You could over-clock the Celeron and get even more performance. Both the slot-1 and ZIF style...

they may have been, yes. back in those days, a CPU with multiple cores were meant for the server or enterprise workstation market and priced accordingly.

Celerons were consumer-grade budget kit.

Just by the release MSRP:

2x Celeron 366 MHz @ $123 each - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Celeron_processo...

1x Pentium III 733 MHz @ $776 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Pentium_III_proc...

And that's assuming that performance scales linearly with clock frequency (which it doesn't).

Yes, because there weren't really CPUs then that had double the performance.

Celeron CPUs were usually CPUs that shared the same core architecture as the current Pentium standard, but often had a lower core clock speed, lower core memory speed, and/or had smaller L2 caches.

Workloads have different constraints however, and simply doubling cache, clock speed, or memory bandwidth doesn't necessarily double performance, especially when running more than one application at once. Keep in mind, this is Windows 98 /NT/2000 era here.

Symmetric multi-processing (SMP) could be of huge benefit however, far more than simple doubling any of the above factors. Running two threads at once was unheard of on the desktop. These were usually reserved for higher-binned parts, like full-fledged Pentium workstations and Xeons (usually the latter.) But Abit's board gave users a taste of that capability on a comparative budget. Were two cheaper than a single fast CPU? Probably not in all cases (depends on speeds). But Abit's board gave users an option in between a single fast Pentium and a orders of magnitude more professional workstation: A pair of cheaper CPUs for desktop SMP. And that was in reach of more people.

In short, two Celerons were probably more expensive than a single fast Pentium, but having SMP meant being able to run certain workloads faster or more workloads at once at a time when any other SMP system would have cost tons.

For some reason you left off the part that explains that the Celeron had a PII core.

> Socket 370 era Celeron processors had a Pentium II core, but Intel disabled the ability to change the multiplier to discourage overclocking

Anyone in PC building during that era knew about Abit. Not really niche for a technical audience, but definitely nostalgic in a way that won’t make sense to anyone who wasn’t into PCs during that era.

Yes, mine bowed eventually even though I put non conductive closed cell foam under the cpu areas.

Still, I made good on my promise to never return to single core machines.

I did love that era, in terms of it providing a young frugal person with the opportunity to buy upgrades piecemeal. It felt like there was more generational overlap, as you describe, so it was possible to just go out and buy a new CPU, or a new graphics card, for a few hundred carefully saved dollars of birthday and christmas money, and get a sizeable upgrade in performance. That era is over, especially with the current pricing crunch.

What I am hoping for is that this leads to a resurgence for all those used computers out there... plenty of great machines from the last decade that should have no problem being competent workstations for 90% of people's needs for the next decade onward if treated well. This is where open standards and open source truly shine.

Pretty sure I had a Pentium 4 mobo that was kind of like that in 2002-2003 timeframe. Was still rocking my old ISA Sound Blaster 16 (the big ass one with the connector for a CD-ROM drive) alongside a Radeon 7500 in the AGP slot.

It wasn't much but I could run Alice, Max Payne, GTA 3, Dungeon Siege on there, all at like mid settings, so I was a pretty happy camper for a high school kid putting paper route money into my own PC.

The thing that jumped out to me was the mention of the engineer jumping ship to DFI. Despite DFI still existing, they stopped making consumer stuff back in 2012, and it seems like they somehow disappeared from the consumer mindset even more than Abit did.

I recall that there was a while during the Athlon 64 era that DFI was the gaming board to get. But I feel like I hear references to Abit more often than DFI.

I think my old Opteron machine with a DFI board is kicking around somewhere still.