Intel May Soon Abandon Celeron Microprocessors

Intel's Celeron brand was mocked for its vegetative name when the CPU launched, but eventually the last laugh belonged to the chip as it proved to be a formidable overclocker and value proposition as the Celeron 300A wrote itself into the history books.

The Celeron brand eventually made its way into notebooks as entry-level solutions for mainstream computers. Sadly, the Celeron never achieved any sort of cult status as an overclocker in the mobile space, but it's still been a nice little chip that got the job done for most casual computer users. But that time could be coming to an end.

DigiTimes once again cites Intel's partners as telling it that the Celeron brand will be phased out in 2011. In its place, Intel will fill the gap with low-end Pentium and dual-core Atom offerings.

Intel denied that it would be phasing out the Celeron at all, but X-bit labs claimed that roadmaps it had seen showed that the Celeron wouldn't be receiving any upgrades to Clarkdale/Nehalem or Sandy Bridge cores. This could mean that once Intel phases out Core 2 technology, the Celerons will go with it.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
  • Good by celery, never really liked your peppery crunchy taste anyways!
    Reply
  • stridervm
    Well, it is getting crowded. There's Core i7, i5, i3 then Pentium. Unlike on Celeron's release, there's just two of them.
    Reply
  • Reynod
    The "Pentium" core2duo "Wolfdale reduced cache" units first effectively sealed the Celeron's fate a couple of years ago when it become the 'Value" end of the line.

    Selling CPU's with this sort of die space (45nm) at under $30 per unit would also cut into their more profitable lines under $100.

    Goodbye Celeron ... for now ...
    Reply
  • dtemple
    They said this about the Pentium line when the Core 2 series hit the desktop market... and then Intel re-introduced the brand with Pentium Dual-Core later on. I think if Intel stops making chips marked as Celeron, it will only be temporary.
    Reply
  • K-zon
    Im still on my P4 but instead of riding along with the industry tech limitations was kinda thrown to the side it seems and then i7 hit the market. Have no clue where the Celeron stopped at.
    Reply
  • killerclick
    k-zonIm still on my P4 but instead of riding along with the industry tech limitations was kinda thrown to the side it seems and then i7 hit the market. Have no clue where the Celeron stopped at.
    No part of this post made any sense at all.

    I just happen to have a Slot1 Celeron 300A sitting on the shelf right here. It overclocked from 333MHz to 500MHz which was pretty good for 1999.
    Reply
  • sstym
    killerclickNo part of this post made any sense at all.I just happen to have a Slot1 Celeron 300A sitting on the shelf right here. It overclocked from 333MHz to 500MHz which was pretty good for 1999.
    Echo that. I had one of the first Pentium III based celerons (366MHz) overclocked to 550 MHz. One of the best, cheapest CPUs I ever bought (also in 1999).
    Reply
  • jhansonxi
    I had a Celeron 300A SL2W8, overclocked to 450MHz. It really was a Pentium II as high demand caused Intel to substitute them. You had to crack them open and put some heat-transferring material between the cache RAM and the case to keep it happy.

    EDIT: Google turned up a TH article about it here.
    Reply
  • jsc
    I also had one - teamed with the marvelous 440BX chipset in an Abit motherboard.
    Reply
  • poorya_user
    You dont know how much I will miss them and how many of these processors I assembled. Goodbye Celeron ...
    Reply