cheap upgrade - worthwhile?

[cheapster]

I am always on the lookout for inexpensive upgrades to my systems. My oldest system is a MSI 6309 motherboard with a PIII 600E running at 744 MHz (6x124). Newegg is currently offering a Celeron 900 retail processor for about $52 shipped. I have heard that most of the Celeron 900's will reliably overclock to at least 1.1 ghz. (9x124) My question is: would it be worth the $50 or so investment? Would a Celeron 900 or 1.1 gig be faster enough to tell the difference? My PIII has the coppermine core with 256 kb of cache compared to the Celeron's 128 kb. Would the increase in clock speed make up for the smaller cache? It just seemed like it might be a pretty good step up for a fairly nominal investment. I may need to flash the BIOS to get it to recognize the new CPU which I have never tried to do before. Any insight on that? Appreciate any comments or opinions. I was sort of planning to upgrade to an AMD solution, but the new motherboard, ram, power supply and processor sort of got a little too expensive. OF course, I could just leave it alone since it is working just fine, but where is the fun in that? Thanks in advance.
Chuck

[wallie_x]

A Celeron is a castrated P III. There is only one CPU that benchmarks worse than the Smell-ron, the Cyrix M III. Your might as well throw your money in the toilet, the end results being equal.

[Ammok]

On Flashing, i have successfully flashed graphics cards no problem. I flashed an MSI5689 mobo and it never worked again!!

For fifty two dollars, running Sandra and 3Dmark you can tryout your own experiments and let us know the results.
Or have a look in the database for both chips and compare before you splash the cash.
I have got a Piii667 and it is much more robust than the celerons i have at the same speed.None of them overclocked cos they have very cheap mobo's and very crude BIOS.
I recommend you save your money and go for an Athlon. I have always used Intel over AMD for my power machine, although I have some AMD's in my kids machines. But I have just switched to an Athlon 1.4 which is still way cheaper than a P4 and boy is it fun to OC. All I need are some extr fans which I hope to get for Christmas, and I shall be off bragging or Bemoaning depending on if I get a good result or fry another cpu.

[cheapster]

Thanks for the replies. And while I don't necessarily agree with Wallie_x, he is entitled to his opinion! I happen to have a Celeron 600 running at 900 on a MSI-6309 board and it is rock stable and runs everything we have thrown at it. It is pretty much equal to the PIII@744. I figure if I can throw in a Celeron 900 and up the fsb to 133, the 1.2 ghz would be a nice step up. I may have to do it, just so I can report back and show Wally that it is not as bad as he thinks. I will probably have to study up on BIOS flashing first, since my motherboard is a revision 1 and the current BIOS probably won't support the Celeron 900.
Anyone else have any comments?
Chuck

[wallie_x]

I don't recognize the nomenclature of your mobo, but MSI is one of the better ones. If your board is an older one, however, the CMOS where the data is stored does not lend itself well to flashing. There has been improvements since then and newer BIOS's have a much lower incidence of flash failure. Study extensively before any attempt. And know that flash failure means new BIOS=$30 or more. If the risk is high I would opt for a new mobo and Duron.(which is actually a castrated Athlon). I don't know which Duron CPU 's are the most overclockable so do your home work. The fact is, is that a Duron of equal mhz beats the Celeron by as much as 40% in benchmarks. A Shuttle AK31 w/KT266a chipset only costs $80 and its gettting rave reviews. The Durons are as cheap as the Celerons dollar wise. Good luck wallie_x

[wallie_x]

Oops!! On second thought, the Shuttle board is not a good choice. I forgot that it only supports DDR memory and a Duron only runs @ 200mhz FSB. What a lot of cheap people like me have done (but more than a few regreted) is to get an ECS K7S5A which accepts either SDRAM or DDR. The performance is killer for the price D/T the Sis 735 chipset. The board however has limited OC features, but there is an unofficial BIOS availible with some FSB adjustments. Being a lower priced board there has been some quality issues, but many peple like the board, including me. Its benchmarks are excellent. There is also the new K7S6A with numerous OC features and the new Sis 745 chipset coming out very soon, but rev. 1.0 boards usually have the most bugs.

[Giyom]

I wanted to upgrade my system (PIII 700 over a BX chipset)with a KT266A MB and a Athlon XP, but I am still waiting for the new MB carrying the Sis chipset to be available for review.
Nevertheless, does PC2700 RAM provide any improvement over PC2100 with the current Athlon processors ? I understood from ECS press releases that the K7S6A will have 2 flavours, one compatible with DDR 200/266, the other with DDR 333 and I am not sure of the improvement of the new chipset over the KT266A, if used with DDR200/266.
Anyone could share their expectations regarding the new Sis 745 features ? Otherwise I will go for a readily available Epox KT266A MB.

[cheapster]

Just FYI, I went ahead and installed the new Celeron 900 with the retail heatsink, fan and thermal pad. My overclocking efforts were not totally successful, but it is running stable at 120 Mhz fsb for a clock speed of 1.08 gig. Overall I am pleased with the "$50 upgrade", even if the BIOS does think it is a PIII 850 I guess I may still have to try the BIOS flash, just so it will know what it is really running. Sandra knows it is a Celeron running at 1.08, and my benchmarks are improved, so I am a happy camper. For a while, at least.
Chuck

[Kurylo]

Leave your PIII. Celeron don't worth it.