The Celeron D series is a very attractive and affordable solution from Intel for today's PC systems. If you don't want to pay a fortune for a system with one of the latest P4 processors or its AMD counterpart, then the Celeron D series is a very good alternative solution. The L2 cache is limited but you can't expect too much in this price range. Both of the Celeron D processors we tested, reported quite decent performance. We compared them to the cheapest Intel Pentium and AMD Athlon 64 series, in order to see just how much of a difference there is in performance. In almost all tests, the Celeron D processors were behind the Intel Pentium 4 530, as we would expect. However, in comparison to the AMD Athlon 64 3000+, there were cases where the Celerons reported better results in benchmarks such as PCMark, Passmark, Prime95 and some encoding times. However, in games there is no comparison and the AMD outperformed all Intel processors. Of course, this doesn't mean that you cannot play games with a Celeron.

With overclocking, don't expect too much. 10% was the limit in our. The difference in benchmark performance was noticeable but probably not worth the effort if you are interested in games.

The price for the Intel Celeron D 341 is close to US$75 on the e-market while for the D 346, you'll have to pay around US$90. At the same time, the Intel Pentium 4 530, if you can locate it, costs close to US$180, which is twice the price of the D 346. On the other hand, the AMD Athlon 64 3000+ is a little cheaper at US$160. As you can see, for half the money, you can have a processor running close to 3.0 GHz without losing a lot in performance. For common, everyday tasks and at a price that won't put a hole in your pocket, the Celeron D series is a good choice.