Margus Ramst wrote:
> 
> "Greg M. Johnson" wrote:
> >
> > Warp wrote:
> >
> > > If rendering speed (with povray) is the same, then it really doesn't
> > > matter which CPU you use :)
> >
> > Do you really mean that a 450 MHz Pentium II is as fast as a 450 MHz Pentium
> > III,  Celeron, etc., as far as povray rendering time?
> 
> Believe or not, the above is usually true for the three processors you named.
> In my experience, the main factor in POV performance is the processor's FPU
> (Floating Point Unit), the part of the processor which handles math-intensive
> computations such as - surprise - raytracing. The three processors you mention
> all belong to the same family of processors (which also includes the old Pentium
> Pro, but not Pentium IV). As such they have all but identical floating point
> units.

Not really.  The FPU of the Athlon is a lot better than that of a PII or
PIII at the same clock speed.  

I take Ken's side on the issue, go for the Athlon.

> I used to have a Celeron myself, and its POV benchmarks were practically equal
> to those of Pentium II / Pentium III at the same clock speed.

The main difference between a Celeron and a "true" PII or PIII is the
lack of onchip cache, so the speed difference with FPU intensive apps
tends to be less noticeable than with "regular" use, which is moving
gigaglobs of memory in and out of the cache (as is word-processing or
sheet-spreading)

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