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Intel "Mysterious" Celeron processor revealed |
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Written by Dusan Srbljak
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Friday, 29 June 2007 |
Another of the processors on the test came into our possession thanks to pure luck, packed with one of the motherboards that came in directly from the faraway Taiwan. At first we thought that it was a standard C2D processor. However, our surprise was immense. The first thing we noticed after putting it into use was that it had a multiplier of 14. After executing CPU-Z we understood that it was an engineer sample whose multiplier is actually unlocked all the way to the aforementioned number. The processor itself is single-core and possesses 1 MB of L2 cache. CPU-Z recognized this core as Conroe-L.
The FSB is identical with the one on the Pentium E2000 series – 200 MHz (800 MHz Quad-Pumped). Now it's already clear that wherever there's a Pentium there must be a Celeron. With all the listed information it only seems logical that we're dealing with a certain soon-to-be Celeron processor based on Core technology. What the name of this series will be is unknown to this point, but we suppose that they will be marked “Celeron E1XXX” or perhaps belong to the 4XX series of CPUs that already made quite a fuss. This Intel move also marks complete retirement of the NetBurst technology through complete “refreshment” of the offer.
Since our motherboard didn't allow us to change the FSB or CPU multiplier, we couldn't examine the overclocking potential of this mysterious CPU. However, we are pretty sure that the overclocking limits are to be in range of other C2D CPUs, or even higher, as it is a single-core model. We also suppose that this sample was pre-overclocked, as the multipliers of these “Celeron” processors will probably not be as high. To further investigate this CPU, we made a direct comparison with some other models. It is interesting that in “everyday” applications this CPU is not so much far behind his dual-core brethren.
| 1280x1024 | Intel Conroe-L 1ML2 @ 2.8GHz | Intel Pentium E2140 | | Sandra 2007 | | | | CPU | 12.910 / 8.968 | 14.759 / 10.257 | | Multimedia | 77.118 / 41.768 | 88.065 / 47.539 | | Memory | 4.846 / 4.868 | 3.900 / 3.910 | | Latency | 89 ns | 101 ns | | 3DMark06 CPU Score | 1,252 | 1,415 | | 3DMark05 CPU Score | 6,411 | 5,703 | | Far Cry (MediumQ) | 161.9 fps | 125.3 fps | | COD2 (MedimumQ) | 83.1 fps | 82.3 fps | | Cinebench (more is better) | 463 | 496 | | WinRAR (more is better) | 659 KB/s | 881 KB/s | | DivX (more is better) | 61.2 fps | 84.9 fps | | PhotoshopCS2 (less is better) | 38.2 fps | 66.1 fps | | Nuclearus (more is better) | 5,162 | 4,791 |
Testbed: DFI DARK Infinity 965, 2x1GB TwinMOS Twister DDR800 4-4-4-15,
EVGA 8800GTS, Windows XP Pro SP2 |
The best examples to demonstrate this are games, in which this processor put on a good show. There is no reason not to believe that this CPU is ultimately going to be cheap, and it will most certainly be a total hit for users who have no need for a dual-core solution. Until then, we will try to determine how this amazingly interesting processor came into our possession.
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Processors 
