Intel speeds up Celerons to beat AMD

Intel today unveiled its fastest ever processors for value PCs in an effort to defend itself from the threat posed to its dominance on the desktop from a resurgent AMD.

The chip giant launched three Celeron processors, featuring its 0.18-micron technology, at speeds of 633Mhz, 667Mhz and 700Mhz. Intel had originally planned to launch the 633Mhz and 667Mhz chips in April, but decided to delay the launch amid high demand for its existing processors.

The delayed worldwide launch comes a week after Intel's arch-rival, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), launched its low-end Athon chip, Duron, which is positioned against Intel's Celeron. AMD claims that Duron provides up to 25 per cent more performance on many industry benchmarks than an Intel Celeron processor at the same clock speed.

Some analysts said Duron is actually a different design, while Intel's launch is just a "speed jump" - but consumers may not notice the difference.

Martin Brampton, chief analyst at Bloor Research, said AMD had bolstered its profile recently, but Intel still has the great majority of the market. "Intel and AMD are engaged in a game of leapfrog which is important for marketing reasons, but people tend to go for something behind the leading edge because it's cheaper," he said.

Intel's Pentium III shipments have been restricted by supply shortages. A spokesman said the company is confident that it would not have supply problems with the Celeron processors.

"In general we are shipping more parts. It's just that demand is growing faster. We now have five factories producing the Celeron, so we are confident of meeting demand," he said.

"The launch of the new Celeron chips will give more performance in the lower-cost segment of the market," he added.

The Celeron processors feature Internet Streaming Single Instruction Multiple Data extensions and advanced microprocessor instructions, which combined with faster chip speeds, will deliver a performance boost over previous versions.

The processors feature 128Kb of on-chip level-two cache along with a 66Mhz system bus.

In 1000-unit quantities, Intel's Celeron processors at 700Mhz, 667Mhz and 633Mhz will cost $192 (£128), $170 and $138 respectively.