Date: Sat, 25 Jul 1998 21:30:35 -0400 (EDT) From: CyberPeasant <djv@bedford.net> To: swwilso1@students.uiuc.edu (steven wesley wilson) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Supported Hardware in FreeBSD Message-ID: <199807260130.VAA29222@lucy.bedford.net> In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.3.96.980724120819.8830A-100000@ux7.cso.uiuc.edu> from steven wesley wilson at "Jul 24, 98 12:10:47 pm"
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steven wesley wilson wrote: > Thanks for responding, I'm interested in the Celeron because it is a cheap > alternative. I realize it has not L2 cache, but through overclocking I > understand you can drive the processer at close to p2 350 performance. If > this is the case(I know people who are doing it), I thought I'ld save a > few bucks. Any thoughts. The absence of L2 cache will cause you /major/ performance penalties, especially in a multitasking environment. The Celeron is for single-tasking, single-user application. There are two kinds of cheap: cheap/bargain, and cheap/nasty. The Celeron is more in the latter category. Think of the Celeron in the same category as the 8088, the 386SX, the 486SX,... i.e., crippled. One other aspect of the Celeron: as the new lowest-end Intel chip, it will be found in systems low-end in all other respects. You don't pop a BMW engine in a Yugo or vice-versa. I'd bite the bullet and get a twin PII mobo with onboard-SCSI and Ethernet; one capable of "fast" PCI bus, whatever that is these days. (100MHz? I dunno...). Save money elsewhere, then add a second PII when your bank account is recovered. (Probably about the same time as the SMP from 3.0 reaches -STABLE.) System speed needs to be considered for the whole "system". A hot processor with a doggy bus and an old disk won't hack it. THIS IS A GUESS: (somebody correct me, in other words) I believe the Celeron uses a different socket than the PII, in other words, you can't upgrade to a PII later. My general attitude is that I'd rather have a slower-CPU high-end machine with well-integrated peripherals, (a Cadillac) than a hotrod running on nitromethane (overclocked Chevrolet). To get the full benefit of heating up that Celeron, you'll probably need to upgrade everything else in the box, and when you get done with that, you'll never notice what you've saved on the Celeron in the first place. I have a rule of thumb: buy the chip that was the big honker last year. Currently, this is the PII 266, I think. "Buy no chip until it's boring." (When the PII 266 was hot, I bought P-Pro 200's, which were "obsolete"). > > Anyway, is there any particlar reason you want a Celeron processor? > > Those have no L2 cache, and performance can suffer badly. The Celeron > > was meant to be bought by people who had no idea what it was missing. Heh. I'd reword that a little: "The Celeron was meant to be /sold to/..." > > Steve Wilson > swwilso1@uiuc.edu Dave -- Sancho Panza: `Microsoft Windows NT Server is the most secure network operating system available.' Don Quixote: `You are mistaken, Sancho.' To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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