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DADDY BOB'S COMPUTER Q & A
December 4, 2005 |
Q. Is there a major difference between a Pentium and
Celeron CPU?
A.
The Intel Celeron processor was always designed to
be a low-cost alternative to the Pentium processor
line. It is much like a car company that offers
various priced cars from the luxury sedan to the
economy compact. The Celeron is simply a downgraded
Pentium, that almost anyone can afford (it is
essentially the compact). One major difference is
that Celeron chips
have a smaller L2 cache than the Pentium 4, which
translates into slower processing speeds.
Intel has recently released three Celeron D
processors rated at between 2.53 to 2.80 GHz. These
CPUs are based on the new 90 nm process. The missing
features fueling the Celeron vs Pentium argument are
a lack of Hyper-Threading technology and a limited
256Kb L2 cache. The Celeron is also limited to a
533MHz front side bus (FSB) speed. (These are
current limitations, but will probably be increased
in the future).
In contrast, the Pentium 4 - 500 series is available
in speeds up to 3.6 GHz, has 1Mb of level 2 cache
and runs on an 800 MHz FSB. They also implement
Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology. Is this enough
to settle the Celeron vs Pentium question? Let's see
what this relates to in the real world.
Benchmarks show that the top of the line Pentium
out performs the Celeron by about 40%. However,
Celeron is dramatically improved when compared with
previous models, and can now easily be recommended
for use in a budget system. The increased
performance offered by the Pentium is only really
noticeable when playing the latest 3D games.
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Equipped with a mid-range graphics card, a
Celeron system can now hold its own in all
but the latest games, while offering all
the performance you need for surfing the
net, office applications, photography, and
music. |
In summary, the Pentium 4 is more powerful than the
most advanced Celeron processor on the market.
However, Intel has planned it to be this way. Most
applications will work just good with a Celeron
processor, despite a little less power than the
Pentium 4. They are more than adequate for the
average computer user.
It is a way to save a little cash when buying a new
PC, but don't forget the saying "You get what you
pay for." Celeron processors are of good Intel
quality, but they will never be as good as the
Pentium. Remember also the saying, “Don’t buy more
than you need”, and for most of us, the Celeron is
all we need.
Q.
What is a Flash Drive and will it ever replace a
PC's hard drive?
A.
A flash drive is one that uses flash memory or EPROM
(Erasable Read Only Memory) to store the data. In their
most common current configuration, they are called jump
drives, or USB mini or micro drives. They are fairly
small devices that plug into the USB port and can be
used just like floppy or hard drive. They come in sizes
up to 4 GB as of this writing, but will probably be
available in much larger sized in the future.
Information can be copied to them and then they can be
moved to another computer and transferred there.
Most of them will work right
out of the box with Windows 2000 or XP, but usually
require a special driver if used with any other
versions. They are universal in that they will work on
any computer that supports the USB interface, including
the Mac. They vary in cost depending on their capacity
from just a few dollars to over $300. Here is a sample
of what one brand looks like.
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One of the size shown to the right, although
less then 3 inches long, can hold as much
data as 2900 floppy disks. It is much more
rugged, will retain the data more reliably,
and allow the computer to access this data
many times faster than a floppy. Therefore,
it is a very good substitute for the floppy
drive, which is all but obsolete, and not
furnished as standard equipment on most new
computers. |
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A few years ago, it was predicted that this type of
solid state or
flash memory would take the
place of hard drives, but it hasn’t happened yet. Hard
drives have gotten smaller, the capacity has gotten larger, and they have stayed very inexpensive
so that it
doesn't look like any flash memory will totally take the
place of a hard drive any time soon.
Some hard drive manufacturers
are experimenting with including a large capacity flash
memory chips in the hard drive to be used as a very
large cache, making reading and writing to the hard
drive much faster.
The main advantage of flash memory is that
it is solid state, having no moving parts, uses
practically no energy, and is many times faster than a
hard drive. However, it is the cost difference that
keeps the mechanical hard drive in wide use. Per
megabyte, the hard drive is considerably cheaper. A 4 GB
USB drive can cost over $300, while a hard drive of
equal cost can hold 100 times as much data.
