What is Celeron?
| PROCESSOR SPECIFICATIONS | ||
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| Manufacturer: | Intel | |
| Model: | Celeron | |
| Year: | 1998 | |
| Transistors: | 7,500,000 | |
| Microns: | 0.25µ | |
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About the time Intel was releasing the improved P2's (Deschutes), they decided to tackle the entry level market with a stripped down version of the Pentium II, the Celeron. In order to decrease costs, Intel removed the L2 cache from the Pentium II. They also removed the support for dual processors, an ability that the Pentium II had. Additionally, they ditched the plastic cover which the P2 had, leaving simply the processor on the Slot 1 style card. This, no doubt, reduced the cost of the processor quite a bit, but performance suffered noticeably. Removing the L2 cache from a chip seriously hampers its performance. On top of that, the chip was still limited to the 66MHz system bus. As a result, competitor chips at the same clock speeds could still outperform the Celeron. What was the point? Intel had realized their mistake with the next edition of the Celeron, the Celeron 300A. The 300A came with 128KB of L2 cache on board. The L2 cache was on-die with the 300A, meaning it ran at full processor speed, not half speed like the Pentium II. This fact was great for Intel users, because the Celerons with full speed cache operated much better than the Pentium II's with 512 KB of cache running at half speed. With this fact, and the fact that Intel unleashed the bus speed of the Celeron, the 300A became well-known in overclocking enthusiast circles. It quickly became known for the cheap chip you could buy and crank up to compete with the more expensive stuff. The Celeron is available in two formats. The original Celerons used the patented Slot 1 interface. But, Intel later switched over to a PPGA format, or Plastic Pin Grid Array, also known as Socket 370. This new interface allowed reduced costs in manufacturing. It also allowed cheaper conversion from Socket 7 boards to Socket 370. Motherboard manufacturers found it easier to swap out a Socket 7 socket for a Socket 370 socket, more or less leaving the rest of the board the same. It was more involved to change designs over to a slotted board. Slot 1 Celerons ranged from the original 233MHz up to 433 MHz, while Celerons 300MHz and up were available in Socket 370. |
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