This article is more than 1 year old

Celeron gets 100MHz FSB in Q1 2001

And not before bloody time

Leaked Intel documents seen by The Reg reveal that Celeron will finally move into the 1990s in 2001. The cheapo chip has been lumbered with a puny 66MHz front side bus ever since its inauspicious launch as the cacheless Covington in the latter years of the last century.

A new chipset, the i810e2 is also set for launch in Q1, supporting both Pentium and Celeron brands on a common motherboard design. There is possibly an interesting development here - the Intel document specifically mentions 'Pentium', not 'Pentium III' - is this a deviation from the corporate style guide, or an indication that both PIII and P4 chips will be supported? (Unlikely, given the differing number of pins involved - still, stranger things have happened at sea)

The Coppermine128 launches at 800/100 in 'early' Q1 2001 and the 100MHz FSB will then be adopted for all Celerons over 800MHz.

'Early' presumably means the first week of January - Intel's traditional time for pissing off folks who have bought Xmas PCs only to find them outdated a couple of weeks later.

The 810e2 will feature ATA-100, 4 USB ports, 6 channel audio and LAN support and Coppermine128 is now billed as 'the value PC solution', following the death of the ill-fated Timna SOC project. ®

Related stories

Intel's Timna dead - official
Celeron stuck in 66MHz timewarp

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like