whats better a celeron or a normal p4 for gaming also a ati radeon 9200 or a asylum nvidia geforce 5200 fx 256MB

Pentium4 is much better. I think the cards are similar.
Edit: Check this out
http://www.devhardware.com/c/a/Video-Cards/FX-5200-vs-R9200/3/
It depends on the game, but pretty close overall.
But neither are "good" gaming cards, ok for word processing or internet/2d stuff.
Somethink like a 9600 would be better for only a few dollars more.
Don't know about the brand, but http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-164-022&depa=1
it's $78 us.

The Celeron is a P4 with less cache and a lower FSB. So, no matter what way you look at it, the celeron is an inferior processor.



The 5200 has native DX9 support but isn't impressive in terms of performance at all. A 9200 doesn't have native DX9 support (for some functions it does) but the performance is also nothinh to write home about. They are both "budget" cards. I'd suggest a 9100 or a GF4TI over both.

the newer celerons the d series are based on a prescott and have a better architecture than the older ones(celerons).there is no comparison between the 2 they are poles apart in terms of performance the company says so the dealer even say this.a celeron is designed for workstation moderate office work like a spreadsheet,web access etc.they are designed to cater to a different market one that doesnt require too much performance.while the p4 ids well p4 the only true workhorse of the two designed for heavy duty number crunching in video encoding or games it has a 2 mb l2 cache(now earlier 1 mb),an 800mhz fsb and hyper threading.a celeron on the other hand isnt bad either its not exactly comparable with the pentium 4 but still can play most of the games at decent frame rateit has a 1 mb l2 cache(now..earlier 256/512k) a slower fsb 400/533mhx no sign of hyperthreading or any other feature.

the video cards on the other hand are comparable and more or less fall within the same category.add a couple of more bucks to your budgewt and get a decent 9600 pro or 9700 or geforce 6600(much better than the other 2 but a little expensive).

Only the Celeron-M features 1MB l2 cache; all other celerons have 256k or 128k cache, going all the way back to Celeron A.