The Celeron should work with any FC-PGA motherboard. That includes some of the newest 440BX boards, i820 boards, i810E boards, and the new i815 and
i815E motherboards. That means the Celeron has a wide variety of stable
platforms with which it can work, most being widely available. Even a few
i815 and i815E boards are already on the market. This is actually what we see as
the Celeron's largest advantage over the Duron.
In contrast, the Duron is a Socket A only CPU, which limits it to working with VIA KT133 and AMD 750 Socket A motherboards only. As of now, KT133
boards are few and far between, though this shortage should lessen over the
next few weeks and Socket A boards using the AMD 750 chipset should come in
the longer term.
As for CPU availability, Intel has made tremendous strides in the past six
months to make sure that there are processors on the market when they make
announcements. You should have little trouble finding a Celeron at 700MHz
today. Durons are still pretty scarce, though each day they are
more widely available.
In volumes of 1000, single units of the Celeron will cost $136 for 633MHz, $170 for 667MHz, and $192 for 700MHz. As of last week's CPU prices, single units of the Duron cost $92 for 600MHz, $125 for 650MHz, and $159 for 700MHz. So when you're just considering the price of the processor alone, the Duron has better performance for the money. When you factor in the motherboard price, the gap closes significantly but the Duron retains the lead. ATX 440BX boards with socket adapters or integrated FC-PGA sockets can be found for about $100. MicroATX Socket A motherboards start at $130 and ATX motherboards are even more expensive. Hopefully, Intel will feel price pressure from OEMs to drop the Celeron price to Duron levels.
For a more complete look at the Celeron architecture, please check out our Intel Celeron 600MHz Review.
And now for the benchmarks...