Intel Celeron D: New, Improved & Exceeds Expectations
by Derek Wilson on June 24, 2004 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Final Words
The numbers don't lie: Prescott is very well suited for Celeron. Not only do the new Celeron 3xx line of processors perform better than the previous Northwood based Celerons, but even when hampered by a 400MHz FSB, the Prescott Celerons consistently showed improved performance over their predecessors. Even more impressive is the fact that the Celeron 3xx line is able to keep pace with AMD's 2600+ and under Athlon XP line.The improvements in Prescott's core weren't enough to help it keep up with Northwood as a Pentium 4, even with a double-sized L2 cache. With a 128kb cache, much of Northwood's strong points were ripped away, causing plenty of costly pipeline stalls as we mentioned in last year's budget CPU roundup. With the Prescott based Celeron, Intel's architectural enhancements aimed at avoiding pipeline stalls really had a chance to shine. This is due in no small part to the increased returns on performance when smaller caches are doubled in size.
It's clear that at this L2 cache size, Prescott is able to avoid enough potential pipeline stalls that the increased impact of refilling a 31-stage pipeline is much less significant than Northwood's constant struggle to keep itself busy. It's hard to tell how much of this is due to the improved branch prediction and scheduling as opposed to the fact that the extra 8kb of L1 cache that the Prescott has is a more significant percentage of the overall cache size on Celerons than Pentiums, but either way, the performance advantage over Northwood is there.
The bottom line is that Intel's newest architecture scales down with cache size and bus speed in a much more graceful manner than Northwood.
The only issue left for Intel to deal with is pricing. With both the Athlon XP 2500+ and 2600+ easily available at under $80.00 (as per our RealTime Pricing Engine), Intel really shouldn't be charging much more for their essentially comparable Celeron D parts. The information we were able to track down tells us that the 325 will be priced at $79, the 330 at $89, and the 335 at $117. It's a welcome change to see Intel close the gap between price and performance, as it was distasteful for us to look around and see people being pulled in by ads pushing something like "only $200 more to upgrade form an Athlon XP 2500+ to a 2.7GHz Celeron!" Stuff like that almost makes my stomach cringe. Now that Intel's gotten a handle on performance, we're happy that they are tightening up their belts and starting to rely on quality (rather than the Intel name) to sell products in the value space.
A very special thanks to MonarchComputer.com for sponsoring this review.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
54 Comments
View All Comments
DerekWilson - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
Sorry for all the L2 cache size problems -- and thanks for the support AtaStrumf :-)Still, no excuse. I accept responsibility and appologize for the mistake.
dankim333 - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
Possible Ad Campaign:NEW! Intel Celeron D: Now with 23% less suck!
AtaStrumf - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
I guess they're rewriting the article now :) Quite a big mistake with the L2 Cache, but hay, shit happens, no need to shout and yell about it to make yourself feel so much smarter mino.robg1701 - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
Ah good, I see im not the only one to notice the 'slight' page long error about the old celerons having 256k cache ;)mino - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
#18 the hell some mispronouncements."with sum BIG mistakes..." should be:
"with such BIG mistakes in every second sentence form Anand !"
mino - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAASE repair(or better-> REWRITE) that review, since(apartt from benchmark results) I didn't saw an article with sum BIG mistakes in every second sentence!Boys , I'm sorry for U but that Idiot who wrote that old Celeron does have 256k L2 is to be fired uppon !
Not to mention that 2.8Cel D should be compared to AXP2800+ or Semrpon2800+.
About 2500+ slower than 2200+: YES, it is a mistake undoubtedly there some where.
ZobarStyl - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
Man what a week for Intel; they release all this new high-end stuff that isn't worth jack yet (and is o/c locked), then come out with some actually decent Cellys for the low end. Shoring up the low end but letting the high-end kinda simmer/slack off? Doesn't seem like Intel's style. Also, I wonder if it's almost too late to save the day, as the northwood-based Celerons were horrible and that will hurt that product's image for a while to come (don't forget there are still people who won't buy an AMD processor because of the old THG video =) )Dasterdly - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
I agree with araczynski, first thing I looked for was a comparison from the prescot/northwood.araczynski - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
throw in perspective by including a couple prescot/northwood scores on the graphs.tfranzese - Thursday, June 24, 2004 - link
If only Intel were pricing these lower than competing AMD parts I might actaully build a system off these, but they'll have to work on that. Not to mention, as others have, the Sempron should be here soon and show improvements to an aging line.