Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/449
Intel’s Celeron has quickly become one of the most popular chips in Intel’s entire lineup, simply because of its incredible price point. Upon hitting the market, a Celeron rarely retails for much over $100 and even the next fastest chip is usually down below the $80 mark.
Ever since its release, the purpose of the Celeron has been to combat AMD’s K6-2 and, in some cases, the K6-III line of CPUs which are also fairly low cost competitors. Intel’s ability to drive costs down to extremely low levels made the Celeron a fierce competitor to AMD’s Super7 solutions and thus added to the success of the Celeron platform.
The Celeron further flourished as Intel’s 0.25-micron fabrication process improved, it was soon evident that Intel could release Celerons in 33MHz clock increments pretty much whenever competition demanded a faster CPU from Intel. AMD announced a 500MHz K6-2, and Intel had a 500MHz Celeron ready to battle it.
One must understand that both the Celeron and K6-2 (as well as the K6-III) are very attractive solutions to OEMs that must cut enough costs to remain competitive to the likes of the big boys out there, such as Gateway and Dell. Instead of opting for an expensive Pentium III or Athlon, these OEMs find it much easier to sell a computer to their customers based on clock speed alone, and if all their customer base is looking for is “how many MHz” they see on the product sticker, then why not sell a 500MHz Celeron for less than half the price of a 500MHz Pentium III or a 500MHz Athlon?
Fortunately, most AnandTech readers know that clock speed isn’t the definitive factor when determining the performance of a CPU. You also know that because of the Celeron’s integrated 128KB L2 cache, it is ideal for an entry level system where the most common tasks will involve running business/home office applications, surfing the internet, and even gaming. There is no reason to spend more than $100 on a CPU if all it’s going to be doing is running spell check in Word or making graphs in Excel.
So you can easily see that there is a very large market out there for the Celeron. The market is composed of those that honestly don’t need the added power a 700MHz Pentium III or Athlon would offer as well as those that purchase based on clock speed alone (there are more than you think). This market is the inspiration behind Intel’s latest addition to the slowly dying line of Celeron processors, the Celeron 533.
The Chip
Produced in response to AMD’s announcement of a 533MHz K6-2, the Celeron 533 is no different from the Celerons that have been around since the release of the 300A seemingly ages ago.
The Celeron 533 is available only in a PPGA (Plastic Pin Grid Array) Socket-370 package which is a move that Intel made after the release of the Celeron 433. All Celerons released prior to the introduction of the Celeron 466 were available in either a 370-pin PPGA Socket-370 package or a 242-pin SEPP (Single Edge Processor Package) Slot-1 version.
However, the 466, 500, and now the 533 are all PPGA-only CPUs, meaning that you can only use them in Socket-370 motherboards or in Slot-1 motherboards by using a Socket-370 to Slot-1 converter card. Such cards have been manufactured by Iwill, MSI, ABIT and ASUS, among others.
The reason the move from Slot-1 to Socket-370 was made was because it’s simply cheaper to produce a socketed CPU than it is to produce a CPU and plant it on a processor card. The move was made possible because of the 128KB L2 cache that is integrated into the die of the Celeron CPU itself, meaning that there was no reason to have the processor card (it was originally used to house the 512KB of L2 cache on the original Pentium II and Pentium III CPUs). The move to Socket-370 resulted in an overall reduction of the street price of the Celeron CPU by around 15%, which is very noticeable in spite of the fact that the CPUs retail for under $100. When you’re dealing with a low-cost CPU, every dollar matters.
The Celeron 533, like all of the previous members of the Celeron family since the 300A is based on the 0.25-micron Mendocino core. What defines the Mendocino core is the lack of any SSE instructions, a full 128KB on-die L2 cache, and an on-die 32KB L1 cache split into 16KB data and 16KB instruction set caches. While the Celeron was originally supposed to gain SSE instructions as well as the use of the 100MHz FSB frequency in 2000, the lack of demand for a revamped Celeron and a simple desire from OEMs for a higher clock speed chip resulted in the production of the 533 as another 66MHz FSB Celeron based on the Mendocino core.
The Celeron 533 makes use of an extremely high 8.0x clock multiplier and officially runs on the 66MHz FSB. The 8.0x clock multiplier limits the overclocking potential of the CPU because increasing the FSB to 100MHz would result in an 800MHz frequency, a mark that the current yields on the Mendocino core isn’t capable of hitting in decent quantities.
Overclocking
The Celeron CPU has been known for quite some time to be an excellent overclocker. The reputation came mainly because of the overclocking successes provided by the original Celeron 266 and especially the Celeron 300A. In fact, users are still using their $100 Celeron 300A CPUs running at a lofty 450MHz with little more than a decent heatsink/fan combo and some thermal grease.
The reason for the better than average overclocking potential of the earlier Celeron CPUs was because Intel’s yields on the 0.25-micron process were so great that they reached close to the potential of the process very early on. We already indicated that the potential of the process was around 600MHz (of course there will be some successes that occur beyond and below this mark), and as time went on we noticed that more and more CPUs were able to be overclocked to around that 600MHz mark.
After the Celeron 300A at 450MHz craze, the next big hit was the Celeron 366 running at 550MHz. The success rate of these 366s at 550MHz grew to be so high that it was almost absurd to hear about a 366 that wouldn’t hit 550MHz, and you’d hear cries of agony when a user would end up with a $60 CPU that wouldn’t make the 50% overclock to 550MHz.
The 366’s success was followed up by the Celeron 400 at 600MHz craze which is still going on; unfortunately, Celerons that boast a clock speed higher than 400 often have more difficulty achieving the same overclocking success as their predecessors because of their high clock multipliers.
Since all of the Celeron CPUs are clock locked (their clock multiplier cannot be adjusted), anything above the 6.0x clock multiplier of the Celeron 400 is virtually useless with the 100MHz FSB. The next step up, 6.5 x 100MHz would result in a 650MHz overclock for the Celeron 433 which is just over the top of the theoretical maximum of Intel’s current 0.25-micron process. So owners of Celerons with clock multipliers greater than 6.0x have to resort to FSB settings less than 100MHz to reach that 600MHz mark.
Luckily, the way the math works out, the 8.0x clock multiplier on the Celeron 533 works beautifully with the 75MHz FSB (a very common and very reasonable FSB setting) to produce a 600MHz overclock. Using the 83MHz FSB setting, another very common and reasonable FSB setting, pushes the 533 up to around 667MHz which, unfortunately, is not very reasonable for the 0.25-micron CPU. If you’re lucky enough to have a motherboard with 1MHz FSB increments from 66MHz up to 100MHz then you may be able to get a little more out of the Celeron 533, but for the most part, 600MHz is about as far as you’ll be able to push this puppy with conventional cooling methods.
The Test
Windows 98 SE Test System |
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Hardware |
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CPU(s) |
Intel Pentium III 700 Intel
Celeron 533 |
Intel FC-PGA Pentium
III 550E |
AMD Athlon 700
|
|
Motherboard(s) |
ABIT
BE6
|
ABIT
BE6
|
Tyan Trinity 400 |
Gigabyte
GA-7IX
|
Memory |
128MB PC133 Corsair SDRAM |
128MB
PC133 Corsair SDRAM
|
128MB
PC133 Corsair SDRAM
|
|
Hard Drive |
IBM Deskstar DPTA-372050 20.5GB 7200 RPM Ultra ATA 66 |
|||
CDROM |
Phillips 48X |
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Video Card(s) |
NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Ultra 32MB (default clock - 150/183) |
|||
Ethernet |
Linksys LNE100TX 100Mbit PCI Ethernet Adapter |
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Software |
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Operating System |
Windows 98 SE |
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Video Drivers |
|
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Benchmarking Applications |
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Gaming |
GT
Interactive Unreal Tournament 4.04 UTbench.dem |
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Productivity |
BAPCo SYSMark 2000
Ziff Davis Content Creation Winstone 2000 |
SYSMark's favoring of processors with SSE instructions is part of the explanation why the Celeron CPUs perform at the bottom of this list. But keep in mind that performing at the bottom of this list isn't bad at all, when the FC-PGA 500E is the next "slowest" CPU.
The 66MHz memory bus of the Celeron does contribute to its shortcomings here, which is a problem that will haunt the CPU throughout its life.
The Content Creation Winstone 2000 test is a little better than the SYSMark 2000 test in terms of favoring SSE enhanced processors. While the Celeron 533 holds the same spot, it is much closer to the more expensive 500E. For a chip that can be used on an old LX board, the performance isn't bad at all.
In terms of gaming performance, the 66MHz memory bus does hinder the Celeron's performance by a noticeable amount since memory performance is a major issue (for example, notice the performance discrepancies between the VIA and Intel BX platforms in the tests). Regardless, the CPU performs respectably for its cost, while it's not a die-hard gamer's solution it doesn't perform too horribly either.
For BX users, you're probably better off with a different CPU, but once again, if you have no 100MHz FSB support, this sort of performance is a blessing.
While the rest of the CPUs manage to max out the TNT2 Ultra, the Celeron 533 just barely makes it. If you're going to be playing at this high of a resolution in Quake III and expect higher frame rates, then you need to consider a video card upgrade.
A GeForce based card would definitely help level out performance as it would offload the transforming and lighting calculations onto its GPU. With a DDR GeForce, getting around 60 fps with a Celeron 533 at 1024 x 768 x 32 can be a reality.
Unreal Tournament seems to like the fast L2 cache of the Celerons as they seem to keep up quite well with the 500E.
The performance drops a tad as we move to the higher resolution/color depth, but the performance is still respectable although not at the magical 30 fps mark, which only the 700MHz CPUs at the top of the chart were able to come close to.
Expendable also appreciates a fast memory bus, which is why the Celeron 533 drops down well below that of the 500E running at its 100MHz memory bus.
Conclusion
As we mentioned a while ago, Intel’s current 0.25-micron process theoretically finds its limits at around 600MHz while upholding the yield percentages Intel is used to from their 0.25-micron CPUs. At 533MHz, the Celeron line is quickly approaching that limit which makes it quite obvious that the Celeron 533 will most likely be the last Celeron to be produced on the 0.25-micron process. If the market demands, a Celeron 566 can be produced but don’t expect to see any 0.25-micron Celerons running at clock speeds higher than that. So with higher clock speed Celerons on the way, why would you even bother with the Celeron 533?
With almost guaranteed operation at 600MHz using the 75MHz FSB setting, the Celeron 533 comes in at a much lower cost than a Pentium III 600 while offering similar performance in business/office applications. Then again, if you’re willing to overclock, there are a number of vendors willing to sell you a Celeron 400 that will overclock to 600MHz with the 100MHz FSB frequency and will outperform a Celeron running at 600MHz using the 75MHz FSB frequency. This continues to make the Celeron 533 a difficult purchase to justify.
The one crowd that the Celeron 533 would definitely be tailored to is the group of users that still have LX motherboards laying around and want to put them to good use. If you remember, the LX chipset released in August of 1997 was the second Pentium II chipset to be released since the introduction of the CPU that summer. The LX chipset was the first Intel chipset that boasted an AGP slot; unfortunately, it did not feature support for the 100MHz FSB (support for the 100MHz FSB was later introduced with the BX chipset in May of 1998).
With no support for the 100MHz FSB, the 66MHz FSB Celeron CPU is ideal for old LX motherboards, all you’ll need is BIOS support for the CPU and you should be good to go on most LX boards. Since most LX boards did support the 75MHz FSB, the Celeron 533 would be pretty much the only way to hit a clean 600MHz without using the 83MHz FSB setting on an LX board. And with a street price of around $120 (expect that price to drop to below $100 shortly), a Celeron 533 running at 600MHz is a much more cost effective investment than a brand new motherboard (which will set you back around the cost of the CPU itself) and CPU.
So while it is true that, for a BX board owner, the Celeron 533 isn’t the best choice by a long shot (picking up a Celeron 366 guaranteed to run at 550MHz using the 100MHz FSB is a much more intelligent and cost effective option, not to mention a faster one), Intel’s decision to stick with the 66MHz FSB for the Celeron for at least one more round spells relief to those owners of LX motherboards that don’t really want to push for the full upgrade just yet. Grab a Socket-370 to Slot-1 adapter, a Celeron 533, and crank your board up to the 75MHz FSB and you should be good to go. Just be sure that you have BIOS support for the newer Celeron CPUs.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for owners of the old motherboards based on the i440FX chipset, the first Pentium II chipset. Support has almost completely died for these motherboards that used to retail for well over $200, which also translates into virtually no support for the Celeron. This is a shame because the Celeron would make the perfect upgrade for an FX board from an original Pentium II 233, 266 or 300, but it seems like the only upgrade option for a FX board owner is to pick up a rare Pentium II 333 or ditch the board in favor of something a little more up to date. Don’t you just love the way the market works?