Celeron Confusion

As expected, Intel launched the Tualatin-renamed-Celeron yesterday. If you’d like, you can download the datasheet for it here.

This is a much different chip that the other Celerons. It’s .13 micron, it has 256K cache, and it only
runs with 815 stepping B mobos. If you have any other type motherboard, you won’t be able to run this CPU on it.

This is not just a matter of the right voltage to the processor. The Tualatin/Celerons also communicate a bit differently to the motherboard than the PIII/Celerons. While the 815 B stepping chipset
can go both ways and support new and old CPUs, older motherboards can’t.

Right now, the only Tualatin/Celeron out there now is the 1.2GHz. Every other Celeron is an “older” one.

If you have a socket 370 or slot 1 board, the best you’re going to be able to do Celeron-wise is one of the older CPUs.

You can see a listing of Celeron CPUs here.

The latest stepping for the “old Celerons” is the cD0 stepping. After looking at the CPU database, it looks like cD0 chips are a pretty safe bet to reach 1133Mhz.
to do 1133 or better seems to be a safe bet.

Before you buy, though, don’t assume it’s necessarily going to work with your motherboard. Particularly for the older BX boards, manufacturers have stopped issuing new BIOSes for the boards.

Sometimes that matters. Sometimes it doesn’t.

What You Should Do

First check the website of the manufacturer of your mobo, and certainly get the latest BIOS for your motherboard before trying this.

If the website doesn’t answer the question, you should then look to see if somebody else has gotten a cD0 chip to work with your motherboard.

There’s basically two ways you can do that:

Take a look at our CPU database (and/or other similiar databases). For at least ours, we ask that
people list the sspec of their CPU, so you can compare what you see there to the Intel Celeron list to see
what stepping that particular CPU is.

All Celerons rated at 900Mhz or better are cD0s, so if you see somebody with a Celeron 950 (not a Celeron overclocked to 950) using your mobo, you should be OK.

Check newsgroups through Goggle Go here and type in something like {your mobo’s model number} Celeron 900 (or 950, or cD0) and read the posts that come up.

You’ll probably see a lot of posts from people who have overclocked a Celeron to 900Mhz or better, but that’s not what you want to know. You want to see somebody using a Celeron rated by Intel at 900Mhz or more (or less if the post indicates a cD0 sspec).

This will take a little time and effort, but certainly less time and effort and money than getting a CPU that won’t work in your mobo and you having to ship it back and maybe paying a restocking fee.

Email Ed