celeron D

I was gunna put together a a64 system, but it is gunna exceed my budget. Im not really a hardcore gamer, I only play America's army, my o/ced 1.3Ghz celeron isnt cutting it anymore. I wanted to throw together a sub $200 celeron D system to hold me over till I am in a position to build a nice new system. I was looking at the celeron D 2.6Ghz, unknown mobo and at least 512Mb of ram, the other things I'll scavenge from my current system.

I'd like to clock the celeron to 3.6Ghz if possible.
so its a celeron d 2.6Ghz and thats what like $90?

is it possible to get a mobo/512MB ram for the other $110?

Alrite, so i was thinking a celeron d 2.4Ghz and an ABit IS7 mobo and 512MB of Ramses CL 2.5 DDR 400 ram. So I'd run the cpu at 3600 (800 x 4.5). How u think that'll all work together? I'd prob need a d0 stepping for the celeron, anyplace i can get that?

Well, a celeron D will be a good improvment over your current setup. One thing to realise though is that what you want "run the cpu at 3600 (800 x 4.5)" doesn't work like that. The Celeron D's are 533 FSB, whcih is quad data rate, so the actual fsb is 133 and the 2.4 will have locked multiplier of 18. So the oly way you can overclock it is to up the FSB from 133, you cannot change the multi. You will also need to figure in on a new cpu cooler as well if you want to Oc that cpu. Its based on the prescott core whcih is a hot cpu and won't be safe to Oc on the stock heatsink. If you can get it up to a 166FSB (667 QDR) then it will be around 3GHz, which won't be too bad. The higher you want to clock that cpu, the better your ram will need to be and the more its gonna cost you. But you should be able to pick up some low cost PC3200 which is good for 200MHz and it should do good with a Celeron D.

Here's some options from Newegg:

Celeron 2.4D $73
CHAINTECH "SPT800 Summit" $48
BUFFALO B-Line 512MB DDR PC-3200, Model MS4002-512MB - OEM $64

Total: $185


Abit KV7 Kt600 $54
Athlon XP 2500+ $83
BUFFALO B-Line 512MB DDR PC-3200, Model MS4002-512MB - OEM $64

Total: $201

I would lean for the Athlon XP, even with a locked multi it should be able to hit 2GHz easy even with a KT600 board. Also, what is your video card now? That could be an even bigger bottleneck than your cpu.

It will be hard to get a mobo, CPU, and RAM for $200. The Abit IS7-E2 is the cheapest mobo I can think of that is a decent overclocker. I would also go with a Celeron D 2.26 because it's cheaper and has a much lower multiplier (that way you can run higher FSB). So, CPU and mobo is $150. Halfway decent 2X256 PC3200 RAM will probably be $70 to $75 (maybe less if you can find a good deal used). That puts you over budget a little, but that should allow an easy 3.4 gig overclock with 1:1 memory ratio (maybe more with good cooling and a little luck). Pretty good for a $225 budget system.

Buy a used XP proccessor get a shuttle nforce2 mobo........celerons SUCK!~

Celerons don't have a good reputation even with Intel folks, but the Celeron D is not bad. All of them should be D0 steppings and capable of 3.6 gig with good cooling. The 533 versions have lower multipliers. The "D" version has double the cache compared to the Northwood Celerons. Another option is a nforce 2 mobo and AMD mobile 2500/2600, but it's probably not going to be cheaper.

I had the same desire as you, so during Thanksgiving weekend I took advantage of Newegg's sale price on the Celeron-D 2.4Ghz for $67. The best motherboard for it I found is an Intel 865 chipset based one, the Asus P4P800SE for $89. If you want onboard firewire and extra ATA133 ports you can get the deluxe version for $15 more. I also got some Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound and 2 sticks of Kingston DDR400 (PC3200) 256MB DDR RAM (total 512MB dual channel) for a grand total close to $250. Though I also upgraded my power supply to a Thermatake 420W model on sale for $34 with free shipping - it was better than I expected, has dual fans and even came with free adaptors for 20->24 pin for the future. I went with 478pin socket, but Asus also has an 865-based motherboard for a similar price with the new LGA778p socket and there is a few Celeron-D's in LGA now too, allowing for easy upgrade in the future to P4s since the 478pin's might all disappear next year - but you need the 24pin power connector from the power supply for LGA. I easily overclocked to 3.6Ghz = 200Mhz*18 for a 1:1 DDR400 RAM clock. I would say its not necessary to spend more for a faster Celeron-D since they all will probably hit a limit of around 3.6-3.8Ghz and the 2.4Ghz model gives a perfect 1:1 RAM clock for that speed and is cheaper. On all the benchmark programs I've run its beating AMD Athlon XPs and 3Ghz P4s that cost 3-4x as much. If I could afford an extra $100-150 I'd get an AMD Athlon64 939 pin setup (the only one with dual channel memory and lowest power consumption/heat).

Hey thanks for the update and about the FSB and such, I'm a bit outdated on the O/Cin scene. right now I have a 9600Xt 256Mb o/ced to 580Mhz/320Mhz. I would go with at Athlon 64, but I want to wait on the PCI-express mobos and for the technology to be on the market a good few months b4 i invest in it, thats why Im tryin to build a budget system and scavenge some parts from my old. I really only play America's Army and AVP2, but America's Army needs more cpu than I got right now, fps dropping to like 15 in some battles no matter what my resolution. So you guys have given me some good advice that I will take into consideration. Feel free to add anymore opinions, thanks.