by Ilya Gavrichenkov
01/14/2008 | 05:11 PM
Last week we started talking about the new processors Intel launched to refresh their product line-up. We discussed the new Core 2 Duo E8000 processor family also known as Wolfdale. However, these processors based on new CPU cores manufactured with 45nm process are far not the only new CPUs that we will be talking about in the near future.
<%BANNER[article]%>A little later the long awaited quad-core Yorkfield processors should arrive into the market, although in the meanwhile their mass supplies have been delayed for a couple of months. The changes will also happen in the low-end market segment. While the top of the price-list will be occupied by the 45nm processors, the older 65nm cores will be transferred to inexpensive CPUs priced below $150. As a result, we will definitely see new faster solutions in the Core 2 Duo E4000 and Pentium Dual-Core E2000 processor families.
But this is not all yet. Very soon we will witness another remarkable event: the launch of the first Celeron processors with two computational cores. So, the price of Intel dual-core solutions will drop to inappropriately low level of $50, which will indicate full and indisputable victory of the multi-core concept.
However, we shouldn’t hold only Intel responsible for introduction of dual-core CPUs into the budget segment of the processor market. AMD did it a little earlier, as their youngest Athlon 64 X2 CPUs have long been selling at ridiculously low prices. However, unlike AMD, whose processors have automatically become cheaper because they couldn’t compete against dual-core processors on Core micro-architecture, Intel introduced inexpensive dual-core CPUs on purpose having labeled them with the not very encouraging “Celeron” brand name.
Although Celeron processors have long been of no interest to computer enthusiasts, who regarded them as a temporary “socket cap”, the new dual-core Celeron processors seem to be able to change the situation dramatically. The thing is that this processor is based on Core micro-architecture (even though its core is manufactured with not the very latest 65nm process), which implies that it may perform and overclock pretty decently. Moreover, we know a lot of cases when Celeron processors appeared almost the best solution for overclocking. Could we be that lucky this time? To answer this question we undertook a small investigation of our own, which we are going to share with you today.
Intel stuck to its traditional tactics when launching the new Celeron processor on Core micro-architecture. As always, they did three things when designing a budget CPU from a fully-fledged processor core: reduced the clock frequency, lowered the bus frequency and made the L2 cache smaller. Moreover, the new Celeron processor turned out deprived of even more features than the one step higher Pentium Dual Core, which can also be regarded as a cut-down Core 2 Duo. The clock frequency of the only currently available representative of the dual-core Celeron processor family – Celeron E1200 – is set at 1.6GHz, the bus frequency – at 800MHz and the shared L2 cache is 512KB big.
Since there are a lot of processors on Core micro-architecture these days, we put together a table with the primary specs of the Intel’s dual-core CPU types that should help to avoid confusion:
Note that Intel is actually shipping only four types of processor semiconductor dies these days: Wolfdale, Conroe, Allendale and single-core Conroe-L. They manage to ensure greater variety of processor modifications by combining different pairs of dies, just like with quad-core CPUs, or by disabling part of the cache memory on the existing semiconductor die. Dual-core Celeron processor is an excellent example of this approach. It is based on Allendale core that theoretically features 2MB L2 cache, however, only one quarter of this capacity is available to the user. From the economical prospective unification turned out more efficient than die size reduction.
However, there is nothing surprising about it, because Intel doesn’t expect this inexpensive dual-core solution to become popular very rapidly, as it will not terminate the life span of the single-core Celeron processor family on Conroe-L core. Old single-core budget solutions will be available at least until 2009, and until Q3 2008 they will continue to dominate over their dual-core counterparts.
Since we are very well familiar with the specifications of CPUs on Core micro-architecture, Celeron E1200 specs will seem pretty evident. Smaller L2 cache and reduced clock frequency are the only features distinguishing this new budget dual-core processor from the Core 2 Duo E4000 and Pentium E2000 CPUs.
The formal specifications of the new Celeron E1200 are given in the table below:
Note that Celeron E1200 brought not only multi-core design but also Enhanced SpeedStep Technology into the budget processor segment. Although, it may have actually appeared because of the higher TDP of the new processor: single-core Celeron on Core micro-architecture boasted typical heat dissipation of 35W. The new dual-core Celeron features the same TDP as the other dual-core Intel CPUs.
Moreover, Celeron E1200 is overall more similar to other dual-core Allendale based processors than to older single-core Celeron CPUs. In particular, it is even based on M0 core stepping that is currently used in Core 2 Duo E4000 and Pentium E2000 processors. So, we shouldn’t expect the newcomer to work any wonders, really.
Therefore, it is not surprising at all that the dual-core Celeron looks exactly as the Pentium Dual-core. The only difference is in the marking: the bottom of both processors is identical.
Celeron Dual-core engineering sample: top and bottom
And here is what we get from the informational CPU-Z utility about our new processor:
We received a pretty interesting dual-core Celeron processor for our tests. It is a unit with E1600 model number and 2.4GHz clock frequency. However, since Intel’s engineering samples have unlocked clock frequency multiplier, we set it to 8x to get 1.6GHz frequency that corresponds to that of the only currently available Celeron mode – E1200. The thing is that the frequencies of dual-core Celeron processors will rise to 2.4GHz only by the end of the year that is why it doesn’t make much sense to test a processor like that today.
When we discuss Celeron processors, overclocking topic comes up immediately. Of course, on the one hand, these processors feature very low clock speeds, but on the other, they are based on the same semiconductor dies as the CPUs from the higher-end families.
To check out the overclocking potential of our Celeron E1200 engineering sample we put together a system based on Asus P5E mainboards (Intel X38 chipset). It was equipped with two modules of Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-10000C5DF DDR2 SDRAM and OCZ GeForce 8800GTX graphics card. The system also featured Western Digital WD1500AHFD hard disk drive. To dissipate the processor heat we used Zalman CNPS9700 LED air cooler.
First of all we decided to find out what would be the maximum frequency for our dual-core Celeron test processor at nominal voltage, which was in our case equal to 1.28V.
The CPU overclocked to 2.96GHz. The result is overall quite logical, considering that top processors on M0 core stepping feature clock frequencies of 2.6GHz.
The second overclocking experiment was performed with the processor Vcore increased to 1.5V.
In this case the CPU remained stable at 3.4GHz frequency. This is a typical and expected result, because the Core 2 Duo E4000 and Pentium E2000 processors based on the same core overclock to pretty much the same frequencies. As for the temperature, Celeron CPU working at this speed heated up to 64ºC under full workload.
Note that we overclocked our dual-core Celeron processor with 8x clock frequency multiplier. We chose this particular multiplier, because it is standard for the only Celeron E1200 model available in the today’s market. During this experiment the bus frequency was increased to 425MHz, which is not too high to hit against FSB Wall.
So, overclocking of dual-core Celeron E1200 processors may bring you doubling of their nominal clock speed, which is highly positive for its relative performance level. However, you shouldn’t forget that overclocking raises only clock and bus frequency, but doesn’t allow increasing the L2 cache memory. And it means that the advantage of overclocked dual-core Celeron processor over higher-end Intel CPUs is quite questionable at this point. Let’s find out what the real state of things is from our performance tests.
During this test session we decided to check out the performance of the already available dual-core Celeron E1200 processor and that of the upcoming Celeron E1600 that we managed to get our hands on. We also couldn’t help testing its performance after overclocking to 3.4GHz (obtained as 8 x 425MHz).
Celeron E1200 will be competing against other CPUs from the same price range: single-core Celeron 440 and dual-core Athlon 64 X2 4000+ that is currently selling for less than $60.
We have also included faster and more expensive processors into this test session that will help us analyze the results of the Celeron E1600 and overclocked to 3.4GHz CPU. As a result, we used the following computer hardware:
AMD Platform:
Intel Platform:
When we measured the performance of the overclocked dual-core Celeron processor its 3.4GHz frequency was obtained as 8 x 425MHz. The memory in this case was running at 850MHz with 4-4-4-12 timings.
Most computer enthusiasts will hardly take dual-core Celeron seriously because of its considerably less attractive features than those of the top processors. The biggest cause for concern poses extremely small L2 cache: even Pentium E2000 processors with 1MB L2 cache yield considerably to fully-fledged Core 2 Duo CPUs in some applications. So, what can we expect from Celeron that has an even smaller 512KB L2 cache? To estimate how the dramatic reduction of the L2 cache size affects the performance of dual-core processors on Core micro-architecture, we undertook a small test involving Core 2 Duo E6850 processor compared against dual-core Celeron working at the same clock frequency (3.0GHz = 9 x 333MHz).
It is true, 8 times smaller L2 cache does have a serious effect on the performance. It is especially noticeable in games, where dual-core Celeron turns out more than 1.5 times slower than its competitor, or to be more exact – 36.6% slower. However, besides games there are very few tasks where the budget processor falls behind as dramatically. For example, a CPU with 512KB L2 cache is only 15% slower than the CPU with a 4MB L2 cache during final rendering. In audio and video content encoding tasks the situation is even better: Celeron running at 3GHz speed is only 7% behind Core 2 Duo E6850.
In other words, smaller cache memory is far not a universal means of reducing the performance. While in some applications the performance may drop significantly, other ones hardly feel it at all. That is why Celeron has not only smaller L2 cache but also lower clock frequency. These two measures taken at the same time ensure that the performance of this budget processor will be much lower than that of the mainstream solution.
On the other hand, overclocking may make up for lower clock frequency. And as a result, the new dual-core Celeron processor may still become a pretty attractive choice for some type of applications that we are going to single out in the next section of our review.
The SYSmark 2007 benchmark we picked uses typical work scenarios to test the systems performance in the most popular real applications.
All in all, the new Celeron E1200 processor turns out much slower than CPUs from other families built on Core micro-architecture. Even Pentium E2160 priced only $11 more (according to the official price-list), outperforms dual-core Celeron E1200 by about 17-18% on average. Nevertheless, if we compare the dual-core newcomer against previous generation Celeron processors featuring only one core, we will definitely see some progress. Celeron 440 is about 12% slower than the new Celeron E1200. In other words, the transition of budget processors to dual-core design was right in time, because most contemporary software has already learned to take advantage of the few computational cores working in parallel.
I would like to stress that the new Celeron E1200 processor runs pretty slow in almost all scenarios. However, in some cases this processor’s smaller cache has more influence on the performance. For instance, the biggest lag behind the leaders can be seen in E-Learning scenario that emulates creation of a tutoring web-site with various media content and in 3D scenario that uses AutoDesk 3ds Max 8 and SketchUp 5 to create an architectural presentation.
I would also like to point out one more thing to you. Despite the transition of Celeron processors to dual-core architecture, Athlon 64 X2 will remain very attractive budget solutions. At least in our test session Athlon 64 X2 4000+ is indisputably faster than Celeron E1200, and the upcoming Celeron E1600 cannot outpace Athlon 64 X2 5200+.
The results of the new Celeron E1200 in games should be not very encouraging for the gaming fans. Its performance is truly below any acceptable level because of the small L2 cache. Even overclocking doesn’t help. Dual-core Celeron processor working at 3.4GHz performs as fast as Core 2 Duo E4600 with the 2.4GHz nominal clock speed. So, Celeron E1200 is absolutely not suitable for gaming. Although it is considerably faster than its predecessor, Celeron 440, Athlon 64 X2 4000+ priced identically can boast a much higher fps level in games these days.
The situation with media content encoding is exactly as we have expected. We have already pointed out that cache memory size doesn’t matter that much in this type of applications. Therefore, the performance of dual-core Celeron processors is primarily determined by its clock frequency. You can clearly see it from the results demonstrated by the CPU overclocked to 3.4GHz: it is much faster than even Core 2 Duo E6750.
When working at the nominal 1.6GHz, Celeron E1200 of course cannot compete against its elder brothers with higher nominal clock frequencies. However, two computational cores allow it to outperform single-core Celeron 440 on Conroe-L core, and Core micro-architecture ensure great results against the background of Athlon 64 X2 4000+.
Dual-core Celeron processor performs quite well during final rendering. Although it yields again to “fully-fledged” CPUs in performance, overclocking helps it catch up with Core 2 Duo E6750, which is not bad at all.
The situation in other applications also turns out different. Adobe applications hardly depend on cache memory. Celeron E1200 is just a little behind its elder counterparts there outperforming Athlon 64 X2 4000+. In Mathematica Celeron E1200 is defeated by Celeron 440, because this application is not well optimized for dual-core configurations. And in WinRAR its small L2 cache tells a lot, although the new dual-core Celeron still manages to outperform its single-core predecessor.
New Celeron E1200 doesn’t aim too high. It is the slowest dual-core processor in Intel’s today’s lineup. Which is actually not surprising at all, as it is the cheapest CPU at this time, too. Nevertheless, Intel made a significant step forward by introducing dual-core architecture into their budget solutions. In most cases Celeron E1200 turned out faster than the top single-core representative of this processor family, Celeron 440. Most software is already optimized for multi-threaded applications, which allows Celeron E1200 to show its real advantages in full.
However, despite all those things we have just said we can’t proclaim the new Celeron E1200 the best choice in its price segment. The thing is that dual-core AMD processors priced the same provide higher performance. Athlon 64 X2 4000+ outperformed Celeron E1200 in our tests in all tasks except those dealing with image and video processing that are not sensitive to L2 cache size.
All in all, our measurements suggest that cutting the L2 cache of the dual-core processor down to 512KB does have a serious negative effect on the performance. And overclocking will not be the remedy in this case. Although dual-core budget processors from Intel can more than double their speed as a result of successful overclocking, their gaming performance can hardly hit the level of Core 2 Duo E4600 even at 3.4GHz clock speed. That is why the new dual-core Celeron processors will hardly be of interest to gaming enthusiasts. Moreover, for only $11 more you can get Pentium E2160 that can guarantee about 25% faster gaming experience.
At the same time, the new dual-core Celeron E1200 can find its niche. For example, when overclocked these processors cope very well with video and audio encoding and pretty well with rendering. That is why dual-core Celeron processors from the E1000 series can be used in a much broader range of tasks, while their predecessors could fit only for office and simple home systems.