Should Intel ditch "Celeron", or does it serve a purpose?

[VirtualLarry]

Just musing. My line of thinking is this, everyone seemed to think that Pentium was too low on the totem pole to bother with, and what little looking at OEM branded PCs that I've done, most are at least i3, there are a few Pentium (Both Core and Atom), and I honestly can't really remember seeing much in the way of OEM branded Celeron systems (in desktops), at least since P4 Celerons like E-Machines sold at Walmart. (Which is really the era in which the Celeron became infamous for poor performance.)

If OEM retail machines, start at Pentium Core, and OEM business machines start at i3 Core, then where does that leave Celeron?

And yet, we are to believe that the lowest-end CPUs do the highest volume, and that the OEM market for CPUs is much bigger than the retail-boxed component / enthusiast market?

Why does Intel still continue the Celeron brand, if it's so tarnished as to not be sold in retail branded OEM systems anymore?

Is it just a place to dump chips that have failed binning as higher-end models? (A very viable reason for the Celeron to exist, even if they are sold very close to mfg cost.)

Edit: Or does Celeron sell much more in "developing markets", rather than in the USA?

Edit: I will say this though, I would much prefer (if I were this type of customer), to purchase a Celeron Core CPU, of the newest architecture, in an OEM pre-built rig, than to purchase a Pentium Atom CPU-based OEM rig. (That is, if I were even in the market for an OEM rig.)

Edit: Do you think that this lack of Celeron, and much Pentium Core systems in the OEM market (replaced by BT Atoms), is due to Intel intentionally moving the market to this mix of CPUs (cheaper for them to make), due to "incentives" and whatnot to OEMs?

I think, that if Intel doesn't give their 20th Anniv. Celeron CPUs unlocked multipliers, then they should give them HyperThreading. It wouldn't really hurt Intel's margins much, as the CPUs would likely be cache-strated, and iGPU-limited.
30% more CPU performance, of the base Celeron, still wouldn't add that much performance, certainly not enough to harm Intel's product lineup.

Edit: And what about Intel's product lineup, should the rumors be true about Intel increasing core counts on their mainstream line around CannonLake time? Perhaps they are keeping around Celeron until then, and by then, they will be 2C/4T (with HT), taking the space that i3 occupies now, and i3 will become quad-core, taking the space that i5 occupies now.

 

[Raftina]

If OEM retail machines, start at Pentium Core, and OEM business machines start at i3 Core, then where does that leave Celeron?

In low end machines, such as these: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series-sff/m73-sff/

 

[Charlie98]

I've often wondered why Intel props up the Celeron chips... I'll be curious to see what others say...

 

[crashtech]

As long as they sell, seems fine to me. That's the ultimate arbiter of relevance in the marketplace.

 

[VirtualLarry]

As long as they sell, seems fine to me. That's the ultimate arbiter of relevance in the marketplace.

Hey, I'll keep buying them!

But seriously, good thought.

In most ordinary use-cases, there isn't a lot of qualitative differences in your everyday experiences between a Celeron and a Pentium Core-based CPU. Sure, there's quantitative differences (benchmarks), but most of the features are largely the same.

However, saving $20-30 off the cost of the CPU can be substantial for extremely price-sensitive budget builds.

Edit: I'll add that I've been running a G1610 IB Celeron in my HTPC, and so has another relative, and neither of us have had any particular performance problems with them.

I bought some G1820 Haswell Celeron CPUs for my mini-ITX desktop rigs, which are going to be paired up with 16GB DDR3-1600 (probably only running at 1333), and a Blu-Ray drive. ($40 ea, brand new in box, from SuperBiiz on ebay.)

My main rig currently has a G3258 @ 4.0Ghz, but I figured that the step down to a 2.7Ghz HSW Celeron wouldn't really affect what I do, since I wouldn't be gaming on the ITX rig. As I mentioned in another thread, the speed of my forum browsing is limited by the latency of my internet connection, not my CPU.

Edit: To add, it really is amazing how much CPU power you can get for $40 new these days. To think, the E5200 CPU was $70 list price, when it was introduced. Compare the G1820 at $40, to the E8400, which was like $300 when it was introduced.

Sadly, though, all of the Haswell Celeron / Pentium CPUs were locked from overclocking, except one. I'm glad for that one, and even happier that it appears that SKL will not suffer from that limitation, and that Celeron / Pentium OCed bang-for-buck might be back. (Sorry, getting a little OT here.)

 

[crashtech]

I hated on Celerons a little until realizing the horror of tablet quad-cores being peddled in desktop machines, which make Celerons look like fire-breathing hot rods in comparison. I guess there's a butt for every seat, as they say.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I hated on Celerons a little until realizing the horror of tablet quad-cores being peddled in desktop machines, which make Celerons look like fire-breathing hot rods in comparison. I guess there's a butt for every seat, as they say.

Yeah, the Core-based Celerons sold today (IB, HSW, and assumed SKL), aren't actually that bad. Not nearly as bad as the P4 Celerons, which were so bad to be nearly unusable. (128KB of L2 cache? GL with that.)

Edit: Looking at Newegg listings to refresh my memory:
HSW Celeron: 2MB L3, 256KB L2 per core
HSW Pentium: 3MB L3, 256KB L2 per core
HSW i3-41x0: 3MB L3, 256KB L2 per core
HSW i3-43x0: 4MB L3, 256KB L2 per core
HSW i5: 6MB L3, 256KB L2 per core
HSW i7: 8MB L3, 256KB L2 per core

So, there is an L3 cache difference between Celeron and Pentium, and between the two different flavors of i3 CPUs, and between i3, i5, and i7.

But none of those configurations, are what I would call cache-strated, like the P4 Celerons were. (At least the L2 cache per core is the same on all HSW.)

 

[Arachnotronic]

I hated on Celerons a little until realizing the horror of tablet quad-cores being peddled in desktop machines, which make Celerons look like fire-breathing hot rods in comparison. I guess there's a butt for every seat, as they say.

Yeah, the current Atom cores are not really that great. The desktop Celerons based on Skylake are actually pretty darn potent for the money.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, the current Atom cores are not really that great. The desktop Celerons based on Skylake are actually pretty darn potent for the money.

Do you know if the iGPU on SKL Celeron, is capable of 4K output? 4K@60?

I know that was one of the limitations, IIRC, on HSW, that the iGPU on Celerons wouldn't do 4K or something like that.

http://ark.intel.com/products/78955/Intel-Celeron-Processor-G1820-2M-Cache-2_70-GHz

Max resolution on HDMI is 1080P, and VGA is 1200P. DP is 2560x1600 @ 60.

http://ark.intel.com/products/77490/Intel-Core-i3-4170-Processor-3M-Cache-3_70-GHz

Max res on HDMI: 4K @ 24
Max res on DP: UHD @ 60
Max res on VGA: 19x12 @ 60

 

[myocardia]

I hated on Celerons a little until realizing the horror of tablet quad-cores being peddled in desktop machines, which make Celerons look like fire-breathing hot rods in comparison. I guess there's a butt for every seat, as they say.

No doubt. I have a playback-only HTPC with a Bay Trail Celeron J1900, and since it has hardware video acceleration for playback of 1080P BluRay rips, as well as 1080P NetFlix and Hulu+ streaming, it handles the job extremely well, but I'm pretty sure I'd cut my own throat, if I were forced to use it as my main/only computer.

 

[myocardia]

Do you know if the iGPU on SKL Celeron, is capable of 4K output? 4K@60?

Yes to both: http://ark.intel.com/products/88179/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G4400-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz

 

[SPBHM]

apart from Bay Trail I don't think Celerons were ever THAT bad,
perhaps the original l2-less p2, or Northwood, but other than that, I can think of a lot of good or even great Celerons (300A, Tualatin, Celeron D, Core 2 Celerons like e3200, sandy bridge+ Celerons), I think they always delivered good perf/price, until sandy bridge also good OC potential, obviously once Pentium was moved to the low end, Celerons was even further down, but it's not really a significant difference,
I guess Intel sees some advantage for keeping it, perhaps some expect their cheap PC to have a Celeron, maybe they will be OK with that, or will want to pay a little extra to avoid it lol

g3900 should be pretty good,

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes to both: http://ark.intel.com/products/88179/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G4400-3M-Cache-3_30-GHz

That's the Pentium (that should be coming my way soon). I was actually asking about the Celeron, which hasn't to my knowledge been released yet.

Good to know, though, thanks.

I'm curious about how the VGA works on my Asus H110 board, as it has a VGA-out, but as the ARK for that G4400 lists, "VGA res: N/A". So I'm rather curious if I'll be able to get VGA-out through the official Intel drivers, or if I'm going to be locked into Asus' proprietary spin on the Intel drivers, to support the VGA output.

 

[mikeymikec]

IMO the reason why the low end CPUs exist is this logic:

"My needs aren't that great, so I don't need to spend much on a new computer"

I've heard this line many times from customers. Without guidance these people buy the cheapest computers they can. Manufacturers scrap over that market segment.

I hated on Celerons a little until realizing the horror of tablet quad-cores being peddled in desktop machines, which make Celerons look like fire-breathing hot rods in comparison. I guess there's a butt for every seat, as they say.

I hate it when a manufacturer makes a laptop/tablet posing as a desktop.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

Here I am browsing on a bay-trail tablet. They're not bad for media consumption or browsing. It bests the K8 2.6ghz in multithread (which browsing and content are) and matches the K8 in benchmarks, including the nuclearus thread here.

My wife has the 2.16ghz dual core variant in her Toshiba Chromebook (13.3", 1080p IPS, 4GB ram?) and its her main computer for everything. The emmc drive makes that thing very responsive.

Bay-trail/atom serves a good purpose.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Here I am browsing on a bay-trail tablet. They're not bad for media consumption or browsing. It bests the K8 2.6ghz in multithread (which browsing and content are) and matches the K8 in benchmarks, including the nuclearus thread here.

My wife has the 2.16ghz dual core variant in her Toshiba Chromebook (13.3", 1080p IPS, 4GB ram?) and its her main computer for everything. The emmc drive makes that thing very responsive.

Bay-trail/atom serves a good purpose.

I use a Dell (forgot the model number, it's some Inspiron 15"), with an N2830, and 4GB of RAM and a Samsung 850 EVO 120GB SSD. It's actually not bad at all for web browsing. Not a heck of a lot different from my Q9300 quad-core, in Waterfox and Win7 64-bit, also with (an older) SSD.

 

[NTMBK]

In my opinion they should keep the Celeron brand, retire the Pentium brand for a few years, then bring it back as the premium brand it once was. Get rid of this Core iWhatever nonsense.

 

[cbn]

I think Intel should use chips with a defect in one core for Celeron.

Then put these 1C/2T chips (clocked to the appropriate level) in desktop rather than the quad core atom chips like J1900.

In some cases they can also make Celeron a 4.5W 1C/2T Core M style chip. (I'll take this over the 4W Braswell N3000).

 

[Insert_Nickname]

In my opinion they should keep the Celeron brand, retire the Pentium brand for a few years, then bring it back as the premium brand it once was. Get rid of this Core iWhatever nonsense.

Either that, or call lower-end CPUs Core i1 to gain some consistency. Then rename the HEDT Core i9, so there would be a differentiator between LGA-115x and LGA-2011xx.

But of course you run the risk of average customers being able to figure out model naming... :hmm:

I think Intel should use chips with a defect in one core for Celeron.

Then put these 1C/2T chips (clocked to the appropriate level) in desktop rather than the quad core atom chips like J1900.

In some cases they can also make Celeron a 4.5W 1C/2T Core M style chip. (I'll take this over the 4W Braswell N3000).

They did that with the Sandy Bridge Celerons (G460, 465, 470). Having used one as a HTPC chip, I'm going to have to say single core CPUs (even with HT) are not going to make the cut in 2016.

 

[VirtualLarry]

They did that with the Sandy Bridge Celerons (G460, 465, 470). Having used one as a HTPC chip, I'm going to have to say single core CPUs (even with HT) are not going to make the cut in 2016.

Even if they could fit the single-core (with HT) in a 6-10W power envelope?

 

[cbn]

I think Intel should use chips with a defect in one core for Celeron.

Then put these 1C/2T chips (clocked to the appropriate level) in desktop rather than the quad core atom chips like J1900.

In some cases they can also make Celeron a 4.5W 1C/2T Core M style chip. (I'll take this over the 4W Braswell N3000).

They did that with the Sandy Bridge Celerons (G460, 465, 470). Having used one as a HTPC chip, I'm going to have to say single core CPUs (even with HT) are not going to make the cut in 2016.

Those were clocked very low though.

Even the G470 was only 2.0 Ghz (Sandy Bridge 1C/2T):

http://ark.intel.com/products/74390/Intel-Celeron-Processor-G470-1_5M-Cache-2_00-GHz

 

[VirtualLarry]

Those were clocked very low though.

Even the G470 was only 2.0 Ghz (Sandy Bridge 1C/2T):

http://ark.intel.com/products/74390/Intel-Celeron-Processor-G470-1_5M-Cache-2_00-GHz

Wow, that's pretty-well gimped. Talk about a dumping ground for bad dies!

 

[cbn]

Wow, that's pretty-well gimped. Talk about a dumping ground for bad dies!

Yes, For 35W that spec is pretty terrible. (Wonder if that was done on purpose simply for product segmentation rather than bad die though)

 

[therealnickdanger]

My problem with Celeron is that the models are a mix of high-end Atom chips and bottom-of-the-barrel Core chips. I don't like it when different architectures share the same marketing label.

 

[ShintaiDK]

My problem with Celeron is that the models are a mix of high-end Atom chips and bottom-of-the-barrel Core chips. I don't like it when different architectures share the same marketing label.

Same with Pentium and Athlon btw.

But true, maybe keep Baytrail/Kabini as Celeron/Sempron and use Pentium/Athlon for the bigger toys.