[plug] Celeron vs Duron - part 2

[Dennis Plester]

I posted a query last week regarding the choice between upgrading an
existing PC with BX motherboard to a Celeron 700, or selling the motherboard
and switching to the Duron on behalf of a friend.

We went a grabbed a Duron 700 for $125 and a suitable motherboard for $210,
and did the deed. In a nutshell, the upgrade went beautifully and improved
the performance by considerably more than expected. My mate is now getting
ready to enter the world of Linux.

The performance difference was so impressive that I bit the bullet and did
the same. So my Celeron 500 with board was swapped to a Duron 700 and socket
A board. My 3dmark 2000 3d (windows - directx7) gaming benchmark more than
doubled from 1900 to 4500 marks, and my various Linux benchmarks using
Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena went ballistic. What's more, general
performance in Windows and Linux is noticeably faster. My Geforce2 MX is now
running at 4x AGP rather than 2x, my UDMA 66 hard disk can now run as such
rather than UDMA 33 and my PC133 RAM is now running at 133, rather than the
paltry 66 under the Celery. I should have done this earlier.

An added bonus was the fact that the Duron overclocks by just looking at it.
I ran it for 12 hours straight running a looping Quake 3 demo, ticking over
at 950 MHz, and sitting on 48 deg C with the bog standard heatsink/fan. Not
bad for $125! For those interested, I unlocked the multiplier using the
golden arches trick with a 2B pencil. No other CPU voltage/front bus
frequency tweaks were required.

I was Intel only, but it looks like I've made the switch. I have since come
across a guy who went the other way, and kept his existing board while
changing to a Celeron 700. It has sped things up considerably, but he is
regretting his decision. I hope this info is of use to someone out there.

Dennis.