DailyTech - Intel Officially Announces Quad-core Products

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Hardware Intel Officially Announces Quad-core Products
Anh Tuan Huynh (Blog) - November 14, 2006 1:08 AM

12 comment(s) - last by Rike.. on Nov 14 at 3:30 PM

Xeon and Core 2 Extreme, now with four cores!

Intel today officially announced its quad-core processor families. Two quad-core product families are launching today. These families include quad-core Clovertown Intel Xeon 5300 series and Kentsfield Core 2 Extreme quad-core processors.

*Intel Clovertown* Xeon**
Processor Number	Core Frequency	Bus Frequency	L2 Cache	Price
E5355	2.66GHz	1333MHz	8MB	$1172
E5345	2.33GHz	1333MHz	8MB	$851
E5320	1.86GHz	1066MHz	8MB	$690
E5310	1.60GHz	1066MHz	8MB	$455

Four Xeon 5300 series products are launching today. These models include the 1.60 GHz E5310 up to the 2.66 GHz E5355. The new Xeon 5300 series products have 1066 MHz or 1333 MHz front-side buses with an 80 watt or 120 watt TDP. Pricing of the Xeon 5300 series varies from $455 to $1172 in quantities of 1,000. Intel Xeon 5300 series processors will work with current Bensley platform motherboards designed for the land-grid array 771 socket.

Also launching today is Intel’s Kentsfield Core 2 Extreme QX6700. This quad-core processor is catered towards the enthusiast and single processor workstation markets. The Core 2 Extreme QX6700 arrives clocked at 2.66 GHz with 8MB of L2 cache on a 1066 MHz front-side bus. Pricing for the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 is expected around $999—the usual debut price for new Intel Extreme products.

Users wishing for a more value priced quad-core processor will have to wait until 2007 for Intel to release its Core 2 Quad processors. In addition to the Core 2 Quad products in 2007, Intel is expected to release Xeon 3200 series socket LGA775 quad-core processors as well.

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not yet?

By mobutu on 11/14/2006 5:08:08 AM , Rating: 2

well, right now there's nothing on intel site about quad processors ...
and you given link leads to some generic news, nothing (yet) about quad CPU.

RE: not yet?

By tuteja1986 on 11/14/2006 7:34:23 AM , Rating: 2

For now i am happy with my E6600 @ 3.4Ghz ;) .. plays my games and i don't need a 8800GTX as i can get all my games running smooth 30FPS @ 1600x1200 8xAA 16xAF. I will buy new GPU ;( when Crysis , Alan Wake , Bioshock , UT2007 and Quake Wars comes out. Then 8900GTX would be out ;( ... Hopping some of these games take advantage of more than one core.

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RE: not yet?

By InsidiousAngel on 11/14/2006 9:26:50 AM , Rating: 2

Front page news on Intel now has info about the new Quad Core Xeons. Nothing about the desktop parts yet.

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SQL Server Administrators rejoice

By QueBall on 11/14/2006 5:08:21 AM , Rating: 2

Well, these are budget priced if you need to purchase per processor SQL Server licenses. 4 for the price of 1. :)

RE: SQL Server Administrators rejoice

By ToeCutter on 11/14/2006 9:23:24 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Well, these are budget priced if you need to purchase per processor SQL Server licenses. 4 for the price of 1. :)

Don't forget about VMware, same licensing applies ;-)

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Need For Speed

By techhappy on 11/14/2006 10:54:34 AM , Rating: 2

This is a truly awesome day, dual-core, then the quick jump to quad-core, AMD really does need to ramp up to speed, finally Intel is starting to flex it's production resources to dish out some quality hardware.

I only wish I didn't jump onto the dual-core bandwagon so early with my Pentium D 915, but with the high price of quad core right now, I think I can survive 6 months before prices are slashed.

I don't think it's too hard to imagine 10-20 cores in the coming years, it will be interesting to behold future developments and the eventual transition to a different manufacturing process, other than the typical silicon based one. Nanotube processors anyone?

RE: Need For Speed

By Lazarus Dark on 11/14/2006 1:19:46 PM , Rating: 2

speaking of speed, Ill be waiting for 1333 quad cores before making the jump. Maybe for native quad core too, when is that coming?

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Wow...

By vortmax on 11/14/2006 10:12:51 AM , Rating: 2

Intel is really laying on the heat now...especially before the Chirstmas season. I know AMD doesn't have anything to answer with right now, but man, they better start moving soon.

QUESTION

By lemonadesoda on 11/14/2006 11:14:40 AM , Rating: 2

It used to be possible to mix and match Pentium 3's in dual CPU systems, and Xeons in dual and quad systems. (ie. different clock speeds would actually work together).

Although it was possible, it wasn't very efficient, because the thread scheduler is ignorant of the DIFFERENT CPU speeds. So while having 2 CPU's meant that thread heavy applications saw a performance improvement, single thread applications might actually SUFFER due to being run on the SLOWER CPU.

However, depending on how the PC was being used, being able to recycle an older CPU with a new CPU can be useful. It meant that the PC was at least as good as a dual-system at the lower clock, but sometimes performed faster due to threads running on the faster CPU. It was also possible to "force" an application to run on one CPU rather than the other CPU. Hence applications could be run on the faster CPU and background services on the slower CPU.

QUESTIONS
1./ Is it still possible to mix and match these new processors in dual or quad socket systems?

2./ Does anyone know if the new Windows 2003 and Vista thread schedulers allow more intelligent scheduling or will it still be luck-of-the-draw?