There's some variation in the cache logic as well as size, but it only really shows up in stuff like SuperPi with 1M plus. A large part of the "celeron is horrible" is always about the bus speed, though you do see the coppermine version being particularly crippled with only 128kb to the tune of 15% ish in Q3 there, and as little as 1 or 2% in other things. Somehow intel are always alternating between too good and too bad with them. Though it's a bit weird now, you dunno if a Celeron is premium version of an Atom core or a core generation core more crippled than "Pentium" without looking it up. .. also possible that it is where the pentium nameplate would be if there isn't a pentium, like some sandybridge mobiles.

The discussion of the Tualatin Celeron is really interesting but the performance of out of the box Celeron seems to be limited. For over clockers it might be interesting but experienced enough to do such things as of now.

The out of the box celeron would also be a little better than the the p3 900 MHZ in my asus p2b system and the Vodoo 3.

Is it save to say that system with Celeron Tualatin would be to slow to really max out gf 4200 if you want to use the cpu out the box?

It also correct to asume that only Pentium 3 cpu that would be of some use for gf 4 4200 system would be P3 Tualatin?

If this questions can be answered with a yes both 2 times things are easy.

I have to start to look for a nice Athlon Socket A or Socket 939 or socket 754 system to get decent athlon xp or better cpu like some guys here have already suggest.

Which of the above mentioned Athlon Sockets would be you guys consider as the most beginner friendy ones?

I am not able to do some soldering yet so It would be good that you can point in the right direction of some mobos where the chances are high that the caps are still ok. I know that bad caps cannot be completely exluded with vantage hardware but if I got some posts here at vogons right it seems that some brands are more prone to bad caps than others.