Intel Breathes New Life Into Pentium 207
angry tapir writes "Intel is giving new life to its Pentium processor for servers, and has started shipping the new Pentium 350 chip for low-end servers. The dual-core processor operates at a clock speed of 1.2GHz and has 3MB of cache. Like many server chips, the Pentium 350 lacks features such as integrated graphics, which are on most of Intel's laptop and desktop processors."
This actually makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
A chip like this would work good for servers that are limited more by network bandwidth and disk IO than by CPU load.
Re:This actually makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, a server is one of the few places I actually want an integrated graphics chip, because it means I don't have to take up a PCI slot and associated energy and I/O load with a low-end graphics card just to provide a console, not to mention the space considerations and form factor requirements to be able to put in a PCI card. While I like that it's not built into the CPU (freeing up those transistors for, you know, CPU things), I'd still be buying a motherboard that has built in cheap graphics.
If you're in a situation where network and disk bandwidth is the limiting factor, then why wouldn't you put in a ULV celeron chip? My laptop has a 1.2GHz dual core with 2MB of cache, and a TDP of 18W, and while that is 3W higher than the processor in TFA, that's also including the graphics card, which this one isn't. And failing that, try putting in an Atom... I have built Atom-powered fileservers before, and they run very well: even with an Atom, the limiting factor is disk I/O, not CPU power for a fileserver.
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Because integrated and PCI slot are the only two choices. ;)
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It doesnt have CPU graphics, but whether or not it has integrated graphics is up to the motherboard manufacturer. I have been looking at a number of server builds with various Xeon chips which dont have the Intel HD graphics, and a lot of them have Nuvoton graphics chips with a paltry amount of video RAM.
It boils down to, do you really want Sandy Bridge graphics chewing up an extra 10w of electricity in your CPU when you could just use a much more modest chip?
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I wonder if there is a market there. If some body could make a really small graphics card. With very lower power consumption. It might even turn itself off once the system is booted. Perhaps it might not even do graphics - but just provide what the POST is looking for.
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You can argue the cleverness of it all day but Windows servers don't work without graphics. AFAIK they don't even boot.
Given that, you want the graphics with the lowest power consumption.
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You can argue the cleverness of it all day but Windows servers don't work without graphics. AFAIK they don't even boot.
All x86 computers don't boot without a video adapter. It's not a matter of the operating system. It's the POST. The motherboard must detect a CPU, must detect RAM, and must detect a video display device. Those are the devices all PC compatible style x86 computers require to complete the POST. This is why "no display" is a common beep code and also why the video BIOS show is before the motherboard BIOS show. One can hardly blame MS for expecting the POST to complete successfully.
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Who says it has to be running Windows?
While you can get ARM processor might be nice, but the few that I've used also had pretty cut-down and altered operating systems at best, I'd rather run an OS configuration I'm more familiar with.
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I still don't understand why a windows computer is used for fileserver purposes. Something embedded with for example an ARM processor on it sounds must more robust and energy efficient to me.
Sometimes you want features. I suspect Linux has equivalents to these, but maybe not quite as easy to set up:
DFSR multi-master file replication [microsoft.com]
BranchCache for file caching either on your Win7 machine or distributed Win2k8R2 servers [microsoft.com]
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I still don't understand why a windows computer is used for fileserver purposes.
Because most servers are serving to Windows desktop machines. Even for pure 'files' that still means lots of Microsoft proprietary protocols.
Plus most people also want Exchange, Access, etc.
So what? (Score:2)
I'm writing this post from an Acer very low-end notebook that sports a "Sandybridge" Celeron CPU - it is a dual core P4600 with dual cores, HD1000 integrated graphics, etc. and the entire laptop was $229 at Bestbuy - it can take 8 Gigs of DDR3 RAM and performs very nicely according to the Windows Experience Index (mid-5's and above on all ratings). I assume it is a Core i3 that failed some test, but it works just fine for me.
I've also got a small Wolfdale E3400 "Celeron" desktops at home - a dual core Celer
So, exept from the name.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing (Score:5, Informative)
And this is also nothing new. They've been selling "Pentiums" for some time now. The Pentium G6950 is one for the last generation Core i series systems (LGA1156). The Pentium G600 and G800 series are for this generation core i series (LGA1155, Sandy Bridge). They are the same architecture as the i series chips, just more cut down.
So for example with the current LGA1155 offerings:
-- The i7-2600/2700 are the quad core, hyperthreaded chips with 8MB cache.
-- The i5s are quad core, non-HT, 6MB cache.
-- The i3s are dual core, hyperthreaded, 3MB cache. They also lack AES-NI instructions.
-- The Pentiums are dual core, non-HT, 3MB cache and have slower graphics and clockspeed. They also lack AVX instructions (and AES-NI).
-- The Celerons are even slower, and 2 or 1MB of cache, and the lowest end one is single core.
In all cases they are all Sandy Bridge. They are 32nm chips with that core architecture. The lower end ones just have less features, cache, clockspeed, and so on and thus can be made cheaper.
Basically these days "Core" is Intel's mainstream and high end brand. Everything from about $120 up is branded Core. Pentiums are their budget brand, the $60-100 range. Celerons are their extreme budget brand. $40-50 (only sold to OEMs).
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference with the Pentium 350 is that it is HT and supports VT-x and ECC. And has a TDP of 15W.
I'm trying to dump the Zacate I bought about a month ago onto someone now, and buy a Pentium 350 instead.... The Zacate gets rather hot(noticed 67 degrees Celsius from on-die sensor) when decoding a movie for example, even with a fan. With the Pentium 350 and a GT 520 for example, I could go completely fanless, and not reach those temperatures.
Re:Nothing (Score:5, Funny)
Sycraft-fu, your posts are consistently accurate, informative and insightful. Could you at least pretend to troll once in a while? It's much more fun!
A cluster**** of unclearly-positioned brands (Score:5, Informative)
Basically these days "Core" is Intel's mainstream and high end brand. Everything from about $120 up is branded Core. Pentiums are their budget brand, the $60-100 range. Celerons are their extreme budget brand. $40-50 (only sold to OEMs).
Good grief, Intel's marketing department really needs a good slapping.
Their brand positioning used to make sense when you knew that Celeron was their budget line (though sometimes quite decent) and Pentium-XXX (later replaced by Core-XXX) the standard midrange, with Xeon for servers.
So when they brought back Pentium, I was confused until (as you say) realising that it was meant as a kind-of-lower-priced line, but not as cheap as the Celeron (*). Confused partly because they still had the Core 2 (**) then i3/i5/i7 lines as their mainstream brand which Pentium used to represent.
In other words, they brought back the Pentium name due (presumably) to some vague consumer recognition, but not for what it was used before and for some vaguely-defined semi-budget segment.
Worse, it isn't even necessary because the current "Core" line is split into i3, i5 and i7, which is an easily-understood hierarchy, and along with the "Celeron", there's absolutely no need for another damn confusing name.
*Now* they're making things even more of a cluster**** by using the Pentium name on low-end *server* (not mainstream) processors.
Please note that I'm *not* talking about the underlying architecture, which marketing doesn't necessarily follow, and which the man on the street probably doesn't care about much. I'm simply talking about incompetent marketing and positioning in that there are a mess of names that no longer represent their intended price segment and/or use clearly.
Then again, perhaps confusion is the aim of the game, as it makes it easier for sales people to bamboozle the public and upsell more expensive CPUs than they need? But I suspect not.
(*) You say that Celeron is now an ultra-cheap OEM-only thing, but I can still apparently purchase boxed versions here [dabs.com] and here [ebuyer.com], for example.
(**) And while I'm here, "Core" and "Core 2" were absolutely stupid choices for a processor name, as "core" already had a technologically-defined use we all know well, and "Core" (the name) was thus guaranteed to confused anyone not in the field, e.g. a dual-core Core, etc. etc..... "Core 2" was even worse, as it's going to get easily confused with "dual core" and terms like "Core 2 Quad" (i.e. a four-core "Core 2"!) are just a confusing mess for Joe Public. I know of at least one alleged computer technician (i.e. someone who *could* be expected to know this) who thought that "Core 2" in itself meant that it was a dual-core processor! I'll give them a free pass on the fact that the original "Core" line didn't actually feature the "Core" architecture, as I was complaining about bad marketing, and marketing doesn't normally mention internal architectures anyway.
Re:A cluster**** of unclearly-positioned brands (Score:5, Funny)
*Now* they're making things even more of a cluster**** by using the Pentium name on low-end *server* (not mainstream) processors.
You forgot to include the footnote for explaining the **** there!
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You forgot to include the footnote for explaining the **** there!
**** fsck**
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What's worse, up until fairly recently they had *two* different chips named after the Pentium. The Pentium D and the Pentium Dual Core.
Who thought up these product ranges? Never mind naming them both Pentium, but giving them similar names? I've known lots of people confuse the two. I have no idea why we need all these product ranges. Celeron, Pentium and Xeon should be sufficient, with maybe something to differentiate the i7. But for god's sake, give them distinct and understandable names!
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... What exactly does this have to do with the older pentium architechtures?
The current Intel line of decent chips is descended from the Pentium III line. While the marketing department was running the US operation with its Pentium 4 ("burn baby burn") line, a small group in Israel took the Pentium III and made it power efficient ('Core').
Pentium 350 sounds like the end of Atom. Yay, I guess, since they handicapped Atom on purpose.
Dual core for servers? (Score:2)
That'd be a very very low end server!
You can buy more powerful hardware, a desktop actually, with 4 cores and call it your server.
Naaa, Intel is killing the Pentium.
Re:Dual core for servers? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dual core for servers? (Score:5, Interesting)
What this looks perfect for is a NAS... now if only anyone would release a mITX C202/C204 board with 6 SATA ports on it.
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That'd be perfect. 6x 3TB in RAID6 on that baby... 12TB in a small box!
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RAID 6 = 2 disks for "parity"
Re:Dual core for servers? (Score:5, Informative)
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Hmm.. thought i saw someone else comment that it has VT instructions. If not, then too bad.
Still, point remains I guess. Even if its pushed at low end physical servers - CPU these days just isn't required. Even less so if you aren't virtualising multiple servers onto one machine. Just retired a couple of blades last year that were pentium III 1.3ghz single cores. They were still running around 90-99% idle most of the time (web server for internal app + db server to go with it).
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Desktops don't have ECC. This does.
Pretty much all AMD desktop chips support unregistered ECC memory. It's great for situations where you load up a desktop with RAM and hard drives instead of building a separate NAS. If Intel has two memory controller designs, I can understand that they don't ship ECC on desktops, but I suspect that they just flip a bit in the microcode, which is really annoying. AMD did it once as well, when they disabled a perfectly good core on quad core chips to get the cheaper 3-core versions, but they don't seem to dis
Re:Dual core for servers? (Score:4, Informative)
Desktops don't have ECC. This does.
Really? Because even a low end AMD motherboard supports (certainly the 40GBP range ASUS ones do) ECC. It's very hard to find such a low-clocked processor as the 1.8GHz Pentium 350, but processors don't put out all that much heat if you don't use them much. It's also a motherboard which allows for easy underclocking, should you wish to reduce the power draw.
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There are already Xeons with 20w and 45w TDP-- the Xeon E3 1220L and 1260L.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Comparing a 65w TDP to a 15w TDP is such a stretch its not even funny.
Im sorry, I love AMD, how cheap they are, their graphics, the competition they bring to intel, etc; but theyre so uncompetitive right now its not even funny. For $200 I can get an intel processor [intel.com] that can do over 1GB/sec of AES encryption (thats around 10gbit vpn tunnels, if youre keeping score) in a 20w package. They seriously need to get their act together, especially as regards power draw.
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My Phenom II desktop has ECC. The cost difference between it and an equivalent Intel system more than paid for a hardware raid controller and 4 big drives. My previous two desktops, a P4 and P3, both have ECC as well.
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It would be more than adequate for most of the servers in my rack. Granted, I'm moving in the direction of virtualization, but I need to get a better storage infrastructure. That brings me to another question, where does one go to get an updated education on server/stoage technologies? I'm primarily a programmer, but being a small shop, I do everything, and my server knowledge is kind of lagging behind.
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It's only a matter of time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Until Intel brings back the Pentium brand in general.
Unless they're stupid.
I'll never understand why they killed their most visible, most recognised brand.
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Their whole Pentium M, Centrino and Core brands are based on the Pentium III "Tualatin".
Pentium never died, although P4 came close. That was a dead end.
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Re:It's only a matter of time. (Score:5, Informative)
Because the ageing pentium architecture was a mess, and they needed to redesign from scratch for the Core 2 architecture - which was a great improvement. They stopped using the pentium brand because they stopped selling chips with any pentium-based technology in.
What is the "Pentium architecture"? The microarchitecture of the original Pentium (P5) was different from the microarchitecture of the Pentium Pro/Pentium II/Pentium III (P6), and P6 was different from the microarchitecture of the Pentium 4 (NetBurst), and NetBurst was different from the microarchitecture of the Pentium M (which was, I think, P6-derived). The microarchitecture of the Core 2 (Core) was, I think, Pentium M-derived.
So there's Pentium-the-chip (P5), and there's Pentium-the-brand, which was first used with the P5 chip but was also used with chips with significantly different microarchitectures from the P5 chip.
The Pentium 350 apparently uses the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, along with a bunch of other microprocessors [intel.com], some named Core, some named Xeon, some named Celeron, and some named Pentium. Some of the ones named Pentium were launched in Q3 2011, before the Pentium 350, so "Intel Breathes New Life Into Pentium" is, to use the technical term, a "complete bullshit headline".
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That makes absolutely no sense. You would consider a 32-bit Pentium 4 505 as a "True Pentium" and a 64-bit Pentium 4 506 as something else even though they are both based on Prescott microarchitecture but the 505 processor has 64-bit capabilities disabled???
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You have a lot of naming to cover if you genuinely want to distinguish between instruction sets by name, rather than model number.
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Well, it can't possibly be any worse than Intel's current naming scheme!
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32-bit x86 CISC instruction set based CPUs
All x86 processors are CISC (regardless of whether they internally turn the instructions into sequences of 1 or more RISCy micro-ops and schedule and execute those independently).
should be called Pentiums
Presumably meaning "Only 32-bit x86 CPUs should be called Pentiums", as you presumably don't intend to call the 80386 and 80486 Pentiums.
(Not that Intel's marketing department has any good reason whatsoever to care what any of us think is the proper use for their "Pentium" brand.)
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To most people, Pentium was just a brand name. The technology behind it was irrelevant. Even if tomorrow Intel starts making their CPUs out of tungsten and unicorn tears, they could still call it Pentium.
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I would buy that processor.
Re:It's only a matter of time. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll never understand why they killed their most visible, most recognised brand.
For me that hasn't been much of a question. For what I gather, the Intel brand is way stronger than the Pentium brand. You don't buy Pentium or Core, you buy Intel. Their changing the processor name only signifies that they are moving forward (and leading) as usual.
Re:It's only a matter of time. (Score:4, Insightful)
"You don't buy Pentium or Core, you buy Intel."
The more technically aware perhaps, but people like the dudes who got Dells (i.e., the ones who had no idea that there were any OS'es besides Windows) knew they wanted a Pentium even if they didn't know if it was made by Intel or Mat-tel.
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Until intel doubled the L2, increased the FSB to 800MHz, and really ramped up the clock speed. Then AMD was stuck with no other option than to inflate the ratings on it's processors. (AMD Athlon XP 3400+, sure....) AMD couldn't do much until the hammers fell.
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You don't buy Intel; you buy Sandy Bridge.
Re:It's only a matter of time. (Score:5, Funny)
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It was an overall recognised brand, but not always in a good way.
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It's all about the Pentiums, baby!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMvS1Q1sos [youtube.com]
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Yes, but when you can get so many of anything else that is slightly slower it's fairly irrelevant unless you have a black-ops budget to play with or some other reason to be immune from accountants.
PowerPC 750 was already the G3 (Score:2)
IBM announced in the late 90's the huge performance upgrade to their mainframes would be G5, so Apple decides to refer to the PowerPC 74xx's as the G series.
Or perhaps they called the 7400 series "G4" because the PowerPC 750 was already the G3. As marketed to Mac users, the first-generation PowerPC was 601, the second was 603 and 604, and the third was 750.
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PowerPC 74xx's
I remember that the 7400 was a quad two input NAND gate and the rest of the 74xx series was assorted other TTL logic gates. There were variants like the 74Sxx, 74LSxx, and others. There was also the 4xxx CMOS series, but the numbers didn't map, so 4000 was not a quad two input NAND gate. I think that there was also a 74xx variant 74Hxx(?) that was also CMOS, but used TTL logic levels. Now, a PowerPC built out of 74xx series chips would be quite the sight to see, especially if you wired it up to some bli
Atom.. (Score:2)
It makes some sort of sense (Score:2)
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This kind of product is ideal for SMBs though, and even individuals who want a high performance NAS box. I've got AMD's equivalent processor (as I see it anyway) in a HP Microserver, and it runs a couple of Linux VMs and a Windows XP VM without a problem (for the odd bits of Windows stuff I have to do), as well as providing me with a fast 4x 3.5" removable HDD storage solution.
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There are corps who buy a ``a few high end servers and use vmware'' and then there are corps who buy thousands of low-end cheap boxes and build hadoop clusters.
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Retroactively rebrand... (Score:2)
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Just what i3's can you name that are not 64 bit capable?
Pentium 350? (Score:3)
What happened to the Pentium 5 through 349?
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The Pentium did have maths problems.
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Their formula for picking the next number involved a sub expression of 4195835/3145727.
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They were not entirely successful.
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Damn. First time in months that I've been tempted to post, and you beat me to it ... :-)
Windows 95? (Score:2)
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And OS I to OS X.
I just pitched a t-shirt that mentioned OS 8.5, and I have used Mac OS 6, 7, 8, and 9.
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Well some of them existed. I had a Pentium 100 back in the day where the clock-frequency was part of the chip name.
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"What happened to the Pentium 5 through 349?"
Their marketing guy comes from mozilla corporation.
Re:Pentium 350? (Score:4, Funny)
In other words you had a waffle iron and a 266.
Integrated graphics? (Score:2)
More like integrated waste of money.
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on 1.2ghz server though, integrated graphics would be more reasonable than on most of the machines integrated graphics ship on.. so.. uh.. I don't think this is a chip for totally gpu'less installations either..
New legal battle on the horizon (Score:3)
hopefully without any bugs (Score:2)
f00f
Summary again (Score:3)
Somehow I doubt that integrated graphics are on "most" of their chips, unless you're talking about the volume shipped for laptops, and even then I thought the graphics were on a separate chip in most cases.
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Re:Smart move by intel (Score:5, Informative)
HP Microservers sold like hotcakes, and were based around AMD's Athlon II Neo N36L processor - which is 64bit, dual core, 25W TDP, VT-x etc. No doubt Intel want part of this pie
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It's pretty obvious that the low TDP means it's meant for something fanless/low-noise like MacMini servers. Though the MacMini already runs a laptop i5 chip for the same reason.
I hope, but have little faith in Intel when it comes to putting out cooler chips with lower TDP. When they have 100W+ TDP, you can only stuff 4 of them in a 15A rack. When they're 15W, that comes up to 24 ,machines or even blade systems.
But I think it might actually be an attempt to beat Calxeda before it sells any servers. http://ww
Re:Cool! (Score:5, Funny)
it was a 59.97, actually...
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I thought that was the video sweep on color NTSC sets.
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I thought NTSC framerate was 23.976? Such an odd number simply because the field refresh rate (originally 60.0Hz) had to be reduced by a factor of exactly 1000/1001 (to give a FiR of 59.94Hz which with a bit of math and timecode drops (1 frame every 1000 count, on average) gives the aforementioned standard NTSC colour framerate) to overcome some constraint or other of the transition between monochrome and colour signal. I think, and stand to be corrected, that the colour signal was vulnerable to interferenc
Re:Cool! (Score:4, Funny)
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I want the best !!
Why do you want bulldozer then?
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Still selling the same chip? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's a Pentium in as much as they named it "Pentium," much like a Ford Taurus of today is just as much a Ford Taurus as one they made 20 years ago, even though they have no parts in common. It's a Taurus because Ford named it that.
The Intel Atom probably has more in common with the original P54C than the Pentium Pro did.