Intel has just begun shipping four new Celeron chips that are intended for low-priced laptops as it plans on gearing up for the back-to-school shopping season. These new dual-core Celeron 877 and 847 chips, which are based on the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, are a part of the same family of processors that appeared in last year’s low-price $200 to $500 range. The 877 chip will allow vendors to cut prices while also boosting performance.

These new Celeron chips have integrated graphics as well as virtualization support. The processors do not have some of the features available on Intel’s faster Core series processors, like Quick Sync video acceleration or Turbo Boost, where cores can be disabled or sped up depending on processing requirements.

The Celeron 877 is priced at $86 in quantities of 1,000 units and has a clock speed of 1.4GHz. That speed is an increase from the previous fastest Celeron in the lineup, the 867, which ran at 1.3GHz and costs $134. The new Celeron 847 has a clock speed of 1.1GHz and is priced at $70 in quantities of 1,000.

In addition to that, Intel has started shipping the dual-core Celeron M B820 chip, which has a clock speed of 1.7GHz and is priced at $86 in quantities of 1,000. A faster version, the Celeron M B830, runs at 1.8GHz and is expected later this quarter. It will likely be priced higher than the B820 and come in quantities of 1,000 as well.

The final new chip is the single-core B730, which runs at 1.8GHz and is priced at $70 in quantities of 1,000. Intel also has a CPU reference chart that details new Pentium chips at clock speeds from 2.2GHz to 2.6GHz that are set to ship later this quarter. The Pentium G645 chips run at 2.5GHz, the G620 at 2.6GHz and the G620T at 2.2GHz, though prices are unavailable.

Source: PC World – Intel Targets Low-priced Laptops With Celeron Chip Refresh