Info Alder Lake Pentiums/Celerons

[Insert_Nickname]

Just noticed the new AL Pentium and Celeron have finally gotten AVX2. About time.

Combined with the AL media block, these should make excellent cheap little video and browsing boxes.

Only downside would be that the H610 chipset only allows a single memory channel. So you'll want B660 minimum.

Anyway, anybody have views or opinions on these? Might be worth buying one to check out.

 

[Shivansps]

Wait, what? The H610 is single channel?

edit: Gigabyte website lists H610 as dual channel DDR4.

 

[NTMBK]

AVX2 support? It's about damn time! Maybe I'll actually start implementing support in my software...

 

[ryanjagtap]

Just noticed the new AL Pentium and Celeron have finally gotten AVX2. About time.

Combined with the AL media block, these should make excellent cheap little video and browsing boxes.

Only downside would be that the H610 chipset only allows a single memory channel. So you'll want B660 minimum.

Anyway, anybody have views or opinions on these? Might be worth buying one to check out.

Maybe just the Pentium one, it's 2C/4T. The Celeron is 2C/2T and I don't think 2 threads are adequate for daily driving windows anymore no matter how performant Golden cove seems to be. [Celeron maybe nice for some linux distros]

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Wait, what? The H610 is single channel?

Seems so unfortunately:

edit: Gigabyte website lists H610 as dual channel DDR4.

Must be an error on their part. Probably overlooked it.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Maybe just the Pentium one, it's 2C/4T. The Celeron is 2C/2T and I don't think 2 threads are adequate for daily driving windows anymore no matter how performant Golden cove seems to be. [Celeron maybe nice for some linux distros]

Yeah, Windows might not be a good idea on the Celeron. Background house keeping will kill it. But it should run Linux-distros just fine, and if you're already in budget territory, that Windows licence costs money too.

 

[deasd]

I was also wondering why H610 only have 1 mem channel, some comments from other sites suggested the official slide offered an error message, it should be 'dimm per channel' instead of that from the original slide... and I am confused when saw these ASUS/GIGABYTE 610 mobo stated has 2 channel....

 

[Shivansps]

It has to be 1 dimm per channel = 2 slots max, going single channel is way too stupid.

 

[ryanjagtap]

Yeah, Windows might not be a good idea on the Celeron. Background house keeping will kill it. But it should run Linux-distros just fine, and if you're already in budget territory, that Windows licence costs money too.

I think they gimped the entire Celeron lineup. Alder lake-U Celeron SKUs show no boost capability (At least they added 4E cores to that one but Pentium and Celeron both just get 1P core )

 

[Shivansps]

They really need to give the Celeron HT and make the Pentium 4C/4T, this is overdue now with the I3s being 4C/8T ever since the 10th gen.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

They really need to give the Celeron HT and make the Pentium 4C/4T, this is overdue now with the I3s being 4C/8T ever since the 10th gen.

Wouldn't be surprised if that only happens with Meteor Lake, but it is overdue. Even the Jasper Lake Celerons have 4C/4T versions.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Only downside would be that the H610 chipset only allows a single memory channel. So you'll want B660 minimum.

I think that you're mistaken, at least, I sincerely hope so.

I think that you meant to say, H610 only supports 1DPC, or one DIMM per EACH memory channel. (eg. two slots for DIMMs.)

NOT that it's like Stoney Ridge (AMD APU), that only supported single-channel memory and rightly sucked hardcore.

Edit: Intel slide WTFBBQ!?!?! Are Intel now choosing to segment based on number of memory channels?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

I think that you're mistaken, at least, I sincerely hope so.

I sincerely hope so too, but fear I'm not. That slide is pretty damming.

Edit: Intel slide WTFBBQ!?!?! Are Intel now choosing to segment based on number of memory channels?

Is anyone the least bit surprised at Intels manic feature segmentation? It's even worse in enterprise.

The only way I can half-way make sense of this is if its for saving on board complexity minimising the number of DDR5 traces needed. It makes absolutely no sense with DDR4. I don't know what the performance impact would be. We're only talking 2 cores and 2 or 4 threads with a minimum IGP, so they may think it justified. But I digress.

 

[jpiniero]

They really need to give the Celeron HT and make the Pentium 4C/4T, this is overdue now with the I3s being 4C/8T ever since the 10th gen.

It's a yield thing. Core Pentium and Celeron is where they take out the garbage. They are supposed to be crappy products where the 99% bin gets dumped.

I sincerely hope so too, but fear I'm not. That slide is pretty damming.

If H610 really is single channel it was done because the cost of the socket has gone up too much and they had to cut something.

 

[LightningZ71]

Maybe it's single channel for DDR5, but dual channel for DDR4?

 

[Zepp]

Yeah, Windows might not be a good idea on the Celeron. Background house keeping will kill it. But it should run Linux-distros just fine, and if you're already in budget territory, that Windows licence costs money too.

last month I bought a small laptop with a 2c2t Dali and 4GB RAM as a simple surf n stream machine on the go. I also expected it to choke with windows and thought I'd have to put linux on it, but so far I've been really surprised how well it's managed.
though I do wish Intel/AMD would retire sub 4 thread SKUs going forward

 

[Plasma1996]

Just noticed the new AL Pentium and Celeron have finally gotten AVX2. About time.

Combined with the AL media block, these should make excellent cheap little video and browsing boxes.

Only downside would be that the H610 chipset only allows a single memory channel. So you'll want B660 minimum.

Anyway, anybody have views or opinions on these? Might be worth buying one to check out.

I'm curious how does the chipset support only one memory channel when the memory channels come off the CPU. Seems like an error on the slide.

 

[jpiniero]

Yeah looking at it further it's 1 dimm per channel with 2 slots only.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I'll pick up Alder Lake Pentium for a friend if it is available before 25th January here in the U.A.E.

 

[Mopetar]

For what Intel is charging (~$40 for the cheapest parts) it's hard to complain about lack of features or what you get.

This is the bottom of the barrel and so it's going to be the lowest common denominator in order to catch anything and everything that could go wrong and still manage to offer some level of functionality.

 

[VirtualLarry]

G6900 scores higher than i9-10900K in GeekBench single-core? (start of video, first 40 seconds)

Yes, but does the 2P + 0E CPU also support HT at Celeron SKU level?

We may have a new $42 browser-box king.

Here's a non-video source:

Intel's $42 Celeron G6900 Alder Lake CPU Gets OC'd And Then Beats A Core i9-10900K

We don't expect a whole lot from a sub-$50 processor, and we most certainly would not anticipate it hanging with a CPU that costs $400 more, let alone beating it.

hothardware.com

Apparently, it was overclocked by an ASRock feature. Nothing to see here, move along.

"
The caveat is that the Geekbench listing shows the Celeron G6900 running at 4.4GHz. If that is not being misread by Geekbench, then it's likely the user took advantage of ASRock's Base Frequency Boost feature, which bumps up the base frequency on non-K series processors.
"

How hard is that to replicate, on say, a Gigabyte B660 board?

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Apparently, it was overclocked by an ASRock feature. Nothing to see here, move along.

So you can overclock it on an Asrock board? Things just got interesting.

 

[jpiniero]

That geekbench score is almost certainly a hack.

 

[JoeRambo]

That geekbench score is almost certainly a hack.

Could be simply result of FSB overclocking. That is also a "hack" but not of GB5.

A word of warning to those who thing FSB overclocking is great: Pentium G3258

Your OC might work fine for a while, but one day Windows update will bring Intel's uCode that crashes CPU after detecting OC and You will be left playing games with deleting Windows files and editing BIOS'e to keep old uCode in new BIOS'es.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Your OC might work fine for a while, but one day Windows update will bring Intel's uCode that crashes CPU after detecting OC and You will be left playing games with deleting Windows files and editing BIOS'e to keep old uCode in new BIOS'es.

Has that happened before? I would think FSB overclocking has the more annoying side effect of causing peripherals and USB ports to start getting problematic after a while. Also, data corrupting I/O errors. I would FSB overclock only for short periods of time when the boost is really needed, instead of leaving it on full time.