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.'"

Comments

AMD-64

[Krusty Da Klown]

Since the arrival of Doom 3 I think we know to where the REAL market demand shifted.

to AMD

[hkg4r7h]

Market demand has shifted to higher performance, and cheaper AMD processors ;-)

The whole line?

[R2P2]

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.

Re:The whole line?

[Amiga Lover]

From the statement in the article it really sounds like someone has an excess of corporatespeak.

"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.'"

translates to

"Those chips weren't selling cos they were too slow"

Re:The whole line?

[Hoser McMoose]

Or more to the point:

"The 3.2GHz P4EE sells for over $900 and the 3.4GHz P4EE sells for only a few dollars more. Anyone dumb enough to waste their money on such an expensive chip might as well spend the extra few dollars for the fastest and get the bragging rights".

As the original poster correctly stated it is NOT the entire line that is being discontinued, only the 3.2GHz P4EE.

FWIW AMD does the exact same thing with their Athlon64 FX line, they have already discontinued their FX-51 model and the FX-53 model will be discontinued in a couple of months when the FX-55 shows up.

Of course it failed; it was a useless gimmick

[TyrranzzX]

Why would I need a 2 meg l3 cache on a gaming processor that only increases performance by 1-5%? Combine that with extrordinary cost, cooling measures, the size of the proc itself, and power consumption and failure to sell is predictable.

Re:Of course it failed; it was a useless gimmick

[ColaMan]

But.... but... they used the "EXTREME" adjective!
That should've moved a million units , right there!

Sales reap: "Hey buddy, wanna buy a (takes deep breath) Intel Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition supporting Hyper-Threading technology 3.20GHz with 800MHz processor system bus in mPGA478 packaging ?"

Customer : "Er, no"

Sales Rep: "Hmm, the fact that it's the EXTREME EDITION does nothing for you?"

Customer : "Oh, its the EXTREME EDITION?!? I simply must take things to the (strains voice) EXTREME!! I'll take six!"

Sales Rep: "Really?"

Customer : "No, you idiot. Now show me your Athlon stock before I lose my patience and go buy my stuff online."

Re:Of course it failed; it was a useless gimmick

[rsmith-mac]

It may have been a failed gimmick performance wise, but it puts AMD in an odd situation. AMD had the Athlon FX line positioned against the P4EE's, while the high-end A64's went against the normal P4's(the 3800+ is priced similar to the 3.6ghz P4, etc), and now the P4EE line isn't there. AMD is going to need to do some repositioning of the FX line, otherwise it will fall in between the consumer A64, and the workstation/server Opteron 1xx line.

Re:Of course it failed; it was a useless gimmick

[Mac Degger]

Well, you have to admit that it does make for a great cpu to do 3d work with. Large L3=good for thta kind of thing, expecially if you can't afford a four processor xeon box or something similar.

Re:Of course it failed; it was a useless gimmick

[Deliveranc3]

Gaming performance on processors has been increasing increadibly slowly.

Trying to sell processors to high end gamers may start becomming an uphill battle. a 2500+ is still pretty much all you need, (Though I'd buy a 939 a64 if I was purchasing) and when the money can go towards a x800pro you can see that even the low end gamer crowd (Yes you can build a gaming rig for $500) will be looking at you dubiously.

Re:Of course it failed; it was a useless gimmick

[the_2nd_coming]

hm, well considering all the processors from the 2400+ to the 3000+ have nearly the same clock speed, the only difference is the amount of cache and the FSB, does it surprise you?

the name gimik worked great for AMD, they make it look like they are making progress, but in reality their chips are all clocked the same. funny how AMD fanboys bash the G5 for only going 2.5 GHz.

Re:Of course it failed; it was a useless gimmick

[Dogtanian]

Sales Rep: "Hmm, the fact that it's the EXTREME EDITION does nothing for you?"

Problem; anyone who is likely to be swayed by the fact it's called "Extreme" (*) is going to expect it to be spelled "Xtreme". Or "Xxxtreme". Or "Xtreme to the MAXXXXXXXXXXX!".

They could have put a little picture of Tony Hawk on top of the CPU (the fact that the heatsink would cover it up shouldn't matter when you're selling to cretins).

Anyway, it's passe now, Intel have just announced the "P4 Street Edition". It's totally urban, dude!

(*) Technical term: Stupid fscker with too much money.

Re:Of course it failed; it was a useless gimmick

[bofkentucky]

But that is the thing, If you wanted a 4 processor xeon box to do 3D/rendering, the EE was not MP capable and had half the cache of the equivalent Xeon core, Gallatin had 4MB L3 cache versions, EE had 2MB mx

You mean

[Omega1045]

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.'

You mean everyone has been heading for the less expensive, better performing AMD chips, from which you are now copying instruction sets.

"EE"

[MarcoPon]

Maybe because "EE" really stand for Extreme Expensive?

Bye!

Re:"EE"

[jaywee]

No, It's Emergency Edition

Branding

[mauthbaux]

Honestly, I think that the only thing that as far as cost and performance ratios go, AMD has the upper hand. People who keep up with the industry are (I assume) fairly well aware of this fact.

From what I can tell, intel's only remaining advantages are in niche markets (not consumer desktops), and the fact that most people buying consumer-level desktops haven't even heard of AMD. I doubt that AMD will be able to overthrow intel's brand-recognition supremacy, but intel will be facing some tough decisions if they do...

Re:Branding

[leereyno]

Most people buying consumer-level desktops don't know the difference between a CPU and a CPA.

Intel only has brand name recognition because they advertise themselves as a brand name.

I think AMD would do well to advertise themselves as a brand also. If I were them I'd completely ignore Intel in my ads. Rather than saying "We're just as good as intel," they should be saying "We're the shit and we've never even heard of Intel."

The reason that this kind of advertisement would be successful is because your average consumer doesn't know anything about computers. Ads that simply encourage consumers to feel good about AMD as a brand will therefore be more effective than ads with a more technical message. They should use the fact that consumers don't know about them to their advantage by NOT introducing themselves as an underdog or their wares as "3rd party" products. They should instead imply that they and their products are the standard, which increasingly they are.

Lee

Re:Branding

[leereyno]

This is just a repeat of the problems that people used to have with Cyrix based systems. Companies would take a cyrix cpu, put it on a bottom-feeder motherboard, connect that to a piece of crap power supply, and then stick marginal memory on it.

The result? A system that was unstable and flaky.

The reason wasn't because the Cyrix CPU's were bad, but because they were the only primary component that wasn't crap. Now I'm not saying that Cyrix processors were great, only that the reputation they had as being flaky was undeserved. Pair them up with good quality components and the end result was just as stable as anything based off of AMD or Intel's processors.

The reason why Cyrix's CPU's were especially sensitive to the quality of the motherboard they were paired with is because they drew significantly more current than the Pentiums they were competing with. A crappy motherboard is going to have crappy power regulation. Plug in something that taxes that power system and the result is not going to be pretty.

As for the current issues that some people may be having with low-end consumer grade systems, all I can say is that from what I've seen the quality of those systems is about on par with an E-machines. I'd be shocked and amazed if there weren't just as many problems with the Intel based bottom-feeder systems that are being sold along side those Athlons.

I have two Athlon systems at home and two more at work. These are all systems that I put together myself. I've never had any problems with them, either from a compatibility standpoint or in terms of stability.

The bottom line is that, right now, AMD is the better choice just about any way you look at it. The only reason I can see someone buying or advocating Intel's wares is if they own stock in the company.

Not discontinued and not stopping making P4EEs

[ricky-road-flats]

It's just the 3.2GHz one, the oldest and slowest. Now the 3.4 and 3.6 are out, it's natural to retire the slowpoke of the bunch.

There's no mention whatever of the whole Extreme Edition line being stopped, in fact they recently said they would be making further new ones in the near future... This is mentioned (with new FSB and clock speeds) here and here and here, for instance - and all quite recently.

Re:Not discontinued and not stopping making P4EEs

[mczak]

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.

Re:AMD for gaming, Intel for real work.

[mabinogi]

> thus I use Intel. I tested AMD once.

Yup, you're right, them XScales sure beat those K5s

While you're at it, you'd better check your Microsoft using your Norton, I think your Adobe just got trashed.

Re:AMD for gaming, Intel for real work.

[Anonymous Coward]

But for real work, I prefer real computer.

"VAX - when you care enough to steal the very best"

No, it was a planned failure...

[Kjella]

...everyone could take one look at the specs and see that it wouldn't sell well if at all. Intel isn't that stupid either. But it managed to squeeze the little extra on the performance graphs comparing the "best" AMD vs Intel processors, cost and other things be damned.

As processor speeds exceed what most people use them for (multi-GHz machine to check mail and surf web, sigh), it is all about perception. Most people would be happy with both AMD and Intel running their box. Of course the slightly more tech-savvy saw what was going on, but the average Joe doesn't know.

To him, Intel is still the strong market leader and AMD the outsider. Intel fumbled once with the Athlon being the fastest thing around, they're not making the same mistake twice. If they showed signs of weakness, it could cost them vastly more in "mainstream" P4 sales than keeping a EE line to put on charts.

Kjella

Re:No, it was a planned failure...

[ncr53c8xx]

But it managed to squeeze the little extra on the performance graphs comparing the "best" AMD vs Intel processors, cost and other things be damned.

But it was still beaten by many of the AMD chips, so even the desperate move didn't pay off. Remember the 1 GHz PIII? They put out an overclocked chip to beat AMD and it blew up in their face.

Intel fumbled once with the Athlon being the fastest thing around, they're not making the same mistake twice. If they showed signs of weakness, it could cost them vastly more in "mainstream" P4 sales than keeping a EE line to put on charts.

It was much more than a stumble. For the first time, Intel is behind AMD in technology, and everything they have thrown at the problem has failed (the Itanic, Rambus). And now their CEO is expressing his frustration in public about product delays and failures. Looks like everything is going AMD's way.

Long product name...

[oberondarksoul]

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.

Try saying that with a mouth full of cheese three times fast...

They're just up to par again

[owlstead]

All insdustry watchers, maybe except Toms Hardware, saw the EE as a trick to get the performance crown from AMD again. At (literally) any price. I don't know if it sold; you must really want to have the ultimate performance at any price to buy one.

Now that they've released faster processors that are up to par on performance with AMD (and removed the GHz speeds from the processor names) there is no need for the extreme edition any more. So now they don't have to sell server chips to make up for bad performance on the PC front.

No surprise

[slayer99]

Hyperthreading is a neat hack, nothing more. It seems designed exclusively to fool non-techies into thinking that they have a 2 or 4 way system when in fact they have half the number of actual processors, and additional really crippled ones.

That combined with the price means my last purchase was a pair of dual opteron workstations.

Re:No surprise

[jrockway]

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...

Re:No surprise

[Proc6]

Do you actually use a computer to do real CPU intensive work?

I do, a ton of it. The last 10 years of my life have been rendering animation, compressing video, and authoring CDs and DVDs. At any time I have 1-3 apps maxing the CPU(s) of my machine(s). As my primary workstation I have always had duals, but worked on singles often. Duals make Windows tolerable but are expensive. Hyperthreading brought 90% of the smoothness of duals to the average person. You can be rendering out an AfterFX composition (or anything compute bound) and the machine still feels pretty light on the load.

Now if HT CPUs were 3x the cost, yes, that would be gimmicky. But it's a feature that's become standard in CPUs and doesn't really cost you any noticeable amount more (P3 HT 3ghz is what, $200? oooo scary), and in the end gives everyone somewhere between a "little" smoother to "a hell of a lot" smoother functioning OS's. Gosh, that sucks. It's not out to "fool people", it's a nice advancement in processor technology.

Re:No surprise

[vxvxvxvx]

The difference is if you run intel hyperthreading, intel says "Way to go, we'll support you!" and if you run dual xp's, amd says "Uh, we don't support that."

Kinda like running dual celerons back in the old days I suppose.

Re:Sadly some techies are fooled just as well

[demon]

While SPARC and MIPS64 and other architectures now have Intel CPUs giving them a run for their money CPU-performance-wise, those systems still kick pretty much any Intel- or AMD-based system's ass in I/O bandwidth. AMD systems have a definite advantage over Intel, however, due to their licensing of the HyperTransport bus design from Alpha Processor Inc., or whoever the current holders are of the Alpha processor design - it really does kick a lot of ass. However systems like the SPARCs were designed with the ability to handle high I/O load in mind, and commmodity systems still aren't quite so much so.

Re:AMD? Really?

[Chordonblue]

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.

Re:Branding (intel is doomed again)

[Bedouin X]

Intel still has a couple of advantages, and one of them is the heat problem that comes with AMDs. OK, in a normal case you'd never notice because you basicly have the room to fit in airconditioning if you wanted to. In a 1U case however, you have to stick to about 1cm (that's less than half an inch, for those who don't know the metric system) for a fan.

On a 1U with an intel on the motherboard, I've rarely had any cooling problems. On a 1U with an AMD I've on regular basis had problems. The money customers save on buying an AMD, they'll have to spend on buying a 2U instead of a 1U.

One word: Hammer.

Learn it. Love it.