Okay, so I got a Celeron D 335 2.8 ghz processor. I paired it up with a 256 mb Radeon 9600 XT, and its like boom! I can’t believe the speed I’m getting from it. I’m running KOTOR II on full EVERYTHING, and no lag, not even in combat mode.
I run HL2 on full detail and reflect, and the rest in on medium. The 7200 RPM HDD runs nicely, and that helps with finding files quickly. My friend’s brand new P4 doesn’t even come close to the performance, and I can’t believe this is a “discount” processor.

So, do any of you have any little processor that could stories?


-KnightRider2000

P.S. Lot of computer threads lately

[Edit : NM about processor, I figured out why! :p ]

But still thats pretty sweet though if you dished out a bit on your video card and got at least a Nvidia 6600 GT (and thats if you can't afford the 6800GT or 7800GT which arent THAT much more expensive) you smack HL2 Maxed Out down pat.

http://www.bizrate.com/marketplace/search/search__cat_id--403,prod_id--174657162.html

Pretty cheap for $79.40 from Newegg.

Yeah HL2 runs nicely. The one part when your on the rooftop before you go to the citidal, blowing up the striders is the only part of the game that shows even a hint of lag. The reviewers on Newegg even confirm this, one has a 256 mb grx card too with the 335, and he gets the smae performance.


-KnightRider2000

Celeron? Worst decision of your life.

Good luck getting performance out of it in say, 6 months.

My Pentium D > Your Celeron D

(Also, dualcore doesn't mean crap for games. Escpecially since so few of them can actually use two processors.)

I've got a PII 266 running Windows XP. If that's not like... the DEFINITION of "the little processor that could", then I don't know what is.

This thread is a joke.

heh, Kyle90, I've got you beat. I had a p166 with 32MB ram running Windows ME.

It was very stable, ran great.. though I admit it was a little slow.

XP requires a lot more resources than ME though.

I think XP manages memory better, its the graphical settings that take up a lot of cpu. If you turn those off, XP runs much faster.

It's not your processor, it's your video card. The 9600XT is the budget item you should be talking about. I bought one a while back and I can still play newer games without worrying about graphics options.

A 2.8 Ghz processor Celeron is not at all a bad processor. It may be bad compared to what you could have bought, but it's still a 2.8 Ghz processor. Most of my machines are running with processors less than 1.5 Ghz.

Processor marketing nowadays is a joke. Hyperthreading and 64-bit are worthless to a lot of people. But they're are buying into them anyway. Even dual-core which is great for multi-tasking is widely misunderstood. I have an Athlon XP 3200, and I'm not upgrading until AMD offers something I can afford that's not a waste of money.

So anyway for my computer story: A friend had a compaq ipaq that he was going to throw away. So I got it from him and upgraded it. This is an almost worthless PC, but I had a lot of old parts lying around. It was running a Celeron with a 66Mhz bus, and it's now running a P3 1.4 Ghz with a 133Mhz bus. Also upped it to 512 MBs of RAM. The only reason I kept this thing was because it's very compact for a desktop, and I use it now as a portable PC. It's more like "the little machine that could" escape being thrown away.

True.. I actually tried to run XP on it, but it wouldn't let me. Said I didn't meet the minimum system requirenments when I tried to install. That's why I went with ME instead.

Which graphical settings?

The only things that you have wrong--64-bit isn't why people buy 64-bit processors--the architecture that they have handles 32-bit processing WAY better, they have bigger caches, they overclock better, and reach better speeds. Dual core also is fairly useful--but not for gaming. It just makes the overall experience a lot...smoother.

Ok obviously you don't understand 64-bit vs 32-bit at all.

All it is is an increase in the size of two things on the chip:
- The registers used for manipulating data. 32-bit chips can crunch 32-bit numbers, 64-bit chips crunch 64-bit numbers.
- The address bus. The chip can request memory addresses 64-bits long, removing the 4gb limitation on memory present in 32-bit chips.

Now, if you up the size of these things, you'll notice that it takes the chip twice as long to do operations on these registers or fill in an address to get memory from, simply becuase it now has twice the data to work with.

And when you're emulating 32-bit it also has to convert all the 32-bit operands to 64-bit, adding another layer of emulation there.

So everything ends up going a little bit SLOWER than if you had the same chip at 32-bits with the same clock speed.

Now, about dual core...

Dual core can basically be described as a "poor man's dual processors" so to speak. You have two distinct processor cores, but they share registers or some other components, meaning they can't REALLY both work independantly as two processors can. Dual processors can outperform dual core, although dual core can outperform a single processor.

[QUOTE=The Mega-ZZTer]Ok obviously you don't understand 64-bit vs 32-bit at all.

All it is is an increase in the size of two things on the chip:
- The registers used for manipulating data. 32-bit chips can crunch 32-bit numbers, 64-bit chips crunch 64-bit numbers.
- The address bus. The chip can request memory addresses 64-bits long, removing the 4gb limitation on memory present in 32-bit chips.

Now, if you up the size of these things, you'll notice that it takes the chip twice as long to do operations on these registers or fill in an address to get memory from, simply becuase it now has twice the data to work with.

And when you're emulating 32-bit it also has to convert all the 32-bit operands to 64-bit, adding another layer of emulation there.

So everything ends up going a little bit SLOWER than if you had the same chip at 32-bits with the same clock speed.[/QUOTE]

You know, in theory you're right. Unfortunately, a Barton 400mhz 3200+ will never outperform a Clawhammer 3200+.

Probably because the 64-bit chip happens to run at a faster speed. So?

You can't cite clock speed (bad word choice on my part) as it is a very bad way to compare chips.

Think AMD chips vs Intel.

[QUOTE=The Mega-ZZTer]Probably because the 64-bit chip happens to run at a faster speed. So?

You can't cite clock speed (bad word choice on my part) as it is a very bad way to compare chips.

Think AMD chips vs Intel.[/QUOTE]

The 64-bit chip runs slower by 200 mhz.

They're also completely different architectures with different CPI, slightly different instruction sets, different pipeline stages, etc.

So you can't really use that to say "Oh, 64-bit processors can process 32-bit instructions faster because this 64-bit processor can do it faster than this 32-bit processor."

I'm not saying that, I'm saying the ones on the market do. I didn't say why, I didn't say how, because to be honest I don't know the intricacies of the 64-bit AMD processors versus their 32-bit models. I'm just saying, in every test, the 64-bit beats the crap out of the 32-bit chip.

I meant that "64-bit" (like "HT Technology") is an over-used marketing term that most computer users won't benefit from or understand. That's it.


And I'm never wrong.

[/sarcasm]

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]I'm not saying that, I'm saying the ones on the market do. I didn't say why, I didn't say how, because to be honest I don't know the intricacies of the 64-bit AMD processors versus their 32-bit models. I'm just saying, in every test, the 64-bit beats the crap out of the 32-bit chip.[/QUOTE]

I don't mean specialized tests that automatically FAVOR 64-bit like large video processing and audio processing applications COMPILED SPECIFICALLY FOR 64-BIT. You said 32-BIT applications are faster on 64-bit. That's different.

Any benchmark I've seen with 64-bit vs 32-bit shows 64-bit faster only with 64-bit OS, apps, and favorable conditions (ie large number crunching, like in video processing).

A friend of mine did a presentation of 64-bit vs 32-bit in class a week or so ago. Every benchmark that wasn't native 64-bit apps vs 32-bit apps in heavy number crunching situations presented had 32-bit outperforming at least a little.

These types of apps the average user is unlikely to use. And even so, there are few 64-bit apps out at the moment.

[QUOTE=The Mega-ZZTer]I don't mean specialized tests that automatically FAVOR 64-bit like large video processing and audio processing applications COMPILED SPECIFICALLY FOR 64-BIT. You said 32-BIT applications are faster on 64-bit. That's different.

Any benchmark I've seen with 64-bit vs 32-bit shows 64-bit faster only with 64-bit OS, apps, and favorable conditions (ie large number crunching, like in video processing).

A friend of mine did a presentation of 64-bit vs 32-bit in class a week or so ago. Every benchmark that wasn't native 64-bit apps vs 32-bit apps in heavy number crunching situations presented had 32-bit outperforming at least a little.

These types of apps the average user is unlikely to use. And even so, there are few 64-bit apps out at the moment.[/QUOTE]

1) I'm talking gaming and the like...not to mention you're wrong. Unless he was using a REALLY ****TY 64-bit processor, or an Intel sixty-faux bit processor, the AMD64 will always outperform the XP.

2) There are tons of 64-bit apps...all for linux or only for XP64-bit. Most of them are just uselessly slow.

.

Whats the collective opinion on the Pentium D?

It was a free upgrade for this PC.

Also, if I sent programs for different affinity, splitting the processor loads manually, is there any benefit? I noticed in the process list I can tell it which processor to use, or both. However I only have maybe one program that multithreads.

sigh

For the most part, all it does is make it so that different processes are handled by different cores/threads, so the overall computing experience goes more smoothly (i.e. working in Photoshop, playing a flash game at the same time, that kinda stuff). It's not OVERLY useful, but it's not useless either.

My G3 350 Mhz that I played JO on