Various rumors have cropped up about a purported line of Pentium- and Celeron-branded processors based on Intel’s Core microarchitecture, and most of these rumors suggested a release date in the third quarter of this year. However, HKEPC says it has learned from sources at motherboard manufacturers that the chips’ release has been pulled forward to the middle of the second quarter—or in other words, probably some time in May. The Pentium chips are expected to be dual-core offerings clocked at 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz with an 800MHz front-side bus and 1MB of cache, while the Celerons should be single-core chips with a 533MHz front-side bus and 512KB of cache. These new chips might help Intel gain some ground in the sub-$200 sector, where even its new Core 2 Duo E4300 processor still isn’t available below $170, according to our price search engine.
