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Intel Hardware

Intel's 64-Bit Pentium 4s Hit The Streets 388

Posted by timothy from the that-sounds-like-it-would-break-them dept.
ThinSkin writes "Nearly 18 months after rival AMD released its 64-bit processors, Intel quietly added its first 64-bit Pentium 4 microprocessors to the market on Sunday. Four versions of the Intel Pentium 4 6XX series were announced at speeds up to 3.6-GHz, a frequency grade lower than the existing 5XX series. Prices will range from $224 to $605. Intel also added the 3.73-GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition to its lineup, a $999 chip that is fabricated on a finer 90-nm process than its older 130-nm P4EE components. As Slashdot previously reported, the 64-bit series will likely be the major enhancement to the Pentium 4 line before the introduction of the Pentium D "Smithfield," Intel's first dual-core part, which is slated for next quarter."
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Intel's 64-Bit Pentium 4s Hit The Streets More

Intel's 64-Bit Pentium 4s Hit The Streets

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  • Pentium D. Smithfield? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:36PM (#12008046)
    He's a good man, I've worked with him for over a decade. He's no Bill Brasky, though/
    • That Bill Brasky is a sonofabitch, he'd eat a homeless person if you dared him.
      • Bill Brasky fathered every sonofabitch on Slashdot with a User ID greater than 198978!
        • Everyone: TO BILL BRASKY!!!
          Mark McKinney: I am wearing a di-aper!
          *Silence*
          Everyone: TO BILL BRASKY!!!
          Will Ferrell: "Did I ever tell you about the time Brasky took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can't find one. Finally Brasky takes me to a vacant lot and says, 'Here we are.' We sat there for a year and a half and sure enough someone constructs a bar around us. The day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Brasky yelled ove
    • We once had a bachelor party for Bill Brasky. He ate the entire cake, before we could tell him there was a stripper in it.

  • Great (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:36PM (#12008050)
    Now the A46 prices should come down a bit.

  • Was it just me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by isny ( 681711 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:36PM (#12008055) Homepage
    Was it just me or did anyone read that as the Pentium D "Seinfeld"?
    Not that there's anything wrong with it...

    • Re:Was it just me... (Score:5, Funny)

      by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:44PM (#12008123)
      "no! no cache for you! you come back one-year."
    • At least according to what I have learned from the Simpsons.

      Patty: The easiest way to be popular is to leech off the popularity of others.
      Selma: So we propose changing our name from "Springfield" to "Seinfeld".

      Intel can start making processors with names that make sense!

      Pentium D Costanza!
      - This is our newest budget-aimed processor which will deliver today's technology in ways you can't imagine. The Costanza will answer your multimedia needs thru experimentations that one would never dare to even think

  • Power dissipation? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by vectorian798 ( 792613 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:37PM (#12008060)
    Anyone know how much heat these put out?

    • Re:Power dissipation? (Score:5, Funny)

      by dynoman7 ( 188589 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:43PM (#12008110) Homepage
      Anyone know how much heat these put out?

      ...about a volkswagon's worth.

      • Re:Power dissipation? (Score:5, Funny)

        by InfiniteWisdom ( 530090 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:02PM (#12008279) Homepage
        You mean the heat that you get from converting a volkswagon to energy (E=mc2), right?
        • Whoa. I did some math and the energy contained in any object with the mass of a VW Beetle (810kg) is enough to bring 217 trillion kilograms of water from room temperature to boiling.
      • The Library of Congress holds about 18 terabytes of information. Printed out, that would be 80 characters/line 54 lines per page single spaced, single sided, or 4320 bytes per page, a stack of 4166666666.66 pages, rounded to 4,166,666,667 pages.

        Paper when burned has an energy density of 4,725,382.41 calories per kilogram. 500 sheets of paper (US letter) weighs 9.07 kilograms, so the weight of the printed out library of congress would be 75,583,333.3 kilograms.

        Thus as an energy unit, the library of congres

    • Re:Power dissipation? (Score:5, Informative)

      by boingyzain ( 739759 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:49PM (#12008170)
      According to some tech sites, it hits a maximum of 52deg Celsius under full Prime95 load. That's a lot better than the 65+ hit by the .09 micron based Pentium 4's.

      Intel has done its homework on these Prescott-based EMT64 chips. They allow a reduction in voltage and die size, which results in a cheaper core too.
      • 65?!?!?

        The P4 in my laptop had been running at 75 degrees C while sitting idle! (it DIED if I opened anything like ut2k4 or even CS)

      • Re:Power dissipation? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:40PM (#12008569)
        That means nothing. If the heatsinking is good enough, you can get it below 0C. The real useful number is power dissipation: the lower it is, the less heatsinking you'll need to get the core down to reasonable temperatures.

        I bet this CPUs will consume as much (and more) than regular P4. Which is bad, unless your house lacks central heating.
        • You'll never get below ambient temperature with an aircooled heatsink. (In this house, we obey the rules of thermodynamics!) -- Paul
          • May be bad phrasing from me, but i'm pretty sure a water-cooled cooling block counts as a "heatsink"; so does a phase change one, which can get electronics below 0C with little problem.

            Anyway, can't argue with Homer!
            • Water cooling just increases the surface area of the heatsink by using water to move the heat around. You still can't get below ambient.

              You need active cooling such as a peltier unit to get below ambient.

            • Re:Power dissipation? (Score:5, Insightful)

              by MoralHazard ( 447833 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @05:50AM (#12010250)
              Once more we play our deadly game (of semantics!)...

              1) When you say "heatsink", you're just talking about a type of radiator. Usually, we restrict the term "heatsink" to a local radiator, an object in direct contact with the CPU core (or whatever your heat source is), as opposed to a remote radiator that uses fluid exchange to transfer heat from the core to the radiator.

              2) ANY cooling system, be it passive/active, air/water, local/remote, is going to incorporate a radiator somewhere. Even with phase change systems or Peltiers, you eventually have to dump heat passively. Meaning that any cooling system will have a radiator of some kind.

              SO: If you refer to a cooling setup as a just a heatsink, when it incorporates some kind of phase-change or other active cooling method, you're being ambiguous and misleading with your language. The real distinction is that active cooling systems can chill the CPU to an arbitrarily low temperature approaching the limit of 0K, whereas passive cooling systems can only chill the CPU to an arbitrarily low temperature approaching the limit of the ambient temperature of the radiator's environment.

              I think it's best not to confuse the issue by referring to active cooling systems as "heatsink" setups, because they HAVE to have a radiator of some kind. It's like calling a submarine a "boat"--while technically correct, the term doesn't describe the subject in a way that adequetely distinguishes its important characteristics.
          • You'll never get below ambient temperature with an aircooled heatsink.

            He didn't say "air cooled", he just said "heatsink". A heatsink is simply an object that maintains a cooler temperature and draws out heat. It could very well be using refrigeration to do this.

      • those numbers mean nothing... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        65C? Under what conditions? What heat sink? Where is it measured?

        Most important is the power dissapation figure. That shows how much energy has to be dumped by the cooling solution.

    • Re:Power dissipation? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Wiz ( 6870 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @04:42AM (#12010009) Homepage
      See this link, most interesting: Intel vs AMD [gamepc.com].

      Specifically, it shows two things (note, the clock throttling wasn't working on the Opteron processors mind):

      1. They output a lot more heat.
      2. Under 64-bit mode, Intel generally runs slower. AMD run quicker. Guess who did a good 64-bit implementation?

  • Finally! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:37PM (#12008063)
    Now Intel can cook my toast using more than 4 GB of memory!

  • Keep buying, suckers! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 ) <DancinSanta@gmail.com> on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:37PM (#12008064) Journal
    I love you suckers out there who are buying these top of the line, bleeding edge chips. It brings the price of "outdated" hardware back to reasonable levels.

    Now if you excuse me, I have a 486 DX4 100MHz that I've been keeping an eye on for a while.

    • Re:Keep buying, suckers! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 ) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:39PM (#12008080) Homepage
      Yup.. $1000 for a processor. Wowzers!

      Low end AMD or P4 processors are dirt cheap now and do everything you could want unless you're running weather simulations or something.

    • Re:Keep buying, suckers! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      'Suckers' or 'people who need as much horsepower as they can get'.

      On that note, can you people start buying up tons of those 27" plasmas? I seriously need a 19" for cheap. Trust me, you need'em...

    • Re:Keep buying, suckers! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mrchaotica ( 681592 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:01PM (#12008271)
      You know the odd thing? 468s are so old now that they're probably more expensive than, say, Pentium 2s just because there aren't as many around any more. Same with RAM -- if you look at Best Buy ads SIMMs are more expensive than DIMMs.
    • I've already thrown out all my 486, Cryix(s) and Pentiums. I'm about ready to throw out a BH6 with Celeron 366 (Runs at 550 stable), not to mention I have another ageing p3 700mhz. There is really nothing you can do with them, and they are not worth the time to sell on Ebay. If I am going to spend the time setting up a computer it is atleast going to be a slower athlon with DDR ram. There is no reason for me to waste my time with anything slower. I am willing to accept suggestions.

      • Donate it!!! (Score:3, Informative)

        by vwjeff ( 709903 )
        Donate anything 300mhz or above to your local school district. I am a computer tech for my local district and we need all the help we can get.

        • Re:Donate it!!! (Score:5, Informative)

          by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @12:06AM (#12008753)
          ASK before you donate. My district won't support anything older than P-III, and we aren't too keen on donated hardware as it requires custom imaging.

          Make sure that your hardware is in good condition, and that the district actually needs systems.

          My district, for example, already has over 500 decomissioned Pentium-II (450MHz) systems. There are only so many places that we can put computers (and so many ports on the network), so old hardware builds up as it is replaced with newer hardware. We try to reuse hardware wherever possible (computer lab systems might become lookup terminals, for instance), but eventually we have to pay to get the old systems recycled.

          Note, however, that this varies dramatically by district. My district donates over 250 systems to our neighboring district every year because they don't have the budget for much new hardware. They are happy to get good-condition P-IIs, and we're happy that they aren't ending up in landfills.

          The key is to know what is needed and where.

          Also, don't purchase a computer to donate without first consulting the district. My district, for example, purchases only one model each year (last year it was the HP D530 small-form-factor). This simplifies management and deployment. By purchasing the same model, you can save the district a lot of time for years to come.

          • Re:Donate it!!! (Score:5, Informative)

            by cptgrudge ( 177113 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @01:26AM (#12009217) Journal
            MOD PARENT UP.

            At my previous job, a K-12 District, we *hated* computer donations. They don't conform to a standard hard drive image, so they require special attention. They have no warranty, and the techs to work on them as they die end up costing more than a new machine would have.

            Management of dissimilar hardware costs a lot.

            Now, if your District isn't to that level of management, they'll probably be pleased with anything they can get. When I started there, we were ecstatic to get extra hardware. But as time wore on, we spent the majority of our time on these donations. When I left, the District had switched over to a completely Leased solution. It ends up much easier to manage from a budget perspective if there is a fixed amount spent on hardware every year in the lease.

            I agree with the poster above:
            Ask your District if they want them. If you go over to drop them off, they may just refuse them, and now you've packed up all those old machines for nothing.

            • Re:Donate it!!! (Score:3, Informative)

              by MatthewNewberg ( 519685 )
              I've done my share of working as a tech on random old hardware in a position where I could not easily refuse. I would not force that upon any person working in a already bad enough position (I am guessing children can be hard on computers). Some of my horror stories cannot be easily described but you should consider a 486 with Windows 3.11 for Workgroups (and a random no name nic of the same age) was the least of my worries. I am not donating anything unless I know the person actually has a use for it, an
        • I worked in the IT department of my local High School, and we had PILES of p2 233s sitting on top of a pile of Pentiums. From the pile of about 45 computers, we were able to get about 15 computers that worked. And we had to buy hard drives for them. The total cost for the hard drives was more than it would have cost to get 10~ year or two old computers.

          Oh, and don't donate monitors. That pissed us off. People would leave monitors in the office for us, and we had about 50. It costs money to get them d
      • Set em up in an OpenMosix cluster and hide em in an out of the way place. Instant free upgrade on your main box.
    • Does anyone remember what a VAX-780 cost? That was a 1 MIPS CPU.

  • Pentium 4 Extreme Edition? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:38PM (#12008073)
    Does that come with... uh... Intel Extreme Graphics? Sweet!

  • Well, better late than never (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CarlinWithers ( 861335 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:39PM (#12008075)
    It would be interesting to see how much business Intel theoretically lost to AMD as a result of their failed first 64-bit attempt and subsequent delay.
    • I imagine none - or some number close to it. However, they've certainly lost appreciable business due to the A64 kicking the P4's arse at the high end, and appreciable revenue due to downward price pressure from the A64 somewhere in the midrange.

      What's more interesting is how for the first time Intel are playing catch up on their own platform. Retrofitting EM64T or whatever it's called has got to be costing them in terms of taking the initiative on new technologies - and between that and having to move to
      • between that and having to move to the Pentium M line

        Don't you mean having to move back to the P3 line? As far as I'm concerned, the Pentium Ms are a glaring example of how stupid the whole P4 experiment was. They applied their shrunken process and advancements in material technology to the P3, retrofit a few of the things they picked up along the way on the P4s and called it a Pentium M. And look how its performance compares with the P4s!

        Imagine what the performance of these Pentium Ms would have be

    • Failed 64-Intel Attempt (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Visaris ( 553352 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:43PM (#12008589) Journal
      I think your right. I have seen benchmarks on the AMDzone forums [amdzone.com] which show that while AMD gets a speed boost (on average) from 64-bit mode, Intel takes a performance hit (again, on average) when in 64-bit mode.

      Intel is just trying to be compatible with AMD64. They won't have a serious product for another quarter or two (or three).
    • Likewise, it would be interesting to see how much business Intel excluded from AMD due to exclusive OEM discounts. Intel has been accused as guilty of this illegal practice by the Japan Federal Trade Commission.

    • Itanic (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @12:38AM (#12008941) Homepage Journal
      The real victim of the Itanic was HP. HP traded their Precicison Architecture (which became Itanium) and all of their CPU engineers and their foundry to Intel in a non-cash deal. Intel is now using HP technology in i386-family CPUs and HP gets nothing for that.

      It's sort of like throwing a few billion dollars in the fireplace.

      Bruce

  • ExTREmE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by TimeTraveler1884 ( 832874 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:40PM (#12008093)
    Intel also added the 3.73-GHz Pentium 4
    Extreme Edition
    The processor that all rock-climbing, skydiving, snowboarding, chick-magnet, adrenaline-junkies use.

    ...Oh wait, this is ./

    • Re:ExTREmE! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Excen ( 686416 )
      I WOULD be a chick magnet, but living in my parents' basement makes it tough.

      That being said, I downhill ski so I really should have this.

  • Pentium M and Celeron, 64 bit (Score:5, Informative)

    by boingyzain ( 739759 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:41PM (#12008099)
    The Inquirer is reporting [theinquirer.net] that Intel will counter the AMD Turion 64 Mobile Processor with a Pentium M Extreme Edition. It is an alphabet soup of potential Intel Pentium M releases and you'll probably have to read it through twice or thrice to understand it all, but an interesting and inciteful read nonetheless.

    There's another interesting article about the future of 64-bit as it relates to Intel here. [thechannelinsider.com]

    And of course, we can't forget our beloved Celeron [theregister.co.uk].
    • Ever notice how Apple was doing really poorly when they were providing dozens of different system configurations on a fairly large handful of Mac platforms, and were suffering because of it?

      The problem was that the consumers simply didn't understand which computer most favorably matched their criteria.

      I see the same thing here with Intel's lineup. What is what? Why is this M? Why is that Centrino? WTF does "Extreme" mean in relation to a CPU?

      It wasn't until Steve Jobs was able to cut through the bullshit and bring the Mac lineup back to 2 basic consumer platforms that Apple was able to enjoy the benefits of the Apple brand. Until Steve came back, it was just another PC outfit. Now, with Jobs at the helm, and through his seemingly infinite ability to grasp consumer wants and needs, Apple is enjoying a resurgence in popularity and relevance.

      Without someone with a grand vision like Steve Jobs, Intel is going to continue suffering through doldrums trying to guide the market with its "alphabet soup" (which you so very astutely coined) without actually listening to the consumers.
      • What Steve Jobs did had nothing to do with processors, at all. In case you didn't notice Apple doesn't make any CPUs, currently that's all done by IBM.

        And last I checked it wasn't IBM that's taking marketshare away from Intel, not yet at least.

      • Re:CPU alphabet soup and the demise of Apple (Score:5, Informative)

        by WasterDave ( 20047 ) <davep@noSPAm.zedkep.com> on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:03PM (#12008287)
        WTF does "Extreme" mean in relation to a CPU?

        "EE" stands for "Extremely Expensive", "Centrino" means "doesn't suck on laptops". Other than that, I also am now completely lost as to what Intel's lineup actually is. Their marketing department are fucked.

        Dave

      • Re:CPU alphabet soup and the demise of Apple (Score:5, Interesting)

        by skogs ( 628589 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:18PM (#12008414) Journal
        I definitely agree with your assumptions. While I don't know enough about the apple business history, I can definitely agree with the idea that intel is losing relevancy and marketability.

        For years intel has owned the market mostly because of its slick sales and marketing department. Their commercials are wonderful, and make people honestly feel they are purchasing something super cool, super powerful, and super relevant - all while completely ignoring the nerdy specs. Why would anybody want to know Why something is strong/fast/meaningful?

        These folks have managed to sell themselves to most people out there, but eventually they are going to have to put up numbers. Like car commercials...what size engine does it have? How many horsepower? How many seats? 4 wheel drive? All these things are pretty important and in the end sell cars. Specs sell chips too, but only the 'nerdy' are deemed able to understand these things so intel leaves that information out.

        Now their advertising and chip naming is becoming on the level of nerdy. Who the F$@! knows what the Celeron D, P4, P4EE, P4-64, Centrino, Pentium -M, Pentium dual core, Pentium[next new thing to sell chips]? Honestly if they just put a few specs out there to differentiate chips it would make life a little easier.

        What is a P4?

        Which of the dozen incarnations of compatible chips do you mean? Prescott, etc...

        What is hyperthreading?

        What is a dual core?

        Why does my 333Mhz RAM beat the S%@# out of my uber-expensive 800Mhz RAMBUS?

        Why this? Why that?

        Why can't people understand what they are purchasing now? Simplify people. Simplify. Or lose more market share to the ACTUAL superior product that AMD manufactures.

        • Re:CPU alphabet soup and the demise of Apple (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          You are not Joe. You want to know what the designations mean while Joe is just confused by 'nerdy' specs and therefore takes advice from the 'more educated' retail dude. Big mistake.

          AFAIK:
          P4 is the bog standard current Intel chip (32 bit)
          Prescott is a P4 cheap and nasty P4 with even higher clock speeds with lower power/cycle (with the innevitable exceptions). Similar to the difference between P3 and P4, only a smaller difference.
          Celeron is a cheap P4 with stripped down cache
          Centrino, same as Pentium M i

      • Re:CPU alphabet soup and the demise of Apple (Score:4, Funny)

        by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @03:57AM (#12009833)
        I see the same thing here with Intel's lineup. What is what? Why is this M? Why is that Centrino? WTF does "Extreme" mean in relation to a CPU?
        How DARE you question the wisdom, experience, and insight offered by managers and marketing departments! These people have spent years of their lives studying their trade so that they can learn how to make your life better. Do you not thank them? Do you not give them the credit they deserve? Oh, marketers everywhere, do not listen to these ingrates, you have made America great and we God bless you for it!
    • The current Pentium M, Dothan is already pretty much an "Extreme Edition" considering that many of them have 2MB of cache. Not that this amount of cache helps typical x86 desktop/mobile use, the usual benchmarks I see show only a slight speed increase (low single digit) over the 1MB cache versions of the same chip. I think it is possible to get a better benefit if you recompile everything for it and the compiler knows about the L3 cache.

  • Yeah, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21, 2005 @10:46PM (#12008144)
    Are they really AMD-compatible?

  • Late last year... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sp1nm0nkey ( 869235 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:00PM (#12008266)
    I talked to some of the few people who were testing these. Apparently it couldn't keep linux running for more than 4 minutes. Lets hope Intel was able to fix that "issue"
    • I talked to some of the few people who were testing these. Apparently it couldn't keep linux running for more than 4 minutes. Lets hope Intel was able to fix that "issue"

      Assuming of course the issue is Intel's not Linux's. Yeah, heresy, sorry about that.

      Actually I should also say assuming the hardware is not flaky. How's the 64-bit WinNT beta run on that system?

  • Yay. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gt_swagger ( 799065 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:03PM (#12008290) Homepage
    Now it's time for game makers to get with the game [dum dum TISHHHH]. I'm tired of seeing 32 bits of my AMD 64 wasted every time I game, and now that every major player has 64 bit processors succeeding 32 bit, they need to get with the program and stop wasting bits.
    • then why did you buy into the technology before it was mature ? not trolling; I understand what you are saying, but by the time 64bit apps become normal, your going to want to upgrade to a faster 64 bit chip anyway. those of us that have a little more patience take the savings to the bank.

    • Re:Yay. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Buelldozer ( 713671 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:32PM (#12008510)
      Thunk thunk thunk...

      (That's the sound of 32 bit code on a 64 bit processor...or was that 16 bit code on a 32...I forget...)

    • The extra bits are not really a big issues yet.

      Why(Assuming you are a home user)?

      Fews apps can gain much from using over 2 gigs of memory currently, I know there are special cases, but really I dont think it is a issue (yet).

      Most apps dont gain from the extra processing of using 64-bit from 32 bit math.When are you really maxing out an INT, or needing to use a double?

      So what do you really gain from having a 64bit processor?

      Extra Registers are key to the performance gains with 64 bit with most ap

  • backwards compatible? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vandit2k6 ( 848077 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:05PM (#12008302) Homepage
    Will this be backwards compatible or support 32bit software.
  • Wow its about freaking time! Consumer 64bit computing here we come! On a side note, who bets that these chips will be as defective as the first 386's (double sigma anyone?)

  • Intel the Trendsetter (Score:5, Informative)

    by Megaslow ( 694447 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:12PM (#12008367) Homepage
    Nearly 18 months after rival AMD released its 64-bit processors, Intel quietly added its first 64-bit Pentium 4 microprocessors to the market

    Wow, and only 10 years after Sun's UltraSPARC [wikipedia.org], 13 years after the DEC Alpha [wikipedia.org], and 14 years after the MIPS R4000 [wikipedia.org]

  • Socket 478 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dalroth ( 85450 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:17PM (#12008406) Homepage Journal
    Question... do any of these processors come in the socket 478 form factor, or is intel forcing us to upgrade our motherboards yet again? If I have to buy a new mother board, I might as well go AMD this time around!!

    Bryan

  • Fine, but what we *really* want to know is... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:36PM (#12008546)
    ... how many large bedrooms can you heat with it?

  • Ever wonder if there will be a Pentium-5? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sl3xd ( 111641 ) * on Monday March 21, 2005 @11:59PM (#12008698) Journal
    Just a question...

    So many versions of the Pentium4.

    So many cores. So many variations. So many significant architectural differences.

    Seriously... when it it enough to be the Pentium5? I seriously doubt there is as much difference between the Pentium-3 and the IV (original P4) as there is between ANY other P4 cpu and this one.

    Seriously... what's the deal?

    Other than the 5-for-$5 jokes (Pentium 5 being a rather redundant name, after all...)

    • Re:Ever wonder if there will be a Pentium-5? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @04:25AM (#12009938) Homepage Journal
      Intel already has an x86 line newer and better than P4. It's called Pentium M.
  • All of this is for Joe Sixpack. Not gamers and enthusiasts.

    If you want to go 64-bit, pick up an Athlon64 2800 for about $100, or Athlon64 3000 for abt $130. AMD motherboards also work out cheaper, since they have been around for a year and a half.

    The 64-bit market is just opening up, expect the pentium prices to come down significantly soon. By 2006, most processors will ship with 64-bit capability. There are not many 64-bit native applications available now. Games are still 32 bit. Windows XP 64 bit is just coming out next month. And Linux still does not support Joe.

    If you are price concious, NEVER buy anything quite recent. Save the money, and buy dual-core 64-bit processors a couple of years from now.

  • Pentium 4s hit the streets and.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by mjh49746 ( 807327 ) on Tuesday March 22, 2005 @01:37AM (#12009286)
    immediately they're overtaken by AMD64s and G5s once they get on the freeway. They're really easy to spot with an infrared camera, too. Kinda like overheated, broken down cars.

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