PIII 550 vs Cel 566/600 - How original

[acts837]

I have been building my own systems for 6 years now but have just recently thought about O/Cing. My main system is:
Retail PIII 550
Abit VT6X4 mobo
256 Crucial cas 3
Matrox G400

After reading through this site & forums for the past week I have decided to venture from the norm! I don't play games...I mainly use graphics programs. I am contemplating selling my pristine 550 on e-Bay and then buying a cely 566 or 600. I would do a PIII 700 but then I wouldn't have enough $$$ to buy my Abit Sloket, Artic Silver, and FOP 32-1.
My question basically boils down to performance. Will I see a big enough increase to justify messing with my extremely stable system?
I am cracking the case anyway to add two more fans as I see that I have been suffocating my case. Sorry for the long post...just wanted to includet all my info.

[Newbie_Doo]

I am very happy with my Celeron2-600 (cB0 stepping). I can run rock stable at 900MHz 24/7 without worry and can at least complete benchmarks at 945. I see a tremendous difference over the performance at 600MHz, most noticeably in apps like Photoshop. I like to play CDs when I am surfing and have been known to have 3 or more browser windows open while also doing photo editing. This taxes the heck out of the system (causes reboots at 945) but at 900, it's not a problem. The cC0 stepping will do even better, so I hear.

FWIW

[Phil]

I would say that if you can get a 600 up to 900mhz then you would see about a 50% performance gain.
I have a cCO 600 at 1.01ghz which I upgraded from a p2 233@350 so for me It was quite a big upgrade, for you I would recomend saving up for the 700 and getting it to 933+ though

[dimmreaper]

I had a P3 500E at 750 for the last couple of months. It was Damn fast for anything you would want to do on a PC (unless your in to application development, or high end 3D graphics). But I just upgraded to a P3 700E at 980 to run folding@home a little faster, and Damn it's a nice setup.

My recomendation. Stick with a P3. The Celeron2's are pretty cripled in comparison to a P3. Even if you can't afford a P3 700E, consider overclocking your 550E, or consider upgrading to a 600E or 650E.

Hope this was what you were looking for :)

[Daniel ~]

Moved post to "Intel CPU's"

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

If that is a PIII 550E with 256k cache, then I would just keep the 550 and clock that, many will do 900mhz, just look at the cpu database.
And if you are into grafics, the stay away from cellies, as they only have 128k cache, and grafics prog's rely heavily on the cache. and by overclocking the 550 to like 900 or so, your memory bandwidth will be significly higher...if it doesn't lockup. but the only way to find out, is to look at your cpu markings, and look at those specs on the cpu database, which you can find from overclockers.com's main page, upper right. check out the successes, and you will get an idea of what works and what won't..and if you must upgrade, then get a cCO 700E, and clock that.
If your's is the one with 256k cache, then I have seen some incredible speeds with that one, and you might want to keep it...it might give what you need without spending $$$$

[acts837]

Unfortunately I have a Katmai 512K. I don't think I want to roast my primary box so I am not going to O/C this one. I do have two other machines that I am going to play with though. Save some $$ and get me a PIII 700 or maybe a 933.