Intel preparing to kill Celeron processors, not?

[Matthew Smith]

A decade ago the Intel Celeron was known as the go-to processor for enthusiasts who wanted performance on a budget. You might recall the processor's early days when it could be aggressively overclocked, and more often than not users were happy to take advantage of the extra performance headroom. Celeron 300A running at 450MHz, anyone?

After its brief brush with popularity, the Celeron line faded away from view and became the boring budget processor Intel originally intended. In recent years it has been giving up market space to Intel's equally retired Pentium brand. Now, according to "major notebook makers," Intel may be planning to kill off the brand entirely.

The rumored demise of the Celeron is to occur in 2011, however Intel has so far denied any such plans. Regardless of the chip giant's claims, killing the line at some point is bound to happen, and why not as soon as next year considering that the few outgoing Celeron CPUs mostly overlap with other Atom and Pentium labeled products.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/39590-intel-preparing-to-kill-celeron-processors-not.html

 

[captaincranky]

As this article attests, Celerons still OC like the dickens; https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic128094.html

 

[Matthew Smith]

Indeed. I don't really think budget enthusiasts have to worry though. Intel will just replace the Celerons with even less expensive Pentiums.

The rumors also currently focus on laptops, where the whole overclocking thing isn't so popular. Although I doubt Intel would kill the brand for laptops and then keep it for desktops.

 

[raybay]

The advantage of Celerons is that they are sometimes modified Pentiums, which would perhaps fail the full quality assurance test... They don't work like Pentiums, but they work, and many/most people cannot tell the difference.

For the substantially lower cost, they are good for internet and writing letters and running Quickbooks of home accounting.

 

[captaincranky]

It's hard to kill something that only exists in name only. A fairer assessment of this situation might be "Intel preparing to stop using the Celeron marque".

Newegg lists 3 "Celeron" CPUs. One is a "Conroe", the other 2 are 'Wolfdales". When I think of a true "Celeron", the term "net burst architecture" springs to mind. As does "Prescott and "Cedar Mill". Ah, the good old days.

Intel resurrected the "Pentium" trademark after most of the P-4 stigma had been forgotten. Perhaps "Celeron" will just have a short hiatus.

 

[thatguyandrew92]

Does the name matter? I thought many different Intel Processors are the same, they just get more and more stripped down.

 

[KG363]

When I hear pentium or celeron, I run

 

[Matthew Smith]

This is true. Intel will in effect only be killing a brand, not a processor architecture. This has been the case for about a decade, I believe.

 

[arkantos]

the dual core will replace it and celeron is history

 

[teklord]

I had a Celeron during P4 era and it was slow as dirt. It sucked using it to even surf the net or using MS Office. I upgraded to a P4 and it seemed twice as fast. Celerons were created to be cheaper CPUs, not to be powerful ones. This is for entry level PC users only that turn on their PC to check their email only, or to us MS Office. I can't stand them for that even and everyone else should avoid these. I will be glad to see these processors discontinued.

 

[raybay]

Celerons have no purpose except to give a market for the defective Pentium processors which eak out along the assembly line. Celerons were not created to be their best, and to live in the market place. Some are defective, most are intentionally crippled, so as to have another plane in the marketing.
It is well known that a section of any market seeks a product which does less at a lower price. It makes some people feel good to know they thwarted quality, common sense, and good quality.
The enemy of good is better... but some just naturally like to side with the good if they cannot fine anything lower.

 

[dividebyzero]

Celerons are simply lower binned Pentiums...you either charge peanuts for them, or throw them away...easy to see why Intel chose the path they have.
The fact that Celeron models are thin on the ground says more about the number of good dies Intel gets per wafer and process/foundry, rather than a market losing traction.
So basically, a high leakage ( leaning towards the upper range of the Intel VID spec-incidentally excellent OC material as CC pointed out) part stripped of most of it's L2 cache, at the lowest bus speed/core frequency bin.

@Raybay
ALL Celerons are defective. It is a product of the binning process until you can get 100% defect free wafer runs. Unless you are talking about the top bin of each line then ALL CPU's are intentionally crippled, otherwise every CPU would have an unlocked multiplier, along with VT-x, VT-d, trusted execution enabled etc.
As for purpose, well, if they sell then some people find a use for them...and thanks to the single core/netburst/insane voltage configuration they (along with their P4 brethren) are still the only CPU's to break 8GHz...or 7.5GHz for that matter....so plenty of very cheap overclocking fun to be had.

 

[barfarf]

Ahhhhh. Sweet memories of the celern 300a. With it's awesome 50% of clock to a pentium 450. It was like getting CPU for 1/4 of th cost. Nice!!! Think between family and friends i had 4 of them.

 

[9Nails]

Intel has too many CPU's and too many sockets in my opinion. Atom, Celeron, Pentium, Core (i3, i5, i7, Extreme), Xeon. I welcome the simplification and thinning of the line-up. And seriously I hope that they keep a sub $50 CPU in the new line-up.

I remember the old Slot / Cartridge Celeron CPU's! I used to run my 266 MHz at 400 MHz for years until I could afford to upgrade the system.

 

[captaincranky]

Why the fuss? There are only a couple of CPUs that could only be called "Celeron" in the first place. I'm referring to the single core variants. Newegg only has the 430 L (Conroe) in stock ATM. There are possibly a couple of mobile Celerons still available also.

Who knows though, the single core issues could be (as DeeBeeZee has thoughtfully alluded to), Conroes with a dead core.

I think you should all be ashamed of yourselves, badmouthing.these fine CPUs. If they discontinue them, you'll all be hanging around saying things like, "I wish this crappy Atom" was as fast as my old Celee"!