The Celeron 266 and 300 might have found a place in many gamer's systems, but they continued to be hammered by the business community. In order to bring this market segment on side, Intel needed to make a change and make it quick. Enter the legendary Celeron 300A, a chip utilizing the famed Mendocino core and featuring 128K of on-die cache. This on-die cache was a first for Intel and was more technologically advanced than even the integrated core/cache die of the Pentium Pro. This 128K of L2 cache also ran at the full core speed of the CPU, compared to the 1/2 speed cache of the Pentium II and Pentium III Katmai.

In trying to satisfy the budget-conscious business market, Intel simply outdid themselves with the Celeron 300A. Although the Pentium II had since moved to the 100 MHz FSB and up-to 450 MHz speeds, the Slot 1 Celeron 300A provided performance equal to the Pentium II 300 at a much lower cost. Instead of producing a standard budget processor, Intel had in some ways set loose a potential competitor to the Pentium II. This bold move also proved fortuitous for the overclockers waiting in the wings and initial attempts at the 450 MHz overclock (4.5x100 MHz) yielded an incredibly high success rate. Suddenly the Net was ablaze with tales of Celeron 300A overclocking, along with the most desirable product codes and batch numbers. The possibility of achieving 450 MHz speeds at a price less that 1/4 of a new Pentium II 450 was just too much to resist. I myself bought one of these CPUs and it performed as advertised and was definitely the easiest overclock I've ever performed.