P2 or Celeron?

Here's an old one for you guys. Due to an un-protected power surge, I no longer have a computer, (board and cpu dead), so I am on my parents system, (in sig). Well this system is driving me insane, mainly because of the ALI chipset being incompatible with ALL NVIDIA GFX CARDS. So I went looking in local comp stores and one store has a Slot 1 440BX motherboard and 2 CPU's, a Celeron 300A (I know they OC good), and a Pentium 2 333. Which would be better for low end gaming, (to hold me over until I save for a new P4 sys)? The guy at the local comp store said that he would trade me, straight across for my K6-2 board and CPU, for one of the CPU's and the 440BX board. Both CPU's use a 66Mhz FSB.

Use the P2 it has a much better l2 512 cache as far as I can recall from using those cpu's it will outweigh the benifit of using the 128k l2 cache on the celeron at 450mhz (o/c'd) and you may be able to raise the fsb of the p2 to say 83 or something if your mb will support that change or even 100 fsb if the cpu will do it.

But don't forget that the Celeron's L2 cache is full speed, where as the P2's cache is half speed. Would that make much diff?

BUMP
Anyone else have any input?

If you run them at stock, the PII 333 will be slightly faster than the celeron 300A. If you're going to oc, I'll go for the celeron since the oc potential is higher.

So the 512KB of cache makes little difference over 128KB? I thought the 512KB would be a big deal...

Some of the P2-333's are very good overclockers. Check my sig.

I have been looking up P2 specs and it turns out that the P2 300 and 333 cpu's run 150 Mhz cache. I am trying to figure out if gaming would be better on the Celeron or P2. I know when comparing the P4 and P4-Celeron, the Celeron is severly limited by it's lack of cache, so wouldn't that apply here?
Also, the P2 300's seem to be unlocked by default.

Update
I went down to the comp store with the CPU's, and the guy there told me that he already tested the Celeron and it will do 450 Mhz (100 Mhz FSB) at stock voltage, no problem. Now I'm just waiting for a Slot 1 mobo....

performance difference between a pentium 2 and a celeron is 0

I think that the 512 of cache will make more of a difference than you might think if you are using the comp for anything other than gaming. Where the cache is a negetive is for trying to OC the chip. Those PII's with all of the cache didnt always OC very well, as the cache gets hot and prevents the cpu from OC'ing very high. I think that you will just have to try each chip for youself and see. Try the PIII for a week and see how it does, then try the Celeron for a week and report back to us and tell us what you find out. I do know that the Celeron has a good chance of hitting 100 fsb and maybe then being the chip that you decide on.

Well I have already been told that the Celeron will do 100 FSB (450Mhz) by the guy at the comp store, (he tested the chip himself). As for the Pentium 2, I am skeptical about that CPU oc'in very high, since my luck with oc'in is pretty bad. I am just gonna get the Celeron, I think.

go for the p2, cache makes a huge difference

The P-II has 512k L2 cache that runs at half speed. The Celeron 300a has 128k L2 cache that runs at full speed. If you have both running at the exact same clock speed, then it's close to a draw (the P-II will edge out the Celeron in some benchmarks). The P-II has more cache, but it's slower. The Celly has faster speed cache, but it's smaller. However, the Celerons "typically" overclock better, so if you can overclock the Celeron significantly faster than the P-II, then the Celeron will have better performance. Business apps benefit more from the larger cache than most games. If that P-II will run at 500 (100 FSB) then I would lean towards that direction. However, many of those P-II 333 won't run that fast. Therefore, I'd probably get the Celeron 300a. I had one of those on an Abit BH6 mobo several years ago and I loved it. Overclock it to 450 (or maybe even 504 with good cooling and a little luck), then match it up with plenty of RAM and a good vid card and it'll do ok until you can save up for a better system.