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Review: Intel Celeron 2GHz CPU

by Tarinder Sandhu on 28 October 2002, 00:00

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

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Conclusion and rating

The Celeron appears to a processor that's suited to certain tasks and rather poor at others, given the relatively high clock speed that it comes to the market at. Due to the lack of L2 on-board cache it struggles in games and applications that require code to be reused on a data set. What that means in layman's terms is that if an application is coded such that a piece of code is accessed repeatedly, you ideally want as much of that code in cache as possible, it saves you going back to system memory as much.

However, if your application is more streaming in nature, such as DivXing and WAV compressing, the basic clockspeed of the Celeron makes it a reasonable processor. The fact that it is largely based on the newest core revision (0.13) and features the very latest C1-stepping ensures that it far exceeds its rated speed with ease.

Using an Alpha 8942 cooler and a Delta 80mm fan run at 7v, the Celeron was pushed to 3.15GHz with ease (1.625v load voltage). With this elevated speed it surpassed the performances laid down by all but the XP2700+ and P4 2.8 in DVD and WAV encoding. Gaming and SETI, the applications that use repeating code on datasets, saw an obvious improvement with a Celeron running substantially faster, but still trailed a stock 2.26GHz Northwood in each and every gaming benchmark, such is the detrimental effect of a lack of cache, amongst other things.

Searching various online vendors finds this processor priced at around the £100 mark, albeit bundled with a retail cooler. That price is a little too high for what is still considered a budget processor. Comparing directly to AMD's lineup, £100 will buy you an XP2000+ and reasonable cooler. The AMD CPU will be the better all-round processor, too.

At least Intel have modernised the Celeron processor to some degree. The fact that it overclocks so easily bodes well for increasing the basic clock speeds to the 3GHz level, should they need to. I just feel that the debilitating effects of only specifying 128kb of L2 cache really do impact heavily upon performance if your inclination is towards gaming or SETI. Intel have made sure that the Celeron cannot pose a realistic threat to their P4 processor when evaluated through a number of benchmarks.

Highs

  • Overclocks fantastically well

  • Is pretty good for certain benchmarks (DivXing in particular)

  • Allows system integrators to produce Intel-based machines at a lower cost

Lows

  • Is poor in gaming

  • AMD offer more performance for your pound with their XP processors

Overall rating 7/10 (or 8/10 if you're solely interested in DivXing)

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HEXUS Forums :: 52 Comments

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question 1, the answer is YES!

question 2, there are several factors, insane realism, every little thing you adjust cam effect sumthing els, just like real life. beautiful models and locations, great learning curve, the feeling of getting in behing a bf109 and blasting him away then trying to hide in cloud before his wingmen eat you alive! buy it, try it, u'll love it, if not take it back and swap it :)

miss anything lads?
Only two bits, Russ.

The realism is totally scalable, so you can have it as easy as you like, from having NO stall effects and being invulnerable to full engine management, high speed flutter and G-force induced blackouts…

Also, the online side has to be THE most satisfying in a game… EVER!

Words cannot describe the sense of anticipation as you climb like crazy, trying to get the height for the upcoming dogfight, then the nervousness as you spot your foe and try and make the decision as to when to turn into him to make your attack… then the excitement as it all comes together and you find yourself on his tail, being buffeted by his slipstream. Then you get the immense satisfaction of opening up on him and watching his plane disintergrate under your fire and you watch with amazement as he spins down, trailing smoke and flame. Then you get terror and fear as tracers rip past your cockpit and you realise the hunter is now the hunted and you spend frantic minutes heaving the stick all over the place trying everything to evade the guy on your tail. The relief when you lose him is immense so you set course for home and spend long minutes checking your six as you scream at high speed and low level back to base.

Add to all that the chatter from your team-mates over Teamspeak as they all live their own personal battles for their lives and it adds up to one intense game.

It may not have the pick up and play appeal of UT 2k3, it's a more relaxed game altogether, but when you're in the thick of it, with the bullets spanging off your ailerons and then severing your rudder cables, when your engine overheats after 5 minutes at full boost as you try to keep your speed above a stall in a tight, twisting dogfight, when you get a guy in your sights and rake your fire down his engine cowling and see oil smoke then flame burst from his plane… THEN you know you're playing THE best prop sim on the market.
ooh and the feeling when u make it home with half a plane and more bullet holes than metal. run out of fuel a mile form home and truy and glide it in.. while being blasted at from all directions, online is amazing!
Cool… would my box run it???… i have ADSL.. so the net wont be a problem would it?… my stats r in my sig…..
Yep, that'll most certainly run it, most likely on pretty much maxed out detail.

I'm running a 1700 clocked to 2400 with a REDai 9600 pro. No idea how it looks just yet as I only stuck the card in last night.

It used to look and play damn good on my XP1800 with a GF3 Ti500, so you're well in spec there.

Connection is fine too, one of our regular squadron pilots is on 56k and he gets along no problems.