Celeron 2 Overclocking

James Yu writes: "FiringSquad has a new overclocking report on the new Intel Celeron 2 processors. These new Celerons are based on the Pentium 3 Coppermine core, but only have half the L2 cache (128KB instead of 256KB). We were able to get one of our 566MHz chips all the way to 901MHz. Sounds like it could be the second coming of the 300A. "

Comments

Re:Why Less L2 Cache?

[ToLu the Happy Furby]

Celery 2 has 256k of Cache, but 128k is permanently disabled because Intel wants to make sure that the Celeron perfoms worse than the P!!!. It is cheaper for them to do it this way too, rather than have two lines.

Nearly right. The real reason that it's much cheaper for them to do it this way is because often times they'll make a PIII and there'll be a fab problem somewhere on the 256k L2 cache. Used to be, that PIII was either destined for a lower speed bin (maybe the flaw won't cause failure at lower speeds), or for the trash. Now, they can just turn that half of the L2 off and sell it as a Celeron 2!

Thus, the cost savings isn't just from only having "one assembly line", but rather because they can salvage chips that would otherwise be tossed in the trash. Of course, they almost certainly have to purposely disable half the L2 of some perfectly good chips so that they have exactly as many Celeron 2's as marketing says they need on the market...but you get the idea.

Yes and No--look at the stepping, on the casing

[Sir_Winston]

The SMP-ability of a Coppermine processor is determined by the stepping of the processor--i.e., the earliest CuMines couldn't SMP, at least not officially. I don't know whether the capability was still there, but just not certified yet, or not there at all. Anyone know?

So, if the stepping of a CuMine--whether Celeron or full-cached--is 1, then it isn't certified for SMP. If the stepping of a full-cache Coppermine P!!! is at least 2, and prefereably 3, then it's fully SMP capable, definitely. While the Celerons are not certified for SMP work at all, and never were, they use the same core and therefore are SMP capable with the same caveats about the processor stepping. In fact, Celerons are probably just Coppermine P!!! with half the cache rendered unusable; this makes sense from an economic standpoint, because as AMD learned with their ghastly K6-III yields, much of the on-die cache can be ruined when the processor is being made; AMD had to disable all the on-die cache on such processors and sell them as cheap K6-2s, and when Intel gets a dud Coppermine it can still be sold as a Celeron as long as half of the on-die cache is still salvageable.

So, to make a long story short, yeah, the new Celeron-2s can do SMP as long as they're not stepping 1, and preferably at least stepping 3. The trick is finding a motherboard that can handle 2 SMP Celery-deuces; I think MSI is coming out with one soon, based on a VIA chipset.

Personally, I'm holding off my upgrade path (a lot--I'm still on a high K6-2 machine) until I can get an SMP Athlon Thunderbird setup, toward the end of the year. I do, however, plan to buy it one processor at a time--I ain't made of money. Personally, I'm happier with AMD chips just because I'm pissed that ChipZilla has been using the same processor core for so many year now it's pathetic. If not for AMD, we wouldn't have either Coppermine P!!! or Celery-2 processors yet--look at Intel's old roadmaps. It's obvious that they never have cared for advancing microprocessors for the desktop user. But, I digress... :-)

Yeah, but...

[yarmond]

Okay, you can overclock it, but what I want to know is, does it make the Internet faster, like the PIII? I'm not going to buy a new computer based on "benchmarks" unless they are backed up by a solid advertising campaign.

Spitfire

[maniack]

Actually, the real question is how the Celeron II stacks up to AMD's upcoming Spitfire. The Spitfire has three times the effective bus speed of the Celeron with 100 MHz DDR bus (eff=200 MHz) along with the same 128 K L2 cache (on-die, full speed). AMD's processors also have the best floating point unit of any x86 processor. Clock for clock , the performance of the Spitfire is almost definitely going to exceed that of the Celeron II. The Spitfire has been performing so well in its sampling phase, according to this article, that the Spitfires "are actually, in many cases, outperforming their elder brothers, the existing Athlon range of microprocessors." Also, the Athlon is a 7th generation processor while the P3/celerons are 6th generation, back from the Pentium-Pro days. How long will this old architecture last them?

This brings about another question: will Intel continue to dominate because of its name, or will AMD gain market share because of the probable superior performance of its Athlon series? I guess the answer depends on who gets more OEM support. AMD has won over several big name companies like IBM, but Intel's domination was shown when Dell decided to stick with Intel and froget about AMD despite Intel's production problems. It shows who has power when a company decides to lose money (Dell) rather than anger Intel.