O/T CELERON CHIP FOR OFFICE

[Smit]

Hi all,

I'm hoping for an opinion from one of the many computer Guru's here. I'm thinking of purchasing a new computer for home, and the celeron chip is several hundred dollars cheaper than the P4. The main purpose of this computer is going to be for school work using MS Office, e-mail and internet cruising. Maybe Mastercam on rare occasion, but not doing 3D heavy number crunching. No high tech, intense graphic games. The computer I'm looking at is a Dell with Celeron 2.4 Ghz with 256 meg of ram. So the question is, do you think this system will be adequate for my purposes?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[CAM Disciple]

It will be adequate for your purpose.

Expect it to s**k when you use it on MC.

 

I am not a celeron fan and I will avoid using it if possible. There are known issue with Dell's computer too. When things come cheap, don't expect too much. Have you look at Athlon? Have you consider building your own pc? it's fun and cheap!

[Fig sign]

Celeron is not for home .

Stay away from it .

I am busy now but can explain it more afterwards .

 

Iskander teh AMD XP2000 and Plentium III-800

[Bullines]

For a home computer that won't ever be called on to do anything "intense" (read: CAD/CAM, modern games, video editing, etc.), I see no problem with a Celeron. It'll save you a few bucks, for sure. I'd up the amount of RAM, if you have a few dollars left over.

[Fig sign]

OOPS ,have not read this :

quote:

---

.No high tech, intense graphic games. Maybe Mastercam on rare occasion, but not doing 3D heavy number crunching. No high tech, intense graphic games. The computer I'm looking at is a Dell with Celeron 2.4 Ghz with 256 meg of ram. So the question is, do you think this system will be adequate for my purposes?

---

Go with Celeron ,sorry for misunderstanding.

[mayday]

I just got a Soyo KT 600 Dragon barebone kit from Tigerdirect. 1.9gig AMD 2600+ athalon 512 mem 80gig drive cpu fan cd/dvd burn. fx5200 agp card all for 650.00 including shiping. nice fast home machine. had it put together and running in less then 2 hrs

[chip]

I say, If you spend a little more....You'll get a lot more to your benefit! Celeron blows, spend the couple hundred, You'll see a difference just browsing the web.

 

The difference is comparable to a Fadal, Try to save a little bit of money, and a little more you could have a Haas!

 

That's my TWO CENTS WORTH!

[d00d]

Try www.pricewatch.com , you may find what you want in your budget there in a pentium.

[Fig sign]

+1000 Chip !

Well said !

 

You never know what you will do on this comp . after one year .

And your children would wish to play Unreal Tournament2004 or Doom3 anyway .

Or ....

So it is better to buy good com at once instead of upgrading after.

And cheaper .

I always buy or make home computers not the low end and strong enough .

When PPL near me bought 386 30 mhz 1 meg Ram my first PC 486 Dx40 8Mb ram and hard disk 300 Mb!

Then I upgraded it 3 times the last one I raized

it to 686 125+ Cyrux -Ibm .

I used it 5 years at least and it is functional till this day .

The same story was PIII-800 .

Now my main home PC is Amd XP2000 and I love it .

Always go with good components -motherboard ,Ram ,

fan,videocard ,hard disk and you can use it 3-5 years doungrading it from main computer to second or some dedicated server till you simply will throw it away .

If you going low (cheap ) it can strike U back .

[Smit]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I think I'm going to spend a little more and get the P4 2.66 Ghz, 512 RAM, 40 GB, 128MB Nvidia GE Force FX 5200 graphics card. It's still pretty affordable at $1029. I was really kind of uncomfortable buying the cheapest stuff anyway...that's probably why I posted.

Thanks!!!

[Bullines]

That's better Later on, you might wanna play Unreal Tournament 2004 and if you were playing on a Celeron, you might end up with less that 20 FPS. That would make anyone angry

[Racer X]

$1029.00?!?

 

Smit,

You should really think about building your own. It's a lot of fun. I just had this one built. XP3000+ with 1 gig of PC3200 ram, 80 gig Maxtor HD, Asus A7N8X-E deluxe board with 400mhz FSB, Asus 256meg Nvidia graphics card, 52x cd, 52x32x52 cd-rw, Thermaltake slim volcano (copper)CPU cooler, 400w power supply, Scorpio case with 4 cooling fans, Soundblaster 128, XP pro. Got it all configured and ready to plug in and go. for $1037.00 delivered.

 

I called Dell, and Gateway, etc to have them quote me a system and this same one was almost $4000.00. They wanted to charge me $500.00 to upgrade one of their stock systems to 1gig of Ram from 512. These chipsets (Micron crucial PC3200 are only $85.00 each. They make a pretty good system but you can get sooooooo much more bang for your buck.

 

The best places I have found to buy stuff is either newegg or infotech Give them a look see. I would be more than happy to help you configure one if you like.

 

I really have an issue with what computer systems cost when they can be done so much cheaper with better components.

 

Oh, and I would recommend staying as far away from XP home as possible. There are many applications that it doesn't play nicely with. Mastercam being one of them. (Your reseller should be able to attest to this)It is only another $25.00 to buy XP Professional($139.00 total from infotech)

 

I do a lot of number cruching on my machines for distributed computing projects (cancer research, drug design optimization, etc. FreeDC running 24/7)and for flat out number crunching performance AMD rules plus it is less expensive than intel and runs more stable when overclocked. I have 6 machines at home and 10 here at work that I have built All AMD and all for a fraction of what dell would sell them for.

 

If you want a good hardware review check out anandtech

 

[ 01-14-2004, 06:03 PM: Message edited by: Moto GP ]

[Smit]

Thanks Moto GP,

I will check those sources. I haven't done anything with hardware for quite a while, since I built a computer back in the early P3 days. I found back then that I could have probably bought a complete system for less than piecing it together. But with the internet sources available now it would probably be wise to check it out again. I haven't kept up with the technology changes, but it sounds like it might be worth my time to get refreshed. Putting a computer together was easy enough to do back then.

[jballs]

Smit,

 

I built my own about six months ago. A breeze, cheap, and fun too. Follow this link for step by step instructions!!!

[Zero]

Yeah I just finished building my first comp, really fun to do and you save tons of money.

I got an Asus P4P800 mobo w/800mhz FSB, a P4 2.8w/800mhz FSB, 1 gig of Kingston PC3200 DDR ram, a 128mb ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, a 40 gig EIDE, a PowMax black and chrome case with the side window and a couple of sound activated cathodes and LED fans. SMOKIN machine, cost me a little over $1000, woulda been at least $3000-$4000 from Dell.

 

 

tomshardware iss also an excelent site for reviews and benchmark comparisons of all the latest and greatest in computer world to help you decide.

 

newegg and infotech are also great sites, but if you have a PCFarm near you, I suggest you go there. Prices as cheap if not cheaper than any pprice on the net, you wont have to pay shipping and if your equipment doesn't work right you can walk right back in and get it taken care of in person rather than sending e-mails and paying for more shipping to ship stuff back and forth.

[kkominiarek]

celeron has no math coprocesser.....i say spend the couple/few hundred more $$$...if you keep the computer 2-4 years thats $100 a year.....don't go out to dinner a couple times a year and theres your money back.....if you don't choose a pentium now you'll kick yourslef later

[Bullines]

quote:

---

celeron has no math coprocesser

---

Every Intel CPU from the vanilla Pentiums onward have onchip FPUs. 386SX and 486SX CPUs....those have no onchip FPUs. Running Mastercam on a 486 may produce undesired results

[Heavycut]

+1 kkominiarek !

 

Go with the Intel Pentium 4

 

P4 right now gives you best BANG for your BUCK. Since Intel broke the 3 GHz barrier, the P4 models in the 2.5 GHz range have become considerably cheaper.

 

Don't let yourself be fooled by pure clock speed. In most of the benchmarks, the Celeron lags considerably behind the Pentium 4. The reason is the smaller L2 cache on the Celeron, which has to get by with only 128 KB. The Pentium 4 based on the Willamette core, on the other hand, has 256 KB. But it's being phased out in favor of the more modern Northwood core - by refining manufacturing down to 0.13 micrometer structures, Intel has managed to squeeze 512 KB L2 cache onto the chip, which is four times the Celeron's cache.