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Intel Readying Dual-Core Desktop Chip

Posted by Zonk on from the incoming dept.

sunisha.shah4eva writes "CoolTechZone is reporting that Intel is planning on introducing a dual-core Dothan chip for desktop computers. According to the article, Intel has plans to turn the performance table around with AMD. From the article: 'Finally, it looks like Intel has learned from its mistake and secretly prepping a surprise for the rest of the industry. According to the information we received, Intel is currently working on a desktop, dual-core Dothan microprocessor with SSE3 instruction set that Intel plans to launch sometime in the future. Whether the launch will take place this year or in 2006 is currently unknown.'"

5 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. I've said it once... by LegendOfLink · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'll say it again, I LOVE competition. Ever since AMD became a threat to Intel, we've seen outrageous processor wars and benchmarking tribunals. I can buy a P4 3 gig processor for about $150 now.

    Most likely, Intel will take that performance throne with their "secret". They have a way of doing that (like HT); but, we'll see something better come from AMD. And so the cycle continues...and we all benefit!

    --
    IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
    1. Re:I've said it once... by masklinn · · Score: 4, Insightful
      All AMD has to do is shrink to 65 nm and start ramping clock speeds, and they are ensured great performance numbers.
      They barely can, they'd have to change the architecture to get significant improvements of their top frequency, the A64 architecture is at it's limit currently, and can barely be upgraded from time to time...

      This is the very reason why they're pumping more cores/processor
      --
      "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
    2. Re:I've said it once... by hawkbug · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I don't think you're correct - they don't have to push their cpus at all right now, they have the peformance crown - if they have to, they will increase clock speed. Intel can't move the P4 up to 4 GHZ like they wanted, while AMD can move up a bit. Why do a I say this you ask? Have you seen the power consumption and heat dissipation of the new A64s? I have one running right here - 2.0 GHZ, Athlon 64 3200+ and it's only running at 30 C. Under full load, it hits 40 C. That's with stock cooling. That's 90 nm, wait until 65 - AMD has PLENTY of head room right now. They just aren't being forced to use it because Intel can't ramp the P4 at all - the 90 nm P4 actually put out MORE heat than the 130.

  2. Cue speculation about Apple by spyrral · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Before anyone beats me to it (surprise! I'm sure they already have) let's curb speculation about whether Apple will be able to leverage this technology in their upcoming products:
    • Apple switched to Intel for the explicit purpose of benefitting from advances like this
    • Apple will most likely be using a slightly different architechture than wintel(mobo, bios, firmware, etc), so not every hot new Intel chip will make it into an Apple system.
    • Apple will still be offering a limited selection of systems, so they will have to pick and choose what makes it into thier product line
    The first systems are more than a year away (not counting the dev system) so everybody take a deep breath.
  3. Re:Funny that, I can already buy dual-core chips by orderb13 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And if you actually looked at the performance for those chips you'd see that the pricing for the dual cores actually favors AMD on a performance basis. The difference is that Intel released their "dual core" chips for the low end, while AMD only released them for their high end chips.

    Also you're not comparing the same type of chip. Opteron is AMD's SERVER chipset, which are always more expensive than desktop chipsets.