Pentium vs. Celeron as in video processing speed

[tienquang2]

My friend just built a 2.4 GHz celeron. He told me as far as video processing speed is concerning, it is the same as the Pentium 2.4Ghz. Is that true? I personally don't think so, but has nothing to compare.

[Craig Tucker]

It seems your friend may be right

http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20020903/index.html

Pay particular attention to the mpeg4 encoding benchmarks.

[pixel]

Very interesting...but I guess those are the results we should have expected.

Look at it this way:
during the encoding it is only doing one process (encoding) so all that matters is the speed it can do that one task at, both processors have the same speed, hence roughly the same time.

It is when you are doing multiple tasks that the P4 will come into its own with its larger cache and all the other hidden extras in this processor.

Although when you compare a 2.4GHz C pentium 4 to a 2.4GHz celeron, this will completely blow the celeron out of the water due to the hyper-threading feature making the P4 act like a dual processor system.

(Just on another note, the celerons will probably not be any good for capturing and cause dropped frames due to the smaller cache. I know someone with a celeron, and the MPEG 2 captures don't have dropped frames, but compared to my captures are pretty poor.)

Just to finish, let me say this: Remember Intel wants to make its money from the expensive P4 chips, so the celerons will be always lagging behind in performance terms, because they do not want to make their budget processor beat their premium processor. So, if you compare same power P4's and Celeron's the P4 will always do better.

[pbhalerao]

Excellently put, pixel.

The Celeron was and is primarily targeted for the Home user while the full-scale P4 towards the Business user.

@tienquang2: However, if one is not doing any serious multitasking, he can save the $$$ by going for the Celeron.

[tienquang2]

This is wonderful info, I will have him build me one.

[pixel]

Thank you pbhalerao, although I had to edit 3 times.

I see nothing wrong with a celeron, the price is sure right for them. I would not really think of buying a Celeron due to the amount of tasks I can end up running on my PC at once without realising it. (Although the person I know who uses a Celeron has lots of tasks running there is no problem, apart from general freezes due to mnay programs running and trying to access the hard drive too, so isn't all necessarily the Celerons fault.)

Just got the notification that said you are going to get you're friend to build you one. Good for you I hope it performs well for you. (PS. I would get him to put one of the 2.6GHz celerons in.)

[tienquang2]

Currently I own a 2gh amd athalon. I would want to wait for perhap a 3gh to make it worth my while. I will be a while, for the price to be at the level I would want to build.

[Jester700]

As noted, encoding is all about clock speed. AMD parts that have lower clock speed at their "rating" and make up for it in cache are similar (Barton). But I think the celeron is a fine processor; just not as fast as a true P4. I would gladly accept a 5GHz celeron, and it'd probably be the fastest CPU out there (for now).

You just need to weigh various things in CPU decisions. As for me, I just ordered a 2500+ Barton and Soltek nForce mobo.

[Greenspock]

As noted, encoding is all about clock speed. AMD parts that have lower clock speed at their "rating" and make up for it in cache are similar (Barton). ...

Not completely true. If you are comparing P4's with Celeron's then fine but not P4's(Celerons) against Athlons(Duron's). They use a different architecture. Intel is, in a way, playing a marketing game, they want higher clock speeds (as is AMD of course with their stupid 'rating' system) because thats what people look at when the buy a computer. But to achieve that, Intel CPU's are doing less per clock cycle than the Athlons, less than what the PIII's used to do. Intel's P4 FPU (Floating-Point Unit) is actually worse than what was in their PIII's! They just included SSE-2 instructions which frankly saved there FPU A$$es. They are basically geared for speed. An analogy would be a weightlifter and a sprinter, either you can do more at a time or simply do it faster.

I'm not saying the one is better than the other, just that they are different.

[pixel]

Currently I own a 2gh amd athalon. I would want to wait for perhap a 3gh to make it worth my while. I will be a while, for the price to be at the level I would want to build.

I don't know what this is referring to.

If it is referring to an AMD Athlon XP, you will probably get a cheap one at around the 3GHz mark around Christmas time due to the upcoming autumn release of the AMD 64bit.

If you are referring to a Celeron, don't hold your breath. Intel won't make a 3GHz Celeron, at least until they have reached just over the 3.8GHz mark on the P4 and if they do, it will probably be some time till then anyway. For the upcoming release of the AMD 64bit, Intel are launching a new processor I believe, but it is still going to be a budget processor not to compete with their P4 , but I don't have a lot of info on them.

[pyrate83]

I understood that Intel was going to gradually filter the Celeron out of the market??? P4 is supposed to be the chip they are going to stick with for awhile...even when the AMD 64bit chip is released.

[pixel]

Like I said above, I believe Intel is bringing out a new processor to compete with AMD in the budget area, so this will probably replace the Celeron.