[Princess Garnet]

This may be a bit old to some, but apparently, Wolfdale Celerons have been launched. They're the E3x00 series, E3200 and E3300 at 2.4GHz and 2.5GHz respectively. It seems to be intended to replace to E1x00 series. Now we have E1 through E8 series complete (no E9, but Q9), where it was E1 through E8 except E3 before these CPUs came about. They have "only" 1MB of L2 cache, which is really their only con (being Wolfdale and having decent enough speed are good on the core and speed fronts). It's still better than 512k shared among 2 cores like the previous E1x00 CPUs had. I hear it lacks SSE4.1 though. These won't go in big gaming machines for the most part, so most simple single core tasks will have a full 2MB, and multi-threaded stuff will have an "acceptable" 1MB each.

The overclocking results are standard fare for these things. Someone got it to 4.4GHz (on air, under 1.4V) too, though I'm not sure if that's a reflection of how far they'll all go, but the better half of the 3.xGHz range and higher sounds about right.

Okay, so I haven't kept up with CPU news lately so it may be a few months old (though they seem to have been just released this September), and these are just Celerons, and it's just LGA775, but I saw no news of this here (I admit I may missed it). What really surprises me most about this though is a supposed E3900 model at 3.4GHz stock due out in the beginning of 2010. If I have that right, that'd make it the highest frequency for a CPU ever released for LGA775 above the 3.33GHz E8600 (not that that'd make it the fastest one for it, of course). This actually sounds legit, since it makes sense that Intel would want to release a speedy enough budget chip for LGA775 only now, almost to signify it's fading out or something.

I'd like one of these just to play with. I'm sure my board and cooling would be able to take it far (sure, my RAM isn't the best, but the thing's got a high enough multiplier to where that won't come into play). They're only $52.99 and $63.99, both with free shipping, on Newegg (the former being the better deal obviously, as it's not worth even $11 for 100MHz when it'll easily overclock more for free even on the stock cooler).

 

[Cid Highwind]

Nice for a budget system, it'll be fast enough for anything you throw at it if you OC it a bit. The problem is that for that you need a decent mobo again. I wonder if at this point it wouldn't be worth going with a nice budget AMD quad system. It's fast enough in case only 2 cores are supported by your game or app, but in the future you will benefit much more from the multicore. The more I read CPU reviews about new applications, the more I'm convinced I did the right thing by going with my Q8200 instead of an e8400.

 

[Princess Garnet]

Remember, to Intel, LGA775 isn't the high end, and they're even shifting mainstream away from it. Anyone conscious of the things you're talking of shouldn't be looking at this CPU anyway. You won't need a good motherboard because it's high enough out the gate, and I'd wager a certain Gigabyte G31 motherboard would do nicely for it for those who want this chip for such things (~$50-$60, took my E2160 to 3GHz, and supposedly has Wolfdale support).

Personally, I think Intel also did this also to have more of a presence in the budget end, since AMDs been winning that by a large margin.

Oh, and by the way, my claim that the E3900 would be the highest frequency out the gate on the LGA775 platform was wrong. It appears I forgot about the Pentium 4s and Pentium Ds, but I think it's best if I go back to forgetting about them.