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.

 

[JoeRambo]

Has that happened before?

Yeah, Google up G3258.

Peripherals like USB won't be problematic, cause Intel decoupled those clocks in this gen. There could be some strange problems due to so called "base" TSC clock rising. For example on 12900K it is 3200Mhz, and with 110Mhz base clock it becomes 10% higher, potentially breaking apps that depend on it.

 

[igor_kavinski]

There could be some strange problems due to so called "base" TSC clock rising. For example on 12900K it is 3200Mhz, and with 110Mhz base clock it becomes 10% higher, potentially breaking apps that depend on it.

Awesome. Didn't know that before.

 

[escrow4]

Landfill rubbish. Dual cores have no place in 2022. If you want a 4K pornhub premium box buy an IPad or one of the less rubbish chromebooks. 2 cores simply don’t have enough puff no more. Even my ultra tightarse work upgraded to Coffee Lake hexa cores even if they are T versions.

Better yet:

 

[LightningZ71]

Well, it's technically faster in geekbench than our i3-1005g1 laptop (991/2020). I don't think it will match it in iGPU performance though...

 

[jpiniero]

Landfill rubbish. Dual cores have no place in 2022. If you want a 4K pornhub premium box buy an IPad or one of the less rubbish chromebooks. 2 cores simply don’t have enough puff no more. Even my ultra tightarse work upgraded to Coffee Lake hexa cores even if they are T versions.

The whole point of Pentium and Celeron is to be so crappy to discourage sales but also to avoid the landfill. The Celeron probably would be OK for general usage on Linux.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Landfill rubbish.

Vehemently disagree. My main work system is i5-2400 (secondary system runs i7-4770) and this is faster than that! Everything I do works great and the Celeron would double the ST perf for me. Intel does some things right.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That RandomGaminginHD video sure puts it in a sort of perspective. Should have been 2P cores + HT, then it would have actually been playable in some of those games. CP2077 can't even load a savefile with only two physical cores!

Granted, that's the software's fault, ultimately, but would it have been so hard, Intel, to allow 2P + HT, even on the Celeron? 4 Threads should be a minimum in 2022.

 

[TheELF]

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?

From what your link shows Base Frequency Boost is just increasing PL2 which any bios should be able to do by now.
All the benchmarks on all the sites are being done with PL2 being set the same as PL1 anyway, a lot of them are even with PL lifted completely, hence the power draw numbers that are way above claimed TDP.

I don't think the celeron has any turbo so asus has to be doing something else, but maybe it does have TDPup which could improve clocks.

 

[Asterox]

That RandomGaminginHD video sure puts it in a sort of perspective. Should have been 2P cores + HT, then it would have actually been playable in some of those games. CP2077 can't even load a savefile with only two physical cores!

Granted, that's the software's fault, ultimately, but would it have been so hard, Intel, to allow 2P + HT, even on the Celeron? 4 Threads should be a minimum in 2022.

Intel mutilated Celeron G9600 well. SMT or 2/4 CPU in general would mean a lot for beeter CPU performance.

 

[escrow4]

It’s not faster you just haven’t experienced Celeron slowness @igor_kavinski

 

[igor_kavinski]

It’s not faster you just haven’t experienced Celeron slowness @igor_kavinski

True that older Celerons may have been awful but the Geekbench scores for this one seem pretty decent.

Geekbench Search - Geekbench Browser

Interestingly, a whole GHz overclock isn't doing much to increase the scores. Poor thing has been castrated quite viciously.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

It’s not faster you just haven’t experienced Celeron slowness @igor_kavinski

Well, yes.

But the stack has moved upwards. Even the lowest-end Alder Lake G6900 is equivalent to a top-of-the-line Skylake Pentium (G4500). With a way improved microarchitecture, and a significantly better platform.

I still wouldn't use one with Windows in 2022. But it might be okay'ish with Linux.

 

[Furious_Styles]

Anyone know when these should be available for purchase?

 

[jpiniero]

Anyone know when these should be available for purchase?

It's available now.

 

[Mopetar]

Just to follow up on one of my earlier comments about board availability, Steven from GN put out a video yesterday about the new motherboards that are coming out.

There are offerings from several companies as low as $100 and several decent looking B660 boards in the $150 price range.

 

[Furious_Styles]

It's available now.

Can't see any FS on newegg yet.

 

[jpiniero]

Can't see any FS on newegg yet.

It's there. Third party though.

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

 

[VirtualLarry]

Since the Celeron is 2P and no HT, I'm now more interested in looking at the 2P + HT Pentium chip.

The G6400 was an exceptional Pentium Gold CPU I thought, coming in at 2C + HT, 10th-Gen, and sporting a 4.0Ghz base/max clock. It seemed like a relative powerhouse, for being (at one point) available for around $59-65 USD. (Before it became a darling of miners, because they couldn't get G4400 and G3900 Skylake CPUs anymore.)

I'm most curious about the clock speed, and the native (GPU) PCI-E revision support on the G7400 (I think that's the 12th-gen Pentium version.)

 

[jpiniero]

I'm most curious about the clock speed, and the native (GPU) PCI-E revision support on the G7400 (I think that's the 12th-gen Pentium version.)

3.7 and the PCIe lanes aren't segmented at all so all of them get the 16 5.0 and 4 4.0 lanes.

 

[Mopetar]

From the AT article covering the newly announced Alder Lake lineup the G7400 is listed as having a 3.7 GHz base clock. No boost is listed. $64 price tag.

 

[VirtualLarry]

3.7? That's rather disappointing, seeing as how the 10th-gen Pentium Gold shipped with a stock speed of 4.0Ghz, and HT. Like, two steps forward, one back.

Why can't they just let us have the full benefit of the new architecture on new products? (AKA at ISO clock frequency of prior-gen products, which previously, since C2D, always went UP with newer products, and yes, even newer architectures.) Why must you incessantly gimp, Intel, WHY?

 

[Mopetar]

I think there was a fairly substantial IPC improvement with Alder Lake so that 3.7 should be faster. It seems as though the features that some motherboards offer can increase that, giving the chip an effective overclock, at least based on this article: https://hothardware.com/news/intel-budget-celeron-g6900-alder-lake-cpu-leaked-benchmark.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think there was a fairly substantial IPC improvement with Alder Lake so that 3.7 should be faster. It seems as though the features that some motherboards offer can increase that, giving the chip an effective overclock, at least based on this article: https://hothardware.com/news/intel-budget-celeron-g6900-alder-lake-cpu-leaked-benchmark.

Maybe so, but who's going to buy a Z690 board (at current Z-series board prices!) to run a Celeron / Pentium Gold in, just to OC a little? (*)

(*) Ok, I did exactly that, with ASRock Z170 boards that offered FSB overclocking, with a Pentium Skylake G4400 CPU, got it boosted pretty well, but only two cores. At the time, my favorite web browser, Firefox, was one of the last holdouts to go multi-threaded, and hadn't yet at that time, so it was in fact an opportune solution for me personally. Plus, Z170 boards back then were like $85, so not a great expense. It was a fun time.

If only ASRock would release an H610 or B660 board with "Base Frequency Boost" support, for under $100, maybe we could have some fun overclocking times again.

 

[jpiniero]

3.7? That's rather disappointing, seeing as how the 10th-gen Pentium Gold shipped with a stock speed of 4.0Ghz, and HT. Like, two steps forward, one back.

Why can't they just let us have the full benefit of the new architecture on new products? (AKA at ISO clock frequency of prior-gen products, which previously, since C2D, always went UP with newer products, and yes, even newer architectures.) Why must you incessantly gimp, Intel, WHY?

Yields.

 

[Mopetar]

If only ASRock would release an H610 or B660 board with "Base Frequency Boost" support, for under $100, maybe we could have some fun overclocking times again.

I could see someone doing something like that because it does add a lot of value for that kind of board. For the DIY and hobbyist market it would certainly make a product stand out or by a good way to get away with taking on an extra $10 to the price tag of what would otherwise be a budget item with low margins.