Chips to go!! (Guide to CPU's) (General Comments on Processors)

Member Name: rob_writer

Product:	General Comments on Processors
Date:	01/05/01 (434 review reads)
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The processor by its very nature is an essential component in any PC. Until recently Intel was the leader in terms of processors but over the last few years AMD have fought their way in to the market and established a large share of it.

Once upon a time there was only one make of processor on the market, all you had to do was pick your speed. Now, however, there are no less than 5 different processors available (6 if you count the Cyrix M III). This can make picking a processor very difficult. On the budget side of things there is the Intel Celeron and the AMD Duron, and on the more expensive side you have the Intel Pentium 3 or Pentium 4, as well as the AMD Athlon.

Budget Processors
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Intel Celeron
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Current Max. Speed - 766Mhz
Bus speed - 66Mhz
Level 1 Cache - 32K
Level 2 Cache - 128K
L2 Cache Speed - Full clock speed
Cache type - On die
Manufacturing Process - 0.18 micron
Material - Aluminium
Transistor Count - 28 million
Price - £74 (766Mhz)
Form Factor - Socket 370-PGA


AMD Duron
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Current Max. Speed - 850Mhz
Bus speed - 100Mhz DDR (Effectively 200Mhz)
Level 1 Cache - 128K
Level 2 Cache - 164K
L2 Cache Speed - Full clock speed
Cache type - On die
Manufacturing Process - 0.18 micron
Material - Aluminium
Transistor Count - 25 million
Price - £73 (850Mhz)
Form Factor - Socket-A

Conclusion
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The Intel Celeron is a slow processor due to its 66Mhz front side bus. This acts as a bottle neck and means that the AMD Duron out performs it easily. The Duron also wins on price, as the 850Mhz Duron is roughly the same price as a 766Mhz Celeron. However, the two chips use different motherboards and the the Duron motherboards are generally more expensive than their Celeron counterparts.

Due to Intel’s 810 and 815 integrated graphics (which come in
most Celeron systems) the Celeron is more likely to be used in very low cost budget systems where keeping the price down is important. However, I would highly recommend paying that little extra to buy a Duron sysyem as the performance increase more than makes up for any extra cost incurred when buying a system.

If you are upgrading I would also recommend the Duron due to its better performance, unless you happen to have a motherboard which is compatible with the Celeron. If you have an older Pentium 2 or Celeron then you may be able to upgrade to a new Celeron without changing your motherboard. If this is the case then the money you save on buying a Duron motherboard (around £100) can be used to buy something else, like more RAM or a new graphics card.

The Celeron is suitable for a general office PC or for home users who won't be doing anything too strenuous. The Duron on the other hand is OK for games and the money saved on it could be spent on a better graphics card, which is likely to have more effect of performance.

Power Processors
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Intel Pentium 3
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Current Max. Speed - 1Ghz
Bus speed - 100Mhz or 133Mhz
Level 1 Cache - 32K
Level 2 Cache - 256K
L2 Cache Speed - Full clock speed
Cache type - On die
Manufacturing Process - 0.18 micron
Material - Aluminium
Transistor Count - 28 million
Price - £200 (1Ghz)
Form Factor - Slot 1/FC-PGA

AMD Athlon
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Current Max. Speed - 1.5hz
Bus speed - 200Mhz or 266Mhz (100x2 or 133x2)
Level 1 Cache - 128K
Level 2 Cache - 256K
L2 Cache Speed - Full clock speed
Cache type - On die
Manufacturing Process - 0.18 micron
Material - Copper
Transistor Count - 37 million
Price - £205 (1.3Ghz)
Form Factor - Socket A

Intel Pentium 4
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Current Max. Speed - 1.5Ghz+
Bus speed - 400Mhz (1x400)
Level 1 Cac
he - 20K
Level 2 Cache - 256K
L2 Cache Speed - Full clock speed
Cache type - On die
Manufacturing Process - 0.18 micron
Material - Aluminium
Transistor Count - 42 million
Form Factor - Socket 423

Conclusion
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The biggest question at the moment must be whether to buy a Pentium 4 or to stick with the old favourites, the Pentium 3 and Athlon.

In my opinion I would say that for the time being it will be best to stick with a Pentium 3 or Athlon. The Pentium 4 is still very expensive in comparison with the other chips, and this is mirrored by the RAMBUS RAM that it must use. Because of different architecture the Pentium 4 uses it is not necessarily a lot faster than the current Pentium 3 and Athlons. In normal use a 1.5Ghz P-4 is little faster that a P3 1Ghz, although when it comes to games the P-4 does have more of an advantage. A lot of this is down to a technology known as Hyper Pipelined Technology which allows the chip to run at much faster speeds (2Ghz plus) but also means that its performance is not as high as it could be. The performance will also increase when more programs are optimised to run with the technologies the P-4 introduces. On worrying problem with the current crop of Pentium 4's is that they use a Socket 423 motherboard. However, in a few months time Intel will ditch this in favour of Socket 478 meaning that an upgrade will also require a new motherboard.

So providing I convinced you to go for a P-3 or an Athlon, which one is best?

In terms of performance there is little to separate a P-3 and an Athlon running at identical speeds. AMD has two advantages though, firstly at identical speeds Athlons are somewhat cheaper than their Intel counterparts, and the Athlon runs at faster speeds (up to 1.5Ghz) and a 1.3Ghz Athlon costs the same as a 1Ghz Pentium 3. With the motherboards for both systems costing pretty much the same the only factor between them is price,
and the Athlon is cheaper.

I have heard that some people have had compatibility problems with Athlons but these were due to the motherboard, problems which are not the fault of AMD and should be fixed by now.

New systems featuring either the Pentium 3 or Athlon are likely to be very similar in price and features, although there may be a slight saving on the Athlon. A Pentium 4 system is likely to cost a lot more and at the moment the performance increases will be small. It would be best to wait until Intel make the new motherboard standard, otherwise your machine could be out of date and impossible to upgrade very quickly.

As for upgrading it is worth checking what you current motherboard supports, as often early Pentium 2 (and even some Celeron systems) can be upgraded to a Pentium 3 just by putting in a new processor. Athlons will need a new motherboard. If you need a new motherboard too I would buy the Athlon, but if you can use your existing motherboard with a Pentium 3 that would be a good option too.

Hope that helped you all, but just incase you were a bit baffled heres a quick guide to some technical terms.

CPU – Central processing unit, just another name for the processor.

Motherboard – Contains all the chips that control your PC and is where everything else is plugged in to.

Cache – Where frequently used data is stored, used to speed up the operation of the processor. Level 1 cache is closer to the processor and is usually made of faster memory, level 2 cache is usually slower but bigger in size.

Front Side Bus – The bus that links the processor, memory, PCI cards etc. Ranges from 66Mhz to 400Mhz, the processor must be a multiple of this.

Clock speed – The speed of the processor in Mhz or Ghz.

Ram Bus (RIMM) – A different kind of memory (as opposed to DIMM’s) used by Intels Pentium 4. More expensive and offers little performa
nce gain.

Mhz/Ghz – Mehahertz / Gigahertz, a measure of speed. One hertz is one cycle per second, the mega prefix means one million and the giga prefix means one million

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