[SEMI-NEWS] - AMD answers Intel's price cut.

[CougTek]

Is anyone surprised?

Visit X-bit Laboratories for the details.

AMD's slash is just as important, if not more, than Intel's one earlier this week. The two processors that dropped the most are the Athlon XP 3000+ and 2800+, with 45% and 40% reduction respectively.

The Celeron looks simply ridiculous against the similarly rated Athlon XP. It always did, but now more than ever.

 

[time]

That's why Dell sells so many Celerons. Because they care so much about their customers.

 

[Tannin]

Thankyou Time. I was due for a new sig. That will do nicely. :wink:

 

[P5-133XL]

YTannin,

our previous sig. gave Merc credit. Why doesn't Time get the same?

 

[blakerwry]

Thankyou Time. I was due for a new sig. That will do nicely. :wink:

I think Celeron's are good. They are 90% of the power for 50% the price. near their initial release back in the slot 1 and early socket 370 days they were sometimes faster than the competing pII/pIII CPUs that were available and they were always faster than the equivalently priced pII/pIII.


The problem I see with most vomit boxes, which is the true reason why people have attached a stigma to the celeron, is that many vomit boxes use crappy motherboards and other low cost components with the celeron. The combination of crap and crap and a good CPU ultimately leads to crap. (Something tannin knows about)

When most people I know were like "eww. it's a celeron." I was like "ewww it's a 3 year old cheapy mobo at the end of it's life with crappy onboard gfx and sound and too little RAM!"

Dell offers the celeron so it can compete on a price vs performance level with AMD based PCs at the low end of the price spectrum. This isn't about caring for their customers it's about being competitive with other vomit box sellers.

 

[time]

I think Celeron's are good. They are 90% of the power for 50% the price. near their initial release back in the slot 1 and early socket 370 days they were sometimes faster than the competing pII/pIII CPUs that were available and they were always faster than the equivalently priced pII/pIII.

Don't confuse overclocked Celeron 300A with castrated P4. From the benchmarks I've seen, 90% is wildly optimistic except for a handful of tasks.

The obvious point is, if Dell needs to compete at the bottom, why not use Athlons? Their PR ratings are more pessimistic at lower speeds as well, so comparing a Celeron 2000 with an Athlon XP 2000 is just ridiculous.

The problem I see with most vomit boxes, which is the true reason why people have attached a stigma to the celeron, is that many vomit boxes use crappy motherboards and other low cost components with the celeron ... When most people I know were like "eww. it's a celeron." I was like "ewww it's a 3 year old cheapy mobo at the end of it's life with crappy onboard gfx and sound and too little RAM!"

Consider that the Athlon alternative allows for a low-cost motherboard (nForce 1) that simply blows ANY integrated P4 motherboard away, and not just in 3D video performance. So I guess that makes Dell look even worse ....

P.S. Tannin, I don't need an acknowledgement.

 

[CougTek]

I think Celeron's are good. They are 90% of the power for 50% the price.

[...]

Dell offers the celeron so it can compete on a price vs performance level with AMD based PCs at the low end of the price spectrum. This isn't about caring for their customers it's about being competitive with other vomit box sellers.

:eekers:

Blake, it's greatly time you take a look a a comparative review between a Pentium 4-based Celery and anything else in the same price range. They are only 90% of the power in very few benchmarks (if any) compared to the 512K L2 cache Northwood. Against the Athlon XP, especially the similarly priced Athlon XP, they are an insult to the customer. Nothing more. Those aren't competitive AT ALL. Period.

It was true that the 300A Celeron and 366MHz Celeron were great CPUs. It was also true for the Tualatin-based Celeron with 256K L2 cache. But the Willamette and Northwood-based Celeron with a puny 128K L2 cache are pathethic.

 

[Mercutio]

What I tell my students is, to compare a Nwood Celeron to a P4 or XP+, cut the listed speed by about 25%.

Some cursory tests between a Tbred 1700 and a Celeron 2.2 proved my point well enough (I had the two machines, running XP, create thumbs.db for a directory with 500MB or so of JPGs. The machines had the same hard disks, and equal amounts of RAM. One was on an 845something, the other on a KT400... the Athlon finished 20 or 30 seconds before the Celeron, despite Via-related IDE crappiness).

 

[blakerwry]

yeah, the p4 celeron isn't nearly as competative as the pIII based ones were... unfortunately.

I think Merc's rule of thumb of 25% applies well for the p4 based celerons