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Celeron Report
Celeron - Thanks, but...
The original Celeron, as we've noted in several articles, lagged behind the Pentium II primarily due to its lack of L2 cache. The Celeron also officially lacked the ability to run on systems with a 100 MHz bus, however adventurous users have proven that overclocking the Celeron (and the new Celeron-A) is indeed possible, using techniques discussed in our report on overclocking. Please read the disclaimer and warnings on that page.
But the Celeron-A has another feature that helps it perform almost as well as a much more expensive Pentium II chip: like Intel's expensive Xeon, the Celeron A has an L2 cache running at CPU clock speed (the Xeon has a 512 KB or 1 MB L2 cache running at clock speed; the Celeron-A has 128K). The P2, with 512 KB of L2 cache, has more cache memory than the Celeron-A, but it runs at half the clock speed.
This new design helps a Celeron-A attain benchmark and real-world performance within a few percent (IDC says the Celeron-A is about 5 percent slower on average) of a Pentium II running at the same bus speed. It's worth considering. Note, however, that not all Celeron chips are created equal. Some revisions are more reliably overclockable than others and, in general, users report better success with retail "boxed" versions than with "OEM" products. A table of success rates in attaining 450MHz speeds is at Anandtech.com.
Incidentally, AMD's forthcoming revision of the K6-2, code-named Sharptooth, is said to have 256K of cache -- half the cache of a P2 -- but running at CPU speed like the Celeron A. This should help that chip keep pace in the ever-accelerating world of CPU one-upmanship.
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