2GHz Celeron

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Intel is currently the king of the CPU crowd, although there are not very many competitors. Their main rivalry is AMD (Advanced Micro Devices). The current top of the line Intel Pentium 4 processor is rated to run at 3.06GHZ with Hyper-Threading Technology and is currently "wowing" the enthusiast community. Obviously a great processor comes with a steep price. Not everyone can afford Intel's top of the line processors. AMD is asking a hefty amount of pocket change for their newest CPU, the Athlon XP2800+. What does that leave for the majority of the consumers who want good performance without ripping a hole in their wallets? Intel has introduced a new line of Celeron Processors aimed squarely at a crows that craves a performance CPU for a cheaper alternative to the P4 Family. The Intel Celeron was started quite a long time ago and everyone should remember the Celeron 300a easily overclocked to 450MHZ or higher. It outperformed the Pentium II at the moment and was the CPU of choice for overclockers. After that, however, the Celeron seemed to fall into obscurity. The socket 370 Celerons' performance were not great, losing to the AMD's budget Duron. Since the Pentium 4 has had huge success with their socket 478 Northwood processors, Intel migrated the Celeron over to the socket 478. Will they be able to redeem the Celeron? Only numbers will tell.

Introduction
Intel is currently the king of the CPU crowd, although there are not very many competitors.  Their main rivalry is AMD (Advanced Micro Devices).  The current top of the line Intel Pentium 4 processor is rated to run at 3.06GHZ with Hyper-Threading Technology and is currently "wowing" the enthusiast community.  Obviously a great processor comes with a steep price.  Not everyone can afford Intel's top of the line processors.  AMD is asking a hefty amount of pocket change for their newest CPU, the Athlon XP2800+.  What does that leave for the majority of the consumers who want good performance without ripping a hole in their wallets?  Intel has introduced a new line of Celeron Processors aimed squarely at a crows that craves a performance CPU for a cheaper alternative to the P4 Family.  The Intel Celeron was started quite a long time ago and everyone should remember the Celeron 300a easily overclocked to 450MHZ or higher.  It outperformed the Pentium II at the moment and was the CPU of choice for overclockers.  After that, however, the Celeron seemed to fall into obscurity.  The socket 370 Celerons' performance were not great, losing to the AMD's budget Duron.  Since the Pentium 4 has had huge success with their socket 478 Northwood processors, Intel migrated the Celeron over to the socket 478.  Will they be able to redeem the Celeron?  Only numbers will tell.

 

Intel Celeron 2.0GHZ
The Intel Celeron I purchased was an OEM processor.  It did not come with the retail box and stock heat sink.  It looks exactly like its big brother, the Pentium 4.  There is an integrated heatspreader covering the core.  Here are the factory markings on the heatspreader:

 

              INTEL

              CELERON

              2GHZ/128/400/1.525V

              SL6HY COSTA RICA

 

Reading from the specifications on the heatspreader, it shows that it is a 2GHZ Celeron with 128kb L2 cache running on Intel's quad-pumped front side bus.  The default voltage is at 1.525v.

 

 

The Specifications
The full specifications of the 2GHZ Celeron (pulled off from Intel's website)

 

To start off, there are two different types of memory in a computer system.  The most common known memory are the DIMMS (for desktop and SODIMMS for laptops).  These are the inexpensive upgradeable memory for a computer system.  More memory allows you to run more programs at once.  This comes in handy especially for the video or music or photo editors who need huge chunks of memory for faster processing and a smoother experience for their applications.  The other type of memory is quite expensive.  Why?...because it is integrated on the central processing unit (CPU).  Most important of all, this memory is not upgradeable, meaning you can't add more memory onto the CPU.  This integrated memory is called cache.  It allows the CPU to process information without having to ask the other memory for help.  Although everything in computers work in nanoseconds, there are differences when there is not enough L2 cache.  Generally speaking, the larger the L2 cache, the faster the process.  The speed of the CPU (in gigahertz-GHz) is the speed in which it runs the L2 cache.  Therefore, the more L2 cache and the faster the CPU, the better the performance.

Feature Chart
 

FEATURES	2, 2.10 and 2.20 GHz	1.70 and 1.80 GHz	1A, 1.10A, 1.20, 1.30 and 1.40 GHz
FC-PGA2 370-pin package (w/Integrated Heat Spreader)			X
FC-PGA2 478-pin package (w/ Integrated Heat Spreader)	X	X
0.13 Micron Technology	X		X
0.18 Micron Technology		X
100 MHz System Bus			X
400 MHz System Bus	X	X
32 Kbytes Level 1 Cache (16 Kbyte/16 Kbyte)			X
8 Kbytes Level 1 Data Cache	X	X
12 K decoded micro-ops Execution Trace Cache	X	X
128 KB Level 2 Advanced Transfer Cache (full-speed)	X	X
256 KB Level 2 Advanced Transfer Cache (full-speed)			X
Advanced System Buffering	X	X	X
64 GB Memory Addressibility	X	X	X
4 GB Memory Cacheability	X	X	X
Streaming SIMD Extensions 2	X	X
Streaming SIMD Extensions	X	X	X
Intel® MMX™ Media Enhancement Technology	X	X	X
Dual Independent Bus Architecture	X	X	X
Dynamic Execution	X	X	X
Hyper Pipeline Technology	X	X
Rapid Execution Engine	X	X

 

What is the difference between the Celeron and the Northwood since both are socket 478?  The size of the L2 cache on the Celeron is only 1/4 than that of the Northwood.  This is quite a big difference.  If you remember when the Pentium 4's made its first debut, with the Willamette core.  The Willamette had 256kb of L2 cache.  It's lack of L2 cache already put it to a disadvantage.  The appearance of the Northwood core quickly put an end to the Willamette's and Intel was back in the performance seat with 512k of Cache and a smaller die size.  To think that the Celeron only has half of what the Willamette had gave me doubts about the Celeron's performance.

The die size of the Celeron is the same of the Northwood.  The 1.7GHZ and 1.8GHZ Celerons have 0.18µ die size while the new 2GHZ Celeron is 0.13µ.  Generally speaking, the smaller the die size the cooler the CPU.  It'll require less voltage to run and also give better overclocking results.  Thus, the new Celeron should definitely overclock better than the older Celeron. 

Now that we've distinguished the difference between the Celeron and the Northwood-based processors, let's head on to the testing department and see how it performs.

 

Next: Conclusion >>
 

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