oppinions please on these cpu's

[stewartmann]

im planing on a low cost upgrade
i know the intel is expensive and the celeron is half the cost of an intel, so i was told in a shop, and a more stable beast. also there is the amd, hell they all crunch numbers but what is the good one?

[AuraEdge]

Celeron is an Intel.

Intel currently makes three chips, the Celeron (533-850Mhz, small cache 66Mhz-100Mhz bus), the Pentium III (500Mhz-1.13Mhz, Large Cache, 100-133Mhz Bus), and the Pentium 4 (1.3Ghz-1.7Ghz, Large cache, 400Mhz bus).

AMD makes two chips right now, and another one is right around the corner. The Duron (600Mhz-900Mhz, small cache, 200Mhz Bus) and the Athlon "Thunderbird" (700Mhz-1.4Ghz, Large cache, 200-266Mhz Bus).

The Pentium shows off some of the best stats here, but doesnt perform nearly as well as it should under normal conditions. This is because it does less per Mhz than any other chip here, such as the Athlon or Pentium III. An Athlon 1.13-1.2Ghz is roughly equal in non-optimized performance to the P4 1.5Ghz.

Athlons the favorite enthusiasts chip. It's fast, cheap, and easy to overclock. Duron is a great bargain chip, because it has everything that the Athlon has except the cache. For extremely bargain prices, Celerons work the best, since there are boards made for it with integrated parts, lowering system costs. For performance, The P4 or Athlon is a great choice, although the P4's total system cost is deemed too high by most to justify buying over the athlon.

If you want a low cost upgrade, I'm assuming you want to just pull out the chip you have and stick a new one in. You'll have to post what board you have to check for compatability; If you select some of these chips, you may have to get a new board because they wont all be compatable.

If you cant post your board, at least post the CPU you currently have.

[stewartmann]

thanks, AuraEdge

board is a Gigabyte GA-6BXC, at the moment its got a 266 in it, very slow by todays standards, and hell i want to put a dvd rom in the beast soon.

might enen think about a new mother board, hell here in Aussie a new Gigabyte board is around the $200 mark.
this is a reasonable board to stick with is it not?

[Dputiger]

I would not stick to Gigabyte if you intend to overclock--Gigabyte's OC offerings are, at best mediocre.

For a good OC board look to ASUS or ABIT. I would also stay away from Intel products--frankly, they have nothing on the market that bests AMD in terms of price/performance ratio.