It depends on the applications you're running. For ordinary office work, browsing the Net, etc., there won't be an enormous difference.

For gaming, calculation-intensive work (CAD, modeling, spreadsheets, databases), the difference will be far more pronounced.

The Celeron D is generally comparable the a Northwood Pentium IV while current PIVs are built on the Prescott core and have more cache a deeper pipeline and are signifigantly faster at some task. If you plan to do anything CPU intensive (gaming, video editing, etc...) spring for the PIV, you won't regret it.

Message Edited by ravik521 on 12-02-2005 06:54 PM

Pentium 4 Celeron - 0128k cache
Pentium 4 Celeron D - 0256k cache
Pentium 4 Wilamette - 0256k cache
Pentium 4 Northwood - 0512K cache
Penitum 4 Prescott E - 1024K cache

More cache does not always translate into better performance.
Its more like marketing. Prescott has a bigger pipeline so even with bigger cache the northwood works faster. Celeron D appears to be based on the prescott core.

Celeron D also has 90 micron process and 533mhz FSB vs 400 and the 31 pipelines like the prescott. Also like the prescott SSE3 - 13 new meaingless instructions (more marketing).

Overall when you combine a Celeron D with 1024K of Ram and a Good Video card it performs as well or better than older Pentium4 systems that are under 2.0A Northwood Spec.

Its a good Budget Chip just like the tualatin Celeron was.

Speedstep "Its a good Budget Chip just like the tualatin Celeron was. " what was the "tualatin Celeron"????