As with the Celeron 466 before it, the Celeron 500 CPU will only be offered in Intel's PPGA Socket370 format. The days of Slot-1 Celeron CPUs are long gone now, and the days of the Pentium III's relatively new SECC2 Slot-1 format are numbered as well.
Both moves were made to cut the cost for manufacturers that design and implement mainboards for Intel's CPUs. Socket370 offers savings that are insignificant to the end user (approximately $4 - $8 per mainboard), but quite dramatic to the mainboard vendor producing over 150,000 mainboards a month.
Luckily, thanks to the proliferation of "Slotkets" (small PCB cards that plug into a Slot-1 mainboard connector while mounting a Socket370 CPU themselves), buyers should have little fear when considering whether or not to purchase a PPGA-only Celeron CPU.
AOpen, ASUS, Abit, and MSI all manufacture slotket converters that are compatible with their 440BX mainboard lineups. Make sure you check your mainboard vendor's web site for compatibility information before you order a generic slotket for your particular board.
We mentioned earlier that the Celeron 500 PPGA CPU is based on Intel's 2nd generation Celeron model, meaning that it's the same basic design as the original 2nd generation Celeron CPU, the 300 A.
Here's a small list of the features found on all current Celeron CPUs from the Celeron 300 A to today's Celeron 500:
- 66MHz Front Side Bus Operation
- 32KB L1 Cache
- 128KB L2 Cache (operates at core speed)
- Mendocino Core
- .25 Micron Manufacturing Process
- 2.0v Operation
Nothing on the list of supported features above has changed on the Celeron line since the 2nd gen parts appeared last year, and that degree of production consistency tends to breed strong overclocking potential within chips.
Before we dive into the Celeron 500's handling of higher than stock MHz levels, let's get a feel for how the chip performs at its default speed of 500MHz.