Pentium II 350Mhz or Celeron 500 which is faster?

**JungleMan1** · July 25th, 2002, 05:54 PM

Which do you all think is faster for general usage-- a Pentium II 350Mhz with 100Mhz bus or Celeron 500Mhz with the 66Mhz bus.

I am thinking the Pentium II because of the better bus and more cache, but wanted your opinions.

Thanks...

**Stalemate** · July 25th, 2002, 07:25 PM

If you are considering overclocking at all, the Mendocina Celerons are hard to beat.

In any case, I'd go with the Celeron without hesitation.

Here and here are some reasons why.

**kato2274** · July 25th, 2002, 07:50 PM

I'd go with the celeron too!

**JungleMan1** · July 25th, 2002, 09:32 PM

Nope, sadly these machines are both prebuilts

the Celeron is a Compaq, the P2 is a Gateway...

I got the Celeron for free...

Overclocking aside...which is faster?

**-Senectus-** · July 25th, 2002, 09:50 PM

P2 Is much better at FPM (Floating Point Maths ) and that mean it will be better at scientific calculation and 3D graphics (games)
Apart from that.. its up to you..

**WebHead** · July 25th, 2002, 09:54 PM

It's funny you should mention these exact processors cuz I actually saw the difference awhile back at my old job. The celery was definately much much more responsive. I've always kinda preferred PII and PIII, but when I saw that, I definately changed my views on celerons. See, my boss is the one who did this. He had a P2 350 and upgraded to the celeron 500 (which at the time, those were both awesome cpu's). Anyway, I used his PC alot and just noticed quite an improvement. Although, memory and video cards, imo, play a big role in this type of comparison too.

**JungleMan1** · July 25th, 2002, 10:07 PM

Yeah, the machine I choose will be running mostly office apps and surfing the Internet-- maybe playing some MP3s too. No gaming.

Thanks.

**Matridom** · July 25th, 2002, 10:08 PM

Compaq or gareway, wich is the lesser evil?

Personaly, i'd think they are about even. The p3-350 will have 512k cach and hum along at the 100 MhZ bus

the celeron is faster, but has a slower bus and less cach.. Personaly i'd go with the p3, you can always pop in a faster CPU since it's slot rather then the PPGA that the celeron would use. (i'm assuming the celeron is on a PPGA board and knowing compaq, it is).

Now if they are both slot boards, it's a pure toss up, I'd look at the other features available

Edit:. just noticed you said P2 and not P3.. go with the celeron.. they run almost the indentical core (the celeron mendecino runs the p2 core with onboard cach)

**JungleMan1** · July 25th, 2002, 10:52 PM

The Gateway hasn't been too bad, I definitely wouldn't touch them again but it has been pretty much problem free.

Yes the Compaq is PPGA.

How much cache does the Celeron have, is it 128K? I can probably find out with HWInfo but am too lazy to hook up the thing right now...heh.

**Matridom** · July 25th, 2002, 11:22 PM

Originally posted by JungleMan1
The Gateway hasn't been too bad, I definitely wouldn't touch them again but it has been pretty much problem free.

Yes the Compaq is PPGA.

How much cache does the Celeron have, is it 128K? I can probably find out with HWInfo but am too lazy to hook up the thing right now...heh.

yup, 128k full speed.

**Outcoded** · July 26th, 2002, 03:04 AM

Originally posted by JungleMan1
Yeah, the machine I choose will be running mostly office apps and surfing the Internet-- maybe playing some MP3s too. No gaming.

Thanks.

For that kind of work, you'd hardly see the difference between a Smelleron and a P2 with similar clock speeds. Given an extra 150MHz, go with the Celeron.

**Akuma** · July 26th, 2002, 07:53 AM

Comcr@p or Gateway!?? There is an interesting choice. Personally, I would either build my own or order a custom from Dell. That is just my 2 cents on the issue.

Regarding the processor, it would all depend on what you are doing. Side by side, with the same speed, Pentium will perform better if multi-tasking is a big issue. But one program @ a time, Celeron will out perform the Pentium. Personally, I would have to say Celeron. Despite the lower bus speed, the processing speed will win this race in the end.

**JungleMan1** · July 26th, 2002, 09:13 AM

Originally posted by Akuma
Comcr@p or Gateway!?? There is an interesting choice. Personally, I would either build my own or order a custom from Dell. That is just my 2 cents on the issue.

Yeap, I already have my own custom built rig, as shown in my signature-- I just have these two spare machines and not sure which one to keep for myself. My dad's taking one of them, and I'm keeping the fastest one for myself.

Looks like the Celeron it is, unless anyone begs to differ...