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General Information -

The Pentium family of CPUs is the latest in a long line of CPUs to come out of Intel.

If you are looking for price comparisons of see the "Intel Microprocessors-Hardware" page.

The Pentium which started out as an underpowered 60mhz CPU soon reached speeds in excess of 200mh.

Sometime in 1996 Intel introduced the Pentium Pro with speeds of 200mh. This model is optimized to operate with 32-bit software which did not help out with the 16-bit code of windows 95. The Pentium Pro comes with an onboard 32k level 1 cache and a 256k on-board level 2 cache.

The MMX technology was also introduced which added 57 more instructions and new circuitry which boosted multimedia applications. This means that applications have to be written specifically using the new commands to benefit from the new instructions.

Next came the Pentium II with speeds of 233mh and 266mh and combines the Pentium Pro and MMX technologies allowing it to run 16-bit software much better. The Pentium II comes with an onboard 32k level 1 cache but the 256k level 2 cache has been moved to an external support chip running at 116.5mh ( in contrast the Pentium Pro has this cache on-board)..

 

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Pentium II -

The Pentium II is a sixth generation CPU processor and comes in 233mh, 266mh and 300mh speeds and incorporates the MMX instruction set.. It is also a totally new physical design package when compared to the other Pentium processors. It runs at 2.8 volts.

The design, the Single Edge Contact (SEC) cartridge, features an edge connector, the circuit board, the Pentium II processor and a separate L2 cache using BSRAMs. The slot 1 connector replaces the Pin-Grid Array PGA socket used in prior systems

It also uses the Dual Independent Bus allowing it the processor to access data from either bus simultaneously and in parallel.

• 233MHz, 266MHz, 300MHz
• Uses the MMX instruction set
• Supports SMP
• Uses 0.35µm technology
• 16K data, 16K instruction cache
• 7.5 million transistors
• Uses the new Single Edge Connector (SEC) and Slot 1 technology

The Pentium II Xeon processor 400 MHz is Intel's most powerful processor ever for midrange-and-higher servers and workstations. Designed specifically for these market segments, the Pentium II Xeon processor combines several technologies, including full-speed level 2 caches of varying sizes, new multiprocessing capabilities and compatibility with previous Intel® microprocessor generations.

Pentium III -

Katmai - Code name for the Intel Pentium III processor. It includes Streaming SIMD Extensions, a set of approximately 70 new instructions designed to enhance 3D, imaging, and video applications

Tualatin - Code name for the Intel Pentium III processor, released in June 2001, an improved processor design using 0.13micron technology, running at 1.13GHz and having 512KB Level 2 cache, it supports Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP).

Designations - 

• B - 133 MHz System Bus 
• E - Advanced Transfer Cache / Advanced System Buffering support
• EB - Advanced Transfer Cache / Advanced System Buffering / 133 MHz System Bus

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Pentium Pro

The Pentium Pro is a sixth generation CPU processor that is optimized to run 32-bit applications and runs at 3.3v.. It is probably the best processor to use for Windows NT 4.0 systems. It can execute up to 4 instructions for each clock cycle and can execute instructions out-of-order.

The Pentium Pro incorporates a Dual Independent Bus (DIB) architecture where one bus is a processor-to-memory and the other is a processor-to-L2 cache bus. Both buses can be accesses simultaneously for faster performance.

• 166MHz, 180MHz, 200MHz
• L1 cache (8K data, 8K instruction)
• 256K/512K L2 cache
• Uses 0.35µm technology
• 5.5 million transistors
• Uses Socket 8

 

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Pentium

The Pentium is a fifth generation microprocessor.

It features speeds up to 200mh, with a 5-stage superpipeline ( 6-stage for the MMX model).

Other

Intel Celeron processor -

• 300 and 266MHz, it has 7.5M transistors and is based on Intel’s advanced 0.25
  micron CMOS process technology, includes Intel’s media-enhancing MMX™ technology, includes a 32K (16K/16K) non-blocking, level-one cache, available in the single edge processor package (S.E.P.P.) form factor, which maintains compatibility with Slot 1, No L2 cache.
  
  The Intel Celeron processor at 800 MHz supports a 100 MHz bus speed only
  All Intel Celeron processors at 766 MHz and below support 66 MHz bus speeds only
  
  
• According to Intel...
  
  Difference between the Intel® Celeron™ processor at 533 MHz and the Intel Celeron processor at 533A MHz.

  The Intel® Celeron™ processor at 533A MHz is based on the 0.18 micron CMOS process technology and is packaged in the FC-PGA package type. For more product details see Product Features. The Intel Celeron processor at 533 MHz is based on the 0.25 micron manufacturing process technology and is packaged in the PPGA package type.

  Difference between the Intel Celeron processor at 300 MHz and the Intel Celeron processor at 300A MHz

  All of the Intel processors utilize the Intel P6 micro architecture's multi-transaction system bus. The Intel Celeron processors at 300A MHz and above incorporate an internal full speed L2 cache interface supporting the Dual Independent Bus architecture of the Pentium® II processor. Having two separate buses allows simultaneous access to both the L2 cache bus and the system bus.

  The combination of the L2 cache bus and the processor-to-main-memory system bus increases peak overall bandwidth availability and performance over single-bus processors.

  Note: Intel Celeron processors at 300 MHz and 266 MHz do not include an L2 cache bus

Pentium MMX

• 166MHz, 200MHz, 233MHz
• Socket 7
• Uses 0.35µm technology
• 4.5 million transistors
• L1 cache (16K data, 16K instruction)
• Uses the MMX instruction set

Timna - 

A future Pentium II Intel Processor manufactured with 0.18-micron technology, which should incorporate a graphics controller, 128KB of L2 cache and on-board RAMBUS memory.

Itanium -
This Intel processor was announced in December 1999 and could be shipping in the middle of the year 2000. It uses a 64-bit architecture with features, such as explicit parallelism, predication, speculation and more.

CPU Identification under Windows 98 -

• Intel Celeron	Intel, x86 Family 6 Model 5
  Intel Celeron	Intel, x86 Family 6 Model 6
  Intel Mobile Pentium III	Intel, x86 Family 6 Model 8
  Intel Pentium II	Intel, x86 Family 6 Model 3
  Intel Pentium II	Intel, x86 Family 6 Model 5
  Intel Pentium II	Intel, x86 Family 6 Model 6
  Intel Pentium III	Intel, x86 Family 6 Model 7
  Intel Pentium Pro	Intel, x86 Family 6 Model 1

   

Tualatin - a future mobile processor design announced in February 2001

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