The Pentium and Celeron are two of Intel’s most popular microprocessors. Here are some of the similarities and differences:
- Core: Both processors have the same fundamental dual-core design, with the Celeron serving as the entry-level chip and the Pentium serving as the chip above it. Both include built-in graphics and can accommodate up to 128 GBs of RAM (computer memory).
- Cache: The cache memory in the Celeron and Pentium 2021 lines is typically between two and four megabytes (cache memory is where frequently used data is stored).
- Clock speed: The 2021 Celeron series offers clock speeds of up to 3.6 GHz, while Pentiums are somewhat faster, with speeds of up to 4.3 GHz. The clock speed of a CPU determines how quickly it can process data.
- Bus speed: Both currently have fairly similar bus speeds of up to eight gigatransfers per second. (A bus is a circuit that links one area of the motherboard to another; the more data a bus can carry at the same time, the faster information can flow.) Each CPU is capable of handling file transfers from devices such as USB drives in a timely and efficient manner.
Pentiums have a significant edge over Celerons in 2021 because of a technology known as “hyper-threading,” which allows the operating system to practically “divide” each processing core in two. As a result, a dual-core Pentium can effectively outperform a quad-core. According to the manufacturer, hyper-threading can increase computing performance by up to 30% during CPU-intensive applications.
The Pentium was Intel’s high-end CPU until it was superseded by the Core series, which reduced it to a mid-tier product. The Core line is designed for enterprises and entrepreneurs, and it has excellent figures all around. They feature clock rates comparable to Pentium CPUs but are not limited to two CPU cores. In fact, the top of the series has a staggering 18 cores, making it many times quicker than the lower-end models.
Core CPUs feature much greater cache capacity but the same bus speed as Intel’s other alternatives. They also get a “turbo boost” capability, which allows the CPU to overclock itself automatically for brief periods of time. Hyper-threading is also enabled, enhancing multi-core performance even more. This performance comes at a cost, with the most costly Core CPUs costing more than ₱25,000, a Celeron processor costing less than ₱5,000, and a Pentium processor costing between ₱5,000 and ₱10,000.
Celerons are frequently pre-installed in low-cost laptops, tablets, and other small smart devices. They’re good for that, but for multitasking on a PC, the hyper-threading functionality offered on Pentiums will most likely come in useful. If you often use resource-intensive programs such as Photoshop, media creation suites, or recent 3-D games, a multi-core CPU such as Intel’s Core processor or AMD Ryzen is recommended.