Intel(r) quickly announced the Intel(r) Celeron(tm) processor "A" series of CPUs which sought to eliminate the public's perception that the L2-less Intel(r) Celeron(tm) processors were too slow in business apps to be considered by the mainstream. The A class Intel(r) Celeron(tm) processors added 128KB of L2 cache back into the mix, this time on the chip itself. By placing the L2 cache on-die, Intel(r) was able to jack up its speed to the full core speed of the CPU itself, which in this case was to be 300 and 333MHz respectively.

Needless to say, when the Celeron A class CPUs were tested, the net result was a CPU with a much faster performance level than the earlier cacheless Celerons, and even equaled or bettered the equivalent MHz Pentium II CPUs in most apps.

Both the masses and overclockers flew to this chip immediately, and for the last few months every hardware publication worth a damn has covered or written about the success/failure of the procedure to overclock a Celeron 300 A CPU into the stratosphere. Months ago, Sharky Extreme overclocked a Celeron 300 A CPU to 450MHz and ran the full glut of benchmarks on it for our readers. We even threw in a true blue Intel Pentium II-450 to compare it against. The results were surprising, being that the 450MHz overclocked Celeron ($200 at that time) performed almost identically to the then $750 Intel Pentium II 450.

Now it is mid-1999 and Intel has given birth to yet another Celeron CPU: The PPGA-only Celeron 466. The PPGA Celeron 466 still follows the pedigree set by its precursors, meaning that its operates off of a 66MHz front side bus speed, and incorporates 128kb of on-die L2 cache. Unfortunately, as we've seen with other PPGA Celerons, the PPGA Celeron 466 is not as overclockable as previous non-PPGA models have been.

We'll analyze each of the Celeron's overclocking abilities later in the article. For now, let's get to the how-to section.