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Intel Upgrades Hardware

Intel Launches Low Cost Chips 51

schliz writes "Intel has announced a new quad core and dual-core processor at the bottom end of its price and specification range and a new Celeron chip. The Q8200 is a 2.33-GHz quad-core chip with 4Mb of level-2 cache, the lowest of any quad-core processor."
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Intel Launches Low Cost Chips

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  • Low cache (Score:5, Funny)

    by XanC ( 644172 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @02:47PM (#24864037)

    This means that the speed of the chip is reduced as it canâ(TM)t handle as many processes as processors with a larger cache.

    hmm, pretty technical stuff...

    • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Actually - the number of processes that a processor can handle doesn't only depend on the cache. It is also a question of the amount of memory a process needs.

      For some solutions a large cache is just a waste of resources. Of course - these are usually special solutions, but anyway.

  • The new dual-core processor is E5200, which has a core clock speed of 2.5GHz, 2MB of cache memory, and an 800MHz front-side bus. It costs US$84 per thousand.

    Am I reading this price right? These can't possibly be 5 cents each...

  • by CyberBill ( 526285 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @02:52PM (#24864113)
    The new processor is the second cheapest in Intelâ(TM)s quad core range and is priced at US$224 per thousand.

    Thats supposed to be "US$224 each in quantities of one thousand", not $224 per thousand, implying they each cost 22.4 cents.
  • How well the does that dual dual-core work with only 2meg l2 on each dual core + the FSB link over head + 800MHz FSB vs a low end amd dual, 3 core, or quad core with a lower cost MB?

    • by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

      Who knows?
      They are not shipping yet as far as I know and Slashdot isn't a review site.

      Right now if you want to build a good low end machine AMD gives you the best bang for the buck.
      The X2s are cheap and the 780G chip set really is very good for onboard graphics.

      Unless you are into gaming, video editing, or heavy transcoding the low end is really good enough for most people.
      Heck even for light video work the low end is probably good enough.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Yvan256 ( 722131 )

        Is the CPU+motherboard cheaper than an Intel D945GCLF [logicsupply.com]? (i.e. 81.00 $USD).

        • by LWATCDR ( 28044 )

          No but probably only 20-30 more and
          It will support 1080P playback,
          Has more SATA ports.
          Supports more RAM.
          Supports DX-10. Not that you would want to use it.
          Is a lot faster. It will play some two year old games pretty well.
          That little atom board is fine for websurfing with XP. The problem with Intel solutions on the low end is that the graphics suck.

          • by Endo13 ( 1000782 )

            Well no, not cheaper with the particular chipset specified. But it's easy to get an AMD+motherboard combo cheaper than $81 that will blow the socks off the atom bundle you linked.

  • You youngins are spoiled.. back in my day, we took our BP6s and dual celerons with 512KB cache (per) and we were grateful!

    • Those Celery 300As (GREAT chips) had 128KB L2 cache. But it was nice and fast since it was on-die, a novelty at the time.

      • by vux984 ( 928602 )

        Those Celery 300As (GREAT chips) had 128KB L2 cache. But it was nice and fast since it was on-die, a novelty at the time

        And overclocked from 300MHz to 450MHz without blinking, and were actually faster than a PII450 as I recall, due to the cache being overclocked too on the 300A, but not on a real PII.

        • And overclocked from 300MHz to 450MHz without blinking, and were actually faster than a PII450 as I recall, due to the cache being overclocked too on the 300A, but not on a real PII.

          I really don't understand that, given that the Xeons had full clock caches and weren't much faster, if at any faster, than the Pentium branded version of the same chip. The Pentium version had half-clock caches.

          • by vux984 ( 928602 )

            I really don't understand that, given that the Xeons had full clock caches and weren't much faster, if at any faster, than the Pentium branded version of the same chip. The Pentium version had half-clock caches.

            It wasn't that the 300A overclocked to 450MHz was much faster; it was only marginally faster. But at the time the PII450 was the 'top of line' desktop cpu, and the PII Xeon 450s were the 'top of line' period.

            And a $110 Celeron 300A overclocked (by simply changing the FSB from 66 to 100MHz by moving a

            • A famous chip in its day. I seem to remember that it could even be modified to work in a dual CPU config with a simple hardware hack.
      • Yeah, I was going to comment - it was the branded Pentium IIIs that had such large caches, but the Celerons made up for it by keeping their lesser caches so close to the core.

    • by hawk ( 1151 )

      And I figured I was young, having been impressed by those Z80s--you could hand-pick them to find units that were stable at a whopping 4 MHZ, . . .

      Oh, and 128k of memory means that someone did some cute bank-switching scheme to change which 64k was addressed at any given moment . . .

      hawk

    • Unfortunately, more cache is becoming a necessity. Throughput (of the CPU and memory) increases much faster than latency decreases. These days, it's not uncommon to have a latency of a thousand clock cycles if the CPU has to go all the way to memory to fetch something. Back then, the latency might've been tens of clock cycles. So yeah, it's way more than we used to have, but without it, your computer would feel like molasses.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      Cache? What is this cache you speak of? Wait, that was the bandaid solution when those wacky new souped up 486s got clocked faster than the memory could keep up, right?

    • by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Spoiled?

      There was a time when there was no cache on the CPU.

      And if you want maximum performance you really don't want a cache, but that solution is horribly expensive. A cache is a way to save on bandwidth for average situations, and in some cases the cache is useless.

    • Bah, you had 512 KB cache and you thought _you_ had it bad? Bah, in my day we had 8 bits for the whole family, and they had to last us a whole week! And we had to load the programs into it with a wheelbarrow, and it was uphill both ways through the snow! And we _liked_ it.

      Well, more seriously, if you started at the 512 KB cache Celerons, you're hardly in a position to call anyone a "youngin". Even the age of Celerons without any cache at all is less than a decade ago.

      If you want a more proper "back in my da

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Look at this:
    http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=22211&vpn=BX80562Q6600&manufacture=Intel

    The Q6600, a 2.4Ghz quad-core CPU from Intel, one which has 8mb of L2 cache, sells for $225 Canadian if you don't buy it on-sale for $199 (which is pretty regular).

    This "new" Q8200 is 70 Mhz slower, 4mb less cache and costs ... more.

    This is why AMD is still alive: because Intel can't bring itself to be price competitive below $400.

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not a big deal, but don't forget the Q8200 has a faster FSB, support for SSE4.1, lower power consumption, etc.
    • by yeremein ( 678037 ) on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @05:18PM (#24866041)

      Q8200 is a 45nm chip vs. the 65nm Q6600, so it comes with lower power consumption and allegedly slightly better IPC than the older core--so it should perform about the same.

      The real complaint about the Q8200 is that it's missing the virtualization technology that's present in the Q6600 and the Q9000-series.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        and the AMD Phenom X4 9950 is under $200 and it is unlocked with a true quad core better bus and built in ram controller 512 L2 per core + 2 meg l3.
        The AMD Phenom X3 8750 is under $140 with true 3 core better bus and built in ram controller 512 L2 per core + 2 meg l3.

        good MB for intel start at about $100 - $200 VS low end amd boards at 740g at about $60 780g about $70 780g + side port ram 128MB DDR3 $100 790gx about $100 64 meg side port 128+ meg $125 - $150 and there is even a board with 1gb side port at $

        • Q8200 is a 45nm chip vs. the 65nm Q6600, so it comes with lower power consumption and allegedly slightly better IPC than the older core--so it should perform about the same.

          and the AMD Phenom X4 9950 is under $200 and it is unlocked with a true quad core better bus and built in ram controller 512 L2 per core + 2 meg l3.

          ... and the AMD Phenom X4 9950 has a TDP of 140 Watts. Also, superior technology like "true quad core" and integrated memory controller haven't helped AMD compete with Intel's high-end desktop offerings (although they have helped in MP servers). On the desktop, AMD Phenom can only compete in price/performance with Intel's low-mid range chips (and they compete quite well). Benchmarks (including power consumption) are much more useful than tech specs.

      • by lmnfrs ( 829146 )
        That's pretty much all you need to look at. If you need bus speed get the Q8200. If you need cache and VT get the Q6600. They are configured for entirely different uses.
    • I agree.

      Which is why I have stuck with AMD since the Socket A days...

      Sure, I don't get as quite as good performance but I use it for programming and web servers (development and live). When I order dedicated hosting, it has to be AMD... I _do not_ want to see them flop. I think they are doing an awesome job but every 16-year-old seems to think that spending $900 on a processor for that 4 FPS gain is worth it.... I don't understand it.

      The only Intel parts in my home is the girlfriends Mac mini.

  • Awesome. I was worried my computer was going too fast.

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