First Looks

What's changed, and what's new?

As with all recently introduced Celeron processors, the 500 is only available in Intel's Plastic Pin Grid Array (PPGA) format for Socket-370 motherboards. Slot-1 SEPP Celerons are slowly being phased out in favor of the less expensive socketed version. Visually, the processor is identical to any other PPGA Celeron.

Most likely, it's also electrically identical as well. With the exception of CPUID setting which labels the processor speed, and Intel's clock-locking circuitry that prevents different multipliers to be effected to specific-speed processors.

Frequency and multipliers

At 7.5x, The Celeron 500 is easily the highest-multiplier CPU Intel has put out to date. Besides being an interesting factoid, high multiplier speeds can be a problem for older motherboards, especially ones built around LX chipsets. While newer motherboards such as the BM6 should be designed with expansion in mind, older boards may not support multipliers approaching 8.0x. This problem also exists with Slot-1 motherboards, and while there aren't any CPUs beyond 5.5 (and soon 6.0), folks running with socket-370 to slot-1 adapters may also encounter this problem with older boards.

What about multiprocessing?

Celeron 500 vs. Pentium III 500 in multiprocessing? In most applications, you can expect the Celerons to hold their own admirably, matching and even beating the P3's in some tests, especially where L2 cache speed makes a big difference. While we didn't have access to two Celeron 500s for this preview, we were able to boot it up with a Celeron 466 in a BP6 (which for any Intel processor will bypass the clock-lock) at 2x 466, and ran through several benchmarks.

The significance here isn't the speed of multiprocessing, but rather the fact that it exists at all. We've recently read reports that Intel will be/has been disabling AN15 on Celerons in order to prevent these low-cost CPUs from functioning in multiprocessor configurations. This is a feature they want reserved for their premium chips, the Pentium III and P3 Xeon.

Why multiprocessing with Celeron?

In our opinion, it makes little sense in the market to do this, as someone who really needs the robustness and reliability of multiprocessing will not want to be running a "hack" dual-Celeron setup. On the other side of the fence, a hobbyist experimenting with dual-CPUs would most likely cringe at the idea of spending $500-$1,200 alone on two Pentium III CPUs, just for the hell of it. It seems like dual-Celerons would generally be a benefit to Intel, and not a hindrance. At the very least, it's safe to say that the initial run of Celeron 500s will not be multiprocessor-disabled.