Is the difference in performance between the P4 and the Celeron of similar processing speed significant enough to warrant the higher price? I know that a couple of years ago, Celeron's were a good deal, is that still the case? What's your opinion?

all i know is celron sucks..it is the cheapest crappy cpu you can ever get... you should get amd or p4 instead of celeron.. celeron perform extremely slow and yes there is huge difference between p4 and celeron, celeron only had 128k of L2 cache, that's why its so slow, and on the other side, p4 got 512k of L2 cache which beat the crap out of celeron. P4 is also got a 533FSB you will see the huge differnece when it comes to graphic intensive applications between intel and the celeron. Celeron is more like for those people who cna't afford high end processor or just use the computer for spreadsheet programs like word processing, not for gamers tho.

If you'd like a more objective response to your post, read on... For more routine computer use -- word processing, email, surfing the net, and other applications that don't put huge demands upon the cpu, you can't tell the difference between the AMD or P4 and Celeron chips of roughly equal speed. I speak from experience -- I've got an AMD 1.4 GB and my wife runs an equivalent Celeron, and for what she does (like the above) you can't see any difference between hers and mine. If you are into more complex games, huge spreadsheets and the like, or lots of heavy video or graphics editing stuff, the P4 will perform better.

I agree with Ryan go get a real p4 or AMD (Athlon xp)system , AMD use to have the same thing Duron was like Intel celeron & Athlon xp like Intel P4 cpu. The first system i bought was AMD with a Duron 1.3 GHZ it was not bad , but it makes a big difference when i switch it for a Athlon xp 1700+ (1.467 GHZ) everything when better & faster I know that my Athlon is faster then my Duron (GHZ) but you see the difference once you tryed it. Anyways if you don't have the money right now you can still buy a celeron with a good board & then later change your celeron cpu for a P4 cpu.

The Celeron architecture "bottlenecks" very easily. You can experience this readily just by opening multiple programs at the same time. As stated above, best bet IS to stay away from it. It is cheap for a reason.

While true it does not perform at the level of a high end P4, the average Joe will never notice the difference. Lets face it if one can multitask DreamweaverMX, PSP and Fireworks while surfing with no lag on a p3 700 then say a celeron 1.8 with sufficent RAM will certainly be more than enough for the almost any average user. Jimi_l

this is what i got to say celeron amd sucks get p4 225$ amd are not bad but still get the p4 much batter in colling and performance