
Substantial numbers were sold on first release, largely on the strength of the Intel name, but the Celeron quickly achieved a poor reputation both in the trade press and among computer professionals. Although clocked at 266 or 300 MHz (frequencies 33 or 66 MHz higher than the desktop version of the Pentium w/MMX), the cacheless Celerons had trouble outcompeting the parts they were designed to replace. Covington also shared the 80523 product code of Deschutes.

Launched in April 1998, the first Covington Celeron was essentially a 266 MHz Pentium II manufactured without any secondary cache at all. The 'Cel' of Celeron rhymes with 'tel' of Intel." Intel Celeron processor familyĭesktop Celerons P6-based Celerons Celeron is seven letters and three syllables, like Pentium. The San Jose Mercury News described Lexicon's reasoning behind the name they chose: " Celer is Latin for swift. Intel hired marketing firm Lexicon Branding, which had originally come up with the name "Pentium", to devise a name for the new product as well. The Celeron also effectively killed off the nine-year-old 80486 chip, which had been the low-end processor brand for laptops until 1998. Instead, Intel pursued a budget part that was to be pin-compatible with their high-end Pentium II product, using the Pentium II's proprietary Slot 1 interface.

Although a faster Pentium MMX would have been a lower-risk strategy, the industry-standard Socket 7 platform hosted a market of competitor CPUs that could be drop-in replacements for the Pentium MMX.

Intel's existing low-end product, the Pentium MMX, was no longer performance-competitive at 233 MHz.

Celeron is Intel's brand name for low-end IA-32 and x86-64 computer microprocessor models targeted at low-cost personal computers.Ĭeleron processors are compatible with IA-32 software.
