Is Intel Going to Kill its Celeron Processor Brand?
There are some rumors that Intel could be phasing out the Celeron brand for low-end processors.
The information comes courtesy of TweakTown, which says that Intel may be replacing Celerons with Pentiums. So far, there is not much substance to this rumor as it is based on speculation surrounding the release of the Pentium 350 as a low-end part for servers.
In the past, Intel has occasionally played with the idea to get rid of some old brand names that carried baggage with somewhat negative connotations. For example, we had credible information back in the beginning of 2006 that Intel was pretty much set to drop the Pentium brand. As the first Core 2 Duo processors (Conroe core) were prepared to replace the 65 nm Pentium 4 processors, which had assumed a reputation of being inferior to AMD's Athlon X2 series while emitting Bunsen burner heat. However, Intel kept the Pentium brand on life support and eventually established it as the identifier mid-range CPUs between Core and Celeron CPUs.
Intel currently offers four desktop Celerons with tray prices from $37 to $52 as well as nine mobile Celerons with prices from $70 to $134. Intel could be dropping the Celeron brand at any given time and, given the brands recognition, few may care if Pentiums took their place.
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dalethepcman Oh no, the crappiest performing cpu's may now be called Pentium instead of Celeron. Now E-Machines and Compaq will have to change the words on half their boxes.Reply -
kawininjazx That is a poor decision. You can build a celeron dual-core, 2gb ram windows 7 PC very very cheap and it would be great for at least 50% of the people out there, who only do facebook and email.Reply
Also, since celerons went dual-core, I think they run very well for every day computing. -
fancarolina There isn't too much performance difference between Celeron chips and Atom chips. Intel doesn't need two budget lines.Reply -
LuckyDucky7 Well, I guess it's about time. That name has been dragged through the mud quite thoroughly- every Celeron I've seen has been flakier than any other processor I've seen.Reply
That still isn't going to get rid of what they are internally, though- processors which couldn't pass muster at the lowest of frequencies.
But no matter what they're called, Joe Average Consumer will still buy them, and those who read this will likely continue to steer clear of them in favor of more stable AMD processors. -
DirectXtreme KawiNinjaZXThat is a poor decision. You can build a celeron dual-core, 2gb ram windows 7 PC very very cheap and it would be great for at least 50% of the people out there, who only do facebook and email. Also, since celerons went dual-core, I think they run very well for every day computing.Well they should get rid of something. Intel has way too many brands out right now... Atom, Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7. I say get rid of the Atom and Pentium because the Atom is too weak for a netbook CPU and Intel could castrate one of their ULV Sandy Bridge parts and sell it for as cheap as the Atom (and even with that, they will still perform better), and because the Pentium doesn't really target a specific market. Both brands are fluff.Reply -
spentshells My first PC...and first overclock were celerons and the gap in the p3-p4 days was not noticeable at all in day to day use.Reply
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