processor, what should buy?

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bass331964

New member
Ok I've got a case a motherboard and a power supply, I've got floppy drive, a cd rom drive, and 256 ram, the processor in the mother board is a intel celeron ??? (equal to a pentium 3 I'm told) I would guess this is going to be the item I would want to up grade any suggestions on what processor I would want to buy and how fast? aside from that all I need is a hard drive which is pretty cheap and burner, and of course a sound card and software which will be after I get the rest built, oh yeah windows 98 will be the platform.
By the way the motherboard is a generic type and should be compatible with most processors. (actually my girlfriends kid who is majoring in cpu science is building this for me and that is what he told me about the motherboard.)
 
No such a thing generic type motherboard.... Motherboards are designed to run a specific processor type.

If you would like to updrage the CPU (Celeron III is not a slow processor at all ....) to P4 lets say, you will need to replace the motherboard as well as the power supply and RAM type probably.
Sometime even the case should be replaced as I already came across wide motherboards that didn't let any CDROM drive to get in the case . It all depends of what you want to upgrade to and what you current system is consisting of. You should take it to a PC shop so they can diagnose and tell you the prices and everything.
 
Depends on the socket config of the processor. A Celeron (new, and if more than 1.7 GHz) will be the same as a P4 socket so you could upgrade the CPU to a P4 no problems.

The older Celeries were on socket 370. The best CPU you can get for those is a 1.4 GHz PIII or so, if the Celeron is >1Ghz. If lower, then the MB may be a coppermine porcessor, for which you can go to 1Gig PIII max.

Now what does the kiddo say about 'Generic' motherboard, hmmm? What flavour of generic? Everytime Intel bumps up their processor specs, you gotta throw out your entire system and get a new one. Life is fun, ain't it?

Sang
 
I believe it is one of the older celeron III processors I think he bought it new when they first came out.
Is this processor fast enough? I'm sure it depends on what software I use, I've looked at some minimum requirements but I'm under the impression when you go minimum it usually works like shit.
 
That board may be only able to take a 933 MHz Coppermine P3. If the PSU and the rest of the mobo can take that kind of speed.

I hope it's a socket 370 CPU. If it's Slot 1, you're basically screwed. You need a new MOBO, CPU, RAM maybe and PSU. Basically, you'd be better off building a new one.
 
Your PIII would be minimum 500MHz. I used to work with a PII 400 and could do most of the things with no problems. An upgrade will cost you as much as a new PC so if you decide not to stay with the current one just go for a new one !
 
Just to clarify.....

"Pentiums" and "Celerons" are different processors, both made by Intel. There are Pentium I, II, III & 4. There is no such thing as a Celeron III. Celerons are basiclly the same Pentiums but with a much smaller on board cache, which make a big difference in performance.

For audio (and any other math intensive application) it is recomended that you use a Pentium.

This is from Nuendo's website descibing their minimum requirment....

Computer Hardware PC
· Minimum requirement: Pentium II 233 MHz
128 MB Ram
· Recommended System: Dual PIII / Athlon 1 GHz or faster
256 MB Ram
· Parallel port required

Celerons will work fine, however when doing a lot of tracks with a couple of effects loaded the Celeron will probably choke.
 
Well, it's true, Intel doesn't name their Celeron version in numbers (3, 4), but the only difference between the Celeron and the standard numbered version is that the Celeron has half cache memory than the standards. Besides, they always change the cache memory size. For example, the PII 400 I had has 512K cache while my new PIII 933 has only 256K ! Modern 1.7GHz P4 has 256K cahce while the 1.8 has 512 while the 1.9 has returned to have only 256K !! (as far as I know)

So one may prefer the 1.8GHz with 512K on the 1.9 P4 ...
 
this is very educating there is much to learn in the digital world I fear the celeron may prove to be a mistake but since cash is an issue right now I will try it just to get off the ground. I picked up a hard drive yesterday (40gig) so now all I have to do is go with a soundcard and some software since you all seem to have an idea of what I'm using any suggestions int he sound card and software catorgories. This is where I really have to do some homework on.
 
celerons are basically PIII's but with less cache and a slower FSB. They usually run at 66mhz as opposed to the 100 or 133 that PIII's run at. (at least thats the way it was 6 months ago) i don't think they upped the speeds on the cellys.
 
This is stange because as far as I know, the Cels PIIIs that has some defected cache memory so what Intel do they just disable half of the cache memory on these defected CPUs and sell them as Celerons... If this is true so there should not have been any difference in the FSB parameter ...
 
ok for the record I checked the processor it is a celeron 484 (or 48 something, memory is getting bad must be getting old or it could have been all those recreational adventures in my early days)
anybody have any info or experience with this processor?
 
Newbie-level question: what does cache do? What's the difference between cache and RAM?
 
dobro: Cache is actually a kind of RAM. It's mostly built into processors, and because of this is able to respond to access requests much faster than RAM (conventional), which needs to go through a memory controller.

Older systems would have some cache built into motherboards and some on the processor. In this case the processor was directly connected to the onboard cache. The AMD K6-2 had on-chip L1, but no L2. The L2cache (or level 2 cache) was built onto the motherboard, same as the original Pentium processor. The K6-3 used three caches, an on-die L1 and L2, and a on-board (motherboard) L3. A board that had onboard cache, would run both of the above but the processor would use the caches as L2 or L3 depending on the kind of CPU. Confusing?? I bet.

As a rule of thumb the larger the cache the better the processor performs. The original P4 had 8kb of L1 cache and 128 KB of L2 cache, and was sadly whipped by its lower-priced counterpart, the PIII. Newer ones have the same 8kB L1, but a beefy 512KB L2. See cache memory is expensive to produce, as it must run at full core speed of the processor (say, 2.2 GHz for a chip rated at that speed). It also is the largest physical part of any processor, and thus affects costs of silicon etc.

The other factor is the balance between L1 and L2 cache. Generally the L1 cache is the first cache the processor requests info from. Ideally, the larger it is, more instructions can be stored for future access. The L2 is where a second set of cache memory which stores both data and instructions.

Cache is one of the *core* arguments between AMD and Intel, and there's really no simple way to explain it, save that if you had a one-lane highway where traffic moved at 200 MPH, and a five-lane highway which moved at 40 MPH, which would move more traffic, in a given amount of time? As obviously, there are views to both sides too technically complex to get into.

bass: If you've read this far, I salute you!

There's no such thing as a Celeron 484.

Celeries were made in two bus speeds: 66 and 100 MHz. The older Celeries (below 733, AFAIK) were on the 66 bus. When the PIII moved to the 133 bus, Celeries became 100s.

That means a Celery (or, for that, a PIII) will always run at a speed divisible by 33 or 50. 484, is not. 400, 433, 466, 500, 533, 566, 600... you get the idea?

At any speed close to 400, I think a processor upgrade should be high on your priority list. When was the computer made? Can you figure out the motherboard model number and manufacturer? When the machine boots up, you will see a few screens. Press 'Pause' there to read all the info. It should tell you what kind and how much RAM you have, what proccessor and at what speed, what kind and how many disks including CD-ROMS, and you Bios rev. number. From the processor speed and the bios rev. number you should be able to answer more questions.
 
Hmm... interesting, Sangram. I just checked my spec sheet, and cache isn't even mentioned on it. I'll phone the guy tomorrow.

When I got my most recent system about a year ago, I thought RAM was the key to all audio processing joy, so I got a boatload of it. I also got a P4. But from what you say, it sounds like more cache does more for speed and processing volume than RAM.
 
What speed is your P4, and how old is it?

All P4 upto 1.6 will be 8/64 as I said above. Above 1.6 GHz, things get fuzzy. there are three possibilities, upto 1.8 GHz. between 1.8 and 2.0, there are two possibilities, and above 2 GHz there's only one.

The first set of P4s were manufactured using the socket 423 configuration. Upto 1.6 GHz, all had 8/64 (L1/L2).

The next set, between 1.6 and 1.8, were also manufactured under socket 423, and had AFAIK 8/128.

The next set, ALSO 423, between 1.6 and 2.0, had 8/256 but I'm not so sure of this, I don't remember a P4 with 256 L2.

The latest set, on socket *478* has 8/512. These are pretty decent processors for audio, anything less is just too slow. They start at 1.6, are currently scaled up to 2.53 but can go up to 3 GHz, are supposedly great overclockers, but as usual cost an arm and a leg, compared to AMD anyway.

In any case, the bulk of audio 'processing' depends on what is called FPU performance and in this AMD still kills the P4, by miles and miles. A 2.53 is just about able to keep up with the XP2100+ (which, incidentally, runs at 1.73 Gz, 800 MHz slower) in FPU perfromance. Actually, I doubt it does that.

No contest there, really. Moot point is it does not depend on either RAM or Cache, but FPU. RAM increases your capacity to keep lots of applications/files open so if you're tracking with a large number of files, more RAM will ensure you don't get bogged down by the OS swapping memory to disk.

Cache, on the other hand, impacts the overall speed of the machine significantly (note that more RAM = more speed is not true unless you had very little RAM to begin with, say 64 MB, but more/faster/better designed Cache=more speed) and is a key part of the processor's performance. A 1.6 P4 with 512 KB L2 will beat a 1.6 P4 with 64 KB L2 cache any day, and by a lot.
 
Sangram your a universe of info, I did read it all actually several times then printed it out for future reference, as far the speed goes it must be a 466 having a hard drive installed next so I will have more details after that
Thanks again for all the info
 
the cpu is in the process of being built the case motherboard and processor were given to me, My girlfriends son is building it, it was running prior to this (built by him) and he bought a new case and motherboard so he offered the one he was using to me.
He's putting the hard drive in for me today so I will have all the details soon also I know he has the manual (which he downloaded off the web) for the motherboard so I should know what it can take for upgrades.
 
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