Testbed and Methods

In order to confirm that the new Celeron 4XX will really be faster than the Celeron 3XX family, we decided to compare the performance of the top Celeron D on NetBurst micro-architecture with that of the upcoming Celeron 440 CPU, the fastest single-core representative of the Conroe-L based family. In other words, although our Conroe-L sample could be clocked at up to 2.4GHz, we set its working frequency at lower 2.0GHz value, because this is the top nominal clock frequency of the new processor family. Therefore, we reduced its clock frequency multiplier to 10x.

Note that the today’s fastest Celeron D processor is marked as 365 and works at 3.6GHz frequency. This was the rival we picked for our 2GHz Celeron 440.

Other than that the testbeds were configured as follows:

• CPUs:
• Celeron D 365 (LGA775, 3.6GHz, 533MHz FSB, 512KB L2, Cedar Mill);
• Celeron 440 (LGA775, 2.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 512KB L2, Conroe-L);
• Mainboard: ASUS P5B Premium (LGA775, Intel P965);
• Memory: 2048MB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Mushkin XP2-6400PRO, 2 x 1024 MB, DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12);
• Graphics card: PowerColor X1900 XTX 512MB;
• HDD: Western Digital WD1500AHFD.
• OS: Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit).

Performance

The obtained results are given in the table below:

The obtained results indicate undoubtedly that the transition of Celeron processors to Core micro-architecture will make them considerably faster. Almost in all tests Celeron 440 outperformed Celeron D 365 and in about half of all cases this advantage is more than 20%. Budget processors on Core micro-architecture are showing even higher results in office applications, games and image editing tasks.

Note that besides the higher performance, the upcoming Celeron processor can also boast much lower heat dissipation and power consumption. The typical heat dissipation for the CPU on Conroe-L core will be 35W, while Celeron D processors on 65nm Cedar Mill core feature 65W TDP.

So, the introduction of Core micro-architecture into the best value Intel processors is definitely great news for the end-users, which will make budget systems with Intel processors faster and more economical.

However, we shouldn’t overestimate the upcoming Celeron CPUs on Conroe-L core, either. If you are hoping to see the times of Celeron 300A will come back, we will have to disappoint you. The further, the bigger gets the performance gap between the fully-fledged and budget CPUs, which is the CPU developers’ policy. And Conroe-L will not break this tendency. Now Celeron can only compete with mainstream and high-end processors only in those applications that do not support multi-threading and their number grows smaller day by day.

However, there is still some hope that a wonder may happen. Maybe Conroe-L will prove extremely overclockable, which will allow us to forget about its single-core design? Let’s find out!