Intel Celeron Dual-Core Linux Performance

While nearly all of Intel's attention is focused on their newer LGA-1366 platform with the high-end Core i7 processors and then the forthcoming Core i5 series, there are still plenty of viable processors left for the LGA-775 motherboards. There are of course a number of different Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Quad, and Core 2 Extreme CPUs on the market, but beyond that Intel's Celeron family does still exist. Most computer enthusiasts simply write off the Celeron products as being too slow, but among the newer Celeron parts there are even some dual-core processors. For a forthcoming article we had picked up an Intel Celeron E1400 for looking at the Linux video decoding performance on a slow system (similar to our HD Video Playback With A $20 CPU & $30 GPU On Linux article), but as we have never published performance results for a dual-core Celeron on Linux, we have decided to get those numbers out there today for those that are interested.

The E1400 is one of four Celeron desktop processors that offer two processing cores and are codenamed Allendale. The other three processors are the E1200, E1500, and the E1600, with the difference between them largely just being the clock frequency. This Intel Celeron processor is built upon a 65nm process and Allendale is derived from Intel's Core micro-architecture. This CPU offers the normal set of features, including SSE3, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology, 64-bit support, and XD bit.

The Intel Celeron E1400 is clocked at 2.0GHz, provides 512KB of L2 cache, has an 800MHz FSB, a 65 Watt TDP, and is compatible with LGA-775 motherboards. The fastest dual-core Celeron is the E1600, which is clocked at 2.4GHz, while the slowest is the E1200 and it comes clocked at 1.6GHz. All of these dual-core Celeron processors have a cost of about $50 USD.