which cpu is faster for seti, celeron 2.2 or p4 1.5?

[CryptokiD]

i have a file server i am just finishing up building. its an older system but its perfect for serving files on my lan, and its going to be on 24/7 so i thought i would install seti@home on it.

i have 2 cpu choices from my box of spare cpu's.

1: celeron "northwood" 2.2ghz 400fsb 128L2 cache
2: pentium4 "willamette" 1.5ghz 400fsb 256L2 cache

the celery has the mhz advantage by 700mhz, but the pentium has twice the L2. both run at the same fsb.

system has 512mb of pc2100 ddr.

 

[benbaked]

My vote between those two is the Celeron, it should overclock much higher then the Willamette and I believe the increased clock speeds that the Northwood should be capable of will outweigh the benefits of the older chip's larger cache.

 

[CryptokiD]

its an oem system, i cant o/c it though.

 

[4GHZ_or_bust]

check eBay, there are many socket 478 motherboard you could get for under $30 shipped and many of them can offer overclocking capabilities.

Even then, these CPU still won't do much credit. When I ran stock BOINC (no optimizations) on a 2.4GHz P4, I was averaging 30 credit a day. CUDA isn't available on AGP card at all and I don't think you can find a cheap s478 board with PCI-e slots if any exists. At bare minimum config with decent PSU (not cheap power guzzling PSU) you'd be looking at around $10 a month extra in electric bill.

 

[QuietIce]

I'm voting #1. I think the 50% difference in speed will win out.

My old 2100+ made about 250 cobblestones per day before the power surge got it and since your rig will be running 24/7 anyway you may as well put it to good use ...!

 

[CryptokiD]

i actually got it to o/c by physically removing one of the bsel pins on the bottom of the cpu, thus making it a 133fsb unit. going from 2.2ghz to 2.9 is a nice jump.