DVD playback depending on the speed of the Celeron or VideoCard!

ivnj

I found this article on a CPU review site,
I use the pentium III and It does everything I want.
Whatever you get make sure It IS compatable with you MOBO.

the main differences between Celerons and Pentiums are in the areas of bus speed and L2 cache features. Both Pentium-II's and -III's ship with 512kB of secondary (L2) CPU instruction cache. This allows the CPU to store recently used instructions close by and is responsible for much of their high performance.

The Celerons that Intel first introduced as a low-cost CPU alternative (266 & 300MHz versions) were basically just Pentium-II's without any L2 cache at all. This deficiency really punished Celeron performance when compared to competitive AMD and Cyrix chips. In response, subsequent Celeron versions (300A and up) were provided with 128kB of L2 cache. Though only one-quarter the size of the Pentium cache, it was built to run at the full speed of the respective CPU, rather than at half-speed as in the Pentiums. Due to its higher manufacturing cost and technical issues, the larger Pentium cache memory has always been set to run at only half the speed of the CPU itself. For a full-speed L2 in a Pentium design, you need to get into Intel's (much more expensive) Xeon line.

What Intel plays down-- but nearly everyone knows-- is that the full-speed, quarter-size Celeron cache gives them almost the same performance as the half-speed, full-size cache gives Pentiums. Thus you'll find that, for most applications, Celerons rated at the same MHz will equal or better an equivalent Pentium-II, for a much lower price.

For example:

Celeron @ 466MHz x 128kB L2 @ 466MHz =>
Pentium-II @ 450MHz x 512kB L2 @ 225MHz

Pentium-III's are given an added boost with an inherently faster system bus speed (100MHz vs. 66MHz for the Celerons) and Intel's new SSE 3D instruction set. This combination of hardware and firmware enhancements gives Pentium-III's a significant edge over the Celeron's smaller cache and slower bus.


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Excellent answer koicarp.

I would only add that on large memory and cache applications - gaming or cad, my experience is that their is a noticeable performance hit on the celeron.

Comparing a Celeron to a Pentium II is rather useless, since PII's haven't been manufactured in well over 3 years. Lets get up to date here. The recent Celeron processors still lag behind the Pentium 4's with the smaller L2 cache, but will serve most users just fine. I find people moving up from a 5-6 year old 350 PII processor will be amazed at the current crop of 1.0+ ghz Celerons. They run DVD's just fine and only the newest high powered games will suffer a bit in frame rate. Still, a recent, say 1.3 ghz Celeron with decent (256mb or better) RAM, and an up to date graphics card, will run most of todays games. I build systems using 1.0+ ghz Celerons daily. For the budget minded, they perform beautifully!

If you want to play 3D games get a Pentium (or an AMD Athlon)
If you want to do word processing and surfing only, get an AMD Duron - DO NOT GET CELERON! Celerons may be made by Intel but they seriously are not worth buying.