Info Alder Lake Pentiums/Celerons

[Insert_Nickname]

Just noticed the new AL Pentium and Celeron have finally gotten AVX2. About time.

Combined with the AL media block, these should make excellent cheap little video and browsing boxes.

Only downside would be that the H610 chipset only allows a single memory channel. So you'll want B660 minimum.

Anyway, anybody have views or opinions on these? Might be worth buying one to check out.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yields.

Considering that the top bin for these chips is 5.5Ghz (the KS), and pretty much all of the celerons will do 4.4Ghz (maybe?), I guess I don't buy that excuse.

 

[Mopetar]

Considering that the top bin for these chips is 5.5Ghz (the KS), and pretty much all of the celerons will do 4.4Ghz (maybe?), I guess I don't buy that excuse.

There's probably some truth to that, but there are probably a few that are the exact opposite of a golden sample and have abysmal performance. There may also be some types of defects that really do limit the number of cores that can be active or which cores can be active. For example, anything related to problems with the ring bus may mean that even if all of the cores function fine independently, many have to be disabled because the cross core communication isn't there to allow the chip to function.

The bottom bin has to be there as a catch-all and given all of the different problems that could arise it truly does turn in to a lowest common denominator. If they didn't do, they'd charge more (say $89) for any 2-core CPUs that could clock closer to 5 GHz.

 

[igor_kavinski]

The bottom bin has to be there as a catch-all and given all of the different problems that could arise it truly does turn in to a lowest common denominator. If they didn't do, they'd charge more (say $89) for any 2-core CPUs that could clock closer to 5 GHz.

Why aren't we seeing this approach with Zen 3? Are their yields that good or are they discarding slightly defective dies to avoid QA/QC and validation costs? I'm not sure if AMD has a Zen 3 equivalent of Pentium/Celeron.

 

[coercitiv]

Why aren't we seeing this approach with Zen 3? Are their yields that good or are they discarding slightly defective dies to avoid QA/QC and validation costs? I'm not sure if AMD has a Zen 3 equivalent of Pentium/Celeron.

Why aren't we seeing the same degree of yield management with AMD's ~80mm2 die on TSMC N7 as we are seeing with Intel's ~163mm2 die on a competing node with known bumpy history?

There's a reason the 3300X was so hard to find for DYI consumers. Not enough defects for everybody.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not sure if AMD has a Zen 3 equivalent of Pentium/Celeron.

That would be Ryzen 3. Specifically, the 1200, and the 3100.

 

[igor_kavinski]

That would be Ryzen 3. Specifically, the 1200, and the 3100.

Those Ryzen 3's are the Core i3 equivalents and not Zen 3 based. There is also no Zen 3 die based Athlon yet.

 

[jpiniero]

Intel also has a lot more volume so they are bound to get enough of really busted chips to make a product out of it.

 

[LightningZ71]

Remembet, with chiplets, highly functionally defective CCDs can STILL find a home in a special purpose SKU, depending on the defect.

 

[Mopetar]

Why aren't we seeing this approach with Zen 3? Are their yields that good or are they discarding slightly defective dies to avoid QA/QC and validation costs? I'm not sure if AMD has a Zen 3 equivalent of Pentium/Celeron.

The heavily binned chiplets that only have 2 cores active are being used in Milan. They have parts that use 8 CCDs, but only have 16 active cores. That particular part has a ~$3,000 MSRP.

AMD doesn't have the low-end part of the Zen 3 product stack available for consumers and there's a good possibility they never will. There's just not enough supply and the chiplets that might normally end up there are being used for products with far better profit margins. During prior generations AMD was mainly using 7nm wafers for chiplets. With Zen 3 there were also console SoCs and a complete line of GPUs needing wafers as well.

I think that even the truly dead chiplets that can't function at all are still used in those server chips that have 6 CCDs just to fill the unused spots and stabilize the IHS so even those aren't really thrown out. Intel doesn't have the same degree of flexibility so the most profitable thing they can do with those highly defective chips is sell them as a Celeron or Pentium Gold.

 

[Furious_Styles]

It's there. Third party though.

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

Yeah I have a rule about not buying from 3rd party sellers on amazon or newegg unless I have to. I guess in another week or so newegg should have some stock.

 

[jpiniero]

Yeah I have a rule about not buying from 3rd party sellers on amazon or newegg unless I have to. I guess in another week or so newegg should have some stock.

Totally understandable.

The heavily binned chiplets that only have 2 cores active are being used in Milan.

There are even SKUs with 1 core chiplets.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

Looks like the story is being picked up by several outlets:

Intel's Most Entry-Level Alder Lake CPU, The Dual-Core Celeron G6900, Has Single Core Performance On Par With a 5.3 GHz Core i9-10900K

The Intel Celeron G6900, Entry-Level Alder Lake, dual-core CPU has been tested and offers better single-threaded performance than i9-10900K.

wccftech.com

But the caveat is important: "The clock speeds were rated at 4.40 GHz which means that the user might have enabled BFB or Base Frequency Boost technology to drive up the clock speeds by +1 GHz by raising the power limit. "

Mind you, this is all based on a single sample. Not much in terms of statistical significance...

 

[jpiniero]

That's what I mean about it being fake... BFB should not allow the chip to run beyond the max clock.