AMD Sempron vs Intel Celeron D (page 1: Introduction, Intel Celeron D)

Basic models : Getting to the heart of the matter

The processor market follows the idea of the following marketing slogan: “the processor that we talk about the least is sold the most”. If the Athlon 64 and the Pentium 4 are regularly in the news, the biggest market for AMD and Intel are, in fact, their basic models.

Up until now, Intel used to provide the Celeron for this market. Based on the Pentium 4, these processors, commonly called Northwoods, have a 130 nm fabrication process. AMD simultaneously manufactured the Duron and Athlon XP. The two manufacturers took the opportunity this summer to come out with a new line of products.

Intel Celeron D

Until now, the Pentium 4 Celeron had 128 KB of L2 cache and used a FSB400. The new Celeron has a 90 nm fabrication process and 256 KB of L2 cache. Additionally, the Celeron 130 nm cache is no longer slower than the Pentium 4 130 nm.

The bus processor has also been improved. Instead of a 100 MHz QDR (FSB400) bus, there is a 433 MHz QDR (FSB533). So if we had to use the DDR266 with the previous Intel chipset and Celeron, the new Celeron D is able to use the DDR333. Finally, if the Celeron D is compatible with the SSE3 instructions, they are, however, not compatible with HyperThreading.

On the left the Celeron D 335 2.8 GHz, on the right the Celeron 2.8 GHz
There are currently four versions of the processor:

Intel Celeron D 320 (2.40 GHz) : 69$
Intel Celeron D 325 (2.53 GHz) : 79$
Intel Celeron D 330 (2.66 GHz) : 89$
Intel Celeron D 335 (2.80 GHz) : 117$

This price table, however, should change quickly in the next few days with the release of the 340 version (2.93 GHz) at 117$. Prices for the 335 and 330 will fall respectively to $103 and $83. With equivalent frequencies, the prices of the Celeron D are equivalent to the previous line.