Lately there have been a lost of hosts offering Celeron processors in servers, and I was just wondering about peoples opinions of celerons in servers.

surely a lot of the big speed increases a P3 gives over a celeron only occur with software specificaly written for P3`s, a lot of which are video functions I don`t suppose that many server would take advantage of these.

I know that there are other factors, but i was thinking of getting one of these servers for a large site I have to take it off of my main server, as it is very CGI intensive, just wondering about raw processing power of celerons for CGI etc. compared to P3`s.

Opinions Please:D

From experience Celerons are very slow.
It handles everything slow.
For one site I don't there will be a problem.

Celerons are definitely slower than P3s (same MHz). By how much -- depends on many things. They do have smaller cache and slower front bus (i.e. slower memory access). I'd say for a web server with lots of CGI, it is probably around 60% slower (i.e. you'll need 1Ghz Celeron to match 600 Mhz P3). If you need raw power, go with Athlons. They are cheaper than P3s, faster than P3s, more Mhz available, and you can get a motherboard with faster DDR memory.

Be careful with a extremely powerful Athlon server in a small rack space. They do tend to get hotter faster than your average PIII.

www.cpuscorecard.com

Recent Celerons aren't nearly as bad as the first ones were. They come with a sizable cache now. I have an older PIII (450) and a Celeron 433, both of which have the same size cache...

Celerons are great when you need a cheap, fast processor; but with that said, I wouldn't use one in a web server. They're fast, but not that fast. I think the slowest part is the FPU, but I can't confirm that; I just know my 433 Celeron takes quite a bit longer to compile a kernel than the PIII 450. It does, however, run a lot cooler than the PIII.

I'd really stay away from Athlons, especially in a smaller case (like a 1U rack mount)... I hear the newer one's aren't as bad, but they still have heftier power supply and cooling requirements than a PIII.

All in all, I'd stick with PIII -- they're really coming down in price lately, and I don't think you'll save much with AMD (or Celeron).

I have an older PIII (450) and a Celeron 433, both of which have the same size cache...

A PIII 450 has 512kb of cache, running at 225mhz. The Celeron 433 has 128kb of cache running at 433mhz.

In virtually all non-cache intensive situations(i.e data not recently used) the two will perform very similarly. The main difference these days between the later PIII's and Celerons is the Celeron has half the cache size, and runs at a lower FSB.

Given the choice, on either a desktop or a server, of a PIII 800 with 128mb or a Celeron 600 with 256/512mb, I'd go for the Celeron each and every time. For a cheap processor, they're good little chips. Intel still have the edge of AMD in server platforms, because of the power consumption and heat dissipation required.

If you were playing games, then an Athlon T-Bird would be unbeatable. In a server, memory makes more of a difference than CPU type or speed. The Celeron/PIII/Athlon/Duron series all have strong cores and powerful FPU's - unlike the K6-x series used in the Raq's. Any of the processors will make a good web server - if you're seeing a high server load, I'd consider dual low end(>700mhz) PIII's far better than a single PIII running much faster(<1ghz).

The newer Celerons cannot run in a multiprocessor situation - anything below a Celeron 533 can, in the correct motherboard.

I don't know if I've helped you at all, but hopefully you'll understand a bit of what I mean :).

--Rich

You are correct -- I could have sworn my 450 had 128k cache as well, but /proc/cpuinfo proves me wrong -- it is in fact 512 :) I may have been confusing a PII... at any rate, there is a definite speed difference between the two when compiling and things like that. Neither even comes close to my Coppermine @ 920 MHz though... I also did forget, the celeron only runs a 66 MHz FSB, which I'm sure contributes to overall performance.

celeron is good for a personal site or for a few commerical sites

anything else i would go with a p3.