Intel Core 2 Updates, QX6850 and E6750
An anonymous reader writes "As AMD's Barcelona approaches, the price war between AMD and Intel continues. To spice things up a bit this week, Intel is throwing into the ring a number of new processors, refreshing the Core2 line-up. HEXUS reviews the high-end QX6850 and mid-range E6750: 'Now is a golden time for anyone looking to buy a new CPU, whether Intel or AMD. The latest round of price cuts means you can now get an incredible level of processing performance for little more than £100. But if your need to buy is not urgent, remember that Intel and its big rival are each promising new processors before the end of the year — AMD with K10 quad-core and Intel with 45nm Penryn-derived CPUs.'"
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2158619 ,00.asp
Just in case anyone is interested in buying a new QX6850 which features 3Ghz 8mb cache quad core processor with 1,333MHz FSB. It is going to cost you $999.
HotHardware also has a full review up right here. They were able to take the new quad-core up to over 3.7GHz and show power consumption numbers for all the high end chips as well.
Yes and no,
Some of the bugs will be fixed, others won't. Every CPU has bugs, it's just a fact of life. These things are designed by humans, it's just going to happen. CPU errata happens with Intel (This is the Core2 link) and AMD. None of this is a major threat to most users, and they get worked around by most people pretty quickly. Microsoft have released fixes for the Core2 issue, as have Apple. I don't know whether there has been an update to the kernel for these yet, but I am sure they would get back ported by your distribution.
There is a note here and here regarding the Core 2 bugs, I think one of these might have even become a slashdot article at one point. The two links here both are referring to Linus' comment of it being "Totally insignificant", which given that he worked for Transmeta and knows a lot more about how the industry works, I would be putting a bit of faith in his statement.
As another poster said, keep up to date on your BIOS revs, as CPU microcode does have fixes for this stuff too.
Berny
Curiosity was framed; ignorance killed the cat. -- Author unknown
There's a planned price cut for Intel on July 22nd. http://www.vr-zone.com/index.php?i=4976
Q6600 2.4 1066 $530 $266
E6850 3.0 1333 - $266
E6750 2.66 1333 - $183
E6550 2.33 1333 - $163
E6540 2.33 1333 - $163
The quad core (Q6600) is getting a ~50% price cut.
Here is another by Tom's hardware, covers benchmarking the 6650 as well, and compares to all the current AMD and Intel chips in a whole wack of different benchmarks.
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http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/16/cpu_charts
Anandtech has a pretty good article about these releases and also about the price cuts. This is looking great for me when I build a new computer in a few months (on which I'm planning to spend $150 chip from two years ago look pathetic. Oh well.
Of course, I'll need to figure out AMD vs. Intel. I just wish Intel had a better bus design. AMD has a good bus (HT) and Intel has the best chips right now. Maybe if they merged...
Athlon64 X2 4000+ 2.1GHz (Brisbane-65nm) - $70
Yes, this low-end dual-core is half the price, but not half the performance. Therefor a real bargain.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Add to that incredibly low memory prices and incredibly low HDD prices and you can piece together something fast and cheap with little cash.
Unfortunately, the mid-range graphics market for DX10 parts isn't up to par with the rest of the parts. There is a void between $125 and $260. The geforce 8600GT is the $125 part, which is ok, and the 8800GTS is in the $260 range. The 8600GTS is about the same speed as a 7900GT, give or take, and in the $150-$200 range. Being that previous generation midrange cards did very well against their high end predecessors, this is not the best generation of cards. The new AMD/ATI offerings are both worse than the nvidia ones, so thats no help at all.