Celeron 400 series - anyoen knows anything?
I'm planning to rebuild my HTPC and have a measly budget (about £150 for the subsystem). As a result I assumed I was going to be restricted to a Sempron / Athlon LE processor and AM2, but research suggests that a Celeron 400, being a low power Conroe derivative, might be a good alternative (coupled with a cheap iG31 based board and probably a Radeon 4650). The system's mostly used for watching DVDs, but also gets tapped up for occasional gaming at the native 1280x768 of my monitor. So, my subsystem choices seem to be one of:
Sempron / Athlon LE + cheap (probably Nvidia) AM2 board + 4650
Sempron / Athlon LE + 780G board + 3450 Hybrid Crossfire
Celeron 400 + cheap (probably iG31) 775 board + 4650
Any thoughts? (other than "I'm an Intel fanboy get the Celeron" or "I'm an AMD fanboy get the Athlon" ;) )
Re: Celeron 400 series - anyoen knows anything?
These reviews will help you:
http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=663
http://technojimmy.blogspot.com/2008...40-review.html
The Athlon 64 also has power saving features built in. An idle it should be better than a Celeron which IIRC does not have any power saving features. The dual core Celerons have EIST built in though. However at load I would think that the Celeron is more frugal.
Also if you are going for an HD4650 get the HD4650 GDDR3 for £55 from Ebuyer.
A simliar model has got excellent reviews:
http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/ind...1&limitstart=7
I would get the following from Ebuyer:
HD4650 GDDR3
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151454
740G motherboard
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/145300
Athlon X2 4850e
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/144638
or an Athlon LE1640
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/141243
Total (with Athlon X2) : £151.11
(with Athlon LE) : £136.51
Re: Celeron 400 series - anyoen knows anything?
Thanks CAT, that was a couple of useful links you've dug up there :) The impression I get is that the Celerons are good at CPU benchmarks but offer no advantage in real-world situations! I also forgot to mention that I'll need new memory on that subsystem as well, but 2GB of DDR2-800 is pretty much standard nowadays anyway ;)
I take it you reckon the 4650 will easily outperform a 780G + 3450 Crossfire combination then?
Re: Celeron 400 series - anyoen knows anything?
You can get 2gb of Crucial Ballistix or Kingston Hyperx DDR800 for £24.99 off Ebuyer:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119279
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/129177
I just looked at the cheapest AM2 motherboard on Ebuyer the Asus M2N68-AM it seems that in can even take the new Phenom II 920 and 940 processors according to the Asus CPU list:
http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/c...49&l3=642&l4=0
If you went for this you could fit in a LE1640 and 2gb of RAM for £154.
The HD4650 GDDR3 has 320 shaders whereas the HD3450 and HD3200 have 40 shaders each. The HD4650 and HD4670 have the same number of shaders as the HD3850 and HD3870. The main difference is that they both have 128 bit memory access as opposed to the 256 bit memory access of the HD38** series. Hence even the HD4670 can be beaten at times by the HD3850 even the former has a higher clocked GPU as default. Most HD4650 graphics cards have GDDR2 which makes them much slower so it is worth the extra money for the GDDR3 version.
Re: Celeron 400 series - anyoen knows anything?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
CAT-THE-FIFTH
The HD4650 GDDR3 has 320 shaders whereas the HD3450 and HD3200 have 40 shaders each.
In other words, 3450 + 3200 (80) << 4650 (320)? ;) Point well made.
Interesting specs on that ASUS board - I used to big a big ASUS fan back in the day and that may just have drawn me back into the fold. Looking at a couple of SB reviews I don't think there's much to choose between ICH7 and MCP630a, or between the Sempron LE and the Celeron 400. Much stratching of head will commence! Although since the new AM3 Phenom IIs will be backwardly compatible to AM2+ motherboards, AMD just might win out this time!
Re: Celeron 400 series - anyoen knows anything?
Well if you go with the Athlon LE you have a bigger L2 cache than a Sempron. Remember than both the Sempron and Athlon have Cool'n'Quiet too whereas as the Celeron 400 series do not have EIST. Also the highest clocked Celeron is only 2ghz with 512kb L2 cache. The Athlon LE1640 has a higher clockspeed(2.6ghz) and twice the L2 cache too.
Re: Celeron 400 series - anyoen knows anything?
Quote:
Originally Posted by
CAT-THE-FIFTH
Well if you go with the Athlon LE you have a bigger L2 cache than a Sempron. Remember than both the Sempron and Athlon have Cool'n'Quiet too whereas as the Celeron 400 series do not have EIST. Also the highest clocked Celeron is only 2ghz with 512kb L2 cache. The Athlon LE1640 has a higher clockspeed(2.6ghz) and twice the L2 cache too.
Thanks for the advice :)
I think it'll all come down to the exact amount of money I can afford to spend on the day I order it. When you're only looking at £150 for a system even a fiver's difference can swing it!
Re: Celeron 400 series - anyoen knows anything?
The important thing is to go with the HD4650 GDDR3 and not the cheaper GDDR2 version as this makes a huge difference!!