Watchdog - The chips are down

Last month we reported on computer manufacturers' concerns about Celeron, Intel's new low-cost processor. Now that it's been officially launched, it's obvious that very few companies are actually selling Celeron-based machines yet. A glance at Intel's own performance figures shows why.

First, Intel has compared a 266MHz Celeron chip with the fastest 233MHz desktop Pentium MMX processor, so some improvement in performance is down simply to the increase in clock speed. Clock cycle for clock cycle, however, it is obvious that Celeron's integer performance is some 20% lower, while its multimedia benchmark performance is only about 2.5% better.

For Intel, the big advantage of Celeron is that, like the fully fledged Pentium II, it uses the Slot One interface. So far, neither AMD nor Cyrix have a Slot One chip, though they both claim the legal right to produce their own versions. Intel has around 90% of the processor market, and if all of this uses Slot One, the future of the older Socket 7 looks bleak.

You can still buy high-performance Socket 7 machines, which are sometimes faster than Pentium II PCs, and there's no reason why they should not be developed further. However, without continued support from Intel, it is unclear how - or, indeed, if - you will be able to upgrade such computers in the future. Intel is abandoning a workable system simply to gain even more market share - good for its profits maybe, but less so for customers.

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