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Buying the Ideal Computer (Part 3 – Pentium vs. Celeron)
- By Eric Wolff
In the previous article, I discussed the three major Intel platforms
and the differences between them. This time around, I am going to go
into more detail about how a Pentium based system outperforms a Celeron
based system. This article is going to be more technical than the
previous articles, but I will do my best to make it easy to understand.
There are four major components to a computer system – the processor,
memory, the motherboard, and a hard drive. Without one or more of these
components, a computer will not be able to function.
The processor is the brain of the computer. When a program is run, it
will request the information needed to run the specified program. The
processor will first check its internal cache for the required data and
perform operations in the order that they are sent to the processor. If
the processor cannot find the information it needs, it will request the
information from the system’s RAM.
Random Access Memory (RAM) stores parts of currently running programs so
that they run faster. RAM is volatile which means any information stored
in RAM will be lost if the computer is turned off. When a program is
closed, most of the data for that program is removed from the RAM. Because
the RAM does not release all of the memory it used for a program, the
computer will begin to appear sluggish if it has been running for a long
period of time (days). Any important data that is being worked on needs to
be saved otherwise it will be lost. When data is saved, the information is
stored on the hard drive.
The hard drive is the component that stores all information on the
computer. When you install a program like Microsoft Office, it is
transferred onto the hard drive so that it can be used. Unlike memory, hard
drives will keep data until it is deleted or the drive goes bad. The storage
capacity of hard drives has greatly increased over time. Current drives can
hold up to 200 gigabytes of information. That is the equivalent of 60,000,000
pages of plain text. When a program is run, the hard drive will transfer part
of the program through the motherboard so that the program can be used.
The final piece of the puzzle is the motherboard. The motherboard allows all
of the components of the computer to communicate with each other. There are
several data paths known as busses on the motherboard that data can travel on.
The motherboard is kind of like a freeway with someone directing traffic. Data
travels along one bus and is then redirected to another bus to get to where it
needs to go. Some motherboards have additional components like audio, video, and
networking built into them so that you do not have to go out and buy additional
components. The disadvantage to this is that if one component on the motherboard
fails, you end up having to replace the entire motherboard as opposed to the
individual component that failed.
There are many other components that can be put into a computer to provide
various functions. The video card puts information provided by the computer into
a format that is viewable and transmits it to a monitor. Unless you have a
motherboard that has video built into it, you will need a video card. A sound card
allows you to listen to music, hear sound effects in games and programs, and so on.
The modem allows you to communicate with other computers at a different location.
They are primarily used to get onto the internet. An Ethernet card allows you to
connect multiple computers in the same location together so they can communicate
with each other, thus forming a network. Ethernet cards are also used to connect
to a high speed internet service like DSL. You can get a TV tuner to watch
television on your computer, a capture card to save home made movies on your computer,
floppy and CD-ROM drives to load data onto the computer, a DVD-Rom drive to watch
movies on your computer, and a CD burner to make backups of information stored on
the hard drive.
Now that we have a basic knowledge of the parts that make up a computer, let’s talk
about the differences between a Pentium and a Celeron processor. There are two major
differences between the Pentium and the Celeron – the amount of cache and the clock
speed. Typically the Pentium processor runs at a much higher clock speed than the Celeron.
This means that the Pentium can perform tasks faster than the Celeron. As of this writing,
the fastest Pentium processor clocks in at 3.4 GHz. The Celeron on the other hand only
goes up to 2.8 GHz.
Although the clock speeds are not that much different between the Pentium and the Celeron,
the cache is where the Celeron really trips and stumbles. The cache is another form of
memory that resides onboard the processor. When a process needs to be completed, the
processor will first look to see of the information it needs is stored in the cache, if
it is not, it will request it from the memory. Typically, the vital information for
running a program is transferred directly to the cache. Because there is little or no wait
time for the processor to receive information from the cache, processes can be completed
much faster. Thus, the more cache the processor has the more instructions the processor
can handle.
The Celeron processor has 128k of onboard cache. This will get filled up very fast, and
when you are playing a demanding game, the processor will literally choke. On the other
hand, the current Pentium processors have 512k of onboard cache – four times as much as
the Celeron. And Intel just released an “extreme” version of their Pentium processor which
has 2mb of onboard cache. That is 16 times more cache than the Celeron. But this performance
boost comes with a HUGE price tag. The processor alone costs 800.00. So in summary, the
Celeron can complete a task almost as fast as a Pentium, but the Celeron has to wait much
longer for the information to reach the processor.
When you are surfing the net or composing a letter, you will not see much of a difference.
But say you are writing an essay, listening to a music CD, and you have an encyclopedia
program running to assist you in writing the essay. If you have a computer with a Celeron
processor, you are going to go crazy waiting for anything to happen on the computer. And
that does not even take into account the things that are going on in the background, like
your virus scanner.
I have given you quite a bit of information to mull over in the last three articles. The
most important thing to remember is that you get what you pay for. You can go out and buy
the cheapest computer that you can find, but when you try to run some more intensive
programs, you will be sitting around for a long period of time waiting for the computer to
do its thing. Hopefully with the information provided in these three articles you will be
able to make an educated decision on purchasing the computer that best suits your needs.
Eric Wolff,
Ulink’s “Hardware Guy”
thehardwareguy@ulink.net
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