Intel Dual-Core Systems Begin Shipping Monday

ThinSkin writes "The wait for Intel's dual-core processor is over, that is if you're willing to fork over some dough for a Dell or Alienware system bundled with the chip. Intel just announced that Monday marks the first day dual-core systems hit the market with Dell's Precision 380 workstation and its next generation Dimension XPS desktop, which start at $2,999. PC Magazine got a chance to play with the XPS system and came away quite impressed."

Comments

No thanks

[Quasar1999]

I still haven't found anything that truely taxes my existing 3.2ghz P4. Games push the video card, not the CPU... I'm sure servers could benefit, but I don't see a major improvement in end user experience for these gaming systems.

Re:No thanks

[selectspec]

Don't forget memory bandwidth and disk I/O as bottlenecks for most desktop apps. Obviously network bottlenecks are the most obvious, but disk I/O is a big pain (think about boot time and launching apps). For games and such, increasing memory bandwidth and system bus speeds would greatly improve performance over adding additional cores.

Dual cores are great for servers and embedded systems, but not sure about typical desktops.

Re:No thanks

[way2trivial]

burn many dvd's?

Every try to play a game while encoding a dvd?

watch a different video while encoding a dvd?

I look forward to it like you can't believe.

Re:No thanks

[fshalor]

PLay a game while burning Mp3's... That will *kill* your single core.

Do it with the dual core 3.2's and you'll better game performance witlh encoding. Though sliughtly less than with the single core and single task.

IMO, these aren't a sub for dual procs yet. But there' promising enough to give them a cost challange soon. And ther'e obviously better than single procs for any intensive cpu tasks that a user needs to do (not just wants for the money) while still having their computer usable.

I just m$ doesn't take advantage of this for more eye candy crap.

Re:No thanks

[YrWrstNtmr]

I still haven't found anything that truely taxes my existing 3.2ghz P4.

They said the same thing about the 386/25 way back when. Don't worry, the software will catch up.

Re:No thanks

[rpozz]

So it's worth buying an insanely expensive CPU so you can encode DVDs while doing something else? Unless you do an awful lot of DVD encoding it seems like a waste of money to me. Better spending that money elsewhere.

The original poster was correct. A >= 3GHz P4 or any AMD64 will be more than enough for normal games as long as you have a decent graphics card. And yes, that includes Doom 3.

Re:No thanks

[NutscrapeSucks]

So it's worth buying an insanely expensive CPU...

These EE boxes are only so expensive so that Intel can rape the early adopter hotrod crowd.

When mainstream Dual-Core P4s hit, they won't be that much more expensive than regular P4s. As a longtime smp user, I certainly think it will be worth the extra $50-$100 to get one of these systems.

So much for the AMD threats

[hazee]

What a massive co-incidence that Dell threatened (again) to look at supplying AMD chips just days ago. Not.

I wonder if the threats did them any good, or if Intel have now got so used to the cries of wolf that they called Dell's bluff? Intel probably told Dell to shut the hell up or miss out on the launch.

intresting looking on the inside..

[gl4ss]

pic.

but 4000 bucks.. well, it SHOULD be impressing.

but seriously though.. it seems like a "thank you mates! were so happy we actually GOT this thing and not having to just do a paper review on your paper launch".
just check these:
"
Subratings (out of 100):
Video: 100
Gaming: 100
Music: 100
Photo: 100
"
ok.

Re:intresting looking on the inside..

[Slack3r78]

Actually, if I were spending $4000 on a computer, I'd be annoyed to see IDE cables. For that price, I'd *expect* Plextor SATA optical drives, but that's just me. :-P

100% for Gaming? NOT!

[Brian Stretch]

The system doesn't quite hit the perfect 60+ frames per second score in Doom 3 at 1,600-by-1,200, but no single graphics card solution has so far, and 40 fps is still quite playable.

Yeah, but Athlon 64 SLI graphics card solutions have. Oddly enough, PCMag only directly compares this Intel Pentium EE 840 box with an Intel Pentium 4 EE 3.73GHz box. Any hard-core gamer who buys an Intel dual-core machine to play his SINGLE-THREADED GAMES instead of an Athlon 64 dual video card SLI box is beyond hope. Torch your money responsibly, kids.

Dell and Intel get 100% from PCMag for "Best Bribes Paid". Geeze.

Re:100% for Gaming? NOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but Athlon 64 SLI graphics card solutions have

Oddly enough, Pentium 4 SLI graphics card solutions have too!

Gee, what does the chip have to do with the capability of the fact that this was a single video card box?

Hit the Market... It's so meaningless

[SuperficialRhyme]

These are hitting the market but won't be shipped for a few weeks - or so I gather from what I read in TFAs. By "Hit the market" they seem to mean "vendors are taking orders" which - to me - seems meaningless.

AMD claims not to do this in one of the articles:
""'t is important to note that AMD only announces products when we are able to immediately begin shipping for revenue and that we have been shipping dual-core AMD Opteron processor production samples to customers and partners since January,' the statement added."

I guess we'll just have to see if AMD actually has products available at their release or if they're just doing the same thing Intel seems to be doing here.

The biggest benefit of dual core...

[JollyFinn]

Is not the single thread performance or how fast can you finish task X.
Its responsiveness of the system. I'm using A64 3000 and I get annoying stalls on system level.
The CPU spends time with the backside thread, while I would love it working on UI, there is annoying stall. Multiple CPU:s according to reviews remove those issues. And don't say having 20% higher processor clock speed is going to help, its by simple fact that CPU was just doing something else at a time I would of loved it to handle UI events. Having 2 cores means, that responsiveness of a system is greatly improved, atleast until people write most of their applications to tie up more than one core ;)

Multitasking would be great for my desktop!

[3770]

Oh man,

I can't wait to get dual cores on my desktop. And to me the biggest advantages are responsiveness and better multitasking.

I really dislike how unresponsive my computer gets when I'm doing something computationally intensive, such as maybe ripping a CD.

I would also love it if my firewall and antivirus protection could be offloaded to another processor.

Re:Multitasking would be great for my desktop!

[GweeDo]

I seriously hope this post was intended to be "+5 Funny" but got modded wrong! Ripping a CD is CPU intensive? Crap, using error correction (slows down the pull from the cd) I can rip in real time to AAC (I use iTunes) and still have AVG running and still browse the web and still have OpenOffice Writer up and still have Gaim running too. All of this on a 1.83ghz single core Athlon XP-mobile.

Re:An improvement

[Homology]

In many setting we don't care abuot the heat....just raw performance. The heat issue is of concern of course..just that when it comes to serious computation you only care about the processing performance....now for home users heat/electrcity becomes a much bigger concern...also I guess if you are building a 2000 node cluster...then the extra heat would translate into significant costs... just my worthless 0.025431343 cents worth.

for the rest...of us...that care about stability...heat is an issue...as well...as...the required...cooling...does makes it sound...like my vacuum cleaner...only louder...This translate into....considerable costs...due to reduced concentration while...actually....trying...to do some...work.

Apple irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's an apple zealot. You can't expect too much from those.

Re:Apple is already there

[Anonymous Coward]

The apple G5 dual 2.5ghz includes 512mb of ram, a radeon 9600xt, a 160gb hard drive, and no display. The Dell XPS gen5 includes 1gb of ram, 500gb of hard drive space, a 20" display, and a 'high performance graphics card' (which will most likely be better than a 9600xt). Try pricing a system that is ACTUALLY equivalent to the Dell XPS gen5 out at Apple and see what it costs you before you claim they are going for the same price.

Re:HP taking orders for dualcore opterons already

[Jeffrey Baker]

Tyan Thunder K8WE: 2 independent x16 PCI-Express buses (40 lanes total), two independent GigE interfaces, PCI-X, PCI, SATA, SCSI, 1394, USB. Is there an Intel motherboard with comparable equipment?

[crickets]

Thought not.

Why?

[Shaheen]

Someone please answer this question for me: Why? Why does the average consumer need a dual-core processor? For that matter, why does the average consumer need a dual processor configuration at all? Are the people buying $3000 dual-proc G5s just being elitist?

My point is this. Let's see what the average consumer does with his computer:

- Surfs the Internet
- Reads email
- Watches DVDs
- Plays music
- Plays games
- Maybe does some work

Note that among all of those things, people rarely do them all at once (and I am not talking about the Slashdot population that does work, listens to music and has browser windows open all at the same time).

Games are the only taxing item there, and most PC games are not even multithreaded. Gamers that buy the Alienware system are literally just wasting cash.

On top of all of this, no matter how much you do, your CPU spends quite a bit of time (upwards of 85%) in the idle thread (aside from you SETI@Home people).

When you put all that together, it makes little sense to buy a dual-core CPU for your desktop PC.