Stepping Up from 2.8GHz to 2.93GHz
Three months after introducing its 90-nanometer-process, 533MHz-bus Celeron D processor for value-priced desktops, Intel Corp. has pushed the chip’s top speed to 2.93GHz with a new Celeron D model 340. Like its Celeron D 335 (2.8GHz), 330 (2.66GHz), and 325 (2.53GHz) siblings, the new CPU features 256K of Level 2 cache. Intel is also making the Celeron D 325 through 340 processors available in the LGA775 packaging used by the latest Pentium 4 CPUs and supported by the company’s 915 Express chipsets, as well as the Socket 478 form factor of earlier Celerons and Pentium 4’s.
A new 910GL Express chipset brings the PCI Express bus and Intel’s Graphics Media Accelerator 900 video to entry-level desktops; the 910GL resembles the 915GV in supporting only integrated instead of expansion-slot graphics, but is limited to the 533MHz bus and up to 2GB of DDR memory instead of either the 533MHz or 800MHz bus and 4GB of either DDR or DDR-2. In 1,000-unit OEM quantities, the Celeron D 340 costs $117 and the 910GL chipset is $34.