Folding: P4 -vs- Celeron

SimGuy

Battle of the Intel CPU's on folding

My question I pose to all of you folding "guru's" out there: How does the Socket 478 version of the "Celeron" processor fold in relation to a similarly clocked Pentium 4?

Does the L2 cache really play that much of a deal in FPU calculations?

Would it be worth the extra money to purchase a slower P4 (ie 1.6A) then a higher-clocked Celeron (ie 2.4)?

I'm trying to get this folding farm off the ground, but funds are a little tight and I'm trying to get the most powerful CPU for the least money, at least when it comes to Socket 478.

Note: I've already got the motherboard & RDRAM, so I'm not going the AMD route on this system.

Thanks in advance

t1rhino

In my experience, a Celeron 1.7ghz folded a particular gromacs protein at 17 minutes per frame. The same protein on a P4 1.7 was doing it at 14 minutes per frame.

mmonnin

Well it was noted that extra cache makes a difference on the AMDs. I am sure if its not going to do anything else but fold, the extra mhz you can buy will outweigh the cache difference. If the 1.6 and 2.4 are the same price then you should get the 2.4.