Alder Lake Comes To The Mighty Pentium Gold, Celeron CPUs

Intel 12th Generation Alder Lake Processor
Intel 12th Generation Alder Lake Processor (Image credit: Intel)

Two new Intel processors will arrive on the market very soon according to Twitter user and known hardware leaker @momomo_us. There's no indication whether these two unreleased chips hail from the chipmaker's latest Alder Lake family or just another Comet Lake refresh. However, the specifications insinuate the former.

The last Pentium Gold or Celeron processor was from Intel's 10th Generation Comet Lake lineup. With Rocket Lake, the chipmaker didn't launch any Core i3 and below SKUs, but preferred to rewarm its Comet Lake chips with a small clock speed bumps. It would seem that Intel may finally give the entry-level processors a much needed renovation.

It seems that the Pentium Gold G7400 and Celeron G6900 are the direct replacements for the Pentium Gold 6400 and Celeron G5900, respectively. As such, these processor should retain the same core configurations as their predecessors. The Pentium Gold G7400 and Celeron G5900 will likely feature a dual-core setup with the first arriving with Hyper-Threading and the latter without.

Core i3 models and some Core i5 variants don't leverage Alder Lake's hybrid microarchitecture, meaning they only sport the Golden Cove (Performance) cores. The Pentium Gold G7400 and Celeron G5900 will follow suit.

Pentium Gold G7400, Celeron G6900 Specifications

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ProcessorCores / ThreadsBase Clocks (GHz)L3 Cache (MB)TDP (W)Part NumberRCP
Pentium Gold G7400*2 / 43.76?BX80715G7400$98
Pentium Gold G64002 / 44.0458BX80701G6400$64
Celeron G6900*2 / 23.44?BX80715G6900$72
Celeron G59002 / 23.4258BX80701G5900$42

*Specifications are unconfirmed.

The clock speeds and L3 cache imply that the Pentium Gold G7400 and Celeron G6900 shouldn't be a Comet Lake refresh. The Pentium Gold G7400 has a 300 MHz lower base clock than the existing Pentium Gold G6400, while the Celeron G6900 preserves the same 3.4 GHz base clock as the Celeron G5900. If the unannounced processors were a refresh, they should be sporting improve clock speeds. 

Another aspect that doesn't add up is amount of L3 cache. The Pentium Gold G6400 and Celeron G5900 have a 4MB and 2MB L3 cache, respectively. The Pentium Gold G7400 and Celeron G6900, on the other hand, utilizes a different cache configuration. Assuming that the Canadian retailer's specifications are spot on, the Pentium Gold G7400 and Celeron G6900 are equipped with 6MB and 4MB of L3 cache, respectively, a considerable increase over the Comet Lake models.

According to the retailer listings, the part numbers for the Pentium Gold G7400 and Celeron G5900 start with "BX80715,", the same string that Intel utilizes for its other Alder Lake parts. The chipmaker uses "BX80708" for Rocket Lake and "BX80701" for Comet Lake.

Intel intelligently launch Alder Lake K-series processors first, while saving the less expensive SKUs for a later stage in time. The chipmaker has confirmed that the non-K chips should arrive early 2022, therefore, the Pentium Gold G6400 and Celeron G5900 are probably patch of the second batch.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor and Memory Reviewer

Zhiye Liu is a news editor and memory reviewer at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.

  • jacob249358
    Why produce more dual cores. People who want those should just get an older system or one of the many existing dual-core options. Would've loved to see some 6c/10t i3s. Is intel done with core i3 or what?
    Reply
  • bdcrlsn
    Not a fan of them continuing dual-core processors. My girlfriend's laptop has a 10th gen i3 that's dual core with hyper threading and in Windows 10, it feels sluggish.
    Reply
  • mdd1963
    "...but preferred to rewarmed its Comet Lake chips with a small clock speed bumps. "

    awkward syntax check...! :)
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Whole lotta complaining going on around here about newly-minted dual cores.

    Dual cores are plenty fast in daily usage on Linux, in any desktop. Especially when using Wayland. Might not play Crysis though. Windows is simply too unnecessarily heavy.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    bdcrlsn said:
    Not a fan of them continuing dual-core processors. My girlfriend's laptop has a 10th gen i3 that's dual core with hyper threading and in Windows 10, it feels sluggish.
    That's because of clock speeds that have to be lower on laptops due to heat, worse and probably single ram, and slow drive.
    All things that most laptops have in common.
    Reply
  • hannibal
    What i am wondering is why they don´t use e-cores instead in these dirt cheap parts? I think that it would make more sense. Smaller chip, cheaper to produce also use less power.
    Two core cpu with two e-cores, 64gb of really slow ssd and 4gb of ram in tiny box, could be sold at very cheap in the markets...
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    hannibal said:
    What i am wondering is why they don´t use e-cores instead in these dirt cheap parts? I think that it would make more sense. Smaller chip, cheaper to produce also use less power.
    Two core cpu with two e-cores, 64gb of really slow ssd and 4gb of ram in tiny box, could be sold at very cheap in the markets...
    Yeah but the ecores come in a quad core package, so they would have to be quad cores at least which would make the rest of the line up, well mostly the i3, look worse in comparison.
    It would be great for the users but it will only happen as a trickle down effect when the core line is going to be much larger core-count than now.

    Also probably using the ecores in higher margin products makes them more money while they only use the very lowest end pcores that they wouldn't be able to use otherwise in these low margin cpus.
    Reply
  • scottsoapbox
    bdcrlsn said:
    Not a fan of them continuing dual-core processors. My girlfriend's laptop has a 10th gen i3 that's dual core with hyper threading and in Windows 10, it feels sluggish.
    Does it have enough RAM (16GB) and a SSD?
    Those apecs effect snappy vs sluggish more than an i3.
    Reply
  • spentshells
    ezst036 said:
    Whole lotta complaining going on around here about newly-minted dual cores.

    Dual cores are plenty fast in daily usage on Linux, in any desktop. Especially when using Wayland. Might not play Crysis though. Windows is simply too unnecessarily heavy.

    I'll bet ya 1000 dollars it'd play crisis maxed out just finenwith a modern graphics card
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    DavidMV said:
    There will be an i3. There are plenty of uses for dual core parts. Intel primarily sells them to get something from parts that aren't good enough to sell as an i3 or higher (too many failed cores or wont clock high enough during testing). Especially early on when yield is worse, getting $70 is better than $0. Similarly, selling 'F' models lets them sell parts with defects in the iGPU.

    Alder Lake for desktop is....
    i9-12900 = 8P+8E (24 Threads)
    i7-12700 = 8P+4E (20 Threads)
    i5-12600 = 6P+4E (16 Threads)
    i5-12400 = 6P+0E (12 Threads)
    i3-12100 = 4P+0E (8 Threads)
    Pentium = 2P+0E (4 Threads)
    Celeron = 2P+0E (2 Threads)

    Raptor Lake for desktop will be... (Q3 next year)
    i9-13900 = 8P+16E (32 Threads)
    i7-13700 = 8P+8E (24 Threads)
    i5-13600 = 6P+8E (20 Threads)
    i5-13400 = 6P+4E (16 Threads)
    i3-13100 = 4P+0E (8 Threads)
    Pentium = 2P+0E (4 Threads)
    Celeron = 2P+0E (2 Threads)
    No single core atoms?
    Reply