14 DAY TRIAL // Traditionally, Intel - the biggest hardware manufacturing company in the world - is not really known for its cheap and affordable central processing units being more than happy to let Advanced Micro Devices take that market segment. Now, Intel realized that they inadvertently handed AMD a very rich segment as the smaller company is the undisputed leader of the low cost entry level computer systems and on a global scale the revenues generated by that market are more than significant.
In an attempt to regain the lower end market of central processing units for desktop personal computer systems, Intel will launch a line of Celeron processors that will come as a range of dual core CPUs and which are directly aimed at the single and dual core Sempron and Athlon AMD made products.
The entry level, cheap central processing units line of products from Intel will debut in the first quarter of the next year with the Celeron E1200 dual core processor that will come with an operating speed of 1.6Ghz while using a 800MHz frontside bus and a 512KB unified L2 of cache memory. After the E1200 hits the market, Intel plans additional products to follow in order to create a wide range of cheap offerings, according to the news site xbitlabs.
The Intel made Celeron E1200 central processing unit will come with two processing cores and it will be built using the 65 nanometer fabrication process, while being designed to fit inside the 65W thermal envelope that will mean a low power consumption as well as a low heat dissipation that directly translates into the use of a lower end cooling solution, driving for a more affordable computer system. In order to assure the quick acceptance of the new line of products, Intel designed the Celeron E100 range with compatibility in mind as they will be interchangeable with all Conroe based processing units like the Intel Core 2 Duo or Intel Pentium dual-core E2000-series.
As the current price range for the entry level line of Celeron products is between $34 and $59, it is more than likely that the new products will stay into the same range while serving along side with the Pentium family as the lower end of the performance spectrum. Because the new Celeron processors are to come with low operating clock speeds and small cache memories they are not going to offer much on the performance chapter but more likely they will serve as a tool to compete against AMD's own line of low end products and as a means to increase the market dominance of the dual core processors.