Momomo US uncovered and listed Intel’s entry-level Alder Lake-powered Pentium and Celeron CPUs aimed at the sub-$100 US pricing category. It’s been speculated that what we’re seeing is additional enhancements to Intel’s newest 12th Gen Alder Lake processor line. It was possible that it would come from the company’s refresh of Comet Lake family CPUs, but given the characteristics of both CPUs, it would be more likely to come from their 12th Gen Core CPUs.
Intel’s 10th Gen Comet Lake series was the last time we saw either the Pentium Gold or Celeron CPU variants. Intel never produced any SKUs from the Core i3 or down during the 11th Generation Rocket Lake core CPUs. During that period, Intel elected to boost the clock speed on their Comet Lake processors, but no other significant improvements were made.
The Intel Pentium Gold G7400 and Celeron G6900 are the two models displayed in the screenshot. These will most likely replace the previous generation’s Pentium Gold G6400 and Celeron G5900 CPUs. The two new CPUs are expected to have a dual-core design, with the Pentium Gold chip receiving Hyper-Threading. The part numbers for the two chips indicated to start with “BX80715,” which is the same as the numbers for the Alder Lake CPUs. The Pentium Gold G7400 costs CAD 123 (about $97 US), while the Celeron G6900 costs CAD 91 (approximately $72 US). Because these are preliminary listings, the final price may be substantially lower.
Because both Core i3 and certain Core i5 variants can’t handle Alder Lake’s hybrid microarchitecture, it’s expected that the two new CPUs will only be able to support the “Performance” cores from Golden Cove. The base frequency of the Intel Pentium Gold G7400 is 300 MHz lower than the G6400 model, and the Celeron G6900 processor from the new Alder Lake line will keep the same 3.4 GHz base clock as its predecessor. The L3 cache of the Pentium Gold model is 6 MB, while the Celeron model is 4 MB, which is significantly more than previous Comet Lake models.
