Bus boost may close the gap between Celeron and AMD Duron chips. But will it be enough?
Intel plans to give a performance boost to lower-end PCs using Celeron processors by making an improvement to associated bus technology.
The chip maker, sources told ZDNet News, will move its "value-oriented" Celeron processor to a 100MHz system bus in the first half of next year. The move isn't unexpected, as Intel has already done so with mobile Celeron chips.
The faster bus should offer a performance boost for budget PCs. The current version of the chip has a 66MHz bus.
The system bus provides a bridge for data to flow between the processor and the chip set in a PC. If the bus is on the slow side, users can't take full advantage of a fast processor.
The boost won't come right away, though. Intel is looking to the 800MHz Celeron chip, due in the first quarter of next year, as the transition point to the faster 100MHz bus, sources said. Or the company may hold off until the 850MHz Celeron, scheduled for a second-quarter launch, they said.
Performance-minded PC buyers have been calling for Intel to raise the bus speed for some time. However, Intel officials maintain that most customers are more concerned with overall system price and processor megahertz ratings than bus speeds. Upping the bus speed has become a marketing decision.
Few changes before Christmas
Meanwhile, Celeron will change very little between now and the Christmas buying season. Although Intel will offer more megahertz to value-PC buyers, with 733MHz and 766MHz versions of the Celeron chip due to ship later this quarter and next quarter, respectively, the highest-volume Celeron-based PCs this holiday season will likely use 700MHz or faster chips.
Analysts agree that bus speed is not important to consumers.
"If it were, Intel wouldn't be at 66MHz anymore," said Mike Feibus, principal analyst at Mercury Research.
However, Feibus said, as the chips get faster, "the more likely (it will be that) the system bus (won't be able to) keep up with the processor."
"I think they're going to do it when the parameters of consumer demand change, and not a second sooner," he said.
Those parameters, due to competition from Advanced Micro Devices, have changed, though. Based on recent tests where AMD's new lower-cost chip outperformed the Celeron, the lower-cost chip from Intel could use a bus boost.
Blown away
Recent tests conducted by PC Magazine showed that a system with a 700MHz Duron chip, AMD's value PC processor, bested a PC with a 700MHz Celeron chip by margins of as much as 34 percent on certain benchmarks.
Part of the Duron's performance advantage comes from a much faster 200MHz bus. However, a chip's performance also comes from its cache. Processor caches feed data or instructions into the processor's core. The Celeron sports a 128KB Level 2 cache, compared with Duron's 64KB Level 2 cache. However, AMD points out that its chip has more total cache. The company provided Duron with a 128KB Level 1 cache, compared with the Celeron's 32KB Level 1 cache.
So far none of the major PC manufacturers shipping AMD Athlon chips, including Gateway and Compaq Computer, has begun offering Duron systems. However, that should soon change as the companies announce plans to deliver Duron systems later this year.
"I think the (PC makers) are waiting on a platform. They don't have a chip set yet," Feibus said.
The platform will come from VIA Technologies VIA's low-cost Apollo KM133 chip set with integrated graphics is expected to arrive later in the year. It should become the basis of these major PC makers' Duron PCs, set for release in time for the Christmas buying season.
"You'll see a big push in the retail channel in that time frame," said Martin Booth, a marketing director at AMD, in a recent interview with ZDNet News.
