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Intel's 64-Bit Pentium 4s Hit The Streets
ThinSkin writes "Nearly 18 months after rival AMD released its 64-bit processors, Intel quietly added its first 64-bit Pentium 4 microprocessors to the market on Sunday. Four versions of the Intel Pentium 4 6XX series were announced at speeds up to 3.6-GHz, a frequency grade lower than the existing 5XX series. Prices will range from $224 to $605. Intel also added the 3.73-GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition to its lineup, a $999 chip that is fabricated on a finer 90-nm process than its older 130-nm P4EE components. As Slashdot previously reported, the 64-bit series will likely be the major enhancement to the Pentium 4 line before the introduction of the Pentium D "Smithfield," Intel's first dual-core part, which is slated for next quarter."
Anyone know how much heat these put out?
It would be interesting to see how much business Intel theoretically lost to AMD as a result of their failed first 64-bit attempt and subsequent delay.
Question... do any of these processors come in the socket 478 form factor, or is intel forcing us to upgrade our motherboards yet again? If I have to buy a new mother board, I might as well go AMD this time around!!
Bryan
For years intel has owned the market mostly because of its slick sales and marketing department. Their commercials are wonderful, and make people honestly feel they are purchasing something super cool, super powerful, and super relevant - all while completely ignoring the nerdy specs. Why would anybody want to know Why something is strong/fast/meaningful?
These folks have managed to sell themselves to most people out there, but eventually they are going to have to put up numbers. Like car commercials...what size engine does it have? How many horsepower? How many seats? 4 wheel drive? All these things are pretty important and in the end sell cars. Specs sell chips too, but only the 'nerdy' are deemed able to understand these things so intel leaves that information out.
Now their advertising and chip naming is becoming on the level of nerdy. Who the F$@! knows what the Celeron D, P4, P4EE, P4-64, Centrino, Pentium -M, Pentium dual core, Pentium[next new thing to sell chips]? Honestly if they just put a few specs out there to differentiate chips it would make life a little easier.
What is a P4?
Which of the dozen incarnations of compatible chips do you mean? Prescott, etc...
What is hyperthreading?
What is a dual core?
Why does my 333Mhz RAM beat the S%@# out of my uber-expensive 800Mhz RAMBUS?
Why this? Why that?
Why can't people understand what they are purchasing now? Simplify people. Simplify. Or lose more market share to the ACTUAL superior product that AMD manufactures.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
If you can get all the manufacturers to agree, comparing systems based on FLOPS would be effective, because it would remove the irrelevant clock speed argument, and thus allow you to compare how much work can be done in a time frame by the processor.
Unfortunately, I doubt you'd get the manufacturers to agree to it, since it would make too much sense and allow an easy and unbiased comparison between their products.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
I think your right. I have seen benchmarks on the AMDzone forums which show that while AMD gets a speed boost (on average) from 64-bit mode, Intel takes a performance hit (again, on average) when in 64-bit mode.
Intel is just trying to be compatible with AMD64. They won't have a serious product for another quarter or two (or three).
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Just a question...
So many versions of the Pentium4.
So many cores. So many variations. So many significant architectural differences.
Seriously... when it it enough to be the Pentium5? I seriously doubt there is as much difference between the Pentium-3 and the IV (original P4) as there is between ANY other P4 cpu and this one.
Seriously... what's the deal?
Other than the 5-for-$5 jokes (Pentium 5 being a rather redundant name, after all...)
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
All of this is for Joe Sixpack. Not gamers and enthusiasts.
If you want to go 64-bit, pick up an Athlon64 2800 for about $100, or Athlon64 3000 for abt $130. AMD motherboards also work out cheaper, since they have been around for a year and a half.
The 64-bit market is just opening up, expect the pentium prices to come down significantly soon. By 2006, most processors will ship with 64-bit capability. There are not many 64-bit native applications available now. Games are still 32 bit. Windows XP 64 bit is just coming out next month. And Linux still does not support Joe.
If you are price concious, NEVER buy anything quite recent. Save the money, and buy dual-core 64-bit processors a couple of years from now.
Life is just a conviction.
Touche. Those old microprocessors are still very useful; older ones like the Z80 or 6502 even more than newer x86 ones. Zilog is still very much alive and selling countless variants of the Z80 core.