Intel Celeron G3930 On Linux: A Dual-Core Kabylake CPU For $40

[Passso]

I have always wondered why Intel produces so many different processors, particularly these worthless underperformers.

Because maybe in USA Intel sells only i5 and i7, but in the real world those models are highly popular for their unbeatable perf/$

[Michael_S]

I'm an AMD fanboy, but's let wait until Zen/Ryzen gets some independent benchmarks before declaring victory.

$40 is a great price for this, but if you're looking to spend $100 or $120 between CPU, motherboard, and RAM then buying used is probably a more cost efficient way to go. Granted, if you get this and a decent Kaby Lake motherboard then you can upgrade in a year or two.

[devius]

51w tdp isn't exactly something i'd want to try passive cooling on.

Except these lower performance parts are nowhere near actually dissipating 51W. More like 25-30W and that's under load.

[Vistaus]

I have always wondered why Intel produces so many different processors, particularly these worthless underperformers.
Why not just focus on a line of processors that performs well? When the price difference between an underperformer
and one that is adequate is very little why would anyone want something that is impractical.

Benchmarks don't tell the whole story. My Dell Chromebook 13 (which is running Solus Linux and has run Arch as well) is my daily driver and it has a Celeron processor. Performance is great. All is smooth and fast. I don't do much gaming, but I've ran a few Steam games (including Euro Truck Simulator 2 with HIGH settings!) and they also run smooth and fast.

Bottom line: don't let benchmarks fool you, real world performance is often much better.

[suberimakuri]

Yeah torsion bar... Even better was a few board mods later and dual OC p3s. Abit bp6. Once p3 cheap enough

[torsionbar28]

All you youngsters and millenials, bah. Back in my day, we had the Celeron 300A aka "Mendocino". Cost a fraction of the price of a pentium, but they were good for 50% overclock right out of the box - on air cooling no less. I had one of these 300A's running at 450 Mhz for a while, and later upgraded to a dual Slot-1 motherboard running dual 300A's @ 450 Mhz. It was so easy, you had only to bump the FSB from 66 Mhz to 100 Mhz and *bam* you had a reliable 450 Mhz. Ah, the good old days.

[Sonadow]

Have you not considered the idea that it could make for a decent passively cooled PC?

51w tdp isn't exactly something i'd want to try passive cooling on.

[chimpy]

Hey Michael, if possible can you do some test with discrete graphics cards, preferably low end like the AMD 460 and the Nvidia 1050? Been looking online for any kind of review on this processor and there are none, so if possible it would be much appreciated

[dungeon]

To me this Celeron is just for someone who really does not have money, wanna raw cheapest power on Desktop and wanna OCing it

These who wanna low power Desktops, HTPCs, passively cooled things... should look at these 10W Goldmont Pentium/Celerons.

[schmidtbag]

I have always wondered why Intel produces so many different processors, particularly these worthless underperformers.
Why not just focus on a line of processors that performs well? When the price difference between an underperformer
and one that is adequate is very little why would anyone want something that is impractical.

Gee, I wasn't aware your personal demands applied to everyone. Had it not occurred to you that the Celeron is good enough for grandma? Have you not considered the idea that it could make for a decent passively cooled PC? Maybe a simple home server? A low-end HTPC?

After a certain point, performance isn't what people are paying for, it's efficiency.

I do agree that Intel has way too large of a product lineup, but I don't find this CPU useless.