The first thing you'll notice once the Celeron 466 hits the resale market in bulk is a total lack of a Slot-1 variant of the CPU. Indeed, we've confirmed with Intel that the earlier Celeron 433 will be the last Celeron CPU that will be manufactured in both the new PPGA Socket370 format as well as in a Slot-1 format.

It's somewhat sad to see the beginning of the end of the much hyped Slot-1 architecture in favor of the less costly Socket370 format. The Pentium III line of CPUs will continue to utilize the Slot-1 process, and that includes the expected September/99 due next-generation .18 micron 600MHz Pentium III, aka "Coppermine".

With the passing of Slot-1 in the Celeron lineup, more attention will now undoubtedly be placed on both the PPGA (Platic Pin Grid Array) manufacturing process as well as the Socket370 mounting bracket itself.

So far neither Intel nor independent outside sources can confirm either a performance gain or loss by moving to Socket370, and frankly that's a good thing. Anytime an identical process can be utilized that costs less to the end-user while delivering the same performance level is a win in our book, and the Socket370 architecture definitely qualifies.

Luckily for those who don't favor a move away from their current Slot-1 based mainboard, several mainboard manufacturers including Abit, Aopen, and ASUS among others are each offering Socket370 CPU mounting cards that fit easily into a standard Slot-1 connector while retaining the usage of Intel's PPGA CPUs.

Since the converter cards cost roughly $10, the switch over to a PPGA Celeron really isn't a negative budgetary decision. This leaves the buyer in a good spot as the attention as to what CPU best fits their needs falls back to the two major variables that should be most important: The CPU's cost and its relative performance level.