The Intel Celeron 1800 Mhz, Socket 478 processor was and still is a low cost way of building a computer.  Utilizing MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction sets, the processor is able to deliver mildly impressive performance that is best suited for a web browsing computer.  The low on-board cache size of 128Kb reduces the power consumption by the processor but at the same time limits the peak performance of the processor.  The small cache size is made evident when running computer games or trying to crunch SETI at home work units.

I often get requests from friends to upgrade an old computer they have laying around the house.  On a Thursday night, Andy called and asked me to turn his old computer into a streaming media workstation for his television.  First, I placed an HDMI capable video card in the computer so that Andy could watch YouTube on his 46” LCD television.  To make sure the system could process the streaming video and sound, I ran a series of benchmarks on his computer to identify the bottlenecks of his system.  The test runs showed that the processor and motherboard did not have enough memory bandwidth.  My options were to either over clock the processor or replace it with a faster model.  The motherboard was an Intel D845GRG and did not have over clocking abilities.  As a result, my final decision was to replace the processor with a Pentium 4 1600 Mhz because of the larger onboard cache.  As you will see from the benchmarks, the decision made a positive difference in performance.

Performance Testing
To give you an idea of the performance of this processor, I used two different benchmarks:  Super Pi and the BOINC Manager benchmark.  Each of these benchmarks stresses unique aspects of the processor and are heavily dependent on the supporting hardware around the processor like the memory, hard drive and motherboard chipset.  The Celeron 1800 Mhz processor was installed in an Intel D845GRG motherboard with 768 Mbs of memory operating in single channel mode.  Mainly designed as a SDRAM compatible chipset, the peak bandwidth is only 1.067 Gb/s.  The motherboard chipset is very important because some chipsets in the Pentium 4 series support dual channel memory and can even pull fewer watts of power to increase the reliability of the system as a whole. 

Super Pi V1.1 is an application that extrapolates the specified digits of PI into a text file.  Since the task is both processor and file system intensive it can give you an idea of how fast your cpu is.  Processors with large on-die cache sizes and high bus speeds, always tend to do better in this benchmark.  The problem is the calculation is single threaded in this version so you only see the performance of one processor. 

Here are the results of three runs to 1,000,000 digits:
#1; 2 mins 21 seconds
#2; 2 mins 21 seconds
#3; 2 mins 20 seconds

The Boinc Manager benchmark is designed to stress every available thread on your computer to see how many computations per second it can perform.  With the results, the Boinc Manager automatically assigns distributed computing projects to your processors.  The benchmark has been improved by scholars at academic institutions over the period of several years and is now a very reliable metric of modern computing performance.

Here the results of three runs:
#1; 943 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per cpu, 1752 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per cpu
#2; 944 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per cpu, 1730 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per cpu
#3; 937 floating point MIPS (Whetstone) per cpu, 1742 integer MIPS (Dhrystone) per cpu

The Super Pi performance tests show the processor struggles with calculations that require high memory bandwidth and cache.  Yet, the Boinc Manager scores, which are mostly frequency dependent, yielded higher scores.  For comparison the Pentium 4 1600 Mhz with 256Kb of cache in the same motherboard had a Super Pi score of 2 minutes 13 seconds and a Boinc score of 842/1752. 

Specifications
Processor Core: Willamette-128
CPU Cores: 1
Hyperthreading: No
Frequency (Mhz):  1800
Bus Speed (Mhz):  400
Clock Multiplier (Mhz): 18
Dimensions:  1.38” x 1.38”
Socket 478 (mPGA478b)
Data width: 32 bit
Level 1 cache size:  12 k execution trace cache, 8 kb data cache
Level 2 cache size:  128 Kb on-die cache
Instruction sets:  MMX, SSE, SSE2
S-Spec:  SL68D, SL6A2
You can find this processor under the following Intel part numbers:  RK80531RC033128, BX80531P180G128

Terminology
If you are new to computers, you will see a lot of unfamiliar terms in this review.  Here are a few definitions to make your life a little easier: 
Hyperthreading is Intel’s term for simultaneous multithreading in the Pentium 4 CPU.  A processor with hyperthreading enabled is treated by the operating system as two processors instead of one.
Whetstone is a synthetic benchmark for evaluating the performance of computers.  The Whetstone was created to defeat compiler optimizations in the 1970’s and has since become a standard metric of performance because some of the earliest mainframes used it to analyze their own computing potential.

Summary
Andy was happy with the upgraded computer processor and video card.  The high definition YouTube content looked outstanding on his 46” LCD television with the audio being feed in digitally over the HDMI cable.  We were both excited because I was able to replace his old processor with a Pentium 4 and save him hundreds of dollars in the process.  While, Andy may have not known why the Celeron did not work his computer, he was still wise enough to realize that a simple upgrade could solve his problems.

The Intel Celeron 1.8Ghz processor is one of the lowest performing processors available in the Socket 478 line.  The 400Mhz bus rate of the processor reduces memory bandwidth which bottlenecks your gaming or SETI crunching performance.  A better alternative to the Celeron processor would be an Intel Pentium 4 which has a larger on-chip cache to reduce the need for calls to the RAM in your computer.  The Celeron is still the lowest cost CPU available for the Intel Socket 478 motherboard and over clocking can quickly overcome its deficiencies.

Recommended: No