Conclusion: Clock Speed Sells

The release of faster Celerons like the new 1.8 GHz version was only a matter of time. On the one hand, the Celeron Willamette cannot compete with the predecessor Tualatin at the same clock speed; that's why it strongly needs higher frequency to justify its existence. On the other hand, the Willamette core with its 0.18 µm is technically able to run at least 2 GHz (see the Pentium 4).

The transition from Socket 370 to Socket 478 does not only entail better performance, but also reduces system costs considerably by virtue of raising production quantities for motherboards and chipsets. Basic motherboards with e.g. Intel's 845 chipset or SIS 645DX can be used both for the Pentium 4 and the Celeron, leaving system integrators and customers the full choice within Intel's portfolio.

In terms of performance, it's quite a shame for Intel that the Duron 1300 still is able to compete with the 1.8 GHz version. Usually, the Duron is slightly behind, but the professional OpenGL benchmark SPECviewperf 7 in particular attests to the excellent performance of AMD's little processor. The only benchmarks that are clearly dominated by Intel's Celeron are the SYSmark 2001, MPEG-4 and MP3 encoding. Obviously, most of these applications require clock speed rather than a sophisticated processor achitecture.

In the end, the statement 'clock speed sells' proves to be true. If you had the choice between a system based on AMD's Duron 1300 and another one with the new Celeron 1.8, what would you buy? Especially for inexperienced users, the clock speed sometimes is the only criterion used to make a differentiation. And in comparison to Athlon XP, many salesmen will tell you that Intel runs at 'real' 1.8 GHz, while AMD lags behind. That's a development that AMD can only correct by releasing new processors whose increase in performance is clear, and with at least the same clock speeds that Intel is running.