New Intel chip for cheap PCs trails AMD, NSM rivals, according to PC World
SAN FRANCISCO, March 31 (Reuters) - A new, much-anticipated
chip developed by Intel Corp. aimed at the sub-$1,000
PC market is not as fast running applications as its clone
competitors, according to tests performed by computer magazine
PC World.
The chip, called Celeron, is expected to be launched on
April 15, but PC World said it obtained a pre-production
personal computer with a Celeron chip running at a speed of 266
megahertz.
"PC World completed the first road tests of the processor,
which indicate that Intel's rivals are still ahead in both
price and performance," PC World said in a statement.
Bill Snyder, senior news editor at PC World, said that
while the chip runs at its expected speed of 266 megahertz,
its performance running software applications is slower than
the performance of rival chips developed by Advanced Micro
Devices Inc. and National Semiconductor Corp.
unit Cyrix Corp.
"The thing is pretty slow," Snyder said. "There is no doubt
in my mind that ... why it's slow is because of the lack of
secondary cache. Take away the secondary cache and you get a
big hit to performance."
Intel has said that Celeron will have no L2 or level two
cache, which is a reserved section of the chip for storing
memory, in order to make a chip that can address the low-cost
computing market.
PC World said it tested the chip running applications such
as Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT.O Excel spreadsheet program;
Microsoft Word, its word processing program; the Lotus 1-2-3
spreadsheet, made by International Business Machines Corp.'s
Lotus Development Corp.; Lotus word processing program
WordPro; and a few other business applications.
"We don't know what the magazine has in terms of a test
system," said Intel spokesman Howard High. "What we have seen
historically -- if you look back at other chips like Klamath
and others -- a number of publications get pre-production
products, and when the real product comes out, they wind up
having to recant and reposition their words."
PC World wrote in its article in the May issue that the
chip was close to the final version but that sources close to
Intel said the final version of the chip may offer slightly
better performance.
"Nevertheless, PC vendors privately express little
enthusiasm over the new chip's performance," PC World said.
PC World wrote that Celeron fails to live up to its name,
which comes from the Latin word "celer," meaning speed. PC
World, a monthly computer magazine published in San Francisco,
said it has a circulation of over 1.1 million. |
