Ballistics Report

Performance:

Celeron continues to perform on par with Pentium II, garnering respectable and high scores across the board. We feel that the 33Mhz difference over the similar Celeron 400 PPGA is more of a marketing than performance-distribution, as this inches the clock speed of the Celeron line past the announced introduction speed of the AMD K6-3.

Innovation:

Relatively, there's nothing really new here. The Celeron 366, 400, and 433 are basically the same device with different rated speeds. However, there's little need for Intel to add any evolutionary or revolutionary changes to the Celeron design, as its performance speaks for itself. It would be nice to finally see official 100Mhz FSB support and Streaming SIMD Extensions (SSE) added in the near future however.

Installation and Setup:

An Intel processor popped into a fully-compliant Socket-370 motherboard is a snap to install. No AGP or peripheral incompatibilities you'll find on other socket platforms manifest themselves. We would like to see more motherboards take the Socket-370 platform more seriously - it's not just a cheap sub-$1000 OEM platform anymore, after all!

Price:

We found the Celeron 433 PPGA for a little less than $175. Compare this to $150 for a Celeron 400 SEPP and $130 for a Celeron 400 PPGA and you've got yourself a decision to make. The price between equivalent form factors is roughly $45 to $50. Is this worth 33Mhz more? In the days of the 486, the answer would be a jaw-slacking yes. Nowadays though, you can still get 300Mhz Celerons to overclock to 450, and a 400Mhz PPGA at 75Mhz FSB will run at 450 as well. As a whole however, the Celeron line is still a great deal, and worth purchasing.