It's Raining Coppermines!

The Coppermines Are Here!

Intel's latest variant of the Pentium III core, codenamed "Coppermine" is beginning to hit the retail channel in volume. Regular FiringSquad readers are well aware of the 0.18-micron die shrink the Coppermine offers, however, some consumers may not be aware of the many versions of the Coppermine currently available.

For the high-end, money is no object user, Intel offers the Pentium III with the 133 MHz frontside bus and 256K of integrated L2 cache running at the same speed as the processor. Previous Pentium III's shipped with 512K of L2 cache located off the core of the processor running at half the CPU speed. By shifting the cache onto the processor as the MHz of the CPU increases the overall performance increases more than if the CPU's cache were running at half speed. (As it is on the traditional Pentium III)

These Pentium III's are the flagship of the line and are given the "EB" designation at speeds of 600EB and 533EB MHz to prevent confusion with other Pentium III's. (With the "E" standing for Embedded cache and the "B" for 133 MHz System Bus) The Pentium III EB variant is also available at speeds of 667 and 733 MHz without the official "EB" designation. These CPU's still feature integrated L2 cache and the 133 MHz system bus. All Pentium III EB's ship in the standard Single Edge Contact Cartridge 2 (S.E.C.C.2) package.

More Coppermines!

Besides the EB Coppermines, there are also those that ship with the embedded cache but without the 133 MHz bus. These CPU's are given the "E" designation and are available in speeds of 700, 650, and 600 MHz with the 600 model given the official "E" designation. These three CPU's ship with the S.E.C.C.2 package. In addition, there are also 550E and 500E models that come with the newer Flip-Chip Pin Grid Array package (FC-PGA) to make matters even more confusing.

The final Coppermine variant is the "B" model. Available in speeds of 600B and 533B MHz, these are traditional Pentium III's (i.e. they ship with 512K L2 cache running at half the speed of the processor) running on the 133 MHz system bus. Like traditional Pentium III's, these CPU's feature S.E.C.C.2 packaging.

Users looking to upgrade their older Celeron or Pentium III systems based on the BX-chipset can upgrade to the "E" series CPU's if they have the right motherboard. For those of you who want the embedded cache and support for RDRAM or AGP4X however, you'll have to purchase a new motherboard based on the Intel 820 or 840 chipset. We've compiled an exhaustive list of motherboards that feature either the 820 or 840 chipset so you don't have to. But first, lets see what these new chipsets add to the table.