Introduction to the 433

Just a few short months ago, Intel introduced the Celeron 366, and more recently, the 400. Is Intel finally giving the Celeron the respect it deserves, and end users a truly great deal on high-powered, budget computing? Industry insiders and folks with any ounce of common sense are already suspecting that the gesture isn't completely magnanimous.

So why the sudden Celeron push into the high-end sector of the market? Well, Intel is in a somewhat delicate situation right now. On one hand, they have the better-than-expected Celeron line; very low margin, very popular. It's beginning to cut into their cash-cow Pentium II (and soon Pentium III) line of processors, and that's definitely not good for Intel.

Two sides of the coin

On the other hand, AMD's low cost K6-2 line is starting to gain a lot of momentum, especially in the hot sub-$1000 PC market. With the imminent release of the K6-3 (which is positioned to compete directly with the Pentium III), Intel has to both beef up performance and lower prices in order to keep AMD from gaining a stronger foothold.

This brings us to Intel's newest chip, the Celeron 433. Following in the line of previous Celeron processors, the 433 brings even more speed to the low end, and surpasses the initial K6-3 400 in clock speed (which really speaks nothing of performance). But how does this sub-$200 CPU compare in the test labs? Let's take a look…