Intel's July 23 launch schedule and price cuts for Core 2 Duo
Eight weeks until Intel's new architecture
Here are two launch dates you might want to put on your
calendar, July 23 and July 11. AMD will introduce its widely hyped LGA
1207-pin Socket on July 11, followed by Intel's shipments of its widely
hyped Core 2 Duo Conroe processor on July 23 -- just in time for Kristopher's
twenty-third birthday.
Conroe, now officially
known as Core 2 Duo for desktops, is officially scheduled to ship on July
23. Intel has already stated that the company plans for Conroe to account
for 40% of its desktop sales by Q1'07 -- a massive undertaking for a completely
new architecture. The pricing for July 23 on Conroe is still
exactly as we had
published back in April. Intel allowed some benchmarks of Conroe
earlier this year,
with reasonably
favorable results. Intel has also put out an advisory saying it will aggressively sell its 9xx and 8xx dual-core processors between June 4, 2006 and July 23, 2006 in order to dump inventory before the Conroe launch.
With the Opteron Revision F launch, we will see the new processor cores Santa
Ana and Santa Rosa. Santa Ana is actually a dual-core
AM2 component targeted specifically for workstations and 1U servers, while Santa
Rosa is an LGA-1207 dual-core Socket F processor. There are no
single-core Opteron Revision F processors. Quad-core Revision G Opterons (Deerhound)
are not anticipated
for at least another year.
AMD's new 1207-pin socket, dubbed Socket F, has made a few appearances
on DailyTech already. The socket will be AMD's first
land-grid-array (LGA) socket using the same method of contact pads for the
processor found on Intel LGA-775 and LGA-771 processors. The retention
clip is also a radical change for AMD.
Update 06/18/2006: Intel has pushed the official embargo of Conroe to July 27, 2006 (the shipment dates are still July 23), and AMD has moved the Socket F launch to August 1, 2006.
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