> Hmm... I've always shunned Celerons a bit. Last time I checked (which was, admittedly, quite a while ago) they didn't carry a cache or anything... in fact, the whole concept rather bothers me. Now Intel has an option other than lowering the prices on Pentiums: sell lower-quality product. I mean, as a marketing strategy, it's brilliant. It just irks me.
>
> Have they improved the Celerons any? If they haven't, I may be more inclined to dodge them like seventeen kinds of plague.
>

The initial 266MHz and 300MHz versions of the Celeron which came out had no L2 cache, but all Celerons since then have had 128K of L2 cache. That's only 1/4 the amount of the PII (512K), but the difference is that the Celeron's L2 cache is integrated directly onto the processor die itself, where it can operate at full processor clock speed, as opposed to 1/2 processor clock speed as per the PII.

Lots of performance reviews have found that a 333MHz Celeron, with 128K of L2 cache running at 333MHz, turns in performance almost equivalent to a 333MHz PII with 512K of L2 cache running at 166MHz. The higher speed of the L2 cache mostly makes up for the smaller amount of it, and the newer Celerons with integrated cache have been only just behind their Pentium II brethren at the same clock speeds, performance-wise.

> > > Dar "Font of pointless babbling" ien
> >
> > Iss "font of Times New Roman" achar
>
> I came *this* close (holds up two fingers) to saying that last time, but I figured the joke needed to be more firmly established first. So I figured I'd wait and get back to it if you didn't beat me to it (which, obviously...)
>
> Dar "I'll get you for this!" ien

Iss "that's okay; you get credit for the assist" achar