Budget CPU Shootout: Clash of the 'rons
by Derek Wilson on December 4, 2003 10:55 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
It is very obvious from these tests which line of budget processors is worth the money. When we can find a 1.6GHz Duron for just over half the price of a 2.6GHz Celeron and get better performance consistently in almost every test we ran, the choice is clear.It's obvious that the long pipeline of the Pentium 4 just can't handle the crippled cache of the Celeron. With more cache misses and pipeline stalls, the processor isn't getting as much useful work done as it is trying constantly to refill the pipeline. We are seeing these results for the same reason we saw the performance gains from the P4 Extreme Edition with its 2MB L3 cache: the pipeline needs to stay full for the P4 to really shine.
The Pentium III based Celerons offered, at one time, acceptable performance. However, it is clear that in the value segment today, Intel has nothing to offer but a high clock speed. AnandTech readers will know to stay away from the Celeron at all costs; however, what is troublesome are the number of retail customers who are faced with the decision between a higher priced 2.6GHz Celeron system and an Athlon XP 2200+. We would highly encourage system vendors like Compaq and eMachines to shift their low-end focus to AMD if their customers are of any importance at all. As we've seen through our extensive benchmarking, the Celeron's performance is truly dismal; so while Intel is quite competitive in the mid-range and high-end segments, their value processors are inexcusably slow compared to AMD.
This review really isn't complete without taking a look at overclocking performance. For enthusiasts who want a lot of performance for a small amount of cash (cache?), pushing a cheap processor beyond its limits is the way to go. Every overclocker remembers the original Celeron processor and its amazing ability to run incredibly fast because of its lack of cache. At this point (however unlikely), such a feature would be the only saving grace of the Celeron line. Of course, even if the Celeron is a good overclocker, it will be very interesting to see how high the Duron can be pushed with its cut cache as well.
The conclusion we can make from all this is that the Duron processor is a solid purchase. If you have the extra 40 to 50 dollars to spend, a Barton processor would be a nice addition to any system for that added dimension of performance to a tightly budgeted system. Hopefully, system builders will take note and start offering better performing systems for an even lower price based on the Duron processor rather than the Celeron. For those who want the cheapest possible system, AMD will give you the best performance every time.
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tonyp1023 - Friday, December 5, 2003 - link
I repair and build pc's in a small college town in upstate NY so I get a good sampling of whats out there in bargain PC land. My off the top of my head statistic is about five to one on dead Athlon/Duron systems compared to Intel Celeron P3/P4 systems. I have read and seen that AMD cpus are more prone to thermal failures than Intel and my repair data bears this out. Or cheap motherboards die quicker because of poorer QC on their assembly lines. Whatever, I won't build clones out of AMD's because I don't want them coming back to haunt me. A warranty is a terrible thing to have to honor (and I always do) but the Intel machines seldom come back to haunt me.LoneWolf15 - Friday, December 5, 2003 - link
(Quoted)"These Sub-$100 CPUs serve as decent upgrades for aging systems (e.g. the P3-800 that is barely chugging along) when combined with a new motherboard, but they are also the heart and soul of many of today's sub-$1000 PCs that you'd find in the retail market."
OT a little, but "barely chugging along"? A P3-800 still runs stuff pretty well with enough RAM (which is pretty darn cheap), a 7200rpm hard disk, and if you want to game a bit, a good budget 3D graphics card. Yeah, the Duron is a great chip, so is the Athlon XP 2500+, but for those locked into a case/motherboard setup, an old P3-800 can be made to do a lot of newer tricks.
INTC - Friday, December 5, 2003 - link
So who would put a "Budget" chip into a high end platform that included:ATI Radeon 9800Pro 256MB
2 x 256MB DDR400 at 2-3-3-6 (frequency chosen by the BIOS)
2 x Western Digital Special Edition Hard Disk Drive
Even for enthusiasts, if you can afford a Radeon 9800Pro then you probably can afford a high-end CPU. Even if someone bought an Athlon XP 2500+ to overclock, they probably shelled out extra money somewhere (heatsink, power supply, high-end RAM, extra fans, etc.) in order to get a successful overclock so their system would not be considered "budget" any longer.
Budget CPUs fall mostly into the ultra cheap integrated video all-in-1 systems sold at retail stores. eMachines and HP typically have Celeron systems on sale in every sale flyer almost every Sunday. Their cheapest systems feature Celeron processors and their AMD systems are typically several hundred dollars more.
I'm not sure what percentage of the market on Celerons is through boxed processors or individual OEM chips but I've heard that Intel is able to sell every single Celeron chip that they are currently making. So, someone is buying them - a whole bunch of them!
As for the Athlon XP and Durons, I'm not an expert in economics, but if demand surpasses supply then prices would increase for a product and the inverse is true which says that if supply is greater than demand then prices decrease in order to spark more demand. So if Celerons and P4s sell enough to get more than 80% of the market for CPUs, did AMD make too many Athlon XPs and Durons or is nobody bying them or a little of both? Maybe they should limit the quantity that they produce and their products would sell at a higher price premium - case and point are the Athlon FX and 64 chips - they haven't made very many of those so they can keep the prices high as long as demand is greater than supply.
CRAMITPAL - Friday, December 5, 2003 - link
Well for the non-believers... Ace's Hardware has a good review of Opteron vs. Xeon that should (but won't) end the bickering regarding server performance. Between Anand's low end CPU review, Ace's Server review, and any number of A64/EE reviews, it should be obvious where the future of PC X86 computing lies. No it's not the G5 Mac as Ace's demonstrated.Enjoy !
JeremiahTheGreat - Friday, December 5, 2003 - link
If AMD bothered to update its ageing MP chipset, it would indeed be! And with the rumoured dual-mp chipset from nVidia down the drain.. there's not much left in this area.Save for dual-opterons :)
jawg - Friday, December 5, 2003 - link
Has anyone done any research on dual Duron setups? I think that if they are so cost effective and you wanted to have a dual processor box it would be a most noble pursuit.AnonymouseUser - Friday, December 5, 2003 - link
"$40 for a Celeron 1.2 (which overclocks easily to 1.6 on a 133 mhz bus). I'd be curious to see how it stacked up against the P4 Celerons."Why? The performance would still be abysmal at any price point. What's the point?
"Intel can afford to charge an arm and a leg for CPUs that perform on this level, why can't AMD?"
It's called MARKETING + ID10Ts. The world is full of uninformed consumers who are pushed to Intel by the fucking ID10T geeks (who apparently outnumber the non-ID10T geeks)...
HammerFan - Friday, December 5, 2003 - link
Support you AMDjihad? never. While I do like AMD, one has to wonder why such high-performing CPUs are priced so low. Intel can afford to charge an arm and a leg for CPUs that perform on this level, why can't AMD?AMDjihad - Friday, December 5, 2003 - link
see intel is being beat on all fronts zserdw you faatty pugly thing. how can you suppooot intek huh you fatty. you thing. everyone suoport me dumbasKGB - Thursday, December 4, 2003 - link
/Pet's his 1.3 Tualatin Celeron box @ 1.73 :D