Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Dual-Core Pentium 4 Slated For 2Q 2005

Posted by timothy on from the also-makes-toast dept.

Quantrell writes "Today is the first full day of the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco, and Intel has announced that dual-core Pentium 4s are coming in the second quarter, one in the Extreme Edition line (no surprise there), and also the Smithfield Pentium 4 800 series, which is the next so-called consumer desktop line. No word on pricing, yet."

19 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. About time... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Twice the inefficiency!

    1. Re:About time... by mrwonton · · Score: 5, Funny

      I don't know about AC, but I live in Michigan, and plan on putting one of these in every room. Central heat? Naaah, distributed dual core pentiums.

      --
      Not more than you need, just more than you want
  2. Lack of bandwidth? by ajiva · · Score: 5, Informative

    While dual processors is great and all, I'd rather see double the memory bandwidth then double the processing power. In the case of Intel processors (especially duals) memory bandwidth is severly lacking, and while DDR-2 should help a bit, I don't expect to be that impressed with the new dual cores.

    1. Re:Lack of bandwidth? by Monkelectric · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's the real problem with hyperthreading. Running 2 processes at once (in the sense that it does, anyways) blows up your cache. You really need 2 seperate caches or a muhc much larger one.

      --

      Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley

  3. What about P5? by pranay · · Score: 5, Funny

    What about P5? I will need it to play my copy of Duke Nukem Forever!

  4. Awsome! by irokitt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now I can fry two eggs at once!

    --
    If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
  5. Re:Well Intel I got to hand it to you . . . by tesmako · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A kludge winning out in the end sure would be consistent with x86 history.

  6. Re:Well... by BlueThunderArmy · · Score: 4, Funny
    Looks like the "Who is Winning the CPU War" line just shifted again.
    No, I think Apple's still on top of that.
  7. Pricing... by riptide_dot · · Score: 4, Funny

    "No word on pricing, yet."

    Is that kind of like saying "if you have to ask, you can't afford it"?

    P4 EE - $989

    Gotta go; I have to sell a kidney or three to afford this thing...

    --
    I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
  8. Re:What kind of sockets will there take? by David+Ziegler · · Score: 5, Informative
    That must be because you didn't read the article:

    The Pentium Processor Extreme Edition will be combined with a new chipset named the Intel® 955X Express chipset, formerly codenamed "Glenwood," that includes features such as Intel® High Definition Audio, PCI-Express and faster dual-channel DDR-2 memory.

    Intel will also couple its mainstream "Smithfield" processor with two new chipsets named the Intel® 945G Express chipset and Intel® 945P Express chipset, both previously code-named "Lakeport" in the second quarter of the year.

    And:

    And before you ask, the new dual-cores require new chipsets, so these CPUs will not run on existing systems. AMD fans, meanwhile, can still hope that their dual-core parts will run in Socket 939.

    --
    -David Ziegler
    -
  9. Re:Well... by mako1138 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not really. Intel has been playing catchup all this time, first with 64-bit and now with dual core. Opteron was built from the ground up to support more than one core, which is the beauty of it.

    Here's a long discussion on the current dual core situation on Ace's Hardware. (They use a lot of codenames. "Smithfield" I think is what this /. story refers to. "Yonah" is somewhere in the future.)

  10. Re:Well... by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well, now with two cores that are near half as efficient, I think they are just about to catch up. :)

    --
    Pretty Pictures!
  11. Reading around though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    AMD has been providing working real dual-core samples to partners for months, whilst dual-core Intel processors are apparently in short supply.

    This smells of Intel running to get there first before AMD, so they aren't second again with a technology.

    HyperThreading is disabled in the Smithfield dual-core product too, so expect a mere 50% overall performance increase at the same clock speed (2.8GHz, 3GHz, 3.2GHz soon afterwards) for Intel. AMD stand to gain more from dual-cores, as they have no HyperThreading equivalent at the moment, and AMD have said that dual 2.4GHz will be possible, that's two 4000+ rated processors, probably overall performance of 6000-7000+. That's a bit better than the 5000+ performance from a dual core Smithfield.

    Dual core AMD will likely perform a lot higher than dual core Intel therefore.

  12. 130 Watts!! by leathered · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The jokes about the heat these puppies will pump out couldn't be more appropriate. An article at Tom's states that the Smithfield core has a thermal design power of 130W making it by far the hottest x86 CPU ever seen.

    In contrast, AMD's dual core offering will offer no increase in TDP over their present single core designs.

    --
    For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
  13. Dupe? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Previous story: NASA Proposes Warming Mars

  14. Re:Good explanation of how this will actually help by Chirs · · Score: 4, Informative

    It works exactly the same as an SMP system. Any OS capable of handling SMP will be able to handle this, including WinXP Pro (but not "Home").

    As for app support, any time you're doing a task that is parallelizable, you may be able to benefit.

    If you are running two totally different processes at once, then you get immediate benefits. (And immediate subtle bugs, if the processes share resources and weren't properly written for SMP).

    If you are running a single multi-threaded app, you get immediate benefits. (And immediate subtle bugs, if the app wasn't properly written for SMP).

    If you only run a single app, and that app has only a single thread, then you will not gain much at all.

  15. New Case Design - Not mentioned by dsginter · · Score: 4, Funny

    Nere's a pic of the new form factor that they will be using for the case.

    --
    More
  16. Re:... questions ... by djohnsto · · Score: 4, Informative

    It will not use socket 478, but it may use LGA775. Dual-core P4's will let you execute 2 simultaneous threads at about 1.5-1.8X speed they would run on a single core P4 (given the same clockspeed). Single-threaded apps will not see a performance improvement (although you could run 2 single threaded apps and get an aggregate improvement). These will probably also be 64-bit enabled.

    If you want dual-core, I would imagine Intel's will be cheaper than AMD's at intro. The Smithfield processor is in their performance mainstream segment (i.e. same as current Pentium 4 - not Xeon). AFAIK, AMD will intro dual-core with their Opteron line. Not sure when it hits the Athlon FX / Athlon 64 line.

    --
    Dan
  17. Dual-core P4 EE w/ HT - best product name ever. by eric_brissette · · Score: 5, Funny

    Honestly. The Dual Core Intel Pentium Processor Extreme Edition with Hyper-Threading Technology.

    Am I the only one that thinks that sounds funny? Like someone took a steaming PR doodoo into the buzzword generator at Intel?

    Personally, I think I'll hold off until they release the Dual Core Intel Pentium Processor Fusion Edition Titanium Pack PRO with Spastic-Threading Nano-Techno-Giga-Awesome Technology.