Intel Cancels 800 MHz Xeon

goingware writes: "This article at C|Net tells how Intel canceled plans to produce an 800 MHz Xeon. They had feedback from major OEMs telling them they wanted fewer speedbumps with larger incremental improvements. I think that's a positive step, actually. I know from doing performance analysis of software that simply making a speedbump to a processor doesn't win the end-user that much, it's mainly for marketing reasons. This is because the performance of real systems these days is limited so much by memory access times and other factors. It would be better if manufacturers concentrated on engineering improvements that would result in real performance gains rather than notching up the clock speed."

Comments

Possible adverse effect on prices?

[Mr. Potato]

This seems to be a good thing for computer sellers, rather than computer buyers.

If the cpu speeds increase in less frequent steps, then the cpu prices will also decrease in less frequent steps (IMHO).

This seems more like an attempt by Intel to "throttle down" the market. Also it makes their marketing campaigns look better if they can demonstrate these artificially-contrived "big improvement steps". Which in turn leads to higher prices asked by Intel, for those big steps.

This seems to be a subtle money grab from the consumer...