But to keep system costs low, don't expect it to happen soon, they said. Pentium III changes Intel's strategy for Celeron focuses on cost and megahertz. While the two chips will be based on the same technology, Intel's high-end processor brand, the Pentium III, will offer higher clock speed, larger amounts of cache and faster bus speeds. The Pentium III will offer clock speeds of up to 866MHz, 256KB of integrated cache and support for a 100MHz or 133MHz system bus in March. However, systems containing the chip will also cost more.
Performance is another point of differentiation.
While new Celerons will be similar in look and feel to some Pentium IIIs, they will not be similar in performance. Celeron on certain benchmarks, sources said. Even an older Pentium III classic chip running at 600MHz with a 100MHz bus showed even 17 percent faster performance, sources said. The classic Pentium III is a .25 micron chip with 512KB of off chip cache. That said, a 600MHz Celeron chip should provide more than enough performance for most consumers who wish to surf the Web, send e-mail or use applications such as word processors, analysts say.