My computer right now is getting pretty old (233mhz Pentium MMX) I am looking for an upgrade (a whole new computer). I am on a very tight budget for one, and ebay is not an option. I was looking at some today and I noticed that Intel Celeron computers are a lot less then Pentium 4 computers, is there a reason for this? I do not do much gaming on computers the most advanced I get is The Sims, or Sim City 3000. The reason why I say this because I heard from somebody that they are not good for gaming. So if somebody could tell me if there is something bad about Celrons, it would help me a lot before I got one. Also one last thing I would also like to know how a Intel Celron 2.5Ghz would compare to a 233mhz Pentium MMX? Thank-You

Jesse: Celeron's are Intel's "value line" of CPUs. A Pentium 4 2.5Ghz CPU(if they made one) would run applications faster than a Pentium 4 2.5Ghz Celeron. The Celerons only have 128meg onboard cache, while the regular Pentium 4's have 512meg of onboard cache. Four times as much. The Pentiun 4's also run at a faster FSB speed. These can make provide a big performance boost with CPU intensive applications. You said you do not "do not do much gaming". Provided you also do not do much video editing, Video re-encoding or CAD stuff the celeron should be fine. Any 2.5Ghz CPU would easily blow away a 233mhz Pentium.

That 233 is good to keep as a back up or give away...I wouldn't hesitate to buy a cheap celeron in your situation. You can always do more next year but you really need something newer now. Skip

I build 10 Celeron's to every 1 P4 machine because as you said "money's tight" for many folks. In my opinion Celeron's are the best kept secret in computing. Even heavy gaming or office applications they stand right up with the big guys. In fact the last two machines I did were a Celeron 2.0 400FSB and a P4 2.6GHz 800FSB. The P4 had a fx5600 video card and the Celeron has an fx5200. Running Code of Duty side by side on each they were virtually identical.The same held true for DVD's. As a system builder I can have my pick of the lot and I would own one in a minite. Jimi_l Microsoft OEM system builder #412085 Intel reseller # 10304445 Maxtor VIP Channel Partner # 138988 Western Digital Select Partner

No mention of an AMD XP system? If you're on a budget & want the most bang for your buck, AMD is the way to go...it'll outperform any Celery out there