The Original

Celeron is the name given to Intel’s famous entry-level processor. Released in 1998 along with the 350 and 400MHz Pentium II’s, the original Celeron was basically a Pentium II with the L2 cache ripped off. The first of its line was a 266MHz model operating on the 66MHz bus speed. If you took the black cartridge off of a Pentium II, then take the L2 cache off, what you would be looking at is essentially a Celeron. It was based on Intel’s 0.25 micron design process and used the same Slot 1 design as the Pentium II.

There are two type of interfaces that the Celeron processor uses. The S.E.P.P (Single Edge Processor Package) which we were accustomed to through the Pentium II Processors, and an “improved” PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid Array) package, which resembles the plain-jane Pentium and PentiumMMX processors. More commonly dubbed Socket 370, the PPGA Package is in no way compatible with Sockets 5 or 7. The reason for the PPGA was simple: to reduce costs even further in production of the CPU. The Celeron was compatible with the 440EX, the 440BX, the 440LX and 440ZX-66 AGP chipsets. Celerons ranging from 266 MHz to 433 MHz were available in the slot design, while chips from 300 MHz on up to today came in Socket 370 format. Today, Intel no longer makes any slot 1 processors.

Intel designed the Celeron processor in order to meet the demands for the sub-$1000 PC. When Intel moved into the Slot 1 market, it did not look back to Socket 7. They decided to place all their efforts into the new design, and attempt to move the entire market with it in an effort to displace Socket 7 and thus steal market share from AMD, Cyrix, and IDT. But, Intel realized that not all PC users could afford the Pentium II processor. They realized that they needed to create an affordable Slot 1 chip. That is why they created Celeron.

The original Celeron was basically a PentiumMMX on a stick. It offered about the performance of a Pentium MMX-233 while using the Pentium II design process. But, by removing the L2 cache, Intel significantly reduced the cost and heat of the processor. This also allowed them to remove the casing, further reducing the cost. Of course, the removal of the L2 cache are caused the Celeron to perform pretty poorly compared to its big brother.

This original Celeron would work on almost any Slot 1 motherboard. Although it fit into Slot 1, the chipset is a prime factor. Celeron was designed to operate on the i440EX chipset, a reduced version of the LX chipset. But, Celeron would work with any BX motherboard. With proper BIOS support, it would work on an LX motherboard. It did not, however, work on an old FX motherboard.

One crappy thing about the original processor was that it is locked into the 4.0x multiplier. Pre-release models were not, and could be overclocked, but retail versions of the chip were locked at 4.0x. Regardless of what multiplier you tried to use with the processor, it will always defaulted to 4.0x. It also, by default, set itself up as a 66MHz Pentium II, meaning that you could not use any bus speed faster than that. This little effort by Intel to discourage overclocking made a lot of people angry.

Performance with the Celeron processor depended on the type of software being used. First, let’s talk about business software like Word and Excel. Such programs make heavy use of the L2 cache, thus performance with these programs would be disappointing when compared to a true Pentium II. But, then again, if performance was on par with the Pentium MMX-233, then even at that speed, such software still seemed pretty fast. Gaming software was a different story. Since the Celeron was basically a Pentium II with no L2 cache, the Celeron has all the FPU power of a standard Pentium II. This meant that FPU intensive 3D software, Quake2 being one, would show great performance for the price. Such software makes much more use out of the FPU than it does the L2 cache, therefore performance does not suffer much from the lack of cache. The Celeron then became a worthy contender for gamers.

One thing that must be mentioned is that, because the original Celeron had no L2 cache, it was VERY overclockable. See, on a standard Pentium II, when you overclocked it, it was the L2 cache that really heated up and limited the overclockability. But, with no L2 cache, the Celeron could be overclocked quite a bit. With proper cooling, the famous 300A Celeron processor could be overclocked to 450MHz with minimal risk. This all but makes up for any shortcomings due to lack of cache. But, this IS overclocking, and of course there are risks associated with that. The newer versions of the Celeron would offer 128K of on die L2 Cache, which ran at the full processor speed, not ½ the processor speed like the Pentium II processors, along with 32KB (16KB Instruction /16KB Data) non-blocking, level-one cache. The Celerons with cache came in speeds of 300, 333, 366, and 400Mhz, which all ran on the 66mhz bus. All Intel Celeron processors are based on Intel’s advanced 0.25 micron CMOS process technology.

Celeron Moves On

Celeron has survived the generations of processors by being re-issued with new enhancements to parallel the corresponding Pentium of the time. In 2000, the Celeron II was released. It was basically a ow-cost version of the Pentium III, just as the original was a stripped down Pentium II. Just as the Pentium III was a Pentium II with SSE and a few added features, the Celeron II is simply a Celeron with a SSE, SSE2, and a few added features. The chip is available from 533 MHz to 1.1 GHz. This chip was basically an enhancement of the original Celeron, and it was released in response to AMD’s coming competition in the low-cost market with the Duron. The infamous processor serial number of the Pentium III had been disabled in the Celeron II, with Intel stating that the feature was not necessary in the entry-level consumer market. Due to some inefficiencies in the L2 cache and still using the 66MHz bus (unless you overclock), this chip would not hold up too well against the Duron despite being based on the trusted Coppermine core. Celeron II would not be released with true 100 MHz bus support until the 800MHz edition, which was put out at the beginning of 2001.

In 2002, Celeron was again re-issued using the Pentium IV Willamette core. The chip again contained 128KB of L2 cache on-die. The core was designed with the 0.18 micron process. Like many of the Celerons, the chip overclocks reasonably well by increasing the front side bus speed.

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