Intel Celeron 466MHz

The New Kid On The Block

Intel Works Its Magic Again: With The 466MHz Celeron ®

We still get excited here when the guys from U.P.S or one of the other courier services delivers a parcel to us here at Blenheim House Network . Com. And a few days ago such a delivery was made, and joy of joy a brand new Celeron 466MHz / 370 socket processor with heat sink and fan was delivered. Always upon opening these deliveries I get a buzz, I suppose because I'm a mechanical engineer, I find the mechanical properties of these devices fascinating, and a real pleasure to just look at. For me they are a work of art. I have to wonder how many people really know just what goes on inside one of Intel's processors, the interaction between the software and the mechanical components of the CPU, are I'm sure almost magical to most of the worlds population. Lets face it every day Intel products work a little magic for all of us.

The 466MHz 370 socket Celeron was placed into Intel's FJ440ZX Motherboard. This is the same motherboard that we tested the 333MHz Celeron a few weeks ago and comes with on board sound and video. The motherboard came up trumps and did not need any bios upgrade at all. The 466MHz is only available in the 370 socket type. This is no bad thing as there is no trade off in performance compared with the slot one fixing, only a saving in cost, and ultimately the price you pay for the processor is reduced. For those of you with slot one type motherboards, adaptors are available that allow a 370 socket Celeron to fit a slot one motherboard. I would however check the availability of these adaptors and price before making a purchasing decision.

In the past some of Intel's processors have been criticized in the press for running hot, in some instances very hot. We ran the 466MHz Celeron for 2 weeks non stop, after 1 hour we checked its temperature and it was no warmer than the surrounding motherboard, we kept an eye on its temperature over the whole of the test period and it did not even get warm. It was in fact running cool, the same can be said of the PIII/500 reviewed some weeks ago. This tells me that the thermodynamic engineers at Intel have got their sums right with fan and heat sink size with the Celeron and PIII ranges, these guys sure know their stuff. The 2 week test cycle is carried out on all components that we review here, in fact the Celeron 333MHz that was removed to make room for the Celeron 466MHz had been running non stop for far longer than 2 weeks and had not failed once. We would have been surprised if it had.

The Celeron 466MHz is currently the fastest so far in the series, and offers a significant increase in performance over its slower siblings. It is said that the Celeron processors are Intel's budget range, you should know this one fact they are budget only in price, in all other respects its state of art computing, only beaten by the cutting edge technologies used in the PIII series. The PIIIs will start to come in to their own when software that makes use of the new instruction set they have is more commonly available.

We are often asked here at BlenheimHouseNetwork.Com what processor to specify when ordering a new PC or building one from scratch. We read on other sites and in monthly magazines various terms and formula, which are banded around, we feel more to confuse the guy trying to decide. Our own method in making such a decision we believe is far simpler.

The budget buyer, either for the home or office, buying one or one hundred PCs. We recommend the fastest Celeron that is available, currently the 466MHz. But and its a big but, you must fit a least 64MBs of fast PC100 ram, 128MBs would not do any harm should your budget allow. We would also strongly recommend that the choice of motherboard be an Intel one, with combined video and sound on board, the Micro ATX is our current preferred format. I think it used to be said no one ever got fired for buying IBM the same must hold true for Intel products now. Couple this with a good 17inch monitor and quality mouse and keyboard from Microsoft, a 8.4 Gb hard drive and we believe 90% of buyers in this class will be very happy.

The performance aware buyer, also for use in the home or office, applications or games. We cannot recommend strongly enough the fastest PIII, currently this is the PIII/500 soon to be replaced by the PIII/550. You must give this processor room to work in, 128MB of fast PC100 ram is needed, 256Mb would not be out of place. The motherboard again in our opinion should be Intel, with on board video and sound the Micro ATX is our preferred format. The monitor should be a 19inch model, mouse and keyboard from Microsoft, for the hard drive look at above 10Gb. This we believe would suit all but the most demanding of PC users.

(editors note : We are currently working on the ultimate home, games / office, applications PC, this is being put together only from the finest components, and is still very much under wraps. However we can confirm that Intel and Microsoft products are being specified.)