Petz, I saw an ad in USA Today for a Dell computer with 1.6GHz Pentium 4, 256MB of SDRAM, and a 15" monitor for $699. This is certainly the same price range for Celeron and Duron systems, so the comparison is valid.
These are all dirt cheap chips that sell in dirt cheap systems, and the only people interested in buying them care for two things: megahertz and price. Frankly, if they can find a 1.6GHz Pentium 4 SDRAM system that is similarly priced to a 1.1GHz Duron system, I think the Pentium 4 would offer equal to better performance, and that they should go for it! Who cares of it actually operates 500MHz higher without the performance that one would traditionally come to expect from that difference? The price/performance is still there.
You can still argue the poor IPC of a Pentium 4 and SDRAM system compared to a Duron with DDR, and I won't disagree. Pentium 4 needs a sizable frequency advantage, especially with SDRAM. Although, many people on this thread also try to argue that people should begin thinking beyond megahertz, and that certainly applies in this case. If you erased the frequency labels from a Pentium 4 and Duron system, the Pentium 4 would still offer equal to greater performance. That makes it a better buy, IMHO.
wanna_bmw |
