Celerons in the High End

Marketing position

Now, the Celeron is wedged into a slightly awkward position for Intel. It has the performance to keep up with the PII/PIII line, but was always marketed as the budget CPU. Intel couldn't raise the Celeron's price due to the increasingly competitive and price-sensitive budget-PC market. This was a blessing for consumers, though, who could get great performance for a relatively cheap price tag.

Intel chose to keep the Celeron advancing at a modest pace, trying to keep a leg up over the competition only when needed. Since the Celeron is on a 66 MHz bus, and multipliers are in .5 increments, Celeron clock speeds are in 33 MHz increments. After the 300 MHz version, there was the 333, then the 366, then the 400, and finally the 433.

Along the way, the Celeron made another change, although as far as computing power was concerned, nothing was affected. Intel decided to cut manufacturing costs on the Celeron and moved it from the SEPP (Single Edge Processor Package) Slot-1 interface to a new interface, the (Plastic Pin Grid Array) PPGA Socket-370 interface. Of course, this raised some questions about new motherboards, which has been addressed by motherboard manufacturers who have both produced Socket-370 motherboards and Socket-370 to Slot-1 converters, which allow socketed Celerons to run on Slot-1 motherboards.

The development that the Celeron line has continued to receive from Intel is a good indication of its success. However, things are not over for this CPU yet, as it continues to progress. We are at an interesting point now, because the newest Celeron that FiringSquad has just gotten our hands on is the first Celeron to surpass the Pentium II in clock speed. The Celeron line, now at 466 MHz, is becoming a pretty high-powered chip!