OLD IS GOLD - Older Celeron Better Than Newer Celeron?

[debojitacharya]

I want to know whether the older Celeron like the Intel Celeron 533A used to be better than the newer ones like Celeron N3050?

I am using Intel NUC Mini PC (NUC5CPYH) with Intel Celeron N3050 and 8 GB RAM+120 GB SSD running on Windows 8.1 but when I am listening to music and surfing the web I notice that the system gets laggy and the mouse pointer can't move freely. While running running any HD movie also I see that it can't play smoothly and while using the forward/rewind features also don't respond instantly of the media player.

Where as my old PC running Windows XP with Celeron 533A (single core) with 1 GB RAM don't show any lagginess while doing the same operations. Why?

 

[The Paladin]

Aside windows 8.1 being as ressource hog?
the N3050 is a better processor, benchmarks show this http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Celeron-N3050-vs-Intel-Celeron-533A

not sure but I would look into video card and maybe how much space is left on SSD, and open a process window while running apps to see what is sucking the marrow of your computer speed.

 

[Ecky]

Programs have changed. If you try to load up a modern web browser and view modern content on a 533mhz Celeron, it will choke. Windows XP uses fewer resources but is also far less secure and capable than 10. Same reason we're only getting ~60fps in modern games, just as we only got that in games 15 years ago.

 

[debojitacharya]

Programs have changed. If you try to load up a modern web browser and view modern content on a 533mhz Celeron, it will choke. Windows XP uses fewer resources but is also far less secure and capable than 10. Same reason we're only getting ~60fps in modern games, just as we only got that in games 15 years ago.

I don't think it's because of the content of the Web Browser because I have kept the homepage of Google Chrome to Blank and when a browser loads it shows a blank white page. So when I am opening Google Chrome while running any video or audio player like Winamp, I notice that lag. The mouse pointer gets stuck while moving it while the browser is loading but after when the browser loads the pointer moves perfectly.

Could this be a bottleneck because of low FSB? I don't know what is the FSB of Celeron N3050. Do you have any idea?

 

[Ecky]

The N3050 has no FSB. Front side bus is the bus between the CPU, through the socket to the memory controller on the motherboard. Starting in about 2005 with AMD and 2008 with Intel, CPUs had their memory controller moved to the CPU die itself so there was no slow bus in between.

 

[debojitacharya]

The N3050 has no FSB. Front side bus is the bus between the CPU, through the socket to the memory controller on the motherboard. Starting in about 2005 with AMD and 2008 with Intel, CPUs had their memory controller moved to the CPU die itself so there was no slow bus in between.

Thats not exactly what FSB is. The Front Side Bus is the main data channel between the processor and the northbridge (microprocessor) of the mainboard. The RAM modules are not directly connected to the CPU but it is connected via the northbridge. So when a CPU runs at a particular speed it must sync with the speed of the northbridge FSB. This design is common in any PC whether it's old or new. However Intel had renamed the FSB as Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) but the concept is same. Therefore the performance of any PC depends mainly on the FSB/QPI of the mainboard. higher the FSB/QPI, greater the performance of the PC. If you have a high speed CPU with a low speed FSB mainboard then you won't get much performance out of your CPU.

So when you are installing high speed CPU and faster RAM on a slow FSB board then you get bottle neck problem. This bottle neck is seen while running some games and editing software.

Now a days I have noticed that Intel mentions the DMI speed on their processors but that is not much important. DMI is the connection between the north bridge and the south bridge and the DMI speed is related to processor performance in a way that the other devices like HDD, USB and communication devices that are connected to the main board do need to connect to the CPU through the DMI because they are connected to the south bridge only. However if the main FSB of northbridge is slow then a better DMI speed won't make any difference.

Therefore I believe that there must be some bottleneck issue with the Intel Mini PC (NUC5CPYH).

What do you think?

 

[Dugimodo]

The NUC will be using intel graphics as well but I've found them to be pretty good at the things you describe, they just don't multitask well because the CPU is easily maxed out.

The 533A would struggle to play HD video and do anything else at all unless it's being helped by a graphics card doing most of the work. Single core CPU's are just not up to running a modern OS.

That said, yes when early Celerons first came out they were much better relative to mainstream parts. So much so that they ate into the sales of pentium 3 & 4 CPUs for budget concious gamers. There were also some legendary overclocking Celerons that often out matched the more expensive CPU's with a bit of tweaking such as the 300A. They don't however hold a candle to modern CPUs with so many generations between them.

 

[debojitacharya]

The NUC will be using intel graphics as well but I've found them to be pretty good at the things you describe, they just don't multitask well because the CPU is easily maxed out.

The 533A would struggle to play HD video and do anything else at all unless it's being helped by a graphics card doing most of the work. Single core CPU's are just not up to running a modern OS.

That said, yes when early Celerons first came out they were much better relative to mainstream parts. So much so that they ate into the sales of pentium 3 & 4 CPUs for budget concious gamers. There were also some legendary overclocking Celerons that often out matched the more expensive CPU's with a bit of tweaking such as the 300A. They don't however hold a candle to modern CPUs with so many generations between them.

Actually it's something to do with the Architecture of the processor whether it's Celeron or Pentium or Core 2. If you could see the Architecture history of Celeron on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Celeron_microprocessors) you will notice that it has gone through a lot of changes in last 15 yrs. Celeron 533A was designed on Coppermine Architecture which was derived from Pentium III. However The Celeron N3050 was totally recreated from on Silvermont Architecture. This architecture is no way similar to Coppermine. That's why I suspect that the newer celerons in the market won't behave like the original ones. Wheather it's a single core or dual core, only the architecture that matters and newer celerons are not built like the original ones.

 

[Dugimodo]

It's worth noting that modern Celerons are at the bottom of the performance pile along with atom CPUs and are designed more for power efficiency and price than performance. These days we have a whole range of intel CPUs from atom to i7 but when the 533A was made it was mainly just Celerons and Pentium 3/4 and the performance was much closer. The 533A was only a little slower than the more expensive CPU's of it's day.

The original Celerons were mostly a Pentium 3 with a bit less cache, on some tasks it mattered but for gaming it generally didn't so they became the budget conscious gamers CPU of choice. Later models are much less powerful than the higher end CPU's of the same generation but early Celerons were very close. A current Celeron cannot compete with an i3 let alone say an i7 but the original Celerons can absolutely compete with the Pentium 3.

I owned a Celeron 366 as an upgrade from my 233 MMX and it was an awesome CPU in it's time. I wouldn't consider using one these days though.

 

[debojitacharya]

It's worth noting that modern Celerons are at the bottom of the performance pile along with atom CPUs and are designed more for power efficiency and price than performance. These days we have a whole range of intel CPUs from atom to i7 but when the 533A was made it was mainly just Celerons and Pentium 3/4 and the performance was much closer. The 533A was only a little slower than the more expensive CPU's of it's day.

The original Celerons were mostly a Pentium 3 with a bit less cache, on some tasks it mattered but for gaming it generally didn't so they became the budget conscious gamers CPU of choice. Later models are much less powerful than the higher end CPU's of the same generation but early Celerons were very close. A current Celeron cannot compete with an i3 let alone say an i7 but the original Celerons can absolutely compete with the Pentium 3.

I owned a Celeron 366 as an upgrade from my 233 MMX and it was an awesome CPU in it's time. I wouldn't consider using one these days though.

That's what I am saying, older Celerons were derived form Pentium III architecture and celerons like N3050 are built from scratch and are System On Chip. I recently ask about FSB/QPI and DMI speed of N3050 but Intel was not able to give any information about it. But I am sure that the bus speed of newer Celerons are not optimized to run without minimal bottleneck. However older celerons were less prone to bottle neck issues while playing games or doing multi-tasking even with single cores.