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Intel Hardware

Intel Discontinues Extreme Edition P4 159

bizpile writes "X-bit Labs reports that Intel is stopping production of its Extreme Edition Pentium 4s. The company said in its statement sent to clients, 'Market demand for the Intel Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition supporting Hyper-Threading technology 3.20GHz with 800MHz processor system bus in mPGA478 packaging has shifted to higher performance Intel processors.'"
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Intel Discontinues Extreme Edition P4

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  • AMD-64 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Krusty Da Klown ( 29575 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @05:44AM (#9912449)
    Since the arrival of Doom 3 I think we know to where the REAL market demand shifted.
    • I just built a Doom 3 machine w/ an AMD 64 3000+ :)

      The game runs like gravy, and of course a few others(Far Cry, UT2K4, Deus Ex: IW, etc.)
      • Re:AMD-64 (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        OMFG - I wanna have your child!!!!
  • to AMD (Score:5, Funny)

    by hkg4r7h ( 468346 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @05:45AM (#9912451)
    Market demand has shifted to higher performance, and cheaper AMD processors ;-)
    • The P4EE was largely a marketing chip from the beginning - they squeezed it out just in time to take some of the thunder out of the newly released Athlon 64 back in September of last year.

      http://www17.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030923/index.h tml [tomshardware.com]

      This largely stopped AMD from recapturing the performance crown, despite the fact that supplies of the P4EE were extremely tight, and the price was hugely non-competitive.
  • The whole line? (Score:5, Informative)

    by R2P2 ( 193577 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @05:46AM (#9912457)
    From the statement in the article, it sounds like they're just discontinuing the 3.20Ghz, socket 478 version of the chip, not the whole P4 EE line.
    • From the statement in the article it really sounds like someone has an excess of corporatespeak.

      "Market demand for the Intel Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition supporting Hyper-Threading technology 3.20GHz with 800MHz processor system bus in mPGA478 packaging has shifted to higher performance Intel processors.'"

      translates to

      "Those chips weren't selling cos they were too slow"
      • Actually it translates to

        "Those chips weren't selling cos they were $900"

        What people forget is that the real market is with OEM manufacturers.
      • Or more to the point:

        "The 3.2GHz P4EE sells for over $900 and the 3.4GHz P4EE sells for only a few dollars more. Anyone dumb enough to waste their money on such an expensive chip might as well spend the extra few dollars for the fastest and get the bragging rights".

        As the original poster correctly stated it is NOT the entire line that is being discontinued, only the 3.2GHz P4EE.

        FWIW AMD does the exact same thing with their Athlon64 FX line, they have already discontinued their FX-51 model and the FX-53
  • by TyrranzzX ( 617713 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @05:49AM (#9912465) Journal
    Why would I need a 2 meg l3 cache on a gaming processor that only increases performance by 1-5%? Combine that with extrordinary cost, cooling measures, the size of the proc itself, and power consumption and failure to sell is predictable.
    • by ColaMan ( 37550 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @06:02AM (#9912491) Journal
      But.... but... they used the "EXTREME" adjective!
      That should've moved a million units , right there!

      Sales reap: "Hey buddy, wanna buy a (takes deep breath) Intel Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition supporting Hyper-Threading technology 3.20GHz with 800MHz processor system bus in mPGA478 packaging ?"

      Customer : "Er, no"

      Sales Rep: "Hmm, the fact that it's the EXTREME EDITION does nothing for you?"

      Customer : "Oh, its the EXTREME EDITION?!? I simply must take things to the (strains voice) EXTREME!! I'll take six!"

      Sales Rep: "Really?"

      Customer : "No, you idiot. Now show me your Athlon stock before I lose my patience and go buy my stuff online."

      • by Dogtanian ( 588974 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @11:16AM (#9913462) Homepage
        Sales Rep: "Hmm, the fact that it's the EXTREME EDITION does nothing for you?"

        Problem; anyone who is likely to be swayed by the fact it's called "Extreme" (*) is going to expect it to be spelled "Xtreme". Or "Xxxtreme". Or "Xtreme to the MAXXXXXXXXXXX!".

        They could have put a little picture of Tony Hawk on top of the CPU (the fact that the heatsink would cover it up shouldn't matter when you're selling to cretins).

        Anyway, it's passe now, Intel have just announced the "P4 Street Edition". It's totally urban, dude!

        (*) Technical term: Stupid fscker with too much money.
      • Gah. For some reason I want to go to the corner store and buy a Mountain Dew and some Extreme Doritos. Damn you!

    • by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @06:10AM (#9912507)
      It may have been a failed gimmick performance wise, but it puts AMD in an odd situation. AMD had the Athlon FX line positioned against the P4EE's, while the high-end A64's went against the normal P4's(the 3800+ is priced similar to the 3.6ghz P4, etc), and now the P4EE line isn't there. AMD is going to need to do some repositioning of the FX line, otherwise it will fall in between the consumer A64, and the workstation/server Opteron 1xx line.
      • That repositioning is coming around when AMD moves to unified socket 939 on the high performance desktop processors. I think the single channel socket will only be used for the budget line (Sempron) in the future and both A64 and FX will use the same socket 939, thus being dual channel with only difference being the size of the on-die caches. Opteron will still use socket 940 for the ECC memory interface.
      • No, it doesn't. They're only discontinuing the 3.2GHz P4EE - RTFA.
      • Actually the P4EE was a knee jerk reaction to the FX. When the A64FX was first announced, there was no high end gaming CPU from Intel to speak of.

        But of course this is all moot because of what the other reply states...
      • For those of you who didn't bother to RTFA, the P4 Extreme Edition is *NOT* being discontinued, just the 3.2GHz model.

        Beyond that though, AMD doesn't really have a problem. They have done a decent job to position the Athlon64 FX chip they are currently selling as simply being the top-of-the-line Athlon64 chip at any given time. The Athlon64 FX-53 is a little bit faster than the current top-end Athlon64 3900+ and sells for only a fairly small ($100-$150) more.

        For Intel it is similar except that they have
    • by Mac Degger ( 576336 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @06:18AM (#9912525) Journal
      Well, you have to admit that it does make for a great cpu to do 3d work with. Large L3=good for thta kind of thing, expecially if you can't afford a four processor xeon box or something similar.
    • ...everyone could take one look at the specs and see that it wouldn't sell well if at all. Intel isn't that stupid either. But it managed to squeeze the little extra on the performance graphs comparing the "best" AMD vs Intel processors, cost and other things be damned.

      As processor speeds exceed what most people use them for (multi-GHz machine to check mail and surf web, sigh), it is all about perception. Most people would be happy with both AMD and Intel running their box. Of course the slightly more tech
      • But it managed to squeeze the little extra on the performance graphs comparing the "best" AMD vs Intel processors, cost and other things be damned.

        But it was still beaten by many of the AMD chips, so even the desperate move didn't pay off. Remember the 1 GHz PIII? They put out an overclocked chip to beat AMD and it blew up in their face.

        Intel fumbled once with the Athlon being the fastest thing around, they're not making the same mistake twice. If they showed signs of weakness, it could cost them vastly

    • Gaming performance on processors has been increasing increadibly slowly.

      Trying to sell processors to high end gamers may start becomming an uphill battle. a 2500+ is still pretty much all you need, (Though I'd buy a 939 a64 if I was purchasing) and when the money can go towards a x800pro you can see that even the low end gamer crowd (Yes you can build a gaming rig for $500) will be looking at you dubiously.
      • hm, well considering all the processors from the 2400+ to the 3000+ have nearly the same clock speed, the only difference is the amount of cache and the FSB, does it surprise you?

        the name gimik worked great for AMD, they make it look like they are making progress, but in reality their chips are all clocked the same. funny how AMD fanboys bash the G5 for only going 2.5 GHz.
        • AMD's chips don't need to go any faster, they are plenty fast to compete with Intel, I'm sure that Apple is just a distant thought when the business strategy is being drafted.

          It's also funny how the AMD chips seem to still have more performance than the previous ones. Maybe those FSB and cache improvements are working? Surely the 3000+ is faster than the 2500+.
    • The only reason this EE was ever released is because of the new AMD 64 chips. AMD was about to steamroll right past Intel and they had to have SOMEWAY to take away some of their fire. It's served it's purpose, but didn't really work, so it's no surprise they're dropping the line now.
  • You mean (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Omega1045 ( 584264 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @05:49AM (#9912467)
    Market demand for the Intel Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition supporting Hyper-Threading technology 3.20GHz with 800MHz processor system bus in mPGA478 packaging has shifted to higher performance Intel processors.'

    You mean everyone has been heading for the less expensive, better performing AMD chips, from which you are now copying instruction sets.

    • you know if Microsoft took up a similar philosophy, Windows might actually be a viable option for an reliable secure functional operating system.
    • Actually, Intel hasn't give AMD permission to use SSE3 yet. They'll be implementing it in their 90nm 64-bit Hammer core (it'll have less leaky transistors!! does that mean it'll water cool better?) but we don't know *when* they'll implement it.
  • Must be shifting to the new Sun technology that got double posted...
  • "EE" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MarcoPon ( 689115 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @06:09AM (#9912505) Homepage
    Maybe because "EE" really stand for Extreme Expensive?

    Bye!

  • Branding (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mauthbaux ( 652274 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @06:09AM (#9912506) Homepage
    Honestly, I think that the only thing that as far as cost and performance ratios go, AMD has the upper hand. People who keep up with the industry are (I assume) fairly well aware of this fact.

    From what I can tell, intel's only remaining advantages are in niche markets (not consumer desktops), and the fact that most people buying consumer-level desktops haven't even heard of AMD. I doubt that AMD will be able to overthrow intel's brand-recognition supremacy, but intel will be facing some tough decisions if they do...
    • Re:Branding (Score:5, Insightful)

      by leereyno ( 32197 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @06:53AM (#9912575) Homepage Journal
      Most people buying consumer-level desktops don't know the difference between a CPU and a CPA.

      Intel only has brand name recognition because they advertise themselves as a brand name.

      I think AMD would do well to advertise themselves as a brand also. If I were them I'd completely ignore Intel in my ads. Rather than saying "We're just as good as intel," they should be saying "We're the shit and we've never even heard of Intel."

      The reason that this kind of advertisement would be successful is because your average consumer doesn't know anything about computers. Ads that simply encourage consumers to feel good about AMD as a brand will therefore be more effective than ads with a more technical message. They should use the fact that consumers don't know about them to their advantage by NOT introducing themselves as an underdog or their wares as "3rd party" products. They should instead imply that they and their products are the standard, which increasingly they are.

      Lee
      • I think they are trying, I am pretty sure i remember seeing a amd ad on the side of a football match during euro 2004.
        • They are doing marketing quite extensively, for instance in the Formula 1 with Ferrari, in Cycling they sponsor USPS (Lance Armstrong). Ironically, they seem to also be picking the winner in sponsoring atm (intel is also in the F1).

      • I dunno, everytime I see somebody having huge problems with their piece-of-crap HP with an Athlon in it, I think maybe AMD is better off trying to fly under the consumer radar. I mean, if I'm Joe User and I'm aware that my crappy Best Buy PC has an AMD in it, I'm that much more likely to buy Intel next time.
        • Interesting... I have 4 machines with various athlon cpus, ranging from a slot A 700 to a dual mp2800 rig, and none of them have had any problems, ever.

          3 of the four I built myself, the other is a Compaq (now owned by hp). Perhaps the problem lies in HP's craptacular components?

        • As opposed to the piece-of-crap HPs with Pentiums in them?

          Don't judge a processor by its packaging.
        • Re:Branding (Score:3, Insightful)

          by leereyno ( 32197 )
          This is just a repeat of the problems that people used to have with Cyrix based systems. Companies would take a cyrix cpu, put it on a bottom-feeder motherboard, connect that to a piece of crap power supply, and then stick marginal memory on it.

          The result? A system that was unstable and flaky.

          The reason wasn't because the Cyrix CPU's were bad, but because they were the only primary component that wasn't crap. Now I'm not saying that Cyrix processors were great, only that the reputation they had as bein
      • ...between Dell's theme music and Intel's jingle? Not too damn many I suspect...

    • Intel still has a couple of advantages, and one of them is the heat problem that comes with AMDs. OK, in a normal case you'd never notice because you basicly have the room to fit in airconditioning if you wanted to. In a 1U case however, you have to stick to about 1cm (that's less than half an inch, for those who don't know the metric system) for a fan.

      On a 1U with an intel on the motherboard, I've rarely had any cooling problems. On a 1U with an AMD I've on regular basis had problems. The money customers

      • Say what?! Have you seen the difference in the wattage an Athlon 64 uses compared to an equivalent Prescott?!
      • Intel still has a couple of advantages, and one of them is the heat problem that comes with AMDs. OK, in a normal case you'd never notice because you basicly have the room to fit in airconditioning if you wanted to. In a 1U case however, you have to stick to about 1cm (that's less than half an inch, for those who don't know the metric system) for a fan.

        On a 1U with an intel on the motherboard, I've rarely had any cooling problems. On a 1U with an AMD I've on regular basis had problems. The money customers
  • by ricky-road-flats ( 770129 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @06:18AM (#9912524) Homepage
    It's just the 3.2GHz one, the oldest and slowest. Now the 3.4 and 3.6 are out, it's natural to retire the slowpoke of the bunch.

    There's no mention whatever of the whole Extreme Edition line being stopped, in fact they recently said they would be making further new ones in the near future... This is mentioned (with new FSB and clock speeds) here [theinquirer.net] and here [theregister.co.uk] and here [theregister.co.uk], for instance - and all quite recently.

    • They don't really "retire" a chip, they just re-name it. The last phase of chip production is testing. Since the manufacturing of a chip does not guarantee a certain speed, they need to test it before they label it. Seems kinda' backwards, but that's the way it is.
      • Also over time these things get recycled for use in other parts. I know one of the Macs along the way used the Apple IIE processor as a keyboard controller.

        Intel and AMD also have a lot of there older chips Pentiums, PIIs etc that are used in the embedded space. You can take an old PC and use modern manufacturing techniques to make it really low powered.
    • You're correct that the P4EE 3.4Ghz is out, but the 3.6 is not. In fact, this chip would probably be difficult for intel to manufacture, since the P4EE is still based on Northwood, and the highest speed grade of that core is 3.4Ghz. The Prescott core (P4E) currently goes up to 3.6Ghz, but no chips with additional cache exist so far.
  • by oberondarksoul ( 723118 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @06:32AM (#9912549) Homepage

    Market demand for the Intel Pentium 4 processor Extreme Edition supporting Hyper-Threading technology 3.20GHz with 800MHz processor system bus in mPGA478 packaging has shifted to higher performance Intel processors.

    Try saying that with a mouth full of cheese three times fast...

  • All insdustry watchers, maybe except Toms Hardware, saw the EE as a trick to get the performance crown from AMD again. At (literally) any price. I don't know if it sold; you must really want to have the ultimate performance at any price to buy one.

    Now that they've released faster processors that are up to par on performance with AMD (and removed the GHz speeds from the processor names) there is no need for the extreme edition any more. So now they don't have to sell server chips to make up for bad performa
    • Some moron in a class I taught (on building computers) had a P4EE. Of course, he was the computer expert, so he and his brilliant friends ignored my instructions and fried his entire computer (let's build it with it on!!!)

      Hmm because of that class I ALMOST had an extra 1700+... but some girl picked the thing up (and it was winter... in a carpeted room) and static shocked the thing ("ohh shiny processor! let's touch it!")

      *sigh*
      • I forgot to mention the reason (that I think) for the frying... he bought a $400 processor, $200 mobo (!!), 1G of PC3200 RAM, etc, etc. And a $20 power supply. I recommended that he get an Antec (or at least one that keeps its voltages in spec!) but he refused. Idiots. People are idiots.

        I'm teaching the class, why the fuck would I know what I'm talking about? His friends at 13370v3rc10c1312.com thought the 600W $20 was just fine.... 600W with voltages +/- 10% MAYBE...

        Hell maybe he was just unlucky (
    • Not to derail, but what is up with TonsHardware? for a long time I heard they were one of the best review places on the net, then about a year ago or so I started hearing rumours that they were Intel and Nvidia shrills now and not to be taken overly seriously. Been hearing that off and on ever since then.

      I donno if I'd call them that, but, looking at some of their reviews of the newer AMD and ATI offerings, they seemed willing to "go the extra mile" in bending over backwards to excuse Intel and Nvidia's
      • At one point, Tom seemed pretty pro-AMD, then the PIII 1.13 GHz debacle came up, Tom made a ruckus and things seemed to change a little after that. They do seem to lean slightly in favor of Intel (I don't think that any reasonable person who reads the regular launch articles would deny that) but I really like their reviews because they provide benchmarks for older hardware. This makes their charts really long, but very useful to people who may not have upgraded for a couple of years and want to see where th
      • I think everyone just got sick of the 4 page review spread over 30 pages at tom's. I also beleive that for a while they got a little to excited about some of the Intel offerings, and in an enthusist market with a lot of people getting success with the AMD that probably didn't go down well. Whether or not they made the right/wrong call is up for debate.
  • No surprise (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slayer99 ( 15543 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @06:51AM (#9912572) Homepage
    Hyperthreading is a neat hack, nothing more. It seems designed exclusively to fool non-techies into thinking that they have a 2 or 4 way system when in fact they have half the number of actual processors, and additional really crippled ones.

    That combined with the price means my last purchase was a pair of dual opteron workstations.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      We've got some people where I work who come from a proprietary unix background and therefore don't really know anything about PC's and PC hardware. I've had to explain hyperthreading to a couple of them on more than one occassion. They just can't get past the fact that "top" says there are 4 cpus and refuse to believe me when I say there are only two. These same people are also hold on to the illusion that their proprietary Sparc and SGI workstations are somehow architecturally superior to a standard PC.
      • While SPARC and MIPS64 and other architectures now have Intel CPUs giving them a run for their money CPU-performance-wise, those systems still kick pretty much any Intel- or AMD-based system's ass in I/O bandwidth. AMD systems have a definite advantage over Intel, however, due to their licensing of the HyperTransport bus design from Alpha Processor Inc., or whoever the current holders are of the Alpha processor design - it really does kick a lot of ass. However systems like the SPARCs were designed with the
    • Re:No surprise (Score:5, Informative)

      by jrockway ( 229604 ) * <jon-nospam@jrock.us> on Sunday August 08, 2004 @07:26AM (#9912638) Homepage Journal
      Hyperthreading was a good way for intel to get itself out of a jam. The p4 had a REALLY long pipeline, and in order to keep it filled most of the time, they needed two threads feeding it with instructions.

      Basically there are multiple units (say integer units) that can run concurrently. If you can get two integer operations to compute at the same time, then you just increased performance. Hyperthreading was a way for the OS to help the CPU keep it's execution units full.

      And yeah, "low-end" Opterons are cheap these days. I have my eye on a dual-opteron setup...
    • Re:No surprise (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Apparently you've been fooled as well, given your total lack of understanding of HyperThreading or simultaneous multithreading (SMT) which is the technical term. SMT/HT does NOT add any more power to the CPU, it's simply a method of using the CPU better, namely by saturating the pipelines better.

      In situations with few threads/processes (Doom 3, rendering, encoding, etc) this will usually not add any performance, quite often the opposite. On the other hand, in situations with many threads/processes (or rath
    • Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Proc6 ( 518858 ) on Sunday August 08, 2004 @09:46AM (#9913019)
      Do you actually use a computer to do real CPU intensive work?

      I do, a ton of it. The last 10 years of my life have been rendering animation, compressing video, and authoring CDs and DVDs. At any time I have 1-3 apps maxing the CPU(s) of my machine(s). As my primary workstation I have always had duals, but worked on singles often. Duals make Windows tolerable but are expensive. Hyperthreading brought 90% of the smoothness of duals to the average person. You can be rendering out an AfterFX composition (or anything compute bound) and the machine still feels pretty light on the load.

      Now if HT CPUs were 3x the cost, yes, that would be gimmicky. But it's a feature that's become standard in CPUs and doesn't really cost you any noticeable amount more (P3 HT 3ghz is what, $200? oooo scary), and in the end gives everyone somewhere between a "little" smoother to "a hell of a lot" smoother functioning OS's. Gosh, that sucks. It's not out to "fool people", it's a nice advancement in processor technology.

      • Re:No surprise (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Mod parent up! Spot on.

        The "creamy smoothness" of duallies that HT (partially) gives was actually never covered in the reviews about HT Pentiums. They just benchmarked the usual benches to get clear-cut figures but never touched on this somewhat elusive and subjective characteristic... Shame.

        The parent obviously deserves an "Insightful" unless you mods are on crack again.
      • For the price of a 3.0 ghz P4, you could get 2 Athlon XP 3000+ cpus, and still have a few bucks left over.

        I'd rather have two real CPUs than something that performs like 2 CPUs in some cases and performs like half a CPU in others. Especially if both options have the same price tag.
        • But you are ignoring the cost of the Motherboard, and in most cases the Ram (quite often dual mb use ECC ram). Also don't you need to buy Althon MPs? Although in the last couple of years this has improved a fair bit.
          • The motherboard wasn't signifigantly more expensive than other high end boards. As for the MPs, there's a BIOS setting to disable the check for the MP version of the processor, and then everything just works.
  • I thought they shifted to the higher performing Athlon 64 FX.
  • Twisted Words (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Jozer99 ( 693146 )
    You make it sound like the whole "Extreme Edition" processor line is cancled. This is not true. They are just dropping the oldest processor in the lineup, which was a little too slow to be considered "ultimate performance" like the rest of the lineup.
  • After AMD whipped their butts in Doom 3 performance with much cheaper A64 parts, they threw in the towel.
  • Honest, I'm thinking about getting a new cpu/motherboard. As many people are touting the cheapness and goodness of AMD vs Intel, I took a gander at newegg, so check prices on the Athlon FX 64, and I don't see any that are any cheaper than the Intel 2.8 ghz. Really, are they less expensive? What about motherboards? Is there a good, credible comparison out there between the AMD and Intel of similar power? Really, I'm curious.
    • Re:AMD? Really? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Chordonblue ( 585047 )
      The best sites (IMHO) to check for this sort of information are anandtech.com and tomshardware.com. Based on the information they (and others) have presented, I've decided to purchase an AMD 3500+ Athlon 64 next week.

      Now this was a difficult decision for me because my main box does an awful lot of stuff - it's rarely just sitting there. If I'm not gaming or surfing, then I might be rendering or producing a DVD. Render times for this stuff can be annoying.

      It's not that Intel couldn't do the job - in fact,
    • THe Athlon FX line is not the series of CPUs that are being talked about as the cheap Intel killers. The standard Athlon 64s are what you want to look for. Myself, I am going to build an Athlon 64 3000+ system, and the CPU is going to cost me about $170. Rougly the same as a 2.6-2.8 GHz Pentium 4, but the A64 kills the P4 performance wise.
  • It's good to see they are finally ditching the Intel Pentium 4 "Expensive Edition".
  • After spending several years writing code for the PS2 (with the world's smallest data cache), I kind of became sensitive to the horrors of blowing the cache.

    So when I was in the market I went for the EE. Probably 70% of that decision was just 'I'm dropping big cash, which I normally don't do - let's go all the way this time', 25% was 'I've seen the horrors of small data cache firsthand and I need a security blanky to forget' and 5% was 'That additional few percentage points really matter!'. So, yeah, it

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