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Hardware Updated Pentium, Conroe Pricing
Sven Olsen (Blog) - April 4, 2006 4:04 PM
Print 48 comment(s) - last by Crappuccino.. on Apr 25 at 1:53 AM

Intel's most recent pricing of upcoming desktop processors
Intel has a few tweaks to the pricing structure for its next generation CPUs

Yesterday we brought you the details on AMD's AM2 processor pricing.  Today we have word from Intel insiders that some of the Conroe pricing has been released. 

The 2.67GHz Conroe CPU featured in the IDF benchmarks last month will have an official MSRP of $530 at launch.  The 2.6GHz AMD Athlon 64 FX processor used in those benchmarks costs a little over $1000 today, though AMD roadmaps have revealed this product will not get a price cut until June at the earliest.  AMD's top of the line DDR2 2.6GHz processor will ship for just under $700 at the end of Q2'06. 

The slightly slower 2.4GHz version will come with a $316 price tag.  Even slower versions with half of the L2 cache will start at $209.  As expected, Pentium D processors will take a huge price cut.  The Pentium D 950, available today for a mere $637, will drop to an incredible $241 at the time of the Conroe launch. 

Conroe still does not have an official launch date, but Intel employees have claimed Conroe will launch "as early in Q3 as humanly possible." 

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My only question!
By Einy0 on 4/5/2006 10:12:24 AM , Rating: 1
Where did all the Intel Fan Boys come from? They been in hiding all this time while Intel was getting their butt kicked performance wise? lol too funny




RE: My only question!
By cgrecu77 on 4/5/2006 12:28:55 PM , Rating: 2
they're only one user, but posting under different names ... :)
just like those guys that defend RIAA, I mean who in their right mind would defend RIAA or Intel or Microsoft for that matter? :)


RE: My only question!
By INeedCache on 4/5/2006 2:02:03 PM , Rating: 2
I am in my right mind and I would defend Microsoft, at least against all of the BS they have been taking lately about what they can bundle with Windows. If a company wants to give me more for my money, that should be their business and I'll take it. I'm sure you don't cry when other companies do this. Ahh, but when Microsft does it then it's bad. By the way, why don't you take a few minutes and write code for an OS that cannot be hacked. Who would you defend? All businesses of this size engage in questionable business practices. If you think that's not so, you'd better wake up and smell the coffee.


RE: My only question!
By cgrecu77 on 4/5/2006 4:52:18 PM , Rating: 2
you missed my point ... I was saying that it's interesting to see how people root for multinational companies like sports fans for their favorite teams ... i have nothing against ms/intel/amd/apple and whatever, all I know is that they're all the same and they'd screw us if they only could. the only hope is when 2 of them get big enough so we have them competing each other to death. I'm not saying that we should hate them, we should have no feeling whatsoever, they are just commercial entities. If someone would tell you that they love the convenience store what would you think?


RE: My only question!
By natejohnstone on 4/5/2006 2:08:53 PM , Rating: 2
I have no loyalty one way for the other. My wife's family lives near the Microsoft "City" and my good friend is a Senior Eng. at Apple and I know a guy at AMD--they all make good products.
Basically, I'll buy whatever computer has the best price/performance ratio for me, probably this June.
I'm just excited to see this big price drop--that's good for me no matter what I buy :)


RE: My only question!
By DallasTexas on 4/6/2006 8:07:40 AM , Rating: 2
>>Where did all the Intel Fan Boys come from?<<

Surprise! There are few "X brand Fan Boys". Most are fans of 1. who has the best performamce (period)
2. who has the best bang for the buck
3. who has the cheapest price

You are amongst the minority of fools who wave the AMD flag because:
1. You're a bleeding heart for a company that continues to fails.
2. You take a check from AMD or it's suppliers
3. You have a vested interest in AMD securities

Pretty simple. When the right company comes with a better mouse trap, buyers flock to it, get excited and then want to tell their friends in stupid sites like this.


RE: My only question!
By Fnoob on 4/10/2006 3:30:10 PM , Rating: 2
Agreed on all counts except the "stupid sites like this" bit... Why are you here? Could you please provide link(s) to better, non-stupid sites for comparison? Personally I think the crew here thanklessly runs a great site. If you disagree, then begone troll. ;)


RE: My only question!
By Crappuccino on 4/25/2006 1:53:01 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
You are amongst the minority of fools who wave the AMD flag because:
1. You're a bleeding heart for a company that continues to fails.
2. You take a check from AMD or it's suppliers
3. You have a vested interest in AMD securities


1. Oh yes, AMD is failing. They failed with K8 when it spanked NetBurst and showed the inadequacy of Intel's platform and highlighted how effective HyperTransport was - essentially how a 2.6GHz CPU could compete with a 3.73GHz one. They failed miserably. [/sarcasm] Did anyone mention that AMD's market share in the US Retail market jumped to 81.5% in the first six weeks of 2006, while Intel's slid to 18.5%? Don't believe? http://news.com.com/Strike+three+for+Intel/2100-10...

2. and 3. Oh yes, this old argument that because x person supports a company, x person must be paid off or have a vested interest in them.

Did you graduate high school? Middle school? Not only should you check your facts, but your arguments are fairly...well, childish.


AMD price cuts will come...
By blckgrffn on 4/4/2006 9:18:19 PM , Rating: 2
If AMD perceives their performance to be that much lower than Intel, we will surely see some cheap x2's. Remember they use less die space than a 130nm A64 2800+ and those went for ~$120 while they were available. How awesome would that be? It would be like the Axp vs the Northwood days :D Pay throught the nose (like 2x the price) for an intel or pay so much less to get just a slightly slower AMD. I know which way I would go then.




RE: AMD price cuts will come...
By coldpower27 on 4/4/2006 10:00:28 PM , Rating: 2
No they don't Newcastle core had 144mm2 die, while the Windsor Core is 220mm2, there isn't a reduce cache core for Socket AM2 yet, it will take a shift to 65nm to bring a cost effective Dual Core for AMD. Or they can design a 90nm reduced cachedWindsor core to come out later in the life of Socket AM2 when yields improve.


RE: AMD price cuts will come...
By blckgrffn on 4/5/2006 2:30:27 AM , Rating: 2
Wrong. Manchester core. Read the article on the 3800+ at anandtech. 147mm2 die vs 144mm2. What a huge difference... :rolleyes;

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?...

Hopefully you can get the link to work.

Nat


By coldpower27 on 4/5/2006 8:04:46 AM , Rating: 2
I am talking about Socket AM2. I am well aware of Manchester.. so you can get cheap Dual Cores if you limit yourself to Socket 939. However, Intel has better margin still with Allendale here at 11x mm2 die size.


By coldpower27 on 4/5/2006 8:17:00 AM , Rating: 2
And the way you worded it made you wrong, the Manchester even though is only 3mm2 die space is larger not smaller then Newcastle's 144mm2, hence regardless of the amount of difference your statement is simply incorrect.


By coldpower27 on 4/5/2006 8:26:08 AM , Rating: 2
And I dunno AMD currently sells Semprons at the price level of around 12x with the Sempron 3400+ 120US, having to sell Manchester at that level of pricing would seriously cut into the margins AMD has been enjoying. Not to mention basically leave the Sempron 64/Athlon 64 lineup squished to bits.

AMD doesn't seem to want to sell Athlon 64's below ~ 150US or so, and Athlon 64x2 any lower then 300US or so. A 120US Manchester would leave Athlon 64's where? 60US. Ha, yeah right... lower price then even Barton.


RE: AMD price cuts will come...
By RichPLS on 4/4/2006 10:05:24 PM , Rating: 2
I can't see AMD cutting prices much more than 20% to 30% or so and that will position AMD with more expensive, hot chips competing with chipzilla and lower power, cooler, faster chips that have huge overclocking potential while being much lower cost even after AMD's 30% price cuts.

What I see is AMD cutting prices to the break even point at accellerated growth, and selling alot less than projections, hurting thier bottom line seriously further.


By natewildes on 4/4/2006 4:34:25 PM , Rating: 2
There is only about a 900Mhz difference between the E6300 and the E6700, and everything else is the same (FSB, Cache). Assuming this CPU overclocks just the same as every other Pentium 4 (it's suspected to do it better), then 900Mhz+ should be no problem with decent cooling! The days of AMD are numbered, as the price:performance of Intel is getting consistently better (i.e. Pentium D 805). Conroe will have no trouble dragging me over to Intel, unless AMD cuts their prices by half ; ).




By ChronoReverse on 4/4/2006 4:39:49 PM , Rating: 2
Indeed. I'll be paying a great deal of attention to these new chips when they come out. They look extremely promising and I've never held any loyalty to either company. It's completely determined by performance/price for me.


By coldpower27 on 4/4/2006 4:56:58 PM , Rating: 3
E6300 and E6400 both have only 2MB of cache while E6600 andE6700 have 4MB, that is the difference.


By coldpower27 on 4/4/2006 5:00:54 PM , Rating: 2
E6300 and E6400 are the Allendale Cores, sorta like Manchester to Toledo.


By smitty3268 on 4/4/2006 8:03:58 PM , Rating: 2
It's actually only about 800Mhz, but that is a lot more than 800Mhz on a P4 because of the lower clocks. It would be like OCing a 3.0Ghz P4 to 4.3Ghz. Not saying it won't happen, but I wouldn't count on that kind of an OC before I see reviews of Conroe.


Intel is doing well
By electriple9 on 4/4/2006 7:19:46 PM , Rating: 2
Intel is really catching up, and allready outperforming amd. Dual cores will get so cheap. No celerons, Would be my guess. It would be amazing if amd am2, would run at ddr2 400mhzx10 or more.
Thanks




RE: Intel is doing well
By cgrecu77 on 4/5/2006 12:37:43 PM , Rating: 2
AMD has a sizeable advantage when it comes to 64bit software (at least it used to have in previous Anand tests). Unfortunately for them Vista won't be launched until January but when it does, they should probably regain the performance crown. Conroe is faster than A64 clock for clock. but nor by much. ~25% on average AND they are already produced with .65 tech. AMD will switch to .65 by the end of the year and they probably have some tweaks in store to squeeze slightly more performance out of A64.

For this summer though, I anticipate that their defense will be to push benchmarks on Vista 64bit edition even while it's still beta.


RE: Intel is doing well
By coldpower27 on 4/5/2006 1:34:42 PM , Rating: 2

Why would they, we have absolutely no information on how well Core Architecture scales with EM64T. That information we will have to wait for at the actual launch of Core Architecture sometime in Q3. NetBurst comparisons are useless as it was thrown in like an afterthought. Your currently assuming K8 AMD64 will get a bigger boost, Core Architecture will with EM64T, this is a major assumption, there is no information to determine this as of yet.


RE: Intel is doing well
By cgrecu77 on 4/5/2006 4:23:05 PM , Rating: 2
the implementation on EMT64 is probably similar with the one in existing P4s, I don't think it has anything to do with NetBurst, after all EMT64 is about bigger registers and stuff like that, I doubt it matters how many processing units or execution steps a particular processor has. AMD is the inventor of x86-64 and their implementation was superior (the same way P4 implementation of SSEx instructions is superior over AMDs). AMD has been very quiet lately and they seem very confident that they will be able to match Intel 6 months from now, so they must have something up their sleeve, otherwise you would see much more noise coming from them. I have no idea what this "something" might be, but I know that AMD used to be superior. Considering that even though Intel benchmarked their CPU in a wide variety of tests there was not a single 64 bit test (which is weird since in 1-2 years the majority of CPUs will be 64bit). Dual core is nice, but programming for dual-core is difficult. Programming for 64bit is trivial and there's very little change in style - so most improvements in performance will come from 64bit native applications on a 64bit native OS, not from SMP attributes.


RE: Intel is doing well
By coldpower27 on 4/6/2006 12:29:08 AM , Rating: 2
Probably because they wanted to test as mature a platform as possible. 64Bit Windows is still early in it's life and not a mature OS.

Your forgetting that after a 32Bit Processor was made available, it wasn't until we had Windows 2000 was where the code was natively 32Bit, and the 386 was released I dunno back in mid 90's? Software lags behind the hardware tremendously with CPU's. 64Bit Processor wasn't truely available till Intel started getting in the game in Early 2005, AMD's contributuion from Late 2003, pales due to their lack of marketshare and capacity.

Again your assuming alot of things. So AMD is the inventor of X86-64? So what? Intel is the inventor of the x86 architecture itself, doesn't mean AMD can't create good or better processor then the creator of it does it? Same applies with X86-64 instruction set.

They have been very quite lately that I agree with, doesn't mean they are confident. 6 Months? SO you think in October they will have something that can match Conroe? Seriously doubtful if all they have is the Windsor core, and Brisbane the 65nm shrink is slated for H1 2007 so no luck on that front yet...

The only area where AMD looks good and has a decent chance is probably in the Xeon MP sector, outside of that I don't see good things for AMD.


Wow, this is great.
By Hulk on 4/4/2006 4:29:20 PM , Rating: 2
I was ready to pull the trigger on a new AMD system just when the Anandtech Conroe benches were published.

I'm glad I waited.




RE: Wow, this is great.
By segagenesis on 4/4/2006 5:58:55 PM , Rating: 5
Yes but you do realize that no matter how long you "wait" there is always something better the next day? I didn't wait and I'm still happy with what I have.



RE: Wow, this is great.
By hoppa on 4/4/2006 10:12:55 PM , Rating: 2
That has hardly been the case (with procs) for the last year, at least. Has anything at all interesting happened since dual-core was released?


A64 killer?
By The Cheeba on 4/4/2006 4:45:33 PM , Rating: 2
Uh, let's see. An Athlon 64 3000+ for $209, socket 939 1.8GHz. Or, a dual 1.8GHz Conroe with quadruple the l2 cache for $209. Let me think about that for all of about 0.1 seconds.




RE: A64 killer?
By coldpower27 on 4/4/2006 5:00:18 PM , Rating: 2
More like Athlon 64 3500+ 2.2GHZ/512KB/SingleCore for 208US or Core Duo E6300 1.86GHZ/2MB/DualCore for 209US


RE: A64 killer?
By hstewarth on 4/4/2006 5:27:04 PM , Rating: 2
Actually according to Mike's Hardware pricings for Dual Core cpus - the closest price is AMD 3800 X2 at $309 and Conroe E6600 at $316. My guess is that the Conroe will be the faster of the two.

This generation ( Conroe ) is very different than current existing generation ( Pentium 4 - Netburst ). I would not doubt that E6300 will be faster than 3500+ in a lot of operations. They should be faster than a pentium M's and 1.66Ghz Pentium is faster to 3Ghz Pentium 4 in some situations. Nobody actually knows how the the Conroes scales. I am also curious how much the cache will make a difference.

Personally, I planning to build a Woodcrest system.


RE: A64 killer?
By coldpower27 on 4/4/2006 8:11:57 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah, from the leaked pricing charts I am getting a 328US Athlon 64x2 4000+ SAM2 2.0GHZ/2x1MB vs Conroe E6600 2.4GHZ/1066FSB/4MB 316US, I have no doubt the X2 will be crushed by Conroe if the perofrmance numbers we have seen are any indication.


By sadffffff on 4/4/2006 4:19:25 PM , Rating: 2
if amd doesnt come up with somehting either better or cheaper... its going to be very weird building an intel based machine. this upcoming generation is my update time. out with my trusty 2600+ *cries*




By tjr508 on 4/4/2006 9:21:42 PM , Rating: 2
Well at least some fimilar companies are now making intel chipsets =)


By SunAngel on 4/5/2006 5:49:28 PM , Rating: 1
ROFL...you must remember the majority of us have Intel machines...and for quite some time now.


Pricing?
By ncage on 4/4/2006 4:37:05 PM , Rating: 2
Are these prices to manufac. at quantities of 1000 or is this retail price. If its retail price i think the conroe 2.4 will be on my list for $316.

Ncage




RE: Pricing?
By bamacre on 4/4/2006 8:27:51 PM , Rating: 2
Should be retail.


RE: Pricing?
By coldpower27 on 4/4/2006 8:59:26 PM , Rating: 1
I say quantities of 1000, a tad higher for Newegg and such, but anything that will sway into AMD's favor.


When will AMDs drop thier prices?
By natejohnstone on 4/5/2006 1:05:59 AM , Rating: 2
So assuming that the Conroe comes out in July, my question is WHEN will AMD drop thier prices to compensate? If they were smart, they'd do it BEFORE the Conroe comes out to secure those who are waiting for the "cheap" dual cores.
At any rate, I'm not willing to wait past July, so I very interested in what goes down.




By RichPLS on 4/5/2006 8:51:24 AM , Rating: 2
Well, AM2 Hits streets in May 06, and less then a month later, In June 06 Conroe hits the market... Earlier than expected...
AMD is smart, and they know they can't lower prices to Conroe levels and remain in the black...


To Paraphrase:
By Aquila76 on 4/4/2006 5:01:12 PM , Rating: 3
"Damn it feels good to be Techster."

This can only mean good things ahead. Intel has a competitive product (both performance AND price) again. AMD has some stuff up their sleeve including the move to 65nm and will need to do something to answer Intel (pretty sure they will). I can't wait till I get my bonus and tax return. Intel or AMD, it's gonna be a great setup.




Even Better
By chickenselects on 4/4/2006 5:04:33 PM , Rating: 2
can't wait, exactly in the price range i was looking for. Any good info on Intel's new chipsets for conroe?




Conroe here i come
By josh609 on 4/4/2006 5:29:33 PM , Rating: 2
That Conroe at 2.4GHz will be in my hands this fall. For crying in the rain, it gets a Super PI score of 21 secounds!

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php...




My take:
By bupkus on 4/4/06, Rating: 0
RE: My take:
By AnotherGuy on 4/4/2006 7:08:44 PM , Rating: 2
LOL...
I agree with part 1 and 2.. But part3 does not apply to me so i dont care... I am thinking of upgrading sometime next year maybe when dx10 videocards come out... So no rush for me Conroe or AMD... whaTEVer gives me best bang for the buck.


Conroe keeps looking better...
By Doormat on 4/4/2006 6:56:26 PM , Rating: 2
$300 for the 2.4? I cant wait for the benches, see if the conroe really performs. I can definately see AMD trying to push an FX 3GHz chip out the door when Conroe gets realeased.

It'd be nice to see integrators get off their rear end and start to actually put these chips in systems when they are released. I go look at Dells and Lenono computers for the entirprise, and I'm lucky if I find an dual core chips. I'm not sure if they dont want to canabalize their workstation sales or not, but they wont have a choice here soon - it'll be a dual core chip or nothing.




damn
By phaxmohdem on 4/5/2006 12:16:50 AM , Rating: 2
You guyz are WAY too excited. The only things I've seen so far in regards to Conroes performance are: an Intel setup benchmark, and a SuperPi result from a random benchmarker on whozit's website. The intel hype machine/marketing department has done a great job to this point apparently. I am ultimately reserving judgement until launch day. Something about all this hype seems too good to be true to me.

Then again, My lowly FX-51 has not given me the slightest reason to upgrade it, so I'm really not all that excited about it.... however If Dual cores get as cheap as advertised, I may have to pick up a three or four tasty X2 3800's or similar Conroes for my Lightwave render farm.




So the Verdict is?
By GhandiInstinct on 4/4/06, Rating: 0
"What would I do? I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." -- Michael Dell, after being asked what to do with Apple Computer in 1997

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