Duron 800 Mobile vs Pentium III? or Sempron 2400 instead?

[IsaacKuo]

I'm thinking of getting a budget mobo/cpu for a silent workstation. One that I'm looking at is a $75 mobo/cpu bundle at newegg:

Newegg Duron 800 Mobile CPU/mobo bundle

I assume that a Duron 800mhz "Mobile" should generate low/moderate amounts of heat, right?

My main concern is whether or not it offers sufficient computing power for my needs. I'm currently using a slot 1 Pentium III at 550mhz. It is a bit sluggish, and not quite fast enough to play all video files smoothly. My wife's 800mhz Pentium III computer IS fast enough to play video files smoothly.

So, megahertz for megahertz, is a Duron comparable to or faster than a Pentium III?

Also, I'm going to be running this computer with very low airflow for the sake of silence. Does a Duron "Mobile" cpu have some form of built in overheating protection? I'd rather the CPU throttle or even automatically shut down than for it to fry itself or to fiddle with a thermally controlled fan.

Another option I'm looking at is this $65 Sempron 2400 mobo/cpu bundle at Fry's Outpost:

Fry's Sempron 2400 cpu/mobo bundle

A Sempron 2400 should be about twice as fast as a Duron 800, right? With this option, there should be plenty of computing power, but I'm worried it isn't as suitable for silence. Does a Sempron have some form of internal overheating protection? As above, I'd rather the CPU throttle itself than fry itself.

Thanks!

[kesv]

So, megahertz for megahertz, is a Duron comparable to or faster than a Pentium III?

It's roughly in the same performance class. However the Duron had a smaller cache (iirc). This means it probably looses to a P3 on some benchmarks. I'm not familiar with the mobile version of Duron, can't comment on that specifically.

A Sempron 2400 should be about twice as fast as a Duron 800, right? With this option, there should be plenty of computing power, but I'm worried it isn't as suitable for silence. Does a Sempron have some form of internal overheating protection? As above, I'd rather the CPU throttle itself than fry itself.

I believe the overheating protection employed by AMD requires support from the motherboard to work. Not all MBs implement this (afaik).

Is this really a problem ? Unless you are trying for totally passive airflow it's unlikely you will fry the CPU. A good heatsink even with a fan at 5v should cool the chip enough that it shouldn't be damaged if it does run a little hot.

I'd go with the Sempron option. Its thermal design power shows a maximum of 62W, but it shouldn't come even close to that in normal use. I happen to have an Athlon XP 1800+ which is clocked at 1.5Ghz and it's thermal characteristics are similar if not a little worse than those of that Sempron, since it's an older stepping. I've managed to quiet it down regardless.

My advice is, get a good heatsink and a fanmate. Then you just start to crank the voltage down bit by bit while monitoring the temperature. You should be able to achieve a level where you have acceptable temperatures and relative silence.

My experience is that the CPU fan is not the biggest problem once you do the above. PSU and case fans are usually much more pronounced. Also remember to eliminate vibrations by decoupling fans from the chassis. Also decouple the PSU and harddrives while you are at it.

[IsaacKuo]

Thanks for the info! I'm leaning toward the Sempron, for the extra performance.

However, I am going for absolute silence, not just merely quiet. I've already done quiet. No matter what, I'm NOT going to increase fan speed just to cool the CPU sufficiently. Either the computer works when absolutely silent, or the project has failed.

This will be a single fan system--one flipped undervolted 80mm fan in the PSU blowing air through the CPU heatsink via a duct. There won't be any case fans or other fans to generate extra noise. The hard drive will be a heavily encased Western Digital Scorpio--absolutely put-your-ear-up-to-it silent.

The main noise producer will be the undervolted 80mm fan. This fan will be exposed at the rear of the PSU, and at 5volts it is definitely audible if you put your ear up next to it. However, it will be absolutely silent with the computer case in its planned position (between the desk and a wall).

The main bad thing about this fan is that it doesn't put out much airflow. But it's my quietest fan, so it's the one I'm going to use.

I'm not sure what heat sink to get, if any. I'd be willing to pay maybe $5-$10 for one, at most. This is a budget system, after all. It seems that most of the heat sinks I've looked at are only for Athlon 64 and not Socket A (or whatever a Sempron is--I am confused with AMD stuff).

Fry's Outpost doesn't have any detailed information about the motherboard. I'm just going to hope it has overheating protection. However, if I fry the thing, I won't feel too much worse. Either it can survive reliably on the low airflow of my undervolted fan, or it was a waste of money to begin with.

[kesv]

I'm not sure what heat sink to get, if any. I'd be willing to pay maybe $5-$10 for one, at most. This is a budget system, after all. It seems that most of the heat sinks I've looked at are only for Athlon 64 and not Socket A (or whatever a Sempron is--I am confused with AMD stuff).

You can't have it both ways. If you are going for lowest airflow, you need to invest in the heatsink to make it possible. Also you will probably want to consider the motherboard carefully. A motherboard that would let you undervolt and underclock your CPU would be best for what you intend.

Semprons come in two flavors. One is basically an Athlon XP (Socket A) and the other is an Athlon 64 with smaller cache and with 64bit features disabled (afaik). I believe the one in the package you linked earlier was a Socket A model.

Either it can survive reliably on the low airflow of my undervolted fan, or it was a waste of money to begin with.

You have an interesting conflict here. You are willing to risk losing the whole system, but on the other hand you want to save money at every turn.

Now I'm not trying to tell you that it's impossible to get an ultraquiet system on the cheap. I'm just pointing out, that saving on *everything* is not the best strategy to achieve your goal. You have to evaluate very carefully how each component affects your chances of keeping things quiet.

If you have the ability to undervolt the CPU and a very good heatsink your overall chances of success will increase.

[IsaacKuo]

You can't have it both ways. If you are going for lowest airflow, you need to invest in the heatsink to make it possible. Also you will probably want to consider the motherboard carefully. A motherboard that would let you undervolt and underclock your CPU would be best for what you intend.

I hear what you're saying. If I go that route, then I'm abandoning the "budget" principle and I may as well go for an A64 or something (along with a nice heat pipe based cooler and investing in some SPCR recommended fans). I'm hard pressed to justify the expense, though.

Semprons come in two flavors. One is basically an Athlon XP (Socket A) and the other is an Athlon 64 with smaller cache and with 64bit features disabled (afaik). I believe the one in the package you linked earlier was a Socket A model.

Yes, socket A. Which leads me to heat sink confusion, because the better ones seem to be for A64 rather than socket A.

Either it can survive reliably on the low airflow of my undervolted fan, or it was a waste of money to begin with.

You have an interesting conflict here. You are willing to risk losing the whole system, but on the other hand you want to save money at every turn.

If the system is inexpensive enough, then I won't feel so bad if it breaks.

Now I'm not trying to tell you that it's impossible to get an ultraquiet system on the cheap. I'm just pointing out, that saving on *everything* is not the best strategy to achieve your goal. You have to evaluate very carefully how each component affects your chances of keeping things quiet.

If you have the ability to undervolt the CPU and a very good heatsink your overall chances of success will increase.

Hmm...maybe I should go with the (Mobile?) Duron mobo/CPU bundle. From the customer reviews, it has a Morgan core and can be overclocked to 1+ghz. From what I've been able to comprehend from reviews, the "Morgan" core is a very good thing, performance-wise. The fact that customers were able to overclock it suggests that it can also be underclocked if I find it necessary to control heat. Also, the heatsink it comes with looks very big and beefy, compared to the Sempron's shallower heatsink.

I can't determine diddly-squat about the Sempron's bundled mobo. I'll bet it has minimal capabilities.

[wsc]

Isaac,

IMHO you need to get your priorities set. After reading your posts I can't tell what is most important to you about this system. Speed, silence, cost... pick two (unless you get lucky and find a great sale or something). Also in my experience the CPU is the easiest to cool quietly. For example my system has higher heat output than any CPU you are considering but even turning my CPU fan off totally does not make any audible difference once the case is closed. This is using a cheapo $15 Arctic Cooling HSF. All IMHO anyway. Goodluck...

[IsaacKuo]

My priorities are:

1. Silence
2. Cost
3. Speed

However, there's a minimum speed below which is unacceptable. I have a VIA C3 800mhz which I'm not using because it was so much slower than I had expected. My current workstation - a 550mhz PIII - runs circles around it. Even my 400mhz PIII laptop runs circles around it. I don't know what an 800mhz C3 does with all those CPU cycles, but I can hardly dare to call it "computing".

My wife's 800mhz PIII is an acceptable upgrade in speed from my 550mhz PIII, so that's why I was curious about how fast a Duron is compared to a PIII at the same clock speed.

Obviously, if the Sempron were easy to run silently, then it's a better choice--it costs less and is much faster. However, the impression I get now is that it's not necessarily easy to run silently.

[mathias]

A morgan core is not good. It's much better than a spitfire core, but with a duron you should want an applebred core. A sempron with a thouroughbred core is very similar, except applebred durons have a stock voltage of 1.5, while socket A semprons are all 1.65V or 1.6V.

[kesv]

My priorities are:

1. Silence
2. Cost
3. Speed

Since you want to have it low cost, I'll suggest this for a hsf:
http://www.glacialtech.com/pdf/Igloo%202470%20Light.pdf

Still, that costs around 15EUR here, so it's more expensive than you said you wanted to spend. I doubt you will find anything better with a lower price unless you happen to get a great deal.

I wont claim that this is the best hsf around and I doubt their 19db claim for the fan, but I think their hsf combos are pretty good when you consider price/performance ratios.

[niels007]

I'd say get the sempron, and an undervoltable board. At 133mhz bus or even 100, it will outperform the duron and still be faster. The core is actually a Thoroughbred B, which undervolt nicely. A normal heatsink and slow fan should be more than enough.

[wsc]

Isaac,

I think you would benefit the most if you outlined a budget you are comfortable spending on your new gear. IMO we aren't going to be much help without knowing what ballpark we're playing in here.. There are just too many options out there otherwise..

[alleycat]

I've got a VIA C3 933MHz system which is 'passively' cooled with just the airflow from an undervolted Panaflo in the PSU. I'm planning to upgrade this system during the next week to a Pentium III 800EB. I'll swap the fan for a Nexus and perhaps use a Fanmate to control its speed. When I get some results I will let you know how successful it is.

[mb2]

it is possible to handle several priorites at once.. for me i had;
low cost, quietness, speed *and* small size.. and i have pretty much met them all. i would have to have gone fairly extreme in any of these categories to see a decent improvement in them, but that would have been at the cost of the other 3 or atleast two in a big way. the thing is that is does require a *lot* of research (or the help of someone who has done that) and perhaps a bit of patience too.

first off.. i wouldn't advise either of those CPU+mobo bundles.. they are usually where u find all the POS motherboards and aren't likely to have any bios options for multiplier, (much for) fsb, or voltages, which are important in getting the best power and silence. (if ur mobo sucks) u can set these with wire tricks but u will only be able to (want to) set it once or a very rarely (requires remvoing of CPU and heatsink).. u may be able to use utilities such as 'CPU FSB' to find how far it can go stably for a certain voltage, if ur motherboard is supported (lotts are).
i would still advise that u get a separate motherboard however, which supports 200fsb, and has atleast some voltage adjustments and multi.
along with this get an unlocked CPU, i'd proably suggest a T-bred B 1700+/1800+ which runs at default 1.5v (not all do), or a 1400+/1600+/1800+ applebred duron.
for (both of?) the above ebay is a good place.

for the sort of heatsink budget u want to work with the best i can think of would be this.. there is also a versoin available with fan (and fanmate), aswell as an Al/copper combination version..
i would probably advise that u get a fan on it and run it at its starting voltage (2 fanmates required for the default fan), which will likely be quieter than ur fan @5v, and may (depending on the quality of ur duct?) make a very big difference in cooling.

a duron 800 should be comparable to a 800mhz p3 [is it 100 or 133fsb thou?]
here compares duron 800 and p3 800.
an unlocked cpu (along with decent motherboard /wire tricks) will mean that u can run at whatever speed u want (underclocked, overclocked, stock) but u can run at 200mhz (400) fsb- giving u more performance per mhz with no extra heat on the CPU. i would think a duron @ 4x200 would outperform and feel alot snappier than a p3 @ 8x100.

if u must go for one of those bundles then i'd say the sempron.. if u need low power then u can set it to 100fsb (as its multipllier locked) and 1.45v (lowest avaiable by wire tricks) then according to 'CPU power' it will be ~28w (@ 1GHZ). which is probably within the margin of error of the mobile duron 800's wattage.
as far as OCing, the only thing i can add is that 1ghz mobile durons (same core?) would OC to just about 1.4ghz, but not a bit over no matter what was done.

if u can consider possibly spending a little more then it may be worth ur while to look into the S754 sempron 2600+
a mobile celeron (p4 based.. @ebay) might be something to consider also.

another possibility might be to upgrade the wifes pc to a sempron (with no need to silence/undervolt it), and steal her p3 if u find that enough power and think u can silence it fairly easily?

also (finally!) u might be able to eek out better performance from ur p3 550 by using better software.. 98 lite (@ litepc.com) u may want to look at, and make sure ur using an efficient media player.. cant remember what is best (WMP 6 or BSplayer maybe? or MPC?) but if u are using WMP 7 + then u will def see gains by changing.

[IsaacKuo]

Wow, thanks for all the info! My budget that I was hoping for would have been less than $100 (US), but perhaps that's just hopelessly unrealistic.

At this point, I'm going to avoid either of the two bundles I had been looking at. I'm going to keep shopping around, now that I have a better idea what cores I should be looking for.

I still don't know what happens when you overheat an AMD processor. I know that a Pentium 4 will throttle itself gracefully rather than frying, so that might be a deciding factor for me to go with a P4Celeron (Northwood). The AMD situation seems so complex.

I might be able to get my hands on a friend's old socket 478 motherboard. That would mitigate the cost of a P4 Celeron CPU. I might even splurge on another Scythe Heatlane heatsink, since I don't have to factor in the potential costs of buying another new CPU (to replace a fried CPU).

[niels007]

You are a victim of the Tomshardware video where they took the heatsink off which the P4 survived and the Athlon XP didn't.. If you plan to take the heatsink off, yes a P4 is safer!

Normally though, with a heatsink in place, the processor will get unstable, making windows / applications crash. This happens long before real damage is done to the chip, unless the case falls from the desk to the floor, ripping the heatsink off.. This will then destroy some other parts like graphics card or RAM, and your harddisk will be dead as well..

So unless you are planning to play frisbee with your computer, the p4 vs amd 'for safety' argument is not really an existing one.

[wsc]

So unless you are planning to play frisbee with your computer, the p4 vs amd 'for safety' argument is not really an existing one.

Yep, I found that out the hard way. Accidentally turned my fan off during a torture test and the system just clicked off once the die temp got high enough.

[wsc]

Isaac I had another thought. You can snag 800 Mhz P3's on ebay in both socket and slot type for pretty cheap. I think at 800 Mhz they only put out something like 20W so you would have little problems with finding a quiet cooling solution. Given your priorities and budget constraints, that is exactly how I would solve the problem.

[IsaacKuo]

Yeah, I'll look at upgrading my slot-1 PC, for now. I have a friend who's more technically knowledgable and he can help me figure out how fast of a PIII my motherboard could support.

Thanks, all!

[alleycat]

Don't forget to check power and thermal specs for each processor you look at. You will notice that above 800Mhz the TDP starts to increase at a greater rate, and for many processors the thermal design temperature decreases, which means an increase in cooling requirements. I chose the P3 800EB (socket 370) because it seems like the high end of the sweet spot for these parameters. See Processor Electrical Specifications for details.

[alleycat]

Well I've just installed the PIII 800MHz, and although I can't see a lot of performance difference from the VIA C3 (probably because my main rig is a P4), the good news is that temperatures are almost the same. I'm using the same heatsink (a basic Al HS with fan removed) and the 80mm Nexus fan in the PSU is the only active cooling in the whole system.