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Preview of Intel's Dual-Core Extreme Edition
ThinSkin writes "Intel let ExtremeTech.com sneak behind the curtain of its anticipated Dual-Core Pentium Extreme Edition processor for a full performance preview with benchmarks. Bundled with essentially two Prescott cores on one die, the Extreme Edition 840 processor clocks at 3.2GHz and contains a beefed-up power management system to keep the CPUs running cool during use. Expect Intel's dual-core line to hit the streets sometime this quarter. No word on pricing yet." Update: 04/04 17:26 GMT by T : Timmus points out FiringSquad's preview, too, writing "The benchmark results are mixed, with a few applications taking advantage of the new CPU, and some that don't." And Kez writes in reference to this article to say: "Our article on HEXUS.net, covering the P4 EE in detail, states the price as £650 (that's what we're looking at in the UK anyway, not sure about the U.S.)."
No, Microsoft has said several times that hyperthreaded CPU's, along with multi-core ones will only be considered a single unit by the OS. So with XP home and a dual core chip, you are fine, just as XP pro users are with a pair of dual core chips.
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How is this informative?? The dual core chip Intel is shipping (smithfield) IS one die, with 2 cores. Actually, this is inferior to MCM packages with 2 dies, as it is difficult to get 2 cores side-by-side with equal performance/power. And yield goes down when you have to have a single large die.
Re: sharing I/O bandwidth. Intel has to do this because they don't have a built-in MCH. It has *nothing* to do with "selling chips with 2 normal P4 dies on them".
Re: Amd's offering. AMD doesn't have to change their design because they have a MCH onboard. That's why the number of pins can remain the same. On the flip side, if you change memory type, you'll have to throw away the chip. It's called engineering tradeoffs, and both companies do it.
Arrgh... practically every point in the above post is misleading or wrong, and it get's modded to +5.