This old Intel Celeron processor was AMAZING

People love to trash talk Intel's Celeron processor. But there was a time decades ago when it was even more desirable than the highest-end Pentiums.

Sources:

Many thanks to VWestlife for providing catalog scans used throughout this episode.

"400MHz Pentium II PCs," PC Magazine, May 26, 1998.
"Intel unveils new Celeron chip," Daily Press, March 5, 1998.
"Intel's Celeron 266," PC World, May 1998.
"Intel christens cheaper chip to target lower-cost PCs," The Oregonian, March 5, 1998.
"Celeron CPU Caches Up, Adds Muscle to Basic PCs," PC Magazine, October 6, 1998.
"Double Feature," PC World, October 1998.
"Crank it up," The Sydney Morning Herald, August 8, 1998.
"Overclocking: Intel Celeron 300A," Maximum PC, April 1999.
PC Magazine, March 23, 1999.
Intel headquarters aerial footage courtesy Intel.

00:00 - Introduction
01:28 - A wolf in sheep's clothing
02:33 - Let's build a computer
06:54 - Even in the future, nothing works
09:08 - It goes to eleven
11:10 - ...except it doesn't
12:36 - Number crunchers
13:25 - The price is right
15:43 - y u no go fast???
16:18 - A flash in the pan

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Follow me on social media! @thisdoesnotcomp

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[borismatesin]

Former Celeron 333A owner here, I remember doing the B21 taping trick on an Abit BH6 motherboard. Went from 333 MHz to 500 MHz, didn't generate any significant extra heat, and the speed boost was immense. The computer's horsepower basically doubled with that (and going from 32 MB PC100 RAM to 128 MB PC100 RAM doubled it again).

[PXAbstraction]

I worked at a local computer store when these Celerons came out. Once word got out about what you could do with them, we couldn't keep them in stock. You paired one of these with an Abit motherboard and you had an absolute beast of a rig.

Also, that Yamaha can truly slappa' da' BASS!

[punk]

For me the name Celeron always conjured up the image of a processor made of celery.

[robsquared]

Watching this video is like watching a person from the future try to fit in a few decades ago.

[joshuabrazile]

It's always amazing to me to see hardware that I used to buy as a teen in the late 90s in videos like this. The no-brand gold motherboards, the generic sound cards with the Yamaha chipset, and the cheapest CD-ROM and floppy drives I could get my hands on. The cheap CD-ROM drives taught me about spending a bit more to get something far superior as some of the cheap drives would freak out over disc errors and start spinning the disc as fast as the motor could go, which the magnetic clamp wasn't designed to handle, so your precious CD was launched into the nether regions of the drive getting scratched to hell. It was a wonderful time to learn and explore computing.

[jasonwhite]

I still have my Celeron 300A. Back in the day I used it with the Abit BH6 and overclocked to 450. Extremely stable and last several years until my next upgrade.

[daw]

If I remember it right, the 300A made in Malaysia was easier to overclock than those made in Costa rica Mine did 450 without any voltage mod but was unstable at any higher speeds or mods, my friend got his to 504Mhz with a little more voltage and improved cooling. Later on in the run when the 300A disappeared the Celeron 366 and 400 was good options, a bit too high of multiplier but they could reach good speeds with the right motherboard that allowed more granular bus speeds. I still have all that stuff in my attic. BH6 motherboards and all. I have the past 40 years of computing up there, never got rid of it. Perhaps I should start a channel going through it all. 🙂

[alistairblaire]

That price was a steal back then. It wasn’t too far removed from the day where a “normal” computer was over $2000.

[MVVblog]

I clearly remember that the '90s and early 2000s were incredible when it came to computer performance improvements. Every 6–7 months, computers became so much more powerful that new applications wouldn’t even run on the previous generation of PCs.

Today, I'm using all kinds of software on 10-year-old computers and on current ones, and there isn’t much of a difference in terms of performance.

[dormcat]

The May 1999 BIOS might have HDD size limit of 33.8 GB. The 4.3 GB HDD of August 1999 was a bit small though; IIRC 8.4 GB or 13 GB were the mainstream in mid-1999.

[christineclips]

The 100 mhz bus speed was very important to overclocking because the BX chipset had a 2/3 divider for AGP and 1/4 for PCI. The 75 and 83mhz frequencies meant you couldn't have a proper divider for the appropriate bus so either you were underclocking or overclocking all your PCI and AGP devices. From what I recall 3DFX cards had issues with the 83mhz bus.

Despite the reduced cache, the 300A at 450 would outperform the P2 450 in some benchmarks because of the full speed cache, which was just embarrassing for Intel. Fun times!

[ELCrisler]

The Celeron 300 was a BEAST! During that era I built 5 gaming systems for family and friends, ALL of them where Celerons. Local stores helped out, binning the Celeron chips for a $25 charge. This mean we KNEW the chip we bought was going to clock to 450Mhz with no issues. It was an incredible chip for the time.

[monohydrate]

I grew up on Quake 3 on a P2-266. Dude your perseverance is incredible. I would have given up. Love how you were able to do everything with period accuracy. I wonder if the thermal paste was bad for your 300A and if you applied new thermal compound if that would have made a difference. Although like the poster below Costa Rica was easier to OC than Malaysia. It was fun going down memory lane seeing all that old hardware and software. Thanks for posting this video!

[fanguyb]

We had a computer lab I. Middle school full of Celeron 300A and 333A that we were able to overcook to 400 and 450 MHz. Our computer teacher instructed us on how to do it. He had two genuine pentium II towers that he used for his computer and the classroom file server and our over clocked systems kept up with them. We were successful enough in our efforts that the new computers for our Library and teachers were all over clocked Celeron A based systems. Needless to say the school district was very pleased to have saved so much money.

[singleproppilot]

I had one of these. It was a overclocked to 450MHz and I paired it with a Creative Labs Voodoo Blaster Banshee. It was a hotrod gaming machine in 1999. The crazy part is that when it was obsolete, we just threw all that stuff in the trash without giving it a second thought.

[VladiDusil]

This brings me back to a time in the early 2000s when I overclocked my socket Celeron 566 to over 1Ghz using peltier cooling in my dorm room. Good times.

[Left-Handed-Cat]

Thank you for this lovely memory! Everyone was talking about it back then. The next amazingly overclockable Celeron was the Celeron D 805, maybe a project for the future?! Keep up the great videos you make and best wishes from Germany.

[spookyghost]

this video is a good demonstration of how easy it is to build a pc nowadays, the minefield of compatibility issues then must have been very frustrating

[Hypnausea]

Had a 300A that consistently ran at 450/100 on an Abit BH6-II without issue. BH6-II, and I'm sure other boards did this as well, had a the ability to bump up above 100 main bus thought I can't remember what it's max was. I do remember trying it occasionally with mixed results. The issue was always heat but with a good heatsink or even peltier module it would work for extended periods. Also one thing I noticed with yours was the "Costa Rica" on there. Back in the day when this was THE thing to do it was always recommended to get the "Malaysia" made ones. Something about them, maybe just a minor manufacturing/quality variance or something to do with that pin being "taped over" (figuratively speaking) from the factory? No idea but they worked. Damn I feel old now. 🤣

[geekenspiel]

I so enjoy a good vintage pc build. 😎 Happy to send you some stickers/badges to add a finishing touch to that awesome NOS case.