Prices of upcoming Pentium and Celeron desktop CPUs

Intel budget processor families, currently represented by Pentium and Celeron brands, will be the last to switch to soon to be released Ivy Bridge micro-architecture. Before transitioning budget CPUs to the new microarchitecture, Intel will refresh existing lineup of Pentium and Celeron desktop chips. On June 3rd, together with the second wave of Ivy Bridge products, Intel will release new G540T, G550, G640, G640T, G860T and G870 Sandy Bridge models. We published their specifications in the past, and now we have details on their pricing.

The least expensive from upcoming models will be Celeron G550 and G540T. These dual-core SKUs with 2 MB L3 cache and basic feature-set will be priced at $52. The G550 is a 65 Watt CPU with 2.6 GHz clock speed, while the G540T with 500 MHz lower frequency boasts 35 Watt TDP. These models will supersede Celeron G540 and G530T.

Pentium processors offer 50% larger size of L3 cache and higher core frequencies, however they cost more. Pentium G640 and G640T will be priced at $64, and official price of G860T and G870 SKUs will be $75 and $86. Pentium G640 and G870 are mainstream 65 Watt parts, and they run at 2.8 and 3.1 GHz respectively. These Pentiums will replace G630 and G860. Low-power G640T and G860T chips have 35 Watt TDP, and 2.4 GHz and 2.6 GHz clock speeds.

New processors will be available on June 3rd. Brief specifications of these budget CPUs are provided below:

Model	Cores	Threads	Frequency	L3 cache	TDP	Price
Celeron G540T	2	2	2.1 GHz	2 MB	35 Watt	$52
Celeron G550	2	2	2.6 GHz	2 MB	65 Watt	$52
Pentium G640	2	2	2.8 GHz	3 MB	65 Watt	$64
Pentium G640T	2	2	2.4 GHz	3 MB	35 Watt	$64
Pentium G860T	2	2	2.6 GHz	3 MB	35 Watt	$75
Pentium G870	2	2	3.1 GHz	3 MB	65 Watt	$86