Pentium vrs Celeron

[CNE]

I have a computer with a 900 meg celeron processor. I'm looking at a dvd burner that recommends a pentium 800 processor or better. Would my celeron processor work? Is there a rule-of-thumb when comparing processors? Thanks for any advice.

[jabarnutcase]

Hi CNE

I see youve been sitting there waiting for a reply, so here's my two cents.

I don't see any reason the DVD burner you're looking at wont work with your celeron 900mhz processor.

Just be sure that you system meets or exceeds all of the other requirements of the burner.

As far as a general rule of thumb comparing processors, that's a tough one (At least for me) :D

As you probably know, different manufacturers chips can perform differently with the same clock speeds. Or for that matter, the same manufacturers cpu's can vary quite a bit. And of course, other components in your set-up will make a difference.

Other opinions will be along, but in the mean time,
HERE (http://www.pcworld.com/howto/article/0,aid,16682,00.asp) is a little reading material on CPU's in general.

[saphalline]

Yeah, a Celeron 900 is faster than a PIII 800, so the burner will work just fine. Generally, a Celeron (800MHz-1GHz) needs to be 50MHz faster than a PIII in order to keep up. Once the Celeron hit 1GHz, speed became a non-issue (do you know anything that requires a 1GHz processor?) and it started using the PIII core (tho there are still "older" versions up to 1.2GHz).

Comparing processors is very difficult, and it used to be worse. Anyone remember the PIII Coppermine vs. SlotA Athlon wars? Or how about the PII vs. K6-2 comparisons? It was a nightmare! Thankfully, all major processors nowadays perform well enough and are at high enough speeds that we usually don't have to worry too much about getting less than adequate performance. Price efficiency is still fought over, however...

If you're really concerned, buy more RAM. It will help a lot with DVD burning and is more cost-efficient ;) than upgrading your Celeron (at least, not until you hit 1.2GHz).

[CNE]

Thanks, Jab......(and Sap.....) for you responses. They were most helpful. Jab, I have been reading the article you referenced and I'm learning some good stuff.

[jabarnutcase]

Glad we could help-:)

And saphalline brings up a good point- Never hurts to add more Ram.
It's been called "the poor man's upgrade"- Guess that's why I have so much of it!!!:D