Celeron G540 retail box CPU - $40.70 shipped **UPDATED 8/6/2012**

This isnt a bad little cpu for general websurfing, htpc, or small fileserver but this deal isnt really exciting either. Amazon and Directron are currently selling it for $45 FS.

Quote from JSquare : Intel should rename the entire line or Celerons/Pentiums to something like Core i1 or just Core to jump start the brains of people still living in the 90s.

Actually, for those of us who still remember, the Celeron 300A from the late 90s was one of the best CPU one could buy. It was highly overclockable and rivalled the fastest CPU you could buy at the time for a fraction of the price. That was when the Celeron name was made famous. Celeron went downhill after that until the recent Sandy Bridge based Celeron which brought up the price/performance ratio once again.

But I agree, the Celeron name has been tarnished for so long that Intel marketing needs to do something. If anything, it is Intel's Marketing who are still living the glory of the Celeron name back in the late 90s.

Quote from JSquare : Ignorance is a bliss [cpubenchmark.net] Every time a Celeron deal shows up we get a thread crapping post like the one above. Intel should rename the entire line or Celerons/Pentiums to something like Core i1 or just Core to jump start the brains of people still living in the 90s.

Or just stop selling crippled chips.

Quote : Processor Graphics Intel® HD Graphics Graphics Base Frequency 850 MHz Graphics Max Dynamic Frequency 1 GHz Intel® Quick Sync Video No Intel® Clear Video HD Technology No Intel® Turbo Boost Technology No Intel® vPro Technology No Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology No

Comparing to AMD chips, passmark is worthless. Comparing to only other Intel chips, passmark is the greatest benchmark to ever be created.

Quote from chung_chang : Actually, for those of us who still remember, the Celeron 300A from the late 90s was one of the best CPU one could buy. It was highly overclockable and rivalled the fastest CPU you could buy at the time for a fraction of the price. That was when the Celeron name was made famous. Celeron went downhill after that until the recent Sandy Bridge based Celeron which brought up the price/performance ratio once again. But I agree, the Celeron name has been tarnished for so long that Intel marketing needs to do something. If anything, it is Intel's Marketing who are still living the glory of the Celeron name back in the late 90s.

You're right, probably more recent than the 90s and I remember using Celerons over the past few years, but still believe that now is the time to re-brand the line to get rid of the myth.

Anyone know of a cheap mobo? I can't seem to find a mobo under $60 besides that $15 ECS after MIR ages ago

Quote from cyup : Anyone know of a cheap mobo? I can't seem to find a mobo under $60 besides that $15 ECS after MIR ages ago

http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.p...=MB-H61MLC

Superbiiz has the Biostar H61MLC for $48.99- that BIGBEN code would knock 10% off that as well. Being the cheapest H61 board around, it's obviously nothing to rave about but it's a decent match for a G540.

Quote from poo : Or just stop selling crippled chips. Comparing to AMD chips, passmark is worthless. Comparing to only other Intel chips, passmark is the greatest benchmark to ever be created.

I use Passmark as a reference only , but real life use is what counts. Been using 2 of these from last month Superbiiz deal (also $41.50ea) and so far they're doing a great job on a WHS 2011 and HTPC with dual tuners(no GPU need it). Recently replaced all my systems from AMDs to Intels for several reasons, but mainly due to slow advances on AMD's CPU line, lack of better performance over Intel and power consumption.

Quote from Zephon13 : I mainly directed that point at the everyday PC usage. I can see it working for a computer that's never really being interacted with, but if you consider your "standard" user that installs 917235125 toolbars and every other useless application you can imagine (from installers hidden check boxes of course) this thing would bog down pretty bad pretty damn quickly. I hooked my dad up with an i5 2500k, and even with all the extra crap you don't even notice. And hell that machine only dropped me about $320.

Like I said, my 1,273 passmark machine I use every day for work as a web developer and I run a VM on it as well. I've never run out of CPU, though I have run out of RAM plenty of times running VMs. Every desktop task I need to do, this machine can handle. I don't even feel like I need an upgrade, though of course, I wouldn't turn it down. This G540 would be a significant upgrade.

Quote from chung_chang : Actually, for those of us who still remember, the Celeron 300A from the late 90s was one of the best CPU one could buy. It was highly overclockable and rivalled the fastest CPU you could buy at the time for a fraction of the price. That was when the Celeron name was made famous. Celeron went downhill after that until the recent Sandy Bridge based Celeron which brought up the price/performance ratio once again. But I agree, the Celeron name has been tarnished for so long that Intel marketing needs to do something. If anything, it is Intel's Marketing who are still living the glory of the Celeron name back in the late 90s.

Yeah, I remember having a few machines with the 300A overclocked to 450MHz or something like that. I didn't play games at the time, and found it plenty adequate for basic desktop tasks. Celeron always had a bad rep, I think because it did poorly in synthetic benchmarks as there was a big difference in benchmarks between processors with cache and those without. However, in real world usage, they were just fine. I had no complaints, and even over the years, I always recommended Celerons to people who just wanted something to get on the web, Facebook, Youtube, etc.

I honestly think people who equate Celeron with crap are the vocal minority - snobby computer users who don't think you can do anything with a processor with a 2300 passmark score. Intel wouldn't keep the name, if it didn't sell. If you look at number of reviews on a site like Newegg for example, it looks like Celerons sell just fine.

Quote from poo : Or just stop selling crippled chips.

I actually don't mind crippled chips like this as long as it was still overclockable. As is, this generation Celeron has very favorable price/performance ratio. Definitely much better than any Celerons made in the last decade. But if it had the overclocking potential of the Clarkdale or SB/IB K-series chips, it would have been a Celeron 300A all over again. Unfortunately, it would seem a decent sub $100 overclocking Intel CPU days are over.

Quote from chung_chang : I actually don't mind crippled chips like this as long as it was still overclockable. As is, this generation Celeron has very favorable price/performance ratio. Definitely much better than any Celerons made in the last decade. But if it had the overclocking potential of the Clarkdale or SB/IB K-series chips, it would have been a Celeron 300A all over again. Unfortunately, it would seem a decent sub $100 overclocking Intel CPU days are over.

Amen to how great this would be with overclocking. I have a g530 (100mhz lower) running in a hackintosh that is plenty fast for netflix hd, web browsing, and common office tasks.

Quote from chung_chang : Actually, for those of us who still remember, the Celeron 300A from the late 90s was one of the best CPU one could buy. It was highly overclockable and rivalled the fastest CPU you could buy at the time for a fraction of the price. That was when the Celeron name was made famous. Celeron went downhill after that until the recent Sandy Bridge based Celeron which brought up the price/performance ratio once again. But I agree, the Celeron name has been tarnished for so long that Intel marketing needs to do something. If anything, it is Intel's Marketing who are still living the glory of the Celeron name back in the late 90s.

Quote from JSquare : You're right, probably more recent than the 90s and I remember using Celerons over the past few years, but still believe that now is the time to re-brand the line to get rid of the myth.

Hehe you guys have got it all wrong. Intel knows what they are doing, they are pulling off a brilliant marketing effort. Consider what the 'bad name' Celeron gets them, more sales of higher end (more expensive!) chips to all those who really dont know any better.

Why not have all the 16 year old gamers begging their parents for the biggest number core i7?

Quote from hightop32 : Hehe you guys have got it all wrong. Intel knows what they are doing, they are pulling off a brilliant marketing effort. Consider what the 'bad name' Celeron gets them, more sales of higher end (more expensive!) chips to all those who really dont know any better. Why not have all the 16 year old gamers begging their parents for the biggest number core i7?

I agree with you. I was thinking the same thing that sales numbers for the Celerons were calculated. If Intel wanted to sell more Celerons, they would re-brand. Same with the Pentium branding. For the average Joe, this Celeron is more than sufficient for everything he/she would need to do. If the masses knew this, there would be significant impact to the i3/i5 sales which are the bread and butter for Intel.

Quote from hightop32 : Hehe you guys have got it all wrong. Intel knows what they are doing, they are pulling off a brilliant marketing effort. Consider what the 'bad name' Celeron gets them, more sales of higher end (more expensive!) chips to all those who really dont know any better. Why not have all the 16 year old gamers begging their parents for the biggest number core i7?

Maybe us people getting the higher end more expensive chips just don't like waiting for slow, crappy hardware.

Who cares if you have a higher clock speed on one of these, your processor time is being spent doing things the i7 doesn't have to because it's better lol. This has a tiny cache, no hyperthreading, no turbo boost, minimal virtualization features...

So there goes any hope of -really- being faster even if you managed to pull off a higher clock speed.

It's nice running new games in 2560x1440 with the highest settings.

Quote from Zephon13 : Who cares if you have a higher clock speed on one of these, your processor time is being spent doing things the i7 doesn't have to because it's better lol. This has a tiny cache, no hyperthreading, no turbo boost, minimal virtualization features...

Not everyone cares about those things, and not everyone has any reason to care about those things. For HTPC or desktop machine for someone who doesn't play games, what's the point of big cache, hyperthreading, turbo boost, or virtualization features? It'll just go to waste. I sure don't need it at work. G540 would be a perfect CPU for HTPC, home user who doesn't play games, an office machine, or a 24/7 server. It wouldn't surprise me if it's sufficient for a lot of games, for that matter... can't really speak on that as I've never tried to game on my G530.

Quote from Zephon13 : It's nice running new games in 2560x1440 with the highest settings.

I think therein lies the problem. You only think about #1. You think just because you need to play new games in 2560x1440 in highest settings, that everybody does. That's not the case. We're all different, we aren't all just like you and don't want to be.