Why does Intel still make celeron?

[teh_pwnerer]

Why would anyone buy a Celeron. That name is like the devil.

I won't lie, the Celeron doesn't suck like it use to back in the day. But you can get a better AMD cpu than a Celeron for the price.

In terms of dual core for Intel it goes Celeron > Pentium > i3. i3 is nearly twice as much as the cheapest Celeron, but about 4x better.

Boo Celeron. :thumbsdown:

The OP has thus far proven to be a serial troller.
-ViRGE

 

[exar333]

Because they are cheap, solid CPUs. Athlon II X2/3 were around or a longtime and are still solid budget options. Nothing wrong with affordable processors.

 

[Greenlepricon]

Because i don't want to pay double for an i3 that does the same thing, or double that for an i5 with features that i won't use. I have one gaming pc where i'll gladly pay that much for the processor but for other computers i have, that would just be silly

 

[teh_pwnerer]

Celeron is cheap, solid no.

an i3 is a dual core as well, but crushes the Celeron into oblivion.

AMD Phenom II"s go on sale all the time. Spend $20 more and get a quad core that crushes the Celeron in single and multi-threaded tasks.

I also don't like the name Celeron. It sounds like celery.

 

[Arachnotronic]

The name "Celeron" comes from the root "Celer" which means "fast".

AcCELERate, CELERITY...not celery. hehe

 

[Greenlepricon]

Well i'll put it this way instead. For running a browser, opening an office document, or loading programs off an ssd, a celeron will keep up with any other processor out there. Now on my $400 pc, that's all i'm asking for. That extra $30 for a pentium or $70 for an i3 really won't matter no matter how much faster i wish my internet was for these tasks

 

[Greenlepricon]

Also forgot to mention these are for low end and low power systems. For these situations, these cpus are perfect

 

[teh_pwnerer]

I don't think a Celeron can even handle a 1080p video on youtube without the video and audio out of sync.

Celeron takes 3 hours to render a 10 minute 720p video. Not good at all.

Intel isn't fooling me with their naming scheme. Celeron does not accelerate!

 

[Yuriman]

There's nothing wrong with Celerons except the association we place on the name.

So far as I can tell, the only difference between a Celeron and a Pentium is clockspeed. Celerons are sold as dual cores at up to 2.7ghz with a 1000mhz iGPU, and Pentiums are sold at up to 3.1ghz with an 1100mhz iGPU. I personally can't see a solid reason for needing a separate name other than to perhaps segment a product into <$50 and $50-$100 price brackets and associating the higher performance with the higher price. (There is only one Ivy Bridge based Pentium so far)

The i3 differs from a Pentium or Celeron only in that it supports quicksync and has hyperthreading, and has a few instruction sets which are disabled on lower-end chips (AVX and some encryption stuff if I remember). They are both the same physical Sandy Bridge die, and a vast majority of programs (all that don't use the disabled instructions) will perform identically on a Celeron as on an i3 of the same clockspeed.

Does a 2.7ghz i3 for $50 with AVX and hyperthreading disabled sound like a terrible chip?

 

[Exophase]

Celerons didn't always used to suck either. The old 300MHz Mendocinos were great, the Coppermine 128s were okay if you overclocked them, and the Tualatin based ones made a strong showing vs Netburst CPUs. On the other hand, the Netburst based Celerons were awful (nothing like taking a uarch that desperately needs L2 cache and memory bandwidth and throwing most of it out - I used to call the old Prescott ones Celerotts) and the original L2-less Covingtons were an abomination so horrible that Intel had to replace them with something that put them at serious competition with themselves.

Since Core 2 I imagine they've been more or less about what you'd expect for their price, which is something Intel can manage pretty well given that they're all just fuse-jobs; not that that wasn't always the case (except for Mendocino) but Intel has gotten less scummy about trying to sell on nothing but brand recognition.

It's also not always the case that you can get a cheaper AMD CPU vs Celeron where it matters. For instance you can find 17W Celerons in Samsung's series 5 Chromebook.

 

[CHADBOGA]

I also don't like the name Celeron. It sounds like celery.

LOL I agree.

Whilst it obviously isn't hurting Intel too much, I think that the names they are using in their low end desktop range are far from optimal.

Celeron's for most of their lifetime have been uninspiring chips, which isn't the greatest sin for a low cost chip, but I still feel somewhat negative about it.

Also, I can't see how it makes sense to use the Pentium name, as to me that invokes an ancient processor, so I wonder if it is missing out on heaps of new instruction sets.

Intel's whole naming scheme could do with a radical overhaul.

The only name I like is their Atom range, as it perfectly denotes the smallness of the CPU.

 

[Yuriman]

^ I agree in part. The Core naming system is not bad and is mostly consistent, but Celeron and Pentium could probably be replaced.

 

[Exophase]

so I wonder if it is missing out on heaps of new instruction sets.

Unfortunately that would be the case, as Intel in their infinite wisdom has stripped AVX from anything sub-i3. :|

 

[Yuriman]

Unfortunately that would be the case, as Intel in their infinite wisdom has stripped AVX from anything sub-i3. :|

It makes as much sense as disabling hyperthreading in i5's even though the transistors are still there, or having HD2500's and HD4000's coming from the same die as well. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority (if not all) of the tiered parts are tiered simply for pricing and are not actually harvested parts.

Intel has the dominant market position and makes what is arguably a superior product in most price ranges, and is thus able to afford to (and even profit from) artificially disabling parts of their CPUs and encouraging people to buy more expensive versions. I shudder to think of how it will be when AMD fully retreats from the high-end CPU business.

 

[teh_pwnerer]

Intel does have a stupid naming scheme.

Conroe, Yorkfield, Sandy Bridge, Haswell. Boring. AMD crushes Intel on codenames.

I agree Pentium is ancient get rid of that name.

 

[podspi]

Yea, the Pentium name should be allowed to die with what little dignity it has left.

Sad thing is, I bet Pentium is still more recognizable as a brand name than i3/i5/i7.

 

[masteryoda34]

I don't think a Celeron can even handle a 1080p video on youtube without the video and audio out of sync.

Celeron takes 3 hours to render a 10 minute 720p video. Not good at all.

Intel isn't fooling me with their naming scheme. Celeron does not accelerate!

First of all, your claims about Celerons not being able to perform basic functions are patently untrue. Why? Because the Celerons being sold today are still much faster than the average processors 6 years ago. I happen to have a 6 year old processor in my media center that plays 1080p video just fine.

Why does Intel sell Celerons? Celeron branded processors are exactly the same microprocessor architecture as the i3's, i5's and i7's. They simply have lower frequencies and less cache. The lower frequencies and cache are done for yield reasons. Intel is able to sell these dies at a reduced price as Celerons instead of throwing them in the garbage. Celerons also have a reduced feature set. This could be for yield reasons, although more likely is for market segmentation purposes. This type of pricing strategy is employed by many companies.

If you really want to understand this better you should study up on microprocessors and marketing strategies instead of running around saying Intel is stupid and looking like an idiot in the process. For your sake I really hope you're just trolling.

 

[Exophase]

It makes as much sense as disabling hyperthreading in i5's even though the transistors are still there, or having HD2500's and HD4000's coming from the same die as well. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority (if not all) of the tiered parts are tiered simply for pricing and are not actually harvested parts.

Intel has the dominant market position and makes what is arguably a superior product in most price ranges, and is thus able to afford to (and even profit from) artificially disabling parts of their CPUs and encouraging people to buy more expensive versions. I shudder to think of how it will be when AMD fully retreats from the high-end CPU business.

I disagree with you on this. I'm not arguing against market segmentation in general, via disabling cores, cache, clock speeds, turbo, hyper threading, etc (the HD2500 vs HD4000 example doesn't count because that's a different die altogether). And disabling highly specialized/niche instruction sets may be acceptable, if less desirable.

But disabling AVX is just stupid. Intel needs to get developers of normal everyday software to distribute binaries that use AVX. Limiting the number of computers that can run it is a big mistake in promoting adoption. And unlike everything else this is pretty new for Intel - dig back and you won't encounter SSE version blocking on earlier processors.

Here's hoping Intel realizes the stupidity of this move come Haswell and AVX2.

 

[teh_pwnerer]

First of all, your claims about Celerons not being able to perform basic functions are patently untrue. Why? Because the Celerons being sold today are still much faster than the average processors 6 years ago. I happen to have a 6 year old processor in my media center that plays 1080p video just fine.

Why does Intel sell Celerons? Celeron branded processors are exactly the same microprocessor architecture as the i3's, i5's and i7's. They simply have lower frequencies and less cache. The lower frequencies and cache are done for yield reasons. Intel is able to sell these dies at a reduced price as Celerons instead of throwing them in the garbage. Celerons also have a reduced feature set. This could be for yield reasons, although more likely is for market segmentation purposes. This type of pricing strategy is employed by many companies.

If you really want to understand this better you should study up on microprocessors and marketing strategies instead of running around saying Intel is stupid and looking like an idiot in the process. For your sake I really hope you're just trolling.

My AMD X2 crushes the poser called Celery.

 

[Exophase]

My AMD X2 crushes the poser called Celery.

Maybe Celerons from that era, but any Celeron processor ever?

Here's the best one on Intel's desktop listing:

http://ark.intel.com/products/69115/Intel-Celeron-Processor-G555-2M-Cache-2_70-GHz

I expect your processor will have difficulty beating it. I'd also hesitate to call even the best i3 out anywhere close to 4 times better.

EDIT: Here it is for comparison: http://ark.intel.com/products/65690/Intel-Core-i3-3240-Processor-3M-Cache-3_40-GHz It's much more than twice the cost and much less than four times the performance (performance will probably be around 25-75% better)

 

[Yuriman]

My AMD X2 crushes the poser called Celery.

A Sandy Bridge-based Celeron is still about 50% faster per clock than Brisbane. The G530 ($44 shipped on Amazon) is a hair faster than any "X2" branded chip. I'll accept that dual core Phenoms probably match or beat a Sandy Bridge Celeron, but it's not the slug you think it is.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Why would anyone buy a Celeron. That name is like the devil.

I won't lie, the Celeron doesn't suck like it use to back in the day. But you can get a better AMD cpu than a Celeron for the price.

In terms of dual core for Intel it goes Celeron > Pentium > i3. i3 is nearly twice as much as the cheapest Celeron, but about 4x better.

Boo Celeron. :thumbsdown:

Oh, really?

\

A Celeron G540 costs $45. A Sempron 145 costs $40, and the Celeron demolishes it.

Intel makes the Celeron because it's the best budget CPU you're gonna find.

My AMD X2 crushes the poser called Celery.

LOL. The benchmarks don't agree with you.

 

[teh_pwnerer]

I don't even see the Celery on Anandtech's Benchmark list. Where are these graphs being drawn up from?

AMD Phenom II crush the Celeron. I didn't say Sempron was any good, it's a poser as well.

 

[Barfo]

why not?

 

[cbn]

I don't even see the Celery on Anandtech's Benchmark list.

Yes, the closest you will get is the SB G620 (with 200 Mhz more frequency and an extra MB of L3 cache compared to SB G530 Celeron)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/406?vs=190