Sources revealed that Intel Corporation has already started to supply its customers the Celeron processors 2.50 and 2.60GHz scheduled to be officially announced only in late June. We expect such processors to show up in retail one of these days.

Set to come on the 25^th of June, Celeron processors 2.50 and 2.60GHz will cost $89 and $102 respectively in quantities starting from 1000 units. At the moment Intel’s top Celeron chip is 2.40GHz that is priced at $84 (see the whole Celeron Price Matrix in this news-story). Hence, this is a very positive news for Intel’s shareholders because earlier CPU roll-out means higher ASP for the whole Celeron family.

Intel Celeron 2.50 and 2.60GHz processors are made using 0.13 micron fabrication technology and utilise 400MHz Quad Pumped Bus. The new models feature only 128KB of L2 cache, just like their predecessors.

Performance of the Celeron processors is historically lower than that of comparable AMD Athlon XP chips. For instance, Athlon XP 2500+ and 2600+ can boast with speed similar to the Pentium 4 2.50 and 2.60GHz, but since Intel constantly phases out slower Pentium 4 chips, AMD is in a position that it needs to compete with Celeron CPUs by selling its Athlon XP for the same price. As a result, any speed bump or price reduction of Celeron processors is basically speaking negative for AMD and its financial performance.