"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.
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.

-- 
Margus Ramst

Personal e-mail: mar### [at] peakeduee
TAG (Team Assistance Group) e-mail: mar### [at] tagpovrayorg
Home page http://www.hot.ee/margusrt

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"Greg M. Johnson" wrote:
> 
> Anyone know the difference between a:
> 
> AMD Athlon
> Pentium III
> Intel Celeron
> 
> for similar speed?

Athlon (and its little brother, Duron) is probably best of the three, at least
in POV-Ray.
Pentium III should be similar in terms of performance, but costs quite a bit
more than an equivalent Athlon.
Celeron, while probably a reasonable performer in POV, is by now widely regarded
as overpriced and underpowered. It recently experienced a mild facelift
(migrating to a 100MHz bus speed), but in my opinion that's too little too late.

If you want a good machine for POV-Ray, I'd recommend the following:
Athlon "Thunderbird" for best performance (currently goes up to 1.2 GHz)
Athlon "Duron" for best value (currently up to 850 MHz)
The P III is also a solid processor if you've got money to burn. It reputedly
has less compatibility problems than Athlon (although I've had no trouble with
my Duron).
I don't recommend the Celeron; nor do I recommend the new Pentium 4, at least
until system prices drop and optimized software becomes available.

-- 
Margus Ramst

Personal e-mail: mar### [at] peakeduee
TAG (Team Assistance Group) e-mail: mar### [at] tagpovrayorg
Home page http://www.hot.ee/margusrt

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"Greg M. Johnson" 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?   It goes against my
> intuition, or at least my cynical view that it's not that simple.

Indeed it should. That's not what he means. "Statistics" are easily abused by
people who don't understand the math or do well and can use it to their benefit.
Marketing people know how to do that. Like the Pentium IV; more MHz but same
megaflops, or RDRAM, faster transfer but slower access, or those supposed "40x"
cd-roms that take five seconds to spin up and misread (ie reread) data... people
like numbers. Americans are the worst when it comes to that...

--
David Fontaine  <dav### [at] faricynet>  ICQ 55354965
My raytracing gallery:  http://davidf.faricy.net/

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"Greg M. Johnson" wrote:

> Anyone know the difference between a:
>
> AMD Athlon
> Pentium III
> Intel Celeron
>
> for similar speed?

You have 'em in order. Any of the new AMDs should give POV a significant
boost over Intel for equivalent MHz, and those all come in the same
range (Athlon and PIII up to around 1.2GHz I believe). The Pentium IV
allows clock speeds much higher but actually does less per cycle IIRC,
so in the end a high-end PIV is probably slower rendering than a
high-end PIII. My advice, go for AMD. (And for equivalent MHz the mac
chips waste any of them, but they don't come nearly as fast in MHz; I'm
pretty sure the fastest PC chips still beat the fastest mac chips. But
macs don't count. ;)

--
David Fontaine  <dav### [at] faricynet>  ICQ 55354965
My raytracing gallery:  http://davidf.faricy.net/

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Christoph Hormann wrote:
BTW, the German c't magazine regularly publishes Povray benchmark results

> for all CPUs.
>
> Christoph
>

Is this information posted on the web?
...Chambers

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David Fontaine wrote:
<snip>

supposed "40x"
> cd-roms that take five seconds to spin up and misread (ie reread) data... people
> like numbers. Americans are the worst when it comes to that...

Oh yeah!?!?  Where are your numbers to PROVE that!

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Dearmad wrote:

> > supposed "40x"
> > cd-roms that take five seconds to spin up and misread (ie reread) data... people
> > like numbers. Americans are the worst when it comes to that...
>
> Oh yeah!?!?  Where are your numbers to PROVE that!

Ok, change it to "I get the impression Americans are the worst when it comes to
that..."

--
David Fontaine  <dav### [at] faricynet>  ICQ 55354965
My raytracing gallery:  http://davidf.faricy.net/

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oh play coy with me... as if you didn't get it... sure... yeah right...


-- 
http://www.teleport.com/~dearmad

But why bother?  I'm not interesting.

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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)

-- 
Francois Labreque | Unfortunately, there's no such thing as a snooze
    flabreque     | button on a cat who wants breakfast.
        @         |      - Unattributed quote from rec.humor.funny
   videotron.ca

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

I totally agree; I was talking specifically about the 3 processors he named,
Celeron, PII & PIII

> The main difference between a Celeron and a "true" PII or PIII is the
> lack of onchip cache

Current Celerons do have onchip L2 cache, but it's smaller than that of
PII/PIII.

-- 
Margus Ramst

Personal e-mail: mar### [at] peakeduee
TAG (Team Assistance Group) e-mail: mar### [at] tagpovrayorg
Home page http://www.hot.ee/margusrt

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