The final diagrams have come out to be much more interesting than we could have expected in the beginning. First of all, the overall score in the professional-use software category for Pentium D 805, which was originally included in the testing "just for fun" (intended as a "dummy"), is higher than what all three of the low-end Celerons based on a much newer core have produced. Of course, one may note that there are also Celerons 530/540/550. On the other hand, they are not as readily available. They exist as parts of complete systems, while Pentium D 805 is far from being the only dual-core model in the series based on NetBurst architecture.
Secondly, this is one of the few articles where the overall scores for professional and household/amateur software differ so greatly. In the "amateur category" Celeron 440 has almost tied the old Athlon 64 X2 3800+ and has just barely lost to a full-fledged dual-core Pentium E2140! At that, this Celeron costs significantly less.
In regards to the common overall score, due to the aforementioned bias differences between professional and amateur/household software the chart looks like a "mess". Nevertheless, fourth place for such a low-end CPU as Celeron 440 doesn't look so bad.
Supposed Power Consumption
We do not see anything surprising on these diagrams. Of course, if we cut a half off of Conroe core, which by itself is low-consuming, then it would consume even less. However, this reduction, as it turns out, is not great...
Conclusion
As a whole, we think that the idea of comparing the old middle-end with the new low-end models has proven to be quite fruitful. The results are interesting and have quite tangible practical value for the owners of systems based on Pentium 4 and Pentium D. The test results are also of some interest to the owners of Athlon 64 X2-based systems, though limited due to low coverage. Besides that, from a pure professional standpoint, as testers we can not help noticing how in some cases the results were quite unexpected.
Despite all that, we found nothing sensational. Celeron 4xx is not going to become the "killer" of low-end Athlon 64 X2 models. It is clear from looking at the results of the X2 3800+ alone. Neither will the new Celeron be a rival for Pentium E2xxx. Too many of the modern applications are capable of taking advantage of the second core, which can become a decisive argument. As to the competition between Celeron 4xx and Pentium D, indeed it is taking place. However, there is no certainty in it. Too much depends on specific software bias.
Yet, let us not get carried away, shall we? After all we are considering a low-end CPU! In its class the new Celeron is a very successful processor, without any doubt. We can make such a claim even now without any comparison to Sempron. Simply do not expect of it anything more than what it is worth. :)
Testbed memory modules provided by Corsair Memory Russia
Your link here
