Intel will start phasing out Pentium and Celeron brands in 2023

[Shawn Knight]

What just happened? Intel will begin phasing out the long-standing Pentium and Celeron brands next year. Entry-level notebooks shipping in 2023 and beyond will feature CPUs under the new "Intel Processor" umbrella. Josh Newman, Intel VP and interim GM of mobile client platforms, said the revised branding will simplify their offerings so customers can "focus on choosing the right processor for their needs."

PC enthusiasts of yesteryear likely have fond memories of both brands. The original Pentium debuted in 1993 and served as Intel's flagship for more than a decade. For many years, the world's fastest personal computers featured Intel Inside. AMD's original Athlon would put up a good fight, but that is a story for another time.

Intel shifted gears to the Core branding for flagships in the latter half of the 2000s.

Intel's original budget chip, the Celeron, experienced its heyday in the late 90s. The Celeron 300A, codenamed Mendocino, proved to be a monster in the overclocking department.

By changing the bus speed from 66MHz to 100MHz on a higher-end motherboard, enthusiasts found they could reliably run the budget chip at 450MHz. The extra clock cycles and the inclusion of on-die L2 cache helped the processor rival the performance of the fastest and most expensive x86 chips available at the time. With a voltage bump and a bit more FBS manipulation, some even succeeded in breaking the 500MHz barrier.

When the Core branding took over as Intel's flagship, the Pentium name was demoted to a value brand. Neither it nor the Celeron caused much excitement from that point forward.

Intel Processor will serve as the brand name for multiple processor families, Intel said. I am not sure how using the same name across multiple processor families will simplify the lineup or make it less confusing as Intel promises but we shall see.

Chipzilla said the streamlining will additionally allow them to remain focused on their flagship brands, Intel Core, Intel Evo and Intel vPro.

Few products enjoy as long of a run as the Pentium and Celeron brands did and that's something to be proud of.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/96003-intel-start-phasing-out-pentium-celeron-brands-2023.html

 

[Bullwinkle M]

Drop ALL bottom rung chips and mass produce only high performance cpu's

This will lower the cost of performance chips for everyone and increase sales across the board

Dropping the budget label is not enough, drop the budget CPU

Performance ONLY!
Performance for ALL!

 

[terzaerian]

Never again will it be about the Pentiums

 

[psycros]

Drop ALL bottom rung chips and mass produce only high performance cpu's

This will lower the cost of performance chips for everyone and increase sales across the board

Dropping the budget label is not enough, drop the budget CPU

Performance ONLY!
Performance for ALL!

Can't quite get behind it. You'll still have customers who want basic functionality with maximum value and battery life coupled with low heat and weigh. However, I would say that we don't need very many of those low-end models. The entry level should be light gaming and high performance for office applications. Anything that struggles with Fortnite goes into the bin bound for China.

 

[bviktor]

Sounds like a change for the sake of change. "Intel Processor", really? How's that a "brand"? That's the stupidest excuse for a "name". Did they get a new CMO from Microsoft?

 

[toooooot]

I wont miss them. Last celeron cpu I used in a backup pc was horribly slow.
I feel sorry for people who actually have to use computers with those slowest CPUs.

 

[mrtraver]

I'm surprised the Pentium name held on for so long. After all, it was initially just a fancier way of saying "80586" for the 5th generation of Intel 8086 processors. "Pentium II" did not make any sense for the 6th generation, but I guess Intel was too chicken to call it the "Sextium."

 

[dragosmp]

Sounds like a change for the sake of change. "Intel Processor", really? How's that a "brand"? That's the stupidest excuse for a "name". Did they get a new CMO from Microsoft?

In lower income countries Pentium is a stronger brand than Intel. Even if Intel makes this obvious mistake, they'll roll it back, as they revived the Pentium brand in the past.

 

[Nobina]

Celerons for desktops should go away, they are too slow even for basic use. People who only do basic stuff will and should just get a laptop anyway. Pentiums, well, they are capable for using browsers and consuming light media but IMO they still belong in a laptop. Ideally, Intel should lower the prices for i3 CPUs to make up for wiping out low-end models.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

These processors are 1P+4E IIRC, yep 1 real core and 4 peasant cores and no H/T on the single P core in Celeron at least.

 

[Athlonite]

These two processors should have disappeared years ago when they started making i3 cpu's
i3 = low end
i5 = mid range
i7 = high mid range
i9 high end
so why do we still need Celery and poontium short answer we don't

 

[PEnnn]

Didn't Intel milk that junk enough already?? About time!!

 

[Guillermo Belli]

In lower income countries Pentium is a stronger brand than Intel. Even if Intel makes this obvious mistake, they'll roll it back, as they revived the Pentium brand in the past.

Not because people like them or seek them, most of the time that's what's available. Non-"Core" based CPUs are total garbage (with some exceptions), especially the 2 core variants. They are not suited even for basic browsing as the modern browsers and websitew are very resource intensive. Not even having an SSD makes Celeron/Pentium computers bearable.

To make matters worse there were some Pentium and Celeron CPUs that were cut-down versions of "Core" processors but were still miles ahead of "Atom" based processors in terms of usability.

Even AMD Puma CPUs offer much better performance.

 

[Ojref]

To be fair, the "Pent" of the Pentium prefix referred to the 5th architectural generation, and lost all meaning as soon as the so-called sixth gen 'Pentium Pro' showed up. Intel's marketing and branding team probably has the collective IQ of a box of dead snail shells.

 

[neeyik]

Drop ALL bottom rung chips and mass produce only high performance cpu's

AMD essentially already does this with their chiplet design. The primary difference between between the models is the number of chiplets they have and what condition those chiplets are in. It’s physically impossible to manufacture 100% perfect wafers so there will always be dies that have glitches in them; rather than throwing them away and wasting money, the damaged sections are disabled and then gets used in a suitable model.

 

[dragosmp]

To be fair, the "Pent" of the Pentium prefix referred to the 5th architectural generation, and lost all meaning as soon as the so-called sixth gen 'Pentium Pro' showed up. Intel's marketing and branding team probably has the collective IQ of a box of dead snail shells.

Very nice, I did not know the origin of the Pentium name.

 

[3ogdy]

Drop ALL bottom rung chips and mass produce only high performance cpu's

This will lower the cost of performance chips for everyone and increase sales across the board

Dropping the budget label is not enough, drop the budget CPU

Performance ONLY!
Performance for ALL!

I get a sense that you don't realize how budget CPUs end up on the market. High performance CPUs that don't cut it in terms of performance because of fabrication defects are sold as cheaper models. Sometimes they're so bad that they need a completely different category (hence the Core, Pentium, Celeron brandings).

 

[3ogdy]

My question now is: How will I be able to differentiate one "Intel Processor" from another "Intel Processor".

Sure, there will be Core CPUs, but how will I be able to tell the difference between the low-end CPUs?
Will the "Intel Processor" moniker be followed by the model name directly? This would mean Pentium and Celeron are being merged under the same umbrella.

I'm getting the impression that Intel is not only dropping the Pentium name, but actually giving it time so that people stop actively associating it with the low-end.

They could be unhappy with the whole Intel Core iX 12345678910K naming.

It's getting a bit long with 5 digits + letters. They might end up dropping the Core name and at some point return the Pentium to its former glory.
Pentium i5 XYZ? Not entirely out of the question.

 

[Hodor]

I'm surprised the Pentium name held on for so long. After all, it was initially just a fancier way of saying "80586" for the 5th generation of Intel 8086 processors. "Pentium II" did not make any sense for the 6th generation, but I guess Intel was too chicken to call it the "Sextium."

"Sextium" sounds so cool. If Intel doesn't want it AMD should take it

 

[Hodor]

Custom made computer case for Pentiums and Celerons:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/281543713093858/?mt=login

 

[Guillermo Belli]

I get a sense that you don't realize how budget CPUs end up on the market. High performance CPUs that don't cut it in terms of performance because of fabrication defects are sold as cheaper models. Sometimes they're so bad that they need a completely different category (hence the Core, Pentium, Celeron brandings).

Most Pentium/Celeron CPUs are based on a completely different architecture than i7/i5/i3. They were conceived to be low power/low performance. They should have left those for appliances (NAS, routers, micro-servers, etc.) instead of using them for mass market laptops/PCs as they are painfully slow and barely usable.

 

[maroon1]

Celerons for desktops should go away, they are too slow even for basic use. People who only do basic stuff will and should just get a laptop anyway. Pentiums, well, they are capable for using browsers and consuming light media but IMO they still belong in a laptop. Ideally, Intel should lower the prices for i3 CPUs to make up for wiping out low-end models.

Bullshit. My dad laptop has old i5-5200U (2 cores with HT), and runs basic stuff (browsing, office etc) smoothly after we installed SSD drive in laptop. It is smoother and more responsive than quad core i7 + slow laptop HDD drive, and also windows 10 starup is way faster. As long you have SSD drive, it will do basic stuff well.

Keep in mind that i5 5200U is way weaker than any modern Pentium CPU. Modern Pentium like (pentiumG7400) can play some AAA games with playable performance as long your GPU is good enough


Also, why should intel lower price of i3 ??? Does AMD even have anything that compete with $106 i3 12100F at same price ??


You can even get i3 10100F for $72.99 which is better choice than Pentium G7400 if you don't care about integrated GPU

i3 10100F | Newegg.com

Search Newegg.com for i3 10100F. Get fast shipping and top-rated customer service.

www.newegg.com

 

[Guillermo Belli]

Bullshit. My dad laptop has old i5-5200U (2 cores with HT), and runs basic stuff (browsing, office etc) smoothly after we installed SSD drive in laptop. It is smoother and more responsive than quad core i7 + slow laptop HDD drive, and also windows 10 starup is way faster. As long you have SSD drive, it will do basic stuff well.

Keep in mind that i5 5200U is way weaker than any modern Pentium CPU. Modern Pentium like (pentiumG7400) can play some AAA games with playable performance as long your GPU is good enough


Also, why should intel lower price of i3 ??? Does AMD even have anything that compete with $106 i3 12100F at same price ??


You can even get i3 10100F for $72.99 which is better choice than Pentium G7400 if you don't care about integrated GPU

i3 10100F | Newegg.com

Search Newegg.com for i3 10100F. Get fast shipping and top-rated customer service.

www.newegg.com

From what I've read on other sites, the change is for mobile processors.

An i5-5200U is miles ahead of a mobile Pentium/Celeron which are usually "Atom" based. The G7400 is "Core" based.

For most Pentium/Celeron "Atom" based computer installing an SSD and more RAM won't even make a difference because for most tasks the bottleneck, by far, is the CPU, even web broswing.

 

[comnut]

The problem with CPU naming, is that it 'covers' a massive difference in speed and capability... the laptop version *sounds* good, but it covers up the fact that it has been heavily cut down to be able to work in the VERY limited confines of a laptop..
have a look at the REAL spec of the 'proper' one...

Which CPU Should You Buy? Intel Core i5 vs. i7

Shopping for a laptop or desktop? Figuring out which CPU it should have can be the hardest part. Let's take a look at two of Intel's most popular processor lines and unravel the differences.

uk.pcmag.com

 

[comnut]

Unless you can afford $3,299 on this... :O

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