What are the Con's or Pro's of each processor?

Celeron: Fast, Cheap
AMD: IMO, AMD's motherboards are not reliable, but I would get a Pentium.
Pentium: Faster, Good Prices, Cache is higher than Celeron.

Though, I could give you more information, I just do not know what your gonna be using it for? Dedicated server more than likely. In that case, go with the Pentium. Feel free to contact me if you need to do so.

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Adam "fibroptikl" Lysne
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fibroptikl
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Hi,
I actually have servers with each of these processors. Personaly I think the celeron preforms better than the amd. The celeron in inexpensive and handes very well. The pentium is more expensive than the celeron but I don't see it preforming faster than the celeron. Just make sure you get enough ram :)

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I disagree with fibroptikl. I have an AMD K6-2 400Mhz at home on my desk and my wife has an Intel Pentium III 700 Mhz and mine is usually faster than hers. So much so that my next purchase will be an Athalon and not a Pentium.

Celeron: Cheap and not as fast. Remember it doesn't have the cache on the chip (unless they changed that)

AMD: Fast, medium priced chip. Get at least a K6-3 or Athalon.

Pentium: Tryed and true chip. Very expensive (compared to the others). Fairly fast (Pentium III 500Mhz +).

Cyrix: Runs Hot, Slower than Celeron, Cheap price. Over the past two years, this chip has gone downhill in value.


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Mike Astin
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I need it for a d-server :)

I have *found* them to be *sometimes* as I have *heard* they are un-reliable.

I have never used one before. Personally, I think they should be stable, but I hear it from overclockers, who are messing with ever asptect.

My Pentium 3 650, out performs any AMD within that range.

In a dedicated server though, I do or do not know if the AMD K6-2's are gonna be good. However, if you want raw speed go with the AMD, if you want speed and performance (I am not gonna argue against you 3d now users), go with the Pentium. If you want something around the Athlon/Pentium range with both go with the Celeron 2. Again Celeron's are Celeron's, and the Celeron 2's have SSE. They are out now.

Personally, this is a Hewlett Packard, though I bought so I could do some website design in July. Its a great computer, but I am going to upgrade to a Celeron 2 566 @ 850 or a Pentum 3 700e cb0. Nothing is integrated on my HP. I get really nice performance. If this were a ded. server, it would be extremely fast.


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Adam "fibroptikl" Lysne
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fibroptikl
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Originally posted by fibroptikl:
I have *found* them to be *sometimes* as I have *heard* they are un-reliable...messing with ever asptect

Eh??? Adam- been on the computer a bit too long? Peepers jumping out of their sockets? Take a break :) :) :)

*EDIT*
I guess this makes sense to all of you? Anyway, just a tangent, and now the thread is too long to go back to whatever this means... nevermind :)
*/EDIT*

[This message has been edited by Chicken (edited 08-03-2000).]

Huh?

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Adam "fibroptikl" Lysne
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fibroptikl
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Chicken, I think you need to step away from the computer for a few days.

Yeah, I agree.

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Adam "fibroptikl" Lysne
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fibroptikl
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AMD procs are cheap and overheat way to much.
hardocp is giving away fried anthlon procs that where used in testing (NOT OVERCLOCKING TESTS). yea, fried the chip causs they where running quake.


Also, if your amd k6-2 400 outperforms a pIII 700, your smoking way to much crack, or your PIII chip is fake and is totally fscked up.

Sweede, HardOCP destoried the chip by using the wrong heatsink. If you read the article you'd know that.

What is HardOCP? where is the article? I was just gonna upgrade to Athlon too...

Admin, HardOCP is an overclockers site, http://www.hardocp.com/ Also, the chip they used was a Thunderbird 1ghz.

And this is the article http://www.hardocp.com/articles/cooling/alpha&tbird/index.html

[This message has been edited by JTY (edited 08-03-2000).]

What do people do when the fan in there dedicated server or co-located server stops?, that must be a nightmare, figuring how what's wrong is probably the hardest part I'd imagine for remote admin, I hope DN covers it.

I use in all my machines, a serious amount of overkill. For instance in my lan server I have two 5000rpm fans on the cpu heatsink while one is enough.

JTY, do you ever visit the Hard|Forum's?

What is your name?

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Adam "fibroptikl" Lysne
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fibroptikl
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I use all three CPU's in my machines. My personal machine uses an AMD Athlon 900MHz CPU, and I find it just as fast as, if not faster than a Pentium.

You also have to take into consideration the amount of RAM you're using. If you're installing an 800Hmz CPU, and only 32MB RAM, your machine will be slow. I would recommend a minimum of 128MB.

Originally posted by Admin:
What do people do when the fan in there dedicated server or co-located server stops?, that must be a nightmare, figuring how what's wrong is probably the hardest part I'd imagine for remote admin, I hope DN covers it.

There are motherboards and monitoring programs that detect malfunctions and report them to the administrator. Better quality cpu fans (ball bearing type) will generally last for years whereas the cheaper sleeve type fans will fail much more frequently.

Also, any smart systems builder will make sure there is proper air flow (there are ways to measure temperature at the cpu) and may even add additional fans to the chassis. Thus, if a cpu fan should fail, it may not be critical (though it should be attended to rapidly) due to the additional cooling capacity.

I've built some servers that had so many fans and so much cooling that they could double as a small air conditioner in South Florida in the summertime [slight exaggeration]. The cost of a few fans and a proper chassis is cheap, especially compared to down time and lost productivity.

Wow weird.

I was going through my list of stuff I want for my next PC. I am thinking of going with an Intel Pentium 3 700 cb0 FCPGA Coppermine Chip. I am also gonna put in Mushkin 256MB PC-133 SDRAM 5ns CAS2...yeah, its gonna rock.

As for cooling I'll have 2 120mm Panaflo Fans, and 1 Panaflo 80mm, CardCooler XT, JustCooler BayCooler 2. So, I am gonna go quite extreme on my cooling, but hey nothing wrong with a lil overkill.

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Adam "fibroptikl" Lysne
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fibroptikl
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fibroptikl, I don't post on the Hard|Forum. I do at Anandtech as JTY though, it's mostly in the For Sale/Trade forum.

Originally posted by fibroptikl:
I was going through my list of stuff I want for my next PC. ..

As for cooling I'll have 2 120mm Panaflo Fans, and 1 Panaflo 80mm, CardCooler XT, JustCooler BayCooler 2. So, I am gonna go quite extreme on my cooling, but hey nothing wrong with a lil overkill.


Don't scrimp on the chassis (case). Even the addition of fans doesn't help some of them. Example: The last server I built for a customer of someone I worked for/with a couple of years ago was like I mentioned above. The previous one, which was being used, would fail if the cover was left on. They had to leave the cover off and a box fan blowing on it. (This caused other problems with corrosion and pitting of various parts in side the computer due to the moisture on the air). The case was not bad, it was a tower case suitable for any PC, but it just wasn't good enough as a server, even with the additional fans I added (while building the new server).

The new one that I built for him works just fine (even with the cover closed), and I'm sure would have worked even without the additional fans. However, this customer was sensitive to the heating problem, wanted the extra fans (and they were certainly cheap enough), there was plenty of room for them, and they were added with full agreement on my part.

You can't have too much cooling (unless icicles begin forming on the case).

I am getting a Chenbro Genie Case.

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Adam "fibroptikl" Lysne
adam@motion5.com
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fibroptikl
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I want to prevent any misunderstanding of something I said about the cost of a good server case. It is cheap compared to lost productivity due to down time and repairs.

However, compared to a pc case, a good server case is typically much more expensive. It is well worth the money, though.

The price goes up even higher when you add things such as dual hot swappable power supplies and others, including intrusion alarm (you are alerted if the case is opened). The much higher prices of a chassis of this type is still more cost effective than the problems that can result without them.

Personally, even for a pc, I will not use a cheap case. It just isn't worth it.

Duster:

I understand you fully. My case is costing me about ~$250.

This case is also a server case from Chenbro, in the Chenbro Server Series. Its a good case and many people use them.

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Adam "fibroptikl" Lysne
adam@motion5.com
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fibroptikl
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To answer the original question, I'd say it all depends on what you're aiming for.

<=450 MHz, with a stable motherboard, nothing beats the K6-3, but good luck finding one at a reasonable price. Having a 64k L1, 256k L2, and up to 2048k L3 (depending on motherboard) lets it blow away the competition in the server environment. Some people say that the AMD K6 series is slower than the PII/Celeron series, but that's only true in FPU, which generally isn't used on servers. On servers, integer is what is used, and K6's blow away the 686 core in integer calculations.

450-550 MHz -- it depends. The K6-2+ looks excellent (64k L1, 128K L2, variable L3) for the same reasons as the K6-3.

550-900 MHz -- Pentium III w/ "Coppermine" core. AMD Athlon Classic/Thunderbird does better clock for clock on repeated ops than the Pentium, but the Pentium has a 128kbit path to it's full speed L2 cache, and thus beats out the Athlon/Thunderbird.

900+MHz -- Athlon. Athlon is the future in my opinion ('till the next gen from Intel, t least), and Intel is effectively "overclocking" to reach these MHz ranges. Basically, they raise the voltage to reach this speed. When we do it, it's overclocking and it voids the warranty ;) I don't trust it. The latest Athlons also have an "exclusive" L2 cache, which means that the L1 cache isn't duplicated in the L2. On an Athlon/Thunderbird, you have 128k L1, 256k L2, no duplication. On the PIII, you have 32k L1, 256k L2, with all of the L1 duplicated in the L2. IMO, the extra cache on the Athlon makes up for the narrower path (64bit v 128bit).

Note also that the Athlon has some advantages that the Pentium core just can't match. The EV6 bus (DDR) from the CPU to the chipset shouldn't be underestimated. This isn't a huge concern just yet, but once the AMD's go multiprocessor, this will make a huge difference. Also, don't be fooled by RAMBUS -- it may be good for raw thuroughput, but on a server, latency is just as important, and RAMBUS has terrible latency. That's all in the future, though.

If you don't want/can't afford/can't find any of these, default to the Celeron. Don't even look at the K6-2. The K6-2 is a good chip, but the Celeron is better.

Originally posted by Duster:
I want to prevent any misunderstanding of something I said about the cost of a good server case. It is cheap compared to lost productivity due to down time and repairs.

However, compared to a pc case, a good server case is typically much more expensive. It is well worth the money, though.

The price goes up even higher when you add things such as dual hot swappable power supplies and others, including intrusion alarm (you are alerted if the case is opened). The much higher prices of a chassis of this type is still more cost effective than the problems that can result without them.

Personally, even for a pc, I will not use a cheap case. It just isn't worth it.
I agree, We get calls for cheap products all the time and after 13 years in business I have learned that it's just not worth it.
Stevef@compunite.com