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Intel Discontinues Extreme Edition P4
bizpile writes "X-bit Labs reports that Intel is stopping production of its Extreme Edition Pentium 4s. The company said in its statement sent to clients, 'Market demand for the Intel Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition supporting Hyper-Threading technology 3.20GHz with 800MHz processor system bus in mPGA478 packaging has shifted to higher performance Intel processors.'"
From the statement in the article, it sounds like they're just discontinuing the 3.20Ghz, socket 478 version of the chip, not the whole P4 EE line.
Hyperthreading was a good way for intel to get itself out of a jam. The p4 had a REALLY long pipeline, and in order to keep it filled most of the time, they needed two threads feeding it with instructions.
Basically there are multiple units (say integer units) that can run concurrently. If you can get two integer operations to compute at the same time, then you just increased performance. Hyperthreading was a way for the OS to help the CPU keep it's execution units full.
And yeah, "low-end" Opterons are cheap these days. I have my eye on a dual-opteron setup...
My other car is first.
You're correct that the P4EE 3.4Ghz is out, but the 3.6 is not. In fact, this chip would probably be difficult for intel to manufacture, since the P4EE is still based on Northwood, and the highest speed grade of that core is 3.4Ghz. The Prescott core (P4E) currently goes up to 3.6Ghz, but no chips with additional cache exist so far.
The best sites (IMHO) to check for this sort of information are anandtech.com and tomshardware.com. Based on the information they (and others) have presented, I've decided to purchase an AMD 3500+ Athlon 64 next week.
Now this was a difficult decision for me because my main box does an awful lot of stuff - it's rarely just sitting there. If I'm not gaming or surfing, then I might be rendering or producing a DVD. Render times for this stuff can be annoying.
It's not that Intel couldn't do the job - in fact, there are places where Intel beats AMD (DiVX encoding and Lightwave rendering comes to mind). But it's close - and here's the kicker: So far, most of these are all just 32-bit software comparisons. Wait for the 64-bit stuff to show up! If I got an Intel, I wouldn't even have that future option.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."