Xbox did okay with just a Celeron - check the serial number - it's a celeron.Originally Posted by njiska
Xbox did okay with just a Celeron - check the serial number - it's a celeron.
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there's the Semprons
No matter what the Xbox uses, it's a mistake to compare modern PC technology to past-generation technology used in a console. Don't base your specs around the aging Xbox, base it on reviews and benchmarks.Xbox did okay with just a Celeron - check the serial number - it's a celeron.
Move 'sig' for great justice.
I'd hafta agree with all the folks recommending AMD.
They're cheaper, they're just as good as Intel, and they're super easy to overclock.
I don't care what you're doing, don't buy a Celeron, lest someone find out. Get a Pentium.
Sempron 64 > Celeron D.
That is all.
And the "decent" performance you're getting on BF2 is probably because the settings are cranked way down and the game is running at 800 x 600. That game takes a hell of a hit even out of the 6 series of GeForce cards.
Man you guys .. lmao. I'm in IT, I build 2 or more systems a week, about 70% of them are for corporate/business clients, but the remaining number are for home users. The common requests I get are for (1)- Games, (2)- Media Center, and (3) Extra system for kid/wife/home office.
Anyways, first lesson : do NOT get suckered into fanboyish loyalty to *ANY* company/product. Variables of who's fastest/cheapest/most reliable/most available/most versatile change constantly, and no one company or supplier is perfect.
Second lesson : If you're a gamer, your video card is at least twice as important as your processor, and I'm not kidding at all. Take your pick, 2.4ghz celeron, 3.6ghz p4, 2.8ghz pentium d, 4800+ Athlon X2, Quad Opteron, if all you've got is a Geforce 6600GT, your game is going to run almost IDENTICALLY. So, if games are your thing, then you need to budget the best video card you can reasonably afford. Undeniably, the guy with the $200 6800GS on a Sempron 2800+ can run circles around someone with a $100ish 6200 and a $1,000+ top of the line Athlon FX Dual Core, in terms of gaming. Hope that's clear.
Next : picking a cpu. It all depends on $, but the range of performance isn't drastic at all between the major players. Now not all of us are made of $, so we need to determine budget. Other things that need to be known are : will you order online? Will you build it yourself? And, will you overclock?
Anyways, I can rule out some choices pretty fast that are just obviously bad moves at this point.
Socket A = no way, no Sempron/Athlon Socket A. Uneven performance, and for the same price you can get into a Socket 754 Sempron with On-die memory controller, hypertransport, PCI-Express mobos, 64-bit capability (yes, Semprons now come with 64-bit), and countless other little goodies.
All Celeron models other than the 'D'. Their FSB and cache were just far too weak to justify purchase instead of the much stronger Sempron on s754.
Athlon X2, still out of the range of logic for price/performance, and the shared-cache approach has been causing well-documented problems (black screens, hard locks, blue screens, etc). If you want dual-core, Opteron or Pentium D is absolutely rock-solid, and actually superior on price/performance.
Anything on Socket T/LGA-775 other than the Celeron D for value, or the p4 dual core for absolute performance, the regular P4s just get schooled by similarly priced s939 athlon 64s.
Ok, that's what *not* to buy under any circumstance. Now, the candidates approach :
(1) - Celeron D. With a higher FSB and double the previous cache, along with some increased SSE stats, it's not a worthless processor anymore. If you get one cheap, or already have one, and can't find an equally cheap deal on a Sempron, then it's a perfectly fine choice. Where this thing really pays off is if you overclock it. I had one of these things running at 3.6Ghz on the RETAIL COOLER, rock stable, and for a $68 (at the time) proc, it was running almost dead-even with a $400+ (at the tiem) Athlon 3500+, same video card/memory. They overclock like demons.
(2) - Sempron on socket 754. A fantastic choice. Performance is close to that of Athlon 64 (has identical core, differences are cache, hypertransport speed, and some other minor stuff). Can be found dirt cheap, Fry's near here had a 3000+ with 755-A2 mobo for $89. I've built a number of these for people. 100% stable, great for anything but psychotic (1920x1280 w/FSAA, etc) gaming.
(3) - Athlon 64 on socket 939. If you're going to make the investment in Athlon 64, nothing less than socket 939 will do. Although, socket M2 is coming before long, so it might make sense to hold off with a Cel D or Semp, but it's up to you. Anyways, socket 939 has all the good stuff, 2x the memory bandwidth of socket 754, and far superior deals on the procs themselves. Venice core 3000+ can be found for $120ish, and you can run them at 2.4Ghz with your eyes closed, which equals roughly 3800+ speeds. Incredible performance. Like I said already, A64 x2 = forget it.
(4) - Opteron on socket 939. Here's where it really gets fun. For the longest time, Opterons were only available on Socket 940, and though they launched before Athlon 64, they remained somewhat rare and exotic, haunting only lucky workstations and medium servers. Recently, AMD has *very* quietly started trickling out DUAL CORE OPTERONS on SOCKET 939! How cool is this! What's better, they have DEDICATED cache for each core, and there are no BSOD/Blank screen issues. 1MB L2 for each core rocks. Search for 'Opteron 165'. Default speed is 1.8Ghz, which basically equals dual 3000+ A64s. Forget the clumsy and confusing x2 model numbers. Anyways, these also overclock like nobodies business, and run icy compared to P4s.
(5) - If you *must* go intel, and have a fairly large budget, there's no excuse not to get the P4 Dual-Core. Their performance/overclocking/stability/value is excellent, and they are a better choice over the A64-X2, with the problems of overhype/ioverprice/crashing. I still recommend socket 939 single-core A64, or Opteron 165 for Dual core, but the P4 dual core is well done. Make sure your mobo is compatible with the bastard though.
Wow that's quite a list. Next comes video card choice. ATI and Nvidia are the only games in town at the moment, and at this time, I recommend the Nvidia stuff almost across the board. Not that ATI is a bad choice at all, but for this generation, Nvidia is doing amazingly well. These guys swap back and forth with who's on top. Probably won't be long before ATI climbs back up.
Anyway :
5200/5500/5600/5700/etc etc etc = NO.
6200 = Will do in a pinch, but I really don't recommend it.
6600GT = great little card, can run any modern game at 1024x768 (sometimes even 1280) fairly comfortably with medium to high detail, go easy on FSAA / etc.
6800LE = sorta rare, very even in performance and in price to 6600GT, added bonus is that you can often unlock pipes (from 8 all the way to 16, if you're lucky) to get genuine 6800 performance.
6800 = Fast, but not priced reasonably for what you get.
6800GT = Very fast, but $300+ makes me unhappy. Does give you respectable 1600x1200 and various 16:9 speeds. Lets you pile on some FSAA and other goodies.
6800 Ultra = Serious waste of $. Not much faster than the GT, but often a $100 or higher price difference.
7800GT = What anyone with common sense would buy instead of a 6800U.
7800GTX = Wow. Hella fast, and blindingly pricey. Unless you use money for toilet paper, wait for a 7800GS model in mid/early '06.
ATI has some good choices, just avoid the x600, x700, and x1300 series. X800XL/XT/GT/GTO and 10 billion other models are all outstanding cards, and fairly equal (faster in some games, slower in others) to the 6800s. If you do need video in / video out / tuning / etc, ATI's All-in-wonder cards are outstanding, if a little pricey.
Man, that was long, well PM if you have more specific questions. Also, don't neglect your selections for Power Supply and Cooling, thermalright is great.
No.
If gaming isn't his primary function, he should probably buy a one-past gen ATI card, Like an X800, lest he owe money to the government and spend the rest of his life with a shaky Italian guy going up to him every four hours asking him "you got da money?".
You're so wrong it's just sick ..
Dude, I'll give you an example of a Celeron gaming machine that would do just fine .. prices from newegg.com ..
Celeron D 336 2.8Ghz (64-Bit version!) Retail w/Fan
$79.40
ASUS P5-VD1-X Mobo (AGP 8X AND PCIe 16x), Supports 4GB Ram, SATA, 6CH Audio, etc.
$64
Albatron GF-6600GT 128MB GDDR3 PCI-Express Retail
$139
Samsung Spinpoint P 8MB Buffer 200GB Hard Drive
$90
NEC 16X CD/DVD RW +, -, DL
$40
JPC889 Case w/450Watt Power Supply
$45
Patriot 1GB CL2 PC3200 DDR Memory Kit
$68
Total (minus monitor/kb/mouse/speakers .. all items that vary drastically depending on what you have left over and what you want/need)
$525 .. and you have a 2.8Ghz, 64-Bit, 200GB HDD, 16X Dual Layer DVD burning, 6 channel audio, GF6600GT-powered 3d gaming box.
If you don't believe a celeron (or a sempron!!) can game, look here ..
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardwar...261_3398581__6
I mean, the gaming ability is great, especially if you're willing to overclock, something that the Celeron D is legendary at.
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ad.php?t=61993
Of course the Sempron is also a great choice. It's a *little* harder to overclock, but also performs great and is a wonderful value.
Also http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...chmentid=30222
My Audigy 2 ZS has nice "features," but you can't hear them under all the noise coming out of the card (it gets quite loud when in a game's GUI, for example, at the menu screen for any Source Engine game), and I can't find the features anyway because Creative bundles too much useless shit with their software package.
Sigh.
Also, Arkaign, what did you have in mind for that system? Running DOOM III at 50 FPS in 1024x768? It'll do fine with current gen games, but the new batch coming out...forget it.
Dude, did you notice that (A)- you can upgrade your cpu to a variety of choices as time goes on (plenty of options for socket-T/775), and that (B)- the performance is similar to the A64-3400+? What other processor can you buy for under $100 that will capably game right now? That's right, the Sempron. They're both fine choices, and just because games will get more demanding does NOT mean that it's not a good gaming processor value. Not everyone is made of money you know.My Audigy 2 ZS has nice "features," but you can't hear them under all the noise coming out of the card (it gets quite loud when in a game's GUI, for example, at the menu screen for any Source Engine game), and I can't find the features anyway because Creative bundles too much useless shit with their software package.
Sigh.
Also, Arkaign, what did you have in mind for that system? Running DOOM III at 50 FPS in 1024x768? It'll do fine with current gen games, but the new batch coming out...forget it.
All I have time for is the Sharky Extreme article. Unreal Tournament 2K3? Crap, I feel like I stopped playing that shit game 3 years ago
Buying a Sempron (hey, it's not a Duron! o_O) is handicapping yourself right off the starting blocks. The AMD 64 4000+ is $334 off Newegg, and provides a lot more horsepower than the D.
I'd also take issue with the choice of video card. The parts you've chosen have a much better price to performance ratio than the new stuff, but if you want to GAME, you'd be better off buying a new card, really. It's not just about FPS - the new cards such as the 7800 GTX also have features the 6600 doesn't, and the list goes on.
Your choice, but I think we should be realistic here. You can buy a top-notch gaming system that'll last for at least a few years for just over $1800 with silent parts, as I did, and a Sempron isn't a part of it.
Doing a new post so we can compare notes:
Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811119090
COOLER MASTER Centurion 531 RC-531-SSN1 Silver
$79.99
Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16813131540
ASUS A8N-SLI Premium Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX, 24 pin
$179
RAM
http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82e16820145466
CORSAIR XMS 1GB (2 x 512MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM Dual Channel Kit
$140
CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103529
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 1GHz FSB Socket 939
$375.99
or...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819103544
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 1GHz FSB Socket 939 Dual Core Processor
$886.08
Heatsink/Fan (plugs into motherboard)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835118118
ZALMAN CNPS7000B-AlCu LED 2 Ball
$32.99
Thermal paste
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835100007
Artic Silver 5
$7.99
HDD
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148064
Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 3.5" Serial ATA150
$165.25
PSU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817151023
SeaSonic S12-430 430W
$99
Sound Card
http://www.newegg.com/product/produc...82e16829102178
CREATIVE Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS SB0350
$71
Mouse
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16826104136
Logitech MX310 930928-0403 2 tone 6 Buttons 1x Wheel USB + PS/2
$19.99
Graphics card - XFX nVidia GeForce 7800
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150104
XFX PVT70FUNDE
$549
OS - Windows XP Home
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16837102151
$86.95
total, no DVD-ROM - $1807.20
DVD-RW drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106988
LITE-ON Black IDE DVD Burner Model SOHW-1693S
$46.99
new total - $1854.20
Jesus henry christ.
That's great, but that's almost $2,000.
Of course the A64s are faster .. but there's nothing wrong with using a Cel D or Sempron for gaming. That was Unreal Tournement 2004 btw. Anyways, another thing to think about is that a lot of people have 17" and 19" LCD monitors that are LIMITED to 1280x1024, so being able to do 5000 frames per second at 1920x1280 is not even an issue.
The point of this thread is 'Can Celeron D do gaming?'
The answer is yes. More than adequately, it performs just as well with proper setup as cpus costing MUCH more.
Comparing a $525 system with something over three times the price is pointless.
It's like saying oh, the 500hp 2006 Corvette Z06 sucks ass, because you can mop the floor with it if you buy a 640hp Ferrari Enzo.
Be reasonable, you can run basically any current game (even hungry ones like Doom 3 and F.E.A.R.) on a Sempron 64/Celeron D and a 6600GT. It will be smooth and playable.
Of COURSE it would be even smoother and better with more power, but where's the limit? Hell, if you want to get serious, get one of those 4-way Socket 940 mobos, throw 4 Opteron Dual-Cores (8 Total Cores), put 24GB of DDR on it, run 7800GTX 512mb SLI with liquid nitrogen cooling, and toss in a custom 25,000 watt speaker system for good measure, while connected to a HD theatre projection system on a 400" screen? Sound crazy? Well, you could do it, it would probably take half a million dollars.
It's all relative. The availability of faster alternative choices that cost more do NOT invalidate affordable but capable platforms.
So what happens when it gets to the point where new games are unplayable on that system? You spend more money and time upgrading your system where a 4000+ and 7800 GTX would still be servicable for the next two years.
The original post was quite vague, but I think it's important to point out the limitations of a system like that. The POINT is not to bludgeon somebody into buying a crap system because it's cheap, or has features you like, but to have some discussion. After all, the first post does say "i will most likely choose this processor...i was curious about it." That seems an invitation to discuss, not simply say "this is your only option, enjoy." I'm just promoting the system I know, since I use the exact same system whose specs I posted every day, and it's a hell of an upgrade over what I would've had if I went with some $550 Sempron box (or one of the similarly priced Pentium D setups being sold at Walmart, for example). I'm not gonna pretend I like something that I don't.The point of this thread is 'Can Celeron D do gaming?'
As for the Sharky Extreme article, yes, now that I've scrolled into it I see it's also got UT2K4. Okay, great - so the heaviest processor they listed was the 3400+, and THAT blows the Sempron right out of the water in bot match.
The other troubling issue, though, is the recommendation of a 6600+ - look at the DOOM III specs; there's a game ruled mostly by the video card's performance, so the question is why the 6600 is being promoted when the new 6800 cards are out. Even this latest, short-run card blows the 6600 out of the water, and the 6800 GT can get roughly 1/3 more FPS in DOOM III - at 800x600 - than the 6600 which isn't even getting 60 in this benchmark. The 6600 is definitely getting old.
With a Sempron/Celeron and a 6600GT, you're not going to be playing games at high res, in full or even close to full detail. You're just not. If you're willing to take a graphical hit, then you can do it, but otherwise, no. And more and more games these days have a heavier strain on the CPU. Don't believe me? Check out 3DMark2005 -- they redesigned the program to act more like a game engine. An AMD 64 will perform better than a Celeron D in gaming. It might be only 5 FPS or so, but it can make a difference. Make the jump from and AMD 64 to an AMD FX or X2 and the jump is even larger.
Oh, and cool tidbit about the 6800GT. Just unlock the hidden driver settings using the information here:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...01/ai_n7182382
And OC it to 400/1100 (stable, very easy). Boom, instant 6800 Ultra. The cards can easily push around 415-425/1150 - 1200 with no additional cooling. Sweet stuff.
Upgrading to decent video cards and processors once a year is a LOT cheaper than buying a top of the line system. The 6600GT is about the best choice for the $$.
Fwiw, I am now running a Venice 3000+ @ 2.6ghz with a SK-120 and a silent 120mm fan, along with a unlocked GF6800 (16 pipes) PCIe on a DFI Lanparty SLI-DR with 2GB of OCZ CL2. It's more than enough for me right now. In retrospect, I probably didn't need to buy an SLI mobo, but I got it really cheap so oh well.
Anyways, how many people do you think buy $1,500+ gaming PCs would be asking about a Celeron D?
The fact remains that Celeron D and Sempron can game just fine. Anyone with faster hardware can be a snob if they want, but it won't change the truth.
Sure AMD offers cheaper processors. Go with the AMD XP processors if you don't want to go 64 Bit.
? Wtf .. Athlon XP is obsolete. It's outperformed by CHEAPER Sempron and Celeron 64-Bit processors. Now if you've already got a Athlon XP, I say keep it and get a decent video card, but for a new build, it's a no-brainer.
Sure AMD offers cheaper processors. Go with the AMD XP processors if you don't want to go 64 Bit.
First, 3dmark is garbage, all the way back to '99 and even 'Futuremark', the one that started it. It's NEVER in line with performance in actual games. There is no substitute for real-world benchmarks. So throw SiSoft, 3dmark, PCmark, and any other synthetic crap right out the window. I mean most of those synthetic benchmarks favor Intel P4, when in games it's Athlon 64 that's almost always ahead anyway.
Second, I'd rather have a 6800 (I do, in fact) than a 6600GT. But the 6600GT is a capable gaming card. It will run today's games at 1024x768 with high detail, or 1280x1024 with some stuff turned down, just as fine as can be. If you want 1600x1200 or 1920x1280, or lots of FSAA, then you're not going to find *ANY* card in the price range that can do it.
Still, 1024x768 with good detail settings is fine for most people.
Boys and their toys .. $$$ is your ceiling. I could say, 'oh the 6800 ultra is crap because I can buy a 7800GTX and it does 40% better on game X with FSAA and AF' .. but it's just a stupid statement.
Bottom line : If it works for your purpose, and your budget, it is fine. It makes no difference that there is faster stuff that costs more. That is IRRELEVANT.
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