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There are some dramatic effects concerning overclocking the Celerons that Intel's cost cutting measures have created:
- Without any external L2 cache, the Celeron's core is the only part that a user has to worry about when overclocking to high MHz levels.
In the Pentium II line, an overclocker has to worry not only about the Klamath/Deschutes core quality, but also about the two or four (depending upon the model) L2 cache chips located in the Pentium II's SEC cartridge.
Since Intel has specifically matched the right speed L2 SRAM chips to the particular Pentium II core they'll be mated with, the potential for the L2 cache to hold back the true overclocking potential of the core is great. This is not so in the Celeron, as again there isn't any external L2 cache to worry about. Instead, the 128KB of L2 Celeron A cache is located on the die itself. It's virtually a part of the core, which means that if the yields are right, then almost every Celeron CPU coming down the pike is overclockable.
- By taking the Celeron core and mounting it on a standard PCB wafer, overclockers could once again mount a high powered fan/heatsink directly on the surface covering of the core itself, instead of having to put up with the poor heat dissipation qualities of the P2's SECC Cartridge. This means that the fan/heatsink would be able to perform its job better, and eliminate more heat than in the covered and blocked Pentium II line, which leads to better overclocking. This comes in very handy with the newer Celeron CPUs, as there are some seriously capable cooling fans from both ComputerNerd and Net-N-Dude available online.
Intel isn't oblivious to all of these 'overclocking benefits' and took an additional step to protect their Celeron lineup from being overclocked massively. As part of a plan that now includes the rest of the Pentium II and Pentium III CPU lines as well, Intel has completely "clock locked" the Celeron CPUs at their respective multiplier ratings, meaning that a user would not be able to choose any other multiplier than the "stock" one.
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