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New Celeron D Core gets a Speed Boost

qtothemax writes "The new Celeron core was released on the 25th. The processor, using Intel's new model number naming convention, looks to be quite a bit faster than the old core. The new core is based on the 90nm Prescott, which offers respectable performance, compared to the very slow Northwood based Celeron. It features a 256kB L2 cache, and a 533mhz FSB. Looks like Prescott's longer pipeline is more then offset by the better branch prediction and most importantly the doubled cache when it comes to the smaller cached Celeron. This Celeron may be able to compete with AMD's offerings based on more then name brand alone. Reviews and benchmarks are at Anandtech. I couldn't find any other good reviews, as budget chips rarely generate much excitement."

34 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Celeron 2.6GHz by strictnein · · Score: 5, Informative

    What Anandtech's review really seems to show is what an absolute piece of shit the 2.6GHz celeron was. In most of the benchmarks it was beat by the 1.6GHz Duron for fuck sakes. It was also beaten by a P4 1.8GHz, which wasn't too suprising, and even an AMD Athlon 1700+ (which runs at 1.47GHz - we're talking a 1.13GHz gap here).

    Of course, last time a celeron interested me was when the good old Abit BP6 board was out.

    1. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by Orgazmus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The cellies lost their value when P3 became outdated.
      The Celerons with coppermine cores were kinda fun ;)

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    2. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Agreed. I sell computers for a living and I seem to spend all my time explaining to people why an Athlon 2.0GHz (2400+) out performs the Celeron 2.6GHz.

      Intel's insanely high clock frequencies with comparably lower performance are slowly driving me mad from people with questions about the competing Athlon models.

      Perhaps I should just raise my prices, use shitty mainboards, less RAM, less HDD space, shared onboard graphics and install 3.2GHz Pentium 4's in all my computers. The scary thing is they'll probably sell better. :-/

    3. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by afidel · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not only that but the Prescott P4 2.4Ghz is only $10 more than the Celeron 2.8, and the P4 part will wipe the floor with the Celeron even giving up 400Mhz. The worst thing you can do to a P4 core is make it stall waiting for reads, and quartering the cache is guarenteed to do that, so why anyone would consider the Celeron for anything other than a web browsing box I can't fathom (and even then you would have to be stupid to use the fastest part).

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    4. Re:Celeron 2.6GHz by DrEldarion · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While that is pathetic, most people who buy a computer with a Celeron in it probably wouldn't notice much of a difference. Even a 1GHz processor is enough for what most people do - web browsing, word processing, listening to music, playing solitaire, etc.

  2. In Other News... by Apocalypse111 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...AMD has recently announced that they will be producing a dual-processor board for its own low-end CPU's. Computers built with this hardware will specialize in playing 80's MP3's.

    They're calling it the Duron-Duron.

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    1. Re:In Other News... by PD · · Score: 5, Funny

      That line kinda gives away the joke

      Rather typical of punchlines, wouldn't you say?

    2. Re:In Other News... by Ed+Avis · · Score: 4, Funny

      They're also announcing a monster 5-processor workstation board, to be called the Pentathlon.

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
  3. Market Statistics by artlu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does anyone have a good website which outlines just how many low-end processors are sold every year? From my POV, I cannot understand how the low-end processors survive. Granted, they use less power for mobile applications, but I would rather spend an extra $30-$50 on a processor then most other components of the system.

    Or is it all just marketing?
    Aj

    GroupShares Inc. - An Interactive Stock Market Community

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    artlu.net
    1. Re:Market Statistics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Its all the P.O.S. Hp's and compaqs that keep celerons going. I see celerons all the time and its usually the PC's that make me want to rip my hair out. XP is just not made to runs on a celeron with 128 megs of ram.

    2. Re:Market Statistics by Zorilla · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It seems the usual OEM tactic is to put together a really fast-looking PC and then put a Pic N' Save version of a current generation video card in - one that will be outperformed by a previous generation card that costs less and has more features. A lot of the Dells I've seen recently had GeForce FX 5200s in them, for example.

      --

      It would be cool if it didn't suck.
    3. Re:Market Statistics by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Interesting

      with a celeron big names like compaq & etc can build a box that's both cheap and has a 2.8ghz sticker. who cares about what the box can do, it's 2.8ghz baby!

      another reason is that they're good enough for office work by a wide margin.. and cheap..

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    4. Re:Market Statistics by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

      The original 300MHz Celerons were very overclockable. Intel had a much higher yield than they expected, and most of them could run at 450MHz with no extra cooling. The same thing happened with the AXIA T-Birds (Athlons), where the 1GHz version could be pushed to 1.33GHz (again, with no extra cooling). The yields on 90nm chips are such that this kind of thing probably won't happen again for a while.

      --
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  4. Re:Core by strictnein · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm not familiar with Intel's current family, but I seem to remember that Celerons were based one on the P2

    The first ones were based on the P2. Then they based them on the P3. And then the P4. And now this one is based on a newer P4. As any intelligent manufacturer would do, their cheaper product line is simply based upon older versions of their more expensive product line.

  5. Re:Core by Orgazmus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Looks like its close to the P4, like the old cellies were P2's with less cache, and then the coppermine cellies with P3 cores.

    Remember my old cellie 633 running rock stable at 950 mhz :D

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  6. Re:What's The Point? by mOoZik · · Score: 3, Informative

    It gets me when people write "Athalon" instead of "Athlon." Is it so damn hard?

    I still use the Celeron, because at the time, it was a good option. It is perfect for an average PC for an average user, but the prices on the ATHLONS have fallen so much so that it wouldn't make sense to get a Celeron.

  7. Duron's success by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Budget chips CAN create excitement. At least they should. I remember when Duron was a new thing. I bought the 750MHz model and got 1/3 to 1/2 more speed with the same amount of money..

    I was really suspicious about the Duron but later on I learned that it was just a rather cool hack at the time. They removed some expensive gate (or something alike) from the cpu and replaced the same function with some very clever engineering.

    They gained some speed and lost one of the most expensive parts of the cpu with one strike. Someone else might be able to recall the details better.

    Anyways the point is: The fact that it is a budget chip means nothing. Some budget chips can wipe the floor with some more expensive "premium chips" if they fit your application. I am always interested in the budget versions since that's where you see what the basic technology tweaked to maximum can do.

    Budget chips are also a huge market since lots of embed stuff and alike (terminals etc) will in time utilize that. Many people also want to read their email and do their banking and do not care wether it takes 3.5 or 3.2 seconds for the page to render.

  8. Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Vellmont · · Score: 5, Insightful


    This Celeron may be able to compete with AMD's offerings based on more then name brand alone

    Ummm.. what? The fastest $117 2.8ghz celeron got the shit kicked out of it by a lowly $55 Athlon 2400XP. Who in their right mind would buy one of these chips? I guess if you really want SSE3 or the only game you play is Quake3 it's a good deal, but otherwise there's no point.

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    1. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >Who in their right mind would buy one of these chips?

      people who don't visit slashdot? people who's never heard of AMD? and believe me, there are many of them out there.

      i'd bet that you yourself own many, many things of which there are cheaper and better alternatives than what you have - and you bought what you bought because of lack of research, reliance on brand names, indifference, etc. the same can happen with the general public when it comes to computer chips.

    2. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Neil+Watson · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There are many vendors and buyers out there that honestly believe that one should only buy Intel as AMD is unstable. I once had a vendor tell me that. I asked them to cite proof of their claim. They could not.

    3. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Tenebrious1 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ummm.. what? The fastest $117 2.8ghz celeron got the shit kicked out of it by a lowly $55 Athlon 2400XP. Who in their right mind would buy one of these chips?

      That "Intel Inside" sticker on the case is worth $62... I hear it adds 50 gigahorses of torque to the hard drive.

      --
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    4. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by qtothemax · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Disclaimer: I'm the submitter. I AM NOT an intel fanboy. If I was going to buy a budget processor today it would DEFIATELY be an Athlon. I think a new processor core is always somthing that should be discussed on slashdot. Also, Intel is moving in the right direction by not screwing people who buy Dell and nothing else, or don't know better and think AMD is crap. My girlfriend wants to buy a laptop, and when I told her to get an AMD she kinda sneered because it isn't the intel she is used to. Funny thing is that her desktop is an AMD K6-II, but she doesn't even know it. Like it or not the vast majority of people who don't know better have NO IDEA that the celeron sucks comapred to the Athlon, and that the intel chip is more expensive. This is at least a break to everyone out there who would buy a celeron over an Athlon just because of the vision that intel is the "trusted name brand." Think of it like toothpaste or somthing similar. Do you read up on toothpaste before you go to the store and buy it? I seriously doubt it, but I guarantee there is a dentist somewhere who is seriously pissed off about Crest's poor quality. Most people just want a computer that works, and they buy Intel, because that's what they had before, especially in the budget PC market, just like probably >90% of you just buy the same brand of toothpaste you always get. Woulden't it be nice if they improved Crest with really not much reason to do so, since you're going to buy it anyway? So consider this new celeron as less of a screwing of budget PC buyers, who generally have no clue what they are getting. People who actually follow processor preformance can probably scrape together the extra $100 to get an Athlon64. I personally would still definately go with AMD, but I woulden't have to get in a fight with my GF anymore if she insists on getting a Dell with a celeron in it. I would actually almost consider myself an AMD fanboy, but I found this interesting, and see it as intel throwing to bone to the ignorant.

    5. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by biz0r · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I had a friend of mine that has consistently told me this...or rather he 'warned' me and cautioned against using them in my servers at work. Well thats interesting as I've got SEVERAL AMD machines that have been up for almost 2 years now (running linux, of course). And the only reason any of them ever get shutdown is for hardware failure (I should note I never have had a CPU related issue) or a kernel update that I just can't avoid.

      --
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    6. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Funny
      There are many vendors and buyers out there that honestly believe that one should only buy Intel as AMD is unstable.

      Well, Intel has been making x86 CPUs since 1978, but AMD didn't start making them until 1979. Obviously, AMD has had less time to iron out any stability problems with their products.

    7. Re:Submitter is Intel fanboy? by qtothemax · · Score: 3, Interesting

      One more point: I thought it was an interesting oddity that the Prescott architecture actually IMPROVED preforamance by a decent margin in a Celeron, while it caused a slight decline in the P4. It shows how the preformance gain from cache really is logarathmic, more then offsetting the preformance loss of the extra pipeline stages. Intel just made an interesting statement about the P4 extreme edition.

  9. Celeron 2.6GHz (better oveclocked) by IYagami · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can find a very good review at

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/cel er on-d.html

    . They show that a Celeron D overclocked to 3.8 Ghz (yes, really) can outperform even a Pentium4 3.2E (Ok, only sometimes ;-) )

    Sorry about my english

  10. Also released: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Intel has announced their new Xeon line will now incorporate an additional 4 hamster bus. The Xeon line is well known for having quick hamsters parse data in a quick, while adorable manner...

  11. Well, think about who buys them... by sirGullible · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not everyone is a geek, and i know plenty of non-geek regular people buy Celerons. From any, say...Best Buy ad, you can see cheap celeron based pc's aimed at families buying their (possibly first) computers. All they need is to browse the internet, listen to some mp3's, instant message, and thats about all. Celerons can accomplish that. They don't really care about overclocking or playing doom 3 or benchmarks or much of that. Also, dell likes to use celeron processors for its lower end systems, so i'm sure dell contributes alot to that.

  12. Nice by marnargulus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A speed boost is always nice, but is it really necessary? I think faster RAM would be a better advance, and faster bus speeds for harddrives as well. While the processor might be able to handle more data, we still are having trouble getting data there in the first place. Bring on the 2 gig on-die cache where I run all of my current apps and OS straight on the proc. That is what I'm looking forward to.

  13. I don't understand... by The+Hobo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    From TFA:

    Holding in the middle of the pack is definitely not a disgrace for these budget processors.

    I don't understand, a chip that costs less, has more cache, and has been a proven good chip (the Athlons) beat this new processor which is considered budget...
    I myself bought a Duron 650 3 years ago, it lasted me that long. When my PSU died, I decided to upgrade to a 2500+, and left my old computer alone. Last Christmas I went home and set up some new Dell PCs my family bought with 2.4 Celerons, and just from watching a fresh install of XP running (which is usually fast) I almost swore that the 2.4 Ghz Celerons were slower than my rebuilt Duron 650 Mhz, and this is without benchmarks.. it probably wasn't 'factual' by a stopwatch's perspective, but it shows just how bad these chips inherently are.

    --
    There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
  14. Re:celeron's are terrible by Bishop · · Score: 4, Informative
    Start reading here or here, and be enlightened.

    From a December 2003 article:

    When we can find a 1.6GHz Duron for just over half the price of a 2.6GHz Celeron and get better performance consistently in almost every test we ran, the choice is clear.

  15. Of course we use Celerons. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Tualatin-core Celerons from 1.0 thru 1.4GHz with 256k cache were some of the best bang for the buck processors in that clock speed range for Linux servers. They overclock quite nicely too. I'm running a pair of servers based on these chips that cost me only about $100-150 per server to build. And that was with brand new compact micro-ATX cases too! They made for me the perfect "server appliances" to be my Internet firewall, web, email and general purpose fileservers.

  16. NX command in the Celeron? by BLKMGK · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AMD is putting the NX processor command into it's low end CPUs, I didn't see any mention of this in the article. Does anyone know if Intel is following suit with it's low end CPUs? Anyone tested the effectiveness of the NX command on an AMD CPU with Linux or the beta SP for XP? IMO if it's as good at stopping overflows as claimed this could provide a competitive edge to the company that has it if the other doesn't....

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  17. Re:What's The Point? by Enigma_Man · · Score: 3, Funny

    GRAMMAR :D

    -Jesse

    --
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