Difference between Pentium and Celeron?

[arnesten]

What's the main differences between a Pentium and Celeron cpu except for the price?
Are Celeron less stable?

[flintstone]

As far as I know, the biggest difference is that pentium comes with a match co-processor while Celeron doesn't. This might mean that there could be differences in motherboard too.
Does anyone have a better idea?

[bdg1983]

Celeron has less (128k) onboard L1 cache than it's big brother the PII or PIII. This keeps the cost down. I've heard that the Celeron is easier to overclock though and can keep up with the same speed Pentium or at times, even perform better than the Pentium.

[FoBoT]

Originally posted by Flintstone:
pentium comes with a match co-processor while Celeron doesn't

all of the p3's and celeron's have co-processors. the floating point math co-processor has been included on all intel chips since the DX (like 486DX) series

the p3's have more cache on the cpu and will run as high as 133 mhz front side bus (motherboard)
the new celeron is basically a p2 with less cache and will only run at 66 mhz front side bus

[HuggyBear]

Originally posted by arnesten:
What's the main differences between a Pentium and Celeron cpu except for the price?
Are Celeron less stable?

A Celeron is a castrated Pentium III. Your WAY better of getting a AMD Duron which is far superior. Even if you can overclock the celeron it will still bog down in games and heavy cpu usage programs.

Huggy

[Salmon]

The original Celerons had *no* cache! I had a 266 Celeron of just such a type. It was great though, because I had it overclocked to 400MHz w/ absolutely no trouble, which was pretty sweet.

[mongrel]

I run a dual celeron system (2 366 overclocked to 550) The Celerons fit into a special socket called PPGA or Socket 7, the onboard cache is only 128K but it runs at full speed, cache on PII I believe only runs at half the speed though I could be wrong.
My front-side bus is 100, though the default for a celeron is 66, by increasing the FSB you in effect overclock the cpu.

The way the difference was explained to me was like this:

You are an auto mechanic with a peg board behind you filled with thousands of tools. You use those tools maybe once or twice a year. Besides you is your toolbox filled with tools you use on a daily basis.
The Pentium is the peg board, and the celeron is the toolbox.

[Molecule Man]

To make the explanation more concise:

Pentiums are the old antiquated processors.
PII/PPros are newer and have a revised core and MMX instruction sets (some Pentiums did as well...) The cache on PII run at half the frontside bus.

PIII have the new SSE instruction sets and run at 100mhz front side bus or higher. The cache runs at full speed as well.

The first Celerons had no cache. Later celerons had 128kb, half of what the Pentiums have. Thier Cache also was full speed, which proved in most benchmarks to be equal of double the amount of half speed cache. The Celerons were also only "officially" supported at 66mhz front side bus. The so called Celeron2 or Coppermine Celeron, was really a PIII with half the cache disabled. So it had the the enhanced core fo a PIII with SSE, but still technically limited to 66mhz. Recently Intel has come out with a 100mhz front side bus version of the celeron.
Celerons were considered easily over-clockable because one could safely raise the front side bus to 100mhz or beyond.

However, the Duron processor from AMD will beat a Celeron clock for clock. The Duron will usually beat a PIII clock for clock. About the only thing that beats a Duron in a select number of benchmarks is the Athlon, and those are ones where cache makes a difference.

[ 24 February 2001: Message edited by: Shad ]

[vhg119]

Ok, This Is the Difference and probably the most meaningful.
The Celeron IS a PIII.
Intel disabled half of the onchip cache and sells its as a "Celeron". Why did they do this? Who Knows. But I read somewhere on zdnet that Intel doesn't make any money from celeron at all. They only way they can even afford to sell celerons is because alot of people buy PIII's. And that is it. You have a neutered PIII.

[Tyr-7BE]

To make this explanation less concise, the Celeron is a watered-down Pentium. Much cheaper, but less powerful. If you're gonna be pushing your processor regularly, go with Pentium (or AMD Athlon even better :)). If you're just gonna use your comp for everyday things such as browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, and general screwing around, a Celeron would probably do you fine :)

[flintstone]

Originally posted by FoBoT:
all of the p3's and celeron's have co-processors. the floating point math co-processor has been included on all intel chips since the DX (like 486DX) series

the p3's have more cache on the cpu and will run as high as 133 mhz front side bus (motherboard)
the new celeron is basically a p2 with less cache and will only run at 66 mhz front side bus

that figures, no wonder I've been feeling like Rip Van Winkle.
Thanks FoBoT for waking me up :)

[Derango]

Originally posted by mongrel:
The Celerons fit into a special socket called PPGA or Socket 7

Actualy, the celerons use Socket 370 (sometimes called PPGA), as well as the new Flip Chip Pentium 3's.

The socket 7 was used by every intel chip before the Pentium Pro, and every AMD chip before the athlon. (Cyrix <shiver> still uses the socket 7 I believe, don't quote me on that however)

[Hatecrime69]

i think cyrix switched to socket 370.