Intel Celeron (Coppermine-128) processors
Introduction: March 2000
Overview
The Celeron brand refered to a range of Intel's x86 CPUs for budget/value personal computers. Considered Intel's "economic" processor, the Celeron branded processors had complemented Intel's higher-performance (and more expensive) brands. Intel had given the brand the motto, "delivering great quality at an exceptional value." Celeron processors was able to run all IA-32 computer programs, but their performance was somewhat lower when compared to similar, but higher priced, Intel CPU brands. For example, the Celeron brand often had less cache memory, or had advanced features purposely disabled. These missing features had a variable impact on performance. In some cases, the effect was significant and in other cases the differences were relatively minor. Many of the Celeron designs had achieved a very high "bang to the buck," while at other times, the performance difference had been noticeable. For example, some intense application software, such as cutting edge PC games, programs for video compression, video editing, or solid modeling (CAD, engineering analysis, computer graphics and animation, rapid prototyping, medical testing, product visualization, and visualization of scientific research), etc. may not performed as well on the Celeron family. This had been the primary justification for the higher cost of other Intel CPU brands vs. the Celeron.
The Coppermine-128 core
The next generation Celeron was the Coppermine-128 (sometimes known as the "Celeron II"). These were a derivative of Intel's Coppermine Pentium III and were released on March 29, 2000. Like the Mendocino, the Celeron-128 used 128KB of on-chip L2 cache and was (initially) restricted to a 66MHz bus speed, but the big news was the addition of SSE instructions, due to the new Coppermine core. Other than half the L2 cache (128KB instead of 256KB) and a slower FSB (66 to 100MHz instead of 100 to 133MHz), the Coppermine Celeron was identical to the Coppermine Pentium III.
All Coppermine-128s were produced in the same FCPGA Socket 370 format that most Coppermine Pentium III CPUs used. These Celeron processors began at 533MHz and continued through 566, 600, 633, 666, 700, 733, and 766MHz. Because of the limitations of the 66 MHz bus, there were diminishing returns on performance as clock rate increased. On January 3, 2001, Intel switched to a 100 MHz bus with the launch of the 800MHz Celeron, resulting in a significant performance-per-clock improvement. All Celeron-128 CPUs from 800MHz and faster use the 100MHz front side bus. Various models were made at 800, 850, 900, 950, 1000, and 1100MHz.
In Intel's "Family/Model/Stepping" scheme, Coppermine Celerons and Pentium IIIs were family 6, model 8 and their Intel product code was 80526.
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.