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Intel's Celeron 266

Intel inside your sub-$1000 PC? Prepare to be disappointed. Our exclusive first tests of a PC using Intel's stripped-down, budget Pentium II chip posted performance numbers well below those of comparable, low-cost AMD- and Cyrix-based models.

  

You have probably noticed the proliferation of astonishingly low-cost yet capable PCs. But have you also noticed that a surprising number of these sub-$1000 systems do not sport the "Intel Inside" logo? Intel hopes that will start to change on April 15, when the company introduces the Celeron, a stripped-down Pentium II-class chip aimed squarely at the fast-growing market for entry-level PCs.

The good news is that continued competition at the high and low ends of the market will force manufacturers to slash prices and push performance even further. The bad news: The Celeron itself falls short of the mark.

The new chip, whose name is based on the word celerity (a fancy synonym for speed), will be rushed out of the factory to counter cheap CPUs from rival chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices, Cyrix, and Centaur. But the PC World Test Center's first road test of the processor indicates that Intel's rivals are still ahead. Simply put, the Celeron fails to live up to its name.

PC World obtained a preproduction PC expected to sell for under $1000 and built around a 266-MHz Celeron with 64MB of system memory and an 8MB video card. We measured it against a range of systems--some with less main memory--and found that the Celeron's performance on business applications didn't match its high clock speed.

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