Flwrite wrote:

Dear Ma'ams and Sirs,

Wow, checking the Powerleap website, the 1.4 GHz Celeron conversion
was just reduced $30 :) to $120.  The 1.1 GHz PIII was reduced $10 to
$220.  However, even if they were both free, the issue would be which
crunches WUs faster.

Thanks for letting me push all your buttons.  I had a feeling it
would be close.


They don't mention the cache sizes; I assume they are the usual
512/half speed and 256/full speed.  Bob blew my mind with:

on the tual p3's the cache is full speed, the difference between the 256kb
and 512kb models of the p3
(the ones at 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4 etc) are the 256kb ones don't do dual cpu,
the 512 ones do (not sure about the dual thing anyway, anyone wanna
confirm?)

so the tual p3 range has 3 models basicly:
celeron
p3 256kb
p3 512kb

it was only the early p3's which had 512kb cache that ran at half speed,
like this one:

CPU type:  Intel Pentium III (Katmai) processor
CPU speed:  550 MHz
L1 cache:  32 KB (16 KB code + 16 KB data)
L2 cache:  512 KB

where as this is a tual p3 1.4ghz:

CPU type:  Intel(R) Pentium(R) III CPU family      1400MHz
CPU speed:  1400 MHz
L1 cache:  32 KB (16 KB code + 16 KB data)
L2 cache:  512 KB

also, you are looking at spending $220 just on a cpu, imo you would be
better simply getting a new motherboard, ram, and cpu

AMD is best value currently, you will get a lot more speed from say, an
xp2500, nice new motherboard, and DDR ram helps lots too, also becuase this
is a more balanced system, it has fast board ram and cpu
but then, some poeple don't like, or not really that bothered to do their
pc's up themselves, if you are not very good at pc hardware and would have
to get someone else to do it for you, this makes the cost go up by quite a
bit (labour)