You cant buy a reliable car without mortgaging an arm and a leg, you cant live in a world without war, and you cant know the straight facts on what processor is right for you. Hummed to the tune of Bruce Hornsbys most remembered song, there are a number of users out there that see the multitude of Intel processors hitting the market yet are never told what path they should take, other than the famous six word solution, Thats Just the Way it is.

Apparently some things will indeed never change, as Intel grows larger by the day, there will always be supporters as well as adamant haters of the undoubtedly successful microprocessor giant. If you ask an extreme Intel supporter what the best processor for you to buy is, the answer would most likely be the outrageously priced Pentium III 500; and if you were to ask an alternative-CPU advocate the same question, their response would probably be centered around "screw Intel and buy a K6-3."

There are those that take the microprocessor industry a bit less personally, however, just as everyone wants to be a part of the best team in the league, no one wants to support a failing microprocessor company. Making an honest suggestion as to which processor is right for you often times ends up a question of whether or not the person you are asking is biased towards one company or another. Unfortunately, thats just the way it is.

Assuming, for one reason or another, youve decided to go with an Intel processor, what is there to choose? For a large percentage of the population, Intel has happened to create one spectacular processor, not in terms of its performance or stability, rather its price, inspired wholly in part by increasing competition from alternative-CPU manufacturer, AMD. As most AnandTech readers already know, this unnamed processor is none other than the Celeron. With the Celerons clock speeds now passing the 400MHz with the newly released 433MHz part, which members of the family are the best contenders for a processor that provides the best price to performance ratio? Well, there are currently 7 clock speeds at which the Intel Celeron processor is currently sold at, which one is right for you? AnandTechs law of winners says that there can be only one, and since you cant buy every single processor out there, your personal law of winners should agree as well, so which processor will it be? The cacheless Celeron 266 or the latest Celeron 433? Lets find out

Understanding the fundamentals of Intels Celeron processor requires that you understand Intels "need" for the Celeron line of CPUs. Facing intense pressure from rising microprocessor manufacturer, AMD, Intel had limited options left in making sure that the market did not slip through their fingers into the hands of their competitors.
In order to prevent the seemingly inevitable from happening, as their flagship processor at the time, the Pentium II, was out of the reach of many users on tight budgets, Intel opted to decrease their profit margin and release a lower cost version of their flagship processor.

Intel used extremely powerful business tactics to make sure that their latest low-cost concoction, dubbed the Celeron, would be the chosen solution over anything AMD would offer. Their approach was so extreme that it was said that the Celeron yielded a profit at least 4 times smaller than that of a single Intel Xeon processor, which retails between $800 and $3000 depending on the type. It was obvious that Intel wasnt making a killing off of the Celeron processors, but in order to remain one step ahead of the competition, Intel needed to release higher clock speed Celeron processors at a rate previously unheard of in the industry. When AMD hit 450MHz, Intel wanted to be past the 500MHz mark, and when AMD hit 500MHz, Intel wanted to be a great distance from them at that point as well.

Somewhere along the line Intel realized that in order for their Celeron to remain as competitive, price-wise, as they had hoped it to be some sort of cost reduction would have to be implemented on the manufacturing of the processor. It was this realization that forced Intel to move away from the Slot-1 interface of the original Celeron processors back towards a more cost effective socket interface. This created the two flavors of Intels Celeron, the new Plastic Pin Grid Array (PPGA) Socket-370 Celeron and the older Single Edge Processor Package (SEPP) Slot-1 Celeron. To date, every single Celeron with on-chip L2 cache is available in both PPGA and SEPP versions, including Intels latest 433MHz model. Due to pressure from Intel to push the Socket-370 platform, you can expect the supply of SEPP Celerons to dry out in the coming months, being replaced by the abundant supply of PPGA units, at increasingly higher clock speeds.

The PPGA Celerons are finally, after a couple of months, being sold at noticeably cheaper prices than their SEPP counterparts, which is a definite benefit to the end user. Although technically there is another form of the Celeron, the older cacheless Celeron that was introduced in early 1998, the value of the older 266 and cacheless 300 processors has placed them at a point where they arent a good investment for any user, even if the price is right, simply because the jump to a 300A (with 128KB of L2 cache) isnt going to cost you that arm and leg.

The Celeron we’re going to be talking about here is what is commonly known as the Celeron A, available in clock speeds ranging from 300MHz to 433MHz, the Celeron A boasts a heavy feature set that explains its high-end performance, at a low-end price. The Celeron A is based on what was internally referred to by Intel as the Mendocino core, a 0.25 micron processor with 32KB of L1 cache, and 128KB of L2 cache integrated into the die of the processor, in order to cut costs while improving performance.

The Celeron is not frequency locked, meaning it can be overclocked through the use of higher Front Side Bus (FSB) frequencies, however it is multiplier locked meaning that higher clock multipliers cannot be used to overclock the CPU. Currently, all Celeron processors operate, officially, using the 66MHz FSB frequency, meaning that they are prime candidates for use on motherboards based on the newer Intel BX/GX and VIA/SiS Slot-1 chipsets, as well as on the older Intel LX chipsets, so don’t throw those old investments out just yet. Intel will eventually make the move to the 100MHz FSB with the Celeron family, but for now, the 66MHz FSB of the Celeron isn’t providing any major bottlenecks for the processor. More importantly, its backwards compatibility with older chipsets (440LX) make the Celeron one of the most backwards compatible processors Intel has ever released, a bit disappointing actually.

One of the reasons for the incredible popularity the first Celeron processors attained was the ability of the 300MHz parts to be overclocked to an incredible 450MHz, simply by using the 100MHz FSB in conjunction with the processor’s 4.5x clock multiplier. The soon-to-be classic 300A to 450MHz overclock gave many users the false impression that all future Celeron processors would be equally as overclockable, however in actuality, with every release after the original Celeron 300A, overclocking the CPUs became increasingly difficult. The reason behind this is simple, according to Intel, the theoretical limit of the Mendocino core, under their current manufacturing process, is approximately 550MHz. The success of the original Celeron 300A was simply due to Intel’s unusually high yield on the processors, meaning that the quality of the CPUs manufactured was high enough that a 300MHz part would reliably operate at 450MHz. As you’ll notice by the chart below, the overclockability of all Celeron CPU’s after the 300A seems to drop off sharply as you approach the 450MHz mark, for the same reason illustrated above, you’re approaching the physical limit of the Mendocino core.  This doesn't mean that you will never see a Celeron overclock up to and beyond 500 - 550MHz, it simply states that the odds are definitely against you if you're trying to accomplish just that. 

The worst overclocker?  The Celeron 333, the best?  The good ol' 300A, unfortunately the supply of 300A's that work at 450MHz is scarce, and seems to be limited primarily to PPGA Celerons alone, with the amount of overclockable SEPP 300As very limited in quantity. 

The Test

The Socket-7/Super7 Test System Configuration was as follows:

• AMD K6 233, AMD K6-2 300, AMD K6-3 450 (engineering sample)
• FIC PA-2013 w/ 2MB L2 Cache
• 64MB PC100 SDRAM
• Western Digital Caviar AC35100 - UltraATA
• Matrox Millennium G200 AGP Video Card (8MB) - All other Benchmarking
• Canopus Pure3D-2 Voodoo2 (12MB) - Glide Tests
• Canopus Spectra 2500 AGP TNT Video Card (16MB) - OpenGL/Direct3D tests
• VIA AGP GART Drivers v2.9
• VIA Bus Master IDE Drivers
• VIA PCI IRQ Remapping Drivers

The Pentium II comparison system differed only in terms of the processor and motherboard in which case the following components were used:

• Intel Celeron 300, Intel Celeron 300A, Intel Celeron 333, Intel Celeron 366, Intel Celeron 400, Intel Celeron 433, Intel Pentium II 400, Intel Pentium II 450, Intel Pentium III 500
• ABIT BX6 Revision 2.0 Pentium II BX Motherboard & ABIT BM6 Socket-370 Celeron BX Motherboard

The Pentium Pro comparison system differed only in terms of the processor and motherboard in which case the following components were used:

• Intel Pentium Pro 200 (256KB L2), Intel Pentium II OverDrive 333 (512KB L2)
• Octek Rhino P6 Pro Socket-8 FX Motherboard

The following drivers were common to both test systems:

• MGA G200 Drivers v1677_426
• nVidia TNT 0.48 drivers (Detonator Drivers were used in the SSE Drivers Comparison)
• DirectX 6.1
• Quake 2 v3.20 w/ 3DNow! Support enabled when applicable

The benchmark suite consisted of the following applications:

• Ziff Davis Winstone 98 under Windows 98
• Ziff Davis Winstone 99 under Windows 98 & Windows NT4 SP4
• Quake 2 v3.20 using demo1.dm2 and Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo
• Naturally Speaking Professional Speech Recognition Software
• Microsoft Netshow Encoder
• Adobe Photoshop 5.02
• Dispatch by Rage Software w/ SSE support

All Winstone tests were run at 1024 x 768 x 16 bit color, all gaming performance tests were run at 800 x 600 x 16 bit color. 3DNow! support was enabled when applicable.

For the in-depth gaming performance tests Brett "3 Fingers" Jacobs Crusher.dm2 demo was used to simulate the worst case scenario in terms of Quake 2 performance, the point at which your frame rate will rarely drop any further. In contrast, the demo1.dm2 demo was used to simulate the ideal situation in terms of Quake 2 performance, the average high point for your frame rate in normal play. The range covered by the two benchmarks can be interpreted as the range in which you can expect average frame rates during gameplay.

Windows 98 Performance

Under Windows 98, the Celeron truly shines, offering virtually no reason for a normal user to opt for the Pentium II or Pentium III.   The Celeron 433 clocked at 488 does do quite a bit of damage, approaching the higher performing and more expensive CPUs in terms of performance here.

With the still popular TNT video card, the Celeron 488 is almost as fast as Intel's Pentium III 500 due to its sheer clock speed.   For all of you non-overclockers, the Celeron 433 does come in quite strong, just a few tenths of a frame away from the overclocked Celeron 450A.

Once again, the Celeron shows the uselessness of the Pentium II in the computers of most everyday users, don't be fooled by it's low-end "intentions," the Celeron can run with the best of them.

The Voodoo2 is still a popular video card, and as you should already know, most of today's CPUs are already maxing out the capabilities of the card.  If you're a Voodoo2 owner, you shouldn't be too worried about your gaming performance with any of the Celeron processors as you won't be CPU limited in your gaming performance.  It may be time to towards a new video card if you're in this position, that Voodoo3 is beginning to look mighty nice...as is nVidia's TNT2.

Conclusion

Your best bet with the Celeron has been, and always will be, a 300A that is guaranteed overclockable (by the vendor you're buying from) to 450MHz.   There are still quite a few vendors online that do offer this guarantee, and for the money you'll end up spending on a 300A, the boost to 450MHz is like getting something for nothing.  But what happens when the 300A is no longer an option?  Then things get a bit messy.

The one processor you definitely want to stay away from is the Celeron 333, whose overclocking potential is next to nothing in comparison to the rest of the processors.  The 333 will give you the bare minimum, and realistically, won't overclock too far beyond the 400MHz limit.  The processor to keep an eye on is the Celeron 366.  The reason being is this, the price of the 366 at the time of publication was at the Celery sweet spot, around $100, and the overclocking potential of the CPU is wonderful.  If your system can work fine at the 83MHz FSB, then the 366 will almost definitely crank out 458MHz worth of power, and even in the rare case that the 83MHz FSB  isn't an option, the 75MHz FSB will give you the 413MHz clock speed which isn't all that much slower in comparison to 458MHz. 

In the future, once the price drops a bit, the Celeron 433 will be the processor to hunt after.  You'll probably want to skip the Celeron 400 altogether as its overclocking potential isn't that great, however the 433, with its 6.5x clock multiplier, would make an excellent couple with the 75MHz FSB for a clock speed definitely faster than any officially rated Pentium II processor.

So for the time being, the processor to get is the Celeron 366, however in the future, the Celeron 433 will rise to take the 366's place, and the cycle will continue.  And that, my friend, is the way it is.