Intel's new Celeron one-ups AMD

The chipmaker, practicing a bit of megahertz one-upmanship, launched the new low-price chip on Tuesday, just one day after rival Advanced Micro Devices introduced its 1.1GHz Duron processor for the value segment of the PC market.

The 1.2GHz Celeron chip represents the first Celeron to be manufactured using Intel's 130-nanometer, or 0.13-micron, process. Of the handful of new features, the most notable is a larger-sized, 256KB Level 2 cache for storing frequently needed data. Previous Celerons have had a 128KB Level 2 cache. The new chip, though, retains the trademark Celeron 100MHz front side bus, which provides a pipeline between the chip and system memory.

The 1.2GHz Celeron lists for $103 in quantities of 1,000 and can be found in PCs from manufacturers such as Compaq.

Compaq is offering the chip in its Presario 5310US PC at retail. Priced at $749, the PC offers the 1.2GHz chip, 256MB of RAM, and separate DVD and CDRW drives. No monitor is included in the price. A similar model, with 128MB of SDRAM and a 15-inch monitor, can be purchased directly from Compaq for $828.