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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."

20 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. Perfect system for that North Pole Wifi Hotspot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    At least cooling won't be a problem.

  2. XPS review by shreevatsa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is just that -- a review of Dell's XPS Gen 5, rather than a review of Intel's dual core, actually. Still,I guess there's a bit about dualcore.

  3. HP taking orders for dualcore opterons already by Ledskof · · Score: 5, Informative

    HP was, and still is taking orders for Dualcore Opterons systems:
    http://theinquirer.net/?article=22553

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  4. No thanks by Quasar1999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:No thanks by selectspec · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

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    2. Re:No thanks by way2trivial · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

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    3. Re:No thanks by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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.

  5. So much for the AMD threats by hazee · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  6. 100% for Gaming? NOT! by Brian+Stretch · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  7. An improvement by Gr8Apes · · Score: 3, Interesting

    over their regular single CPU offerings for those of us that run multiple apps, but I truly would like to see the real heat/performance numbers, and whether the rumored performance throttling is enabled on these. If not, how bad is the heat generation?

    From what I've read up to now, AMD's solution will outperform Intel's offering with significantly lower heat dissappation, making it a double winner. However, testing shipping units will finally quantify these processors. Can't wait for AMD's unit to ship and get compared.

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  8. Hit the Market... It's so meaningless by SuperficialRhyme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Don't Worry by Gr8Apes · · Score: 3, Funny

    MS already has plans for your second core.

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  10. Sun's been shipping dual-cores for a while now... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    The UltraSparcIV is a dual-core chip. Been shipping for quite a while now - maybe even more than a year.

    And just like the first UltraSparcs from about a decade ago, it's also fully 64-bit....

  11. Multitasking would be great for my desktop! by 3770 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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  12. I can just see the problem by stewwy · · Score: 5, Funny

    winxp to processor1 : please open this window.
    P1 to winxp: No I'm busy, ask P2
    winxp to P2: open this window
    P2 to winxp: ask the other lazy sod
    winxp to all: please or I'll BOS
    P1 and P2: go on then, we don't care
    user: ?

  13. Re:XBox by rpozz · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes. The next Nintendo console will be PowerPC-based, and the PS3 will use the Cell, which is PowerPC-based (I think). The PS3 also claims to be using multiple CPUs.

    What I can't understand is how these companies are planning to deal with the enormous amount of heat that will be dissipated from a multi-CPU system, and not make the console sound like a jet engine at the same time. Anyone able to shed any light on that?

  14. Dedicated CPU for spyware processing by DigiShaman · · Score: 5, Funny

    With all the spyware running on boxen these days, it's finally nice to have a CPU dedicated to spyware thread processing.

    Why should users prevent and remove the stuff when they can just throw more CPU cycles at it just to keep the PC responsive?

    And yes, the whole premise behind this is absurd. But people often have and do throw money at a solution out of acts of being lazy/responsible when it comes to system maintenence.

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    Life is not for the lazy.
  15. Re:Apple is already there by canuck57 · · Score: 4, Informative

    You complain that Dell is over priced while singing the praises of Apple in the same breath? How very amusing! I can't believe you even presume to be serious about this.

    At $2999 for the Dell, and $2999 for a dual G5 2.5GHz from Apple, I would say Apple has the value here. But if you rather, you can buy the Dell... I am saving my pennies for the Apple.

  16. Re:I don't get it by l3v1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't get it

    Yes, you obviously don't. Hyperthreading is not in any way like a dual processor or dualcore processor. On a HT processor you still can have threads waiting and not doing anything because another thread which is using e.g. the single FPU that the system has. If two computationally heavy threads want to run, they have to wait for their turn on the single FPU. And that is just one example for HT. On dualcore and dual processor systems you have everything doubled, which is a Good Thing.

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  17. Re:Apple is already there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're comparing Apples to Dells here...

    According to the article, the Dell has a 20" LCD, a Radeon x850, a dual layer DVD+/-RW as well as a DVD-ROM drive, 500GB of disk and 1GB of ram, a 5.1 surround sound speaker system and has dual TV tuners. An Apple dual G5 configured that way? For $3,000? I'd LOVE to see that. Coming even close to that runs well over $5000 without the speakers or TV tuners.

    And this Dell is STILL a rip off!