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Intel

Anandtech Looks At 'Celeron 2' 82

Posted by Hemos from the examnining-the-chips dept.
Oscarfish writes, "Anandtech has the scoop on the new batch of Celeron chips hitting the market. They're more or less Coppermine chips with half the L2 cache removed, so you basically have a Coppermine core with 128K L2, a 66MHz front side bus, and FC-PGA packaging. A decent choice for the "Value PC" segment, he says, but not for performance machines. "
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Anandtech Looks At 'Celeron 2' More

Anandtech Looks At 'Celeron 2'

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  • Will they work with the dual-Celeron BP6 board, is the question? I could definitely handle a dual-celeron2 system... :)
  • Next chip would have had to be either Hexium or Sexium. Filtering software would have blocked hex or sex. No one would have even been able to get to their web site to read about it. PR nightmare waiting to happen.
  • I know FC-PGA is flip chip-pin grid array, but what's a flip chip?
  • Just how dumb does Intel think people are?
    ICQ#2584116

  • "Flip chip" refers to mounting the chip that is the CPU "upside down" on the circuit board its on. This puts the metal substrate "down", against the circuit, and the silicon "up", where is it that much (1-2mm) closer to the heatsink. The idea is to make them easier to cool.
  • I suspect the perfomance gap between a P3 and a Celeron2 would not be big enough to validate the (much) higher cost of P3, without intententionally cripling the Celeron2. Just think about 486SX vs. 486DX. They were exactly the same design, except that the FPU in 486SX was disabled (it was still there). The point was to make people who needed fast floating point performance pay more, and in an ideal case, make someone who had bought a SX upgrade to a DX (effectively making the person buy the same CPU twice).

    End of marketing lesson.

  • Athlons need a motherboard too.. Athlon mobos generally cost more than Celeron mobos.
  • So if my Celeron 433 works just fine and dandy, what in the world would I need a Celeron II for?

    So you're saying that just because YOU don't new a new CPU right now, Intel should altogether stop development of new products, until YOU do need a new CPU? Okay..

  • In a few applications, knowing the specific cache size helps. Core numeric libraries for things like matrix multiplication and factorization use blocked operations with block sizes that are dependent on cache size. Figuring out the best blocking is not straightforward, but what works best for a small cache is usually suboptimal for a larger one.
  • In fact, this Celeron will probably start life as the larger-cached version, and have half it's cache disabled (intentionally destroyed) to offer the customer an ILLUSION of having more choices.

    What do you mean ILLUSION? They will have different amounts of working cache... sound different to me...

    Does anyone think that Intel bean-counters really care about the OPTIMALITY of the product? No, they care about it's PROFITABILITY

    Its hard to make a PROFIT if you are making bad PRODUCTS.

    Intel just wants to produce a variety of chips to hit a lot of different price points... what's so wrong with that?

  • I believe that the term for deliberately crippling a chip by removing part of its cache is called "cache-tration".
  • AMD's Spitfire will have the Athlon core, on die cache, a fast bus, and be ridiculously cheap. While Intel cripple the Celeron 2 to avoid it competing with their high end offerings, AMD beef up the low end because they know they are going to own the high end for the next few years at least.

    AMD has 1GHz pricing power over Intel
    AMD Spitfire beats Intel Celeron 2
    AMD Sledgehammer will crush Itanium (esp. 32 bit)
    AMD copper interconnect soon, Intel in a year

    Be grateful for AMD's competition, or Intel would also be pushing the overpriced underperformingn Rambus down our throats, rather than market realities having to force it to gradually accept that it's a crock of shit.

  • Your analogy against a 4 and 8 cylinder car holds up. In the end you were paying for performance, your 8 cylinder blew the doors off the 4 cylinder. Here I believe with the latest and greatest processor you are paying for the engineering behind the processor. After a while they roll the technology, that people who have to have the latest and greatest have had for months, down to the rest of us. I have a Celeron 300A running at 450 (overclocking could be like adding a turbo-charger) when I buy a new processor (not likely anytime soon my 300A is plenty fast for my linux box) it will be a Celeron because I don't need the bleeding edge. Besides, you don't get ripped off because Celerons cost much less than their big brother counter part. I paid less than $100 for my Celeron back when a PII 450 cost about $250-$300.
  • Don't knock the Celeron. I have a dual Celeron 466 system at home. Remember that under everyone's favourite gaming OS, Tivoli98, my beloved second CPU is reduced to a really expensive room heater. With 128 MB of RAM and a 32 MB TNT2 Ultra this baby rocks!

    This was just to say that with the right GFX card you too can join the fun [counter-strike.net]. Your Celeron 433 needn't be half bad, so happy fragging!

  • Either of those would still be preferable to 'Itanium'.
  • there was an announcement a while back from abit - the bp6 would not work with the coppermines without substantial reengineering in SMP mode. youre outta luck bub.
  • The integrated video on any of those boards chokes starting at ~1024x768 above 16bit color. 800x600 in 16 bit is fine for some people, but why (5 years later) can't we at least have an onboard video chip that is half as fast as a Matrox Millenium (I)? Doesn't make a whole lot of sense...

    I haven't met an onboard sound set that I've liked yet, but hey, if you are only planning on paying $499 for a system, the integrated boards are almost acceptable... just don't try to use them for anything besides freecell (they can't handle Space Cadet Pinball 8^D)
  • You don't write code optimized for a certain cache size. You use general techniques for reducing cache footprint. You do optimize for a certain cache line size, but not for the cache size.

    You're always best off to make your cache footprint as small as possible, all else being equal. In multitasking OSes, if you have carefully used all the available cache, then one task switch kills your context anyway. OTOH, if you have two tasks with 64K working sets, and you have 128K cache, then the task switch doesn't cost much. Similarly, if you have a resident set of 32K, you can run four of these things.

    So, different cache sizes don't make all that much difference for compilers or programmers. You'd use the same techniques to write code for 128K cache as for 512K cache.

    Also, the 128K thing is not so much about about a 95% hit rate; it's more about the resident set. If you graph performance of a program vs. cache size, you'll an elbow in the graph where a small reduction in cache size causes a large reduction in performance. The location of this elbow in terms of cache size is the resident set of the program.

    Studies show that most programs have a resident set of less than 128K, so that will do for most applications.

    Actually, most programs have several elbows in the graph, and so have several resident sets. Usually most of them are less than 128K, so you get most of your performance benefit from a 128K cache size.
    --
    Patrick Doyle
  • If I had the money, I'd get an athlon, but to do so i'd need a new mobo $125 at least, and the cpu, while with the celeron 2, i'd just need a new cpu

    /me Watches in amusement as the FC-PGA Celeron-2 gets forced into a Slot-1 or Socket-370. The power is applied, and the C-2's 1.5V core emits an interesting aroma...

    Intel is in the motherboard business now. The days of upgrading a CPU without changing the motherboard are behind us. If it ain't the socket/slot, it's the VRM.

  • Thats not the reason either. The new Celerons are flip chip and the older ones are regular socket 370, therefore you can't interchange them. You would need some sort of an adapter. I think the main reason is intel is trying to differentiate the processors and direct OEMs into putting Celerons into low end systems while the P3's should be used for midranged business systems.
    --
  • I remember overclocking my Mac IIsi by desoldering my 40MHz quartz clock crystal with a 50MHz and later a 66MHz. The CPU (a Motorola 68030) ran at half the crystals frequency so it went from 20MHz to 25MHz (woohoo!). When I went to 33MHz, I had speaker issues for some reason but things still worked (with a RadioShack heatsink glued to the processor. Man those were the good old days ;)
    --
  • I beleive that bp6 was reporting on the FC-PGA PentiumIII coppermine chip. The celeron2 has the same core but is the pin-out the same as the FC-PGA or is it the same as the original PPGA celerons?
  • So OEM's can make new motherboards that work with both old and new Celerons. Old Celeron MB (my BP6) do not have the voltage req.'s and other tomfoolery for the new Celeron 2's, but new MB can be made to support both. It is much easier for big OEM's to make a MB that can be used across the entire celeron line

    matt
  • The greater the cache...

    the decrease of yield...

    the increase of cost.

    That is how is looks to me. The performance boost that comes with bigger cache only appears to effect certain server applications (DB stuff), and is next to nothing for desktop stuff, be it games, office apps, or what have you. It simply doesn't make sense to increase the cost of chips, which is the result of increasing cache due to the decreased yield.

    matt
  • They were exactly the same design, except that the FPU in 486SX was disabled (it was still there).

    While that was true for the very first i486sx chips, they very quickly had seperate masks for the SX chip. This mask allowed the chip to use ~1/4 less space. (less space per chip = more chips per wafer = cheaper production costs in the long run) I'm certain that that will be the same case for the celeron2 processors as well.

  • From the people I have talked to, who still buy Intel, the reason to them is obvious. They trust Intel. They have never had a problem with them so why switch to another company that could potentionally be less reliable?
    Like buying a car without the undercoating, they figure it'll turn into a rust bucket in no time.

    More promotion and education is needed. Not technical jargon to confuse people (cause these people are computer illiterate), but cold hard facts that even they can plainly see.
  • Tbey say i386 because they were the main chip makers when the 386z were around. A 386 is the lowest form of PC you can run any conventional form of Linux on. AMD had thier own line of 386z but they were not even making a dent in the market share.
    Now they are, thier chisp are better, faster, and have more O/C ability, and are just as reliable.
    Maybe AMD sucked a$$ back then, but they kick a$$ right now.
  • The Athlon's bus speed is 200 only between the proc and the chipset.
  • I'd only be happy if this worked with my BP6.
    -motardo
  • Oh, the road map says it's time to announce the 667MHz Celeron II. Let's up the voltage on the 600.

    Oh, the road map says it's time to announce the 733 MHz Celeron II. Let's up the voltage on the 600.

    Oh, the road map says it's time to up the FSB on the Celeron line. Let's solder that bit back into the 600. Hey, look at all the money we saved by not designing new chips.

    They can't do that with the Pentium line any more because AMD is nipping them in the speed race, so they can't leave the breathing room that they used to.
  • no the bp6 is a ppga motherboard the new celeron chips are fc-pga. i have heard of adapters to convert one to another. but i have heard of those adapters smoking p3 coppermines also.....
  • Yeah, but the Athlon needs a special board, and Celeron i810 boards with everything(video,sound,modem,) integrated go for about $100, these celerons can make a very cheap system which doesn't suck too much unless you want to play games or run linux...hmmm...what else would you want to do. If I had the money, I'd get an athlon, but to do so i'd need a new mobo $125 at least, and the cpu, while with the celeron 2, i'd just need a new cpu

  • Whenever I see anything about the Celerons and there purposefully being crippled, i.e. less cache, lower bus speeds, underclocking (look ma' I coined a new word), I always feel like it's a rip off.

    Two points: 1) less cache can often be easier to produce, as Intel can get better yields, which means lower cost to manufacture... so you're not getting ripped off at all. 2) Underclocking (it's a word) is actually good for the customer, because you get the same proformance at a lower cost. Look at what AMD did (does?) with their low-end Athlons -- they make so many high-speed ones (for volume production), but they can't sell them all at a high price so ship them at lower-speed -- the customer gets a better deal than before (esp if you know how to identify and properly clock it)! Win-Win.
  • First they did the brilliant move of calling them coppermines, even though there is no relation what so ever to the copper process. So when MOT, IBM and AMD start using copper, those who aren't paying attention will think that Intel has already been doing that. It also slowed down the Athlon invasion by staying competitive. This is the second smart thing they have done, which is that Coppermines that don't make the grade can now become celerons. Now all those failed chips can actually be sold as budget chips. This way they can switch all their fabs to coppermine and increase the number of good chips they get and sell the failed ones as celerons. Way to go intel. I've got a lot of AMD stock based on all the mistakes intel has been making and what AMD has been doing right, but this does signal that the end of intel production problems is going away. (sort of)
  • Check your facts.

    Your argument about the FSB has its merits but you are forgeting something. Celeron's run at 66MHz anyway. That's slower than my K6-2. Now on some apps the celron will beat a K6-2 becuase it has better floating point registers, but that doesn't make up for Intels lack of effort. K6-2's aren't the greatest either, but Celeron's still suck for SMP systems. And another thing...

    First off, the spitfire chipsets will have true 200MHz bus speeds. That speed cannot be atained with PC100 RAM, however becuase of the TYPE of motherboard setup they have (DEC's alpha systems [something like that]) it will be very easy for them to switch the RAM type to DDR. (Unlike Inel's RAMBUS crap)

    Second, when they do switch to DDRRAM, it will be close to the same price as SDRAM, becuase DDR is an open standard. DDR is better in so many ways: it can be made in higher volumes, becuase it fabs better; because of it's open standards, it will be chaeaper. (not much more than regular SDRAM) adn best of all, it's faster. Look at the analysis you can find on tom's hardware. Lower latencys, and higher bandwidth!

    AMD is already making DDRRAM modules (not AMD specifically, they have companies actually doing the MFG)

    People need to keep supporting AMD, I know that Intel has made donations to Linux companies, but I for one don't want to pay that much for something that doesn't even work the way it's supposed to. Competition is good, especially when the competion to the norm is better.

  • ...at least for my 37 year old reflexes.

    Seriously, I play Quake, Star Wars Racer, Need For Speed III, etc on a piddly $499 box (we did add a TNT2 card for $72). Maybe I'm missing something I'd be getting on a 'kick ass' $2-3K box, but I dunno what it would be...

  • Its like buying a truck with a V8 that only has 6 of the cylinders working, the other two were disconnected from the crank and the ignition/fuel system.

    Doh, thats what chevy did with thier 4.3L V6, its just a 350 with the front 2 cylinders lopped off.
  • What the fuck is an Athalon?
  • Beats me. With the Althion 600 at 133 FSB and a street price of $166, they are going to have to sell this turkey way under $100 to get sales. Of course we have the arrogance factor on the part of Intel. Wanna commit Intellicide?
  • I love all this discussion of the `533 MB/s memory bandwidth' of the 66 MHz bus. Ever do a test to see how much bandwidth you can *really* get? Like, for instance, by running streams? You might be a little disappointed. Anyone know why? Familiar with those thermal throttling registers in the BX chipset? These boxes do *not* have the memory bandwidth people think they do . . .
  • Couldn't they at least come up with an original name? Celeron 2? Sounds like some sort of bio-engineered vegitable.

    kwsNI
  • So what happened to Hexium, Heptium, Octium, Nonium and Decium. Did someone else trademark squat on these names, or did they just decide that they didn't like them.

    And if they didn't like them, who came up with Celery^Hon?
  • I tried this (with the standard celeron coolers). It lasted about 19seconds, to when it shut down. Too much heat. What cooling setup did you have? if its possible, I want it too :)
  • My first computer is Celeron 333A, [stop snickering], I wanted to have a nice monitor so that left less cash for other components. The motherboard was to get a PIII proc when they became more affordable but now I think I'll just get a new computer and save my Cel for the purpose of overclocking. It's the computer for poeple who buy cheaper cars and hot rod them into something a bit (or alot) faster. This sounds like alot of fun, and as soon as I don't need to rely on my Cel everyday, I'm crawling under the hood to speed things up. CaNuK When you hear the bell, GO!
  • I wholeheartedly agree that Intel shouldn't cripple it to 66 MHz. I personally believe that people will eventually get around this and post results on overclocking via higher FSB, though. I've read about the Celeron2 elsewhere that they'll be fabbed on machines that also fab CuMines, therefore they'll be identical to each other. The only difference is that Intel will resolder/remove/etc. a few areas on the chips to disable (read 'not remove') 128KB of cache and other similar stuff. Someone will eventually find a workaround, someday. Hopefully soon, cuz I'm starting to look for an upgrade.
  • Dude, you have no clue what your talking about. The reason no one(me included) switches to AMD is because the first chips that came 0ut besides intel (Cyrix perhaps) Sucked hairy goat balls, you couldn't even run Cad on them. THe reason I stick with intel is compatibility. HAve you ever looked in Linux at binary packages and crap, what do the say?, i386 or i486, what do you think the "i" stands for? Intel!!!!!!!!.
    Thankyou and Goodnight!
  • Who is Anandtech? And why is the link to it broken? Either they don't exist, or they have trouble keeping up their website. Now do i really want to believe "scoop" about Intel? What's more, they have a link on Snobdot. Oops, i mean Slashdot.
  • http://www.anandtech.com/index.html
  • I think it's pretty obvious why Intel has kept the 66MHz bus--profit! The cost difference between manufacturing a Celeron die and a P3 die is minimal, but by intentionally crippling the performance of the Celeron they can force customers to buy the more costly (and thus more profitable) P3s. It's common knowledge that the first Celeron designs were rushed-to-market-stripped-down-Pentiums, but these pseudo Celeron 2 designs and target markets seem to be well planned.

    AMD has really broken down the fat margins Intel is used to getting for high performance chips, so a move by Intel to try and regain their prior business model isn't overly surprising. Now, whether that model is valid anymore is another can of worms...

  • I have a BP6 with two Socket 370 333s running at 500 MHz, and my CPU temperature stays in the 80s. I don't have any special cooling stuff, just ball bearing CPU fans, and one additional case fan.

    Maybe FreeBSD is cooking those CPUs... :-)

    New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

    /bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.

  • And I don't think those are going to just plug into an Ultra 1... :-)

    New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

    /bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.

  • The U-3 is looking pretty sharp, too - as far as performance figures go. It's seriously overdue as a replacement for the U-2.

    Agreed. It's kinda late, but still, this is going to be one hell of a processor.

    Notice how Suns keep their value? I mean, I'm trying to get an Ultra 1, and can't seem to get one for under $1000 on eBay.

    What's with the pissant moderators around here?

    Dunno. I see that you are at a 0, but don't see any moderations on your post. Do you have negative karma or something?

    New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

    /bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.

  • Tak,

    Personally, I view the new Celeron CPU's with this: yawn.

    The best way to speed up computers nowadays is NOT by getting a faster CPU. More effective solutions include adding more system RAM (so your system uses the virtual memory on your hard drive a LOT less) and switching to 7200 RPM hard drive.

    In fact, I've played with an Abit AB-ZM6 motherboard running a Celeron "A" 500 MHz CPU with 192 MB of PC-66 SDRAM and a 7200 RPM IBM Deskstar 10.2 GB ATA-66 hard drive and it runs Windows 2000 Professional and Microsoft Office 2000 Professional quite well with no appearent speed problems!
  • No, according to this article [heise.de] from the German Heise Newsticker, the PSN has been disabled by default in the new Celeron.

    ------------------
  • Dude, Intel chips are named after rivers. I doubt they named it after the Coppermine to fool dumbsh*ts into thinking it used copper interconnects.
  • Buy the second best processor and a good motherboard. My Motherboard is an iWill Dual Slot 1. It has up to an 8.5x multiplier and up to a 133mhz bus speed. With a small adapter card I can pick up Coppermines and stick them in this puppy (along with new memory). Right now I've got a single P3 (Katmai) 500 and plan to get a second in July. I CAN with a little work have dual Ghz Cumines if I could afford it. Dual processors is definitely cooler than school because if your system is too slow with only a single processor, two doubles your processing power for a much lower cost than a faster processor. The Abit BP6 would be a good Coppermine board AFAIK since it's got the dual Socket 370s.
  • If you want to add alot of speed to your system and are worried about disk I/O invest is ALOT of RAM. The fewer number of times the program hits the swap the less important the disk I/O is. You load everything once and let it fly from there. I run around with 384 megs of RAM and even Win 2k doesn't take swap hits very often. With BSD you would be set with 256 megs of RAM.
  • The gamers I know would all rather buy Celeron systems than spring for a 'real' P3 which would get perhaps 5% more speed. They'd then throw the extra money into a GeForce DDR or 128MB more RAM, where they'd really notice a speed difference.

    Buying a P2 over a Celeron A is a bad decision. Similarly, buying a P3 over a Celeron 2 will probably be a bad decision.

    Instead of padding Intel's profits, try spending the money where it'll actually do some good.
  • Whenever I see anything about the Celerons and there purposefully being crippled, i.e. less cache, lower bus speeds, underclocking (look ma' I coined a new word), I always feel like it's a rip off.

    In the automobile industry there is certainly a place for both the 4 cylinder and the 8 cylinder and we expect too pay less for the 4 cylinder. After all you get a lot less metal in the average 4 cylinder automobile than you do in the 8, but this analogy just doesn't hold up for me when applied to silicon.

    Am I being totally unreasonable here?

    BTW, I'm actually hoping somebody will set me straight about this. I've recommended Celerons to a few people but always half-heartedly and for some people it does seem like a lower end machine would suffice.

  • if my Celeron 433 works just fine and dandy, what in the world would I need a Celeron II for?

    It's not about convincing people who have something that they're happy with that they should upgrade. It's about having a product which is half-way competitive with AMD for those people who are looking for a new computer.

    There are still a lot of folks looking for a first (cheap) computer, and an amazing number of antique systems out there. My company just upgraded my software development system from the Pentium-166 that I'd been using. We have tons of 486 systems still in use, including a bunch of SX-25's. We will be buying new computers to replace those over the next few years, and we certainly will be looking for cheap ones.

  • Well, here we are again, folks:

    Between Intel & AMD we have:
    Socket7
    Super7 (100Mhz)
    Socket 370
    Socket ??? (100 & 133Mhz Coppermine)
    Slot 1
    Slot 2 (SECC2)
    Slot A

    With all these different "standards" for putting the processor onto the motherboard, how long will it be before the processors are just stamped onto the motherboard?

    We're at the point now, where any processor upgrade requires a new motherboard (either for FSB speed, or connector type, or chassis type). If you buy early and expect to upgrade, Intel changes the rules, if you buy later, your upgrade choices are less than 100Mhz different because the clock multiplyer won't go that high. And of course, everything else under the sun has been integrated onto some motherboards (Video, Sound, Modem, Ethernet, Serial, Parallel, USB, IDE, FDC)

    This industry is rapidly moving just like the Automotive industry did about 10 years ago. The trend moved from a car that could be 'tinkered' with in the driveway to eke out more horsepower or gas mileage, to cars that should never be touched by a hobbyist without expensive diagnostic equipment.

    The days of tinkering are numbered, and I for one am disappointed.
  • Okay, let me get this straight..

    Intel releases a chip for less than $200 that easily overclocks to 83/750 MHz with simple air cooling. And that's before anyone's gotten fancy with it...or even considering that the cheaper 566 MHz chip has the option of going up to 100/850 MHz (and remember this is the same core stepping as the new CuMine 850s and 866s).

    And people are bitching about this???

    Talk about history repeating itself...I remember when the 300A came out, everyone whined about its low bus speed and small cache. Anyone else see the irony?
  • > The days of tinkering are numbered, and I for
    > one am disappointed.

    Well, get over it.

    Back in the good old days (before ZIF (zero insertion force) sockets) motherboards have ALWAYS been tied to the motherboard they were running on. (8086, 286, 386, early 486). There was little overclocking too, since they used quartz timing chips that were difficult to remove or replace. You basicly used what you had.

    Even during the years of the 486, pentium and pentium II, cpus were still more or less tied to the motherboard. There was simply no point in only replacing the CPU. The main reasons for this are:

    1) Better resale value: most people looking for older hardware need the motherboard that came with the CPU and pay much better.

    2) Newer motherboards have features and performace better than the older motherboards, Eg higher FSB's, better RAM support (although RDRAM is a bit dodgy). What is the point of sticking a 1Ghz cpu into a motherboard that can only do 66mhz, or cannot supply enough voltage. So the most logical thing to do is to remove the old motherboard and sell it with the CPU and get a decent motherboard.

    It may be that intel are pushing through extra physical changes to their boards to boost chipset sales, but even if they didn't, the technology changes quickly enough that old motherboards are just useless with older CPU's (the only exception that I will mention is the BX board, which seems to scream no matter what pentium-II/III class processor you use in it)

    The days of tinkering may be numbered, but don't imply that they existed of more than a few lucky years.
  • What kind of people need new CPUs? The people who have motivation to upgrade. Usually it's because of games that require a faster processor in order to get the 3d movement to be more real time and more realistic (not blocky). These power users aren't the kind of people who generally buy Celerons... they get the full fledged PIII or Athlon.

    I don't play those kind of games (I don't like 1st person shoot em up games), and my Celeron 433 is just fine for the kinds of games I play on it. Other people with previous generation Celerons are most likely the same kind of user that I am.

    Intel SHOULD develop new products... they SHOULD work on getting the high end processors even better. Not cripple their high end processors and try to get Joe user who uses office apps to "upgrade" just because an upgrade is available.
  • There's I think 2 or 3 different versions of the UltraSparc II...

    The problem with the processor wars is that they just focus on a number (now many MHz they can get up to) when there are lots of other factors in computer performance. People see the 800 mhz and think it must be 2x as fast as their 400 mhz chip. If some of the bottlenecks in the hardware would be resolved, there'd be a lot better performance everywhere.
  • I have a celeron 433 computer at home (of the home assembled variety). A celeron works fine for me because I don't play games that require real time 3d. I play Heroes III, AOE, and Civ II - Test of Time for the most part, and internet stuff on my computer. I'm the kind of person who buys a Celeron. So if my Celeron 433 works just fine and dandy, what in the world would I need a Celeron II for? I think that the only reason they're coming up with these new chips is so that people who have other chips that work just fine for what they use it for will be pressured to upgrade, and thus contribute to their bottom line.

    When will the insanity end??

  • Yea using PC100 ram... (Non-DDR) see the probelm here?

    Of course, the CPU bus does not always talk to the RAM. It also acts as a conduit for information to the PCI/AGP Bus as well, which means that while the CPU waits for a data from the decoupled RAM connection, it could also read/write to the peripheral busses. No, there isn't a problem here.

    Even if the PC100 was the only game in town, there are many ways to speed it up, like having multiple banks of RAM. Instead of having one bank for the memory, you have two. Now, in optimal cases, the cpu can read/write two words at once, effectively doubling the memory bandwith.

  • "Intel knows that they can't beat AMD on performance, so they will flood the market with variations of the same chip"

    Have you looked at any benchmarks for the high speed chips (where the athlons are running at 1/3 speed cache)? What will you see? The coppermines soundly thrashing (well, by a noticeable, but not very large, margin)

    Oh wait, I forgot, AMD is the underdog. Therefore, since a while back their chips were faster (the lower speeds with the 1/2 speed cache) Mhz by Mhz, we're still going to say they're faster even though it's no longer true.

    Really though, read up on the performance of the Athlons with the 1/3 speed cache vs. the performance of the Coppermines... Yup, the Coppermines have edged by the Athlons.
  • Celeron 2 - Flip chip.
  • Hmm.
    Interjecting a bit of math
    x times the log of y is equal to log y ^ x
    so 2 times a celeron 2, would be a celeron 4, because it's celeron 2 ^ 2.

    Of course, this is entirely stupid, but what can you expect when you have math on the brain
    ----
    Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
  • I just thought I'd interject a bit. What made the celeron such a great chip to OC was that they had that 66Mhz bus - remember, when the multiplier is locked, when you overclock, you're upping the bus speed. So, if you overclock your Celery 400 to 600 (completely possible with nothing more than a large fan) suddenly you're running at 100Mhz FSB...

    Compare this to overclocking a normal P3 - you have to start pushing your FSB OVER 100 - suddely your PC100 ram isn't good enough anymore... your PCI cards start to act fruity - when you up your FSB, after all, you're overclocking EVERYTHING... Forget about even TRYING to overclock your Cu that is designed to run on a 133 Mhz FSB... your PC133 ram will bite the dust around 140-145.

    So, once you got your celeron running at 600, 100mhz FSB, you just get your Abit BP6 board, run two of them, and whoosh. Nice power. 'Cause remember, the other thing that made the celeron so great was that the cache RAN AT THE SAME SPEED AS THE CHIP. As opposed to half. So just because there was less cache didn't matter so much 'cause it was a HECK of a lot faster.

    Then there's the celeron two - same slow cache as the P3, just less of it. And the multiplier's going to be pretty damn high to make a 600+ Mhz chip out of a 66Mhz FSB... so if you up it all the way to 100, just sit back and watch the fireworks... the era of the Celeron being the perfect chip (value-wise, and even power) looks like it's coming to a halt.

    God, I ramble like Katz...
  • That's because you already bought a new motherboard. It's all a matter of timing. I put together a new system for myself for Christmas and needed all new parts. The lower price of an Athlon more than made up for the higher priced MB. Intel had you upgrade MB's a couple times in the last couple of years so you should figure that in. I used to work for an authorized Intel dealer and Intel sent us a press release explaining that socketed CPU's will never break the 400Mhz mark because of technical limitations. This was to explain Slot1's purpose when the P2 266Mhz was top dog. Intel is working the system as much as they can. On the positive side, I can drop a Celeron in my P2 LX(66Mhz) MB and give it some more life.

  • My understanding on the cache issue and clock (Score:3)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2000 @06:09AM (#1163008) Homepage Journal
    As I understand it, there is still 256k cache on-board (saving money in the design process), but half of it is disabled to differentiate it from the Coppermine PIII processors, where it's all enabled. Doing it that way would be cheaper than having a completely different fab, I'd think.

    Performance-wise, the average Joe who buys a Celery-based system isn't going to overclock, and the overclockers are a small, but devoted group that will find a way to crank the processors up anyway. The multiplier locks on processors don't really stop overclockers, but they do help stop people from remarking the chips since there's no easy way to tamper.

    On the overclocking front, interestingly enough, Athlons are actually pretty overclock-friendly, and the Golden Fingers cards that simplify the process are pretty inexpensive. I run my K7-600 at 750 and it was quick and easy.

    Basically, the new Celerys are a pre-emptive strike against the AMD Spitfire CPU's, which replace the K6-2 processor family but use an Athlon core and bus. I think AMD will continue making inroads into the Celery target market, though - the box companies have been burned too many times by Intel of late to put all their eggs in one basket. Dell is the last Intel-only holdout and we'll see how long that lasts.

    Depending on pricing, these new Celerys could be a pretty good bargain for the "enthusiast". I may check out the possibility of slapping one in to replace the PII-350 I have in my old Mandrake box at home.

    - -Josh Turiel

  • ... cache size isn't everything ! (Score:3)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2000 @05:59AM (#1163009) Homepage
    Cache organisation is as important as size! The larger caches (512KB-1MB) seen on SS7 boards were often direct mapped. Do not compare these with two-way or four-way (Celeron) caches.

    The problem is a direct mapped cache has only one place for each RAM location (repeating every cachelength). Say you have a program that accesses a memory location, then accesses one [cachelength] away. The first will be flushed from cache to make room for the second. And over again = thrashing. You won't generally be able to predict physical addresses because paging remaps everything.

    Two way set associative caches are a big win. Every memory cell can go into _two_ cache locations. That way, an LRU algorithm is used to decide who replaces what, and recently used data is much less likely to be flushed.

    I'm very pleased with Intel's P6 four way set associative caches. When comparing cachesize, I multiply size by associativity. So a 128 KB 4way cache is as good as a 512 KB direct mapped.

    This is definietly an oversimplification. There are a few problems/OSes that can keep their entire working set in L2 cache. Then large direct mapped is a win. But they are rather rare compared to problems that exceed L2 and need to coprocess 2 or more data elements.

  • Still 66MHz FSB? (Score:3)

    by tak amalak ( 55584 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2000 @04:55AM (#1163010)
    Why is Intel crippling the new Celeron with a 66MHz bus? I mean the P3 is already at 133 so the Celeron is at half the bus speed of the P3. The Spitfire on the otherhand, shares the Athlons bus speed and seems will be a better performer. We'll see how this affects performance and how soon Intel will change their minds on Celeron FSB speed. I'm recommending my friends get Athlon systems or iMacs depending on thier needs.
    --

  • Apparently not... (Score:3)

    by DebtAngel ( 83256 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2000 @05:45AM (#1163011) Homepage
    Pentium, Pentium II, Pentium III, Pentium Pro, Pentium II Xeon, Pentium III Xeon.

    I'm still a little surprised they didn't go with Pentium Value for the Celeron. I mean, they paid the hundred bucks for the trademark, and they'll be damned if they can't squeeze every last cent out of it.

  • Re:BP6? - almost. (Score:3)

    by WhyteRabbyt ( 85754 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2000 @05:08AM (#1163012) Homepage
    www.bp6.com [bp6.com] reports that single-CPU's works okay on the BP6 with the Powerleap 370 to FCPGA adaptor, but not SMP. Although I wouldnt be surprised to see the adaptor tweaked for SMP real soon now

  • Why the small cache? Because... (Score:4)

    by jabber ( 13196 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2000 @05:37AM (#1163013) Homepage
    What you say is completely on-target, technically. But technical details have nothing to do with the choice of cache size.

    The 'new' Celeron, with another cache level is being introduced to add confusion to the market. It will be marginally cheaper than the larger cache version, so cost of production is not the issue.

    In fact, this Celeron will probably start life as the larger-cached version, and have half it's cache disabled (intentionally destroyed) to offer the customer an ILLUSION of having more choices.

    Intel has done this before:

    386SX was a 16 bit 386DX. Valid difference.
    486SX was a 486DX, with a non-functioning floating point unit. The DX chips that burned out their FPU during testing were relabeled as SX and sold at a discount. This way, Intel sold that which it would have otherwise thrown away.

    How is this different? This is intentional. Intel knows that they can't beat AMD on performance, so they will flood the market with variations of the same chip. Intel is betting on the fact that Joe Q. Average will see how many 'different' processors Intel produces, and conclude that Intel is a better investment.

    The performance penalty that Joe Q. Average will suffer by running a chip with a cache that is half the size for which most code is optimized is not really an issue for Intel.

    Does anyone think that Intel bean-counters really care about the OPTIMALITY of the product? No, they care about it's PROFITABILITY. The stock-holders are the company's first priority.

    As for the technical details.. CAVEAT EMPTOR, as always.

  • More on the Celeron 2 (Score:5)

    by Oscarfish ( 85437 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2000 @05:18AM (#1163014) Homepage

    Here's a HardwareCentral review [hardwarecentral.com] of the Celeron 2 (today must be the day NDAs were lifted; look for other butt-kicking sites like Thresh's [firingsquad.com] and Sharky's [sharkyextreme.com] to maybe have something on it later today.

    Here's BP6.com [bp6.com], an excellent reference for those of you with that funky Abit board. Check out the video preview of the Powerleap FC-PGA adapters - basically they plug into Coppermines and allow two of them (new stepping ONLY) to run in SMP mode. Of course, your BP6 would be running at 100MHz FSB by default - and overclocking well past 100MHz (which is what is required to unlock the true potential of Coppermines) is flaky on any BX board.

    Coppermines seem, for me, an excellent buy. I have a 500E running at 733Mhz (147MHz FSB) on an MSI MS-6309 [firingsquad.com] Apollo Pro 133A board. Excellent performance, and super stable.

    The 66MHz FSB for these new Celerons is a double-edged sword. It's good that the 66MHz+ gap is open, which is really what made the original Celerons such good overclockers; but besides the performance hit (naturally), the lower FSB means a higher multiplier. The internal multiplier (locked by Intel) for the 600MHZ Celeron 2 is 9.0x. That's ass-high, people. I don't think many motherboards currently support that. At the very least I think a BIOS upgrade is in order, unless you're absoluely sure the board can handle that high a multiplier - but getting back to the performance hit, not only is your memory, etc. running at only 66MHz, but with the high multiplier your chip is running 9 times faster than your system. That's a low of waiting on its part.

    My advice? Get a 500E or 550E (both can be had for around $200, if you know where to look) and overclock them beyond insanity. 150MHz FSB is not out of the question for these chips, especially the ones with the new core stepping. I'll be going for a 600E (FC-PGA) as soon as school [ssu.edu] lets out for me for the Summer.

    For a truly bent journalistic look at the Coppermines, check out this piece [overclockers.com] I wrote for the fantastic Overclockers.com [overclockers.com] over Winter Break.

  • The problem with different amounts of cache... (Score:5)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2000 @05:03AM (#1163015)
    The trick to caching is that it speeds up repeated access to the same data or accessing data in nearby segments of memory.

    When you are optimizing memory locations in your code (the OS or the applications), you optimize for vitual memory page sizes for memory usage, and for cache sizes to make sure that your application gets the most use of the cache as it can.

    In a world where we get precompiled binaries (ideally you could teach the compiler to optimize for the different levels and compile it for different amounts, additionally programmers could put flags in their code for the different optimizations), how to we optimize our applications?

    If the Celeron2 becomes really popular, then we optimize for 128K and 256K machines or 512K machines get little to know benefit from their larger caches. If we optimize on 256K or 512K, our smaller caches may get unacceptable cache miss rates and suffer poor performance.

    The idea behind this is that 128K is aleady ~95% cache hit rate, and doubling the cache only gives small improvements. However, when Pentium Classic machines used to ship with 512K on the good boards and K6s and K6-2s were shipping on mobo with 1MB cache, why are we now switching down the amount for higher speed? I understand why it is faster (90% of L1 no slow down, 95% of L2 1 missed cycle; faster than 90% of L1 no slow down, 98% or 99% L2 of 3 or 4 missed cycles and memory access is 6-8 missed cycles)? Are our programs out there optimized for the older "larger" caches or the newer, "smaller" caches. It seems like we are going to see less and less advantage to the expensive systems with lots of cache when we are optimizing for the workstations with much less cache.

    Alex

  • Intel has a problem... (Score:5)

    by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Wednesday March 29, 2000 @05:16AM (#1163016)

    From where I'm sitting, Intel currently has an interesting problem. Their flagship processor line, the Pentium III Coppermine, tops out at 1GHz . But there aren't that many around, and the current crop of PIIICu's seem to top out at 800MHz. Overclockers can squeeze this up a bit, but it seems that the PIIICu's in the shop are close to their limits anyway. Celeron's have always proved to be seriously overclockable - most 500MHz will go to 600MHz plus, which leads me to believe that Intel is not being anything like as strict in the CPU speeds it's binning its processors into.

    In other words, the Celeron processors are not being tested hard as they come off the production line as there is an adequate supply of the speeds that Intel wishes to see. Why doesn't Intel want it's Celerons to be sold as close to the limiting speeds as possible? In my opinion, it's because they don't want to eclipse their PIIICu flagship chips with Celeron chips running at the same clockspeed as this would dilute their market with their own product.

    So what you cry? None of this would matter so much if AMD wasn't quietly pulling ahead in the high-speed chip fabrication stakes. With the Athlon coming off the production lines at clock speeds 850, 900, 950 and 1GHz, there is considerable pressure on the PIIICu's to remain visible in the marketplace, since they are the direct competitor to the Athlon. The Celeron 2 looks to be throttled by it's bus speed (66MHz?) in comparison to the Athlon at 200MHz, and won't compete in heavy memory fetching tasks, such as games, art programs, complex DTP etc. Until Intel can successfully ramp up the speeds on it's headline brand, the increasing speeds of the Celerons and Celeron 2's present an interesting dilemma.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

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