Is a Celeron processor a 'B'-Quality Pentium / Core processor?

Question

A friend told me that an Intel Celeron processor in laptops or desktops is actually an Intel Pentium or Core Processor that failed to meet the quality standards in tests, and therefore are unreliable and slow. Is he right?

Answer 1

Well yes and no. The celeron is a value and also a step down. For people who want cheaper processor. There was a processor that failed to met the pentium dual core standards a was downgrade to a celeron. Celeron's quality is high, but it's low end and slow.

Answer 2

Yep, it's c**p

Answer 3

No. Both Celerons and Pentium / Core processors are tested to precisely the same standards before they are sold.

The grain of truth in what he is saying is that sometimes a CPU becomes a Celeron because it has a defect in part of its cache or won't run at a particular speed grade. For example, a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 with 1MB cache and a 1.2GHz Celeron with 512KB cache may be made from the same die. If there's a die that won't run at 2.4GHz or has only a defect in one part of its cache (which they can then disable), it will become a Celeron and not a Pentium 4.

Celerons are not unreliable. That's crazy.

As for them being slow, they generally have lower FSB speeds, lower core frequencies, and smaller caches. However, they will not be slower than a comparable non-Celeron CPU.

A modern Celeron is way faster than an old Pentium 4. All intel CPUs (and, in fact, pretty much all modern computer chips such as AMD CPUs and graphics chipsets) are thoroughly individually tested before sale to ensure they meet their specifications -- there are no 'unreliable' lines of CPUs.