Quad-Core Celeron?

[heartview]

Not that I'm thinking Intel will make one, but I am kind of curious about the way the industry is headed. Scaling to more cores as fast as they can makes me wonder about the future of bargain chips and low cost systems. Will the dual-core chips be the bargains of a tomorrow filled with quad-core CPUs or will they still be making scaled back quad-core versions like the Celeron of today?

I know it is anyone's guess, but what do you folks think?

 

[chocobocorey]

thats an interesting question. i think for right now and probably the next year all the budget models will be single core ie- semprons and celerons. but really the budget chip i think is getting kind of phased out right now. you can grab a cheap dual core pentium for $90. is that considered a budgest chip? i guess in about 2 years all the dual cores will be dirt cheap, but the 30-50 dollar range will probably still be single core

 

[konfuzd]

What I think will happen is budget chips will linger about 1-2 generations behind the high end. For AMD, this means once they abandon the single core A64, single core Semprons will also be a thing of the past. Same with Intel, though they appear to be far closer to abandoning single core chips than AMD is.

 

[tool_462]

I would really like to see dual core Celeron/Semprons making it into low end desktops. Like the average family's Dell or HP. Not only would they (presumably) overclock very well for the enthusiast that wants to mess around, they would give that "snapiness" of a dual core for simple office apps and internet use.

I know the Pentium D 8xx's can be bought for very cheap along with the 3xxx X2's, but I really like the idea of having the minimal processor being a dual core with small cache. Anyone else agree?

 

[boduke]

I would love to see a Celeron/Sempron type dual core cpu at a sub $75 price point (preferably sub $50)...my suspicion is we'll see something along these lines next year but at what price point is anyones guess....

 

[angry_ducky]

I know the Pentium D 8xx's can be bought for very cheap along with the 3xxx X2's, but I really like the idea of having the minimal processor being a dual core with small cache. Anyone else agree?

The X2 3600+ has performance close to that of the X2 3800+; cache doesn't make a big difference with the K8 architecture.

Also, Semprons are essentially A64's with less cache and a (slightly) slower HTT, and they're great for web surfing, office tasks, and other basic computing. Maybe even some gaming. Not to mention that they overclock like a whore in heat (same with 65nm Celerons).

 

[nanoprobs]

I think they will start releasing the dual core celeron cpu once they have stocked enough faulty dual core cpu that don't make it pass the quality control tests. You know how the celeron cpu comes from right? it came from P4 cpu that have some minor fault in them, so they degrade/disable some functions and make it into a celeron cpu. This way they don't need to throw away faulty cpus, they can rework them and turn them into cheap celeron cpu and sell them. A good method.
Same goes with quad core, but it takes a while for them to stock up enough faulty units and resell them as cheaper celeron chips.

 

[tool_462]

Sorry if I came off wrong Angry_Ducky. What you said is exactly what I was trying to say! I am very intrigued by the idea, being that the cache difference doesn't affect performance drastically and the less heat the CPU produces = the happier the enthusiast market is.

Even a Celeron D 351 overclocked on AIR to 4.5Ghz+ (I've seen 5.0Ghz on a 356 I think it was) performs pretty well in games. A dual core version would be all the better.