The Consequence of Waking Up a Sleeping Giant: Intel Roadmaps Inside
by Kristopher Kubicki on January 25, 2005 7:44 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
Dual Core on the Horizon
So we lied originally - we have even better news. Dual core Smithfield processors, which are really nothing more than two Prescotts slapped together with independent caches, are scheduled to launch a little earlier than we originally claimed in previous roadmap articles. In fact, part of the push to launch so early seems to be to coincide with the 945/955 launch as those chipsets are the only ones to support the multiple core processors. Recall AMD's dual core launch strategy is to enable existing hardware (nForce4, K8T890, 8xxx) to run multiple cores. So while you can't plug a Smithfield into your existing 925X motherboard, it may be for the better. DDR2 has plenty of bandwidth to offer, but as we have seen in server benchmarks, multiple Pentium 4's competing on the memory bus can be quite slow. Dual core Pentium 4's might be horribly inefficient without DDR2-667, however that is another theory we can put to the test on launch day. If you look carefully, you'll see the Smithfields launching only at 800FSB. We find it slightly unusual that the entire 945/955 platform supports a front side bus speed that two $1000 SKUs utilize.
| Intel Dual Core PerformanceDesktop Lineup LGA775 | ||||
| Processor | Speed | L2 Cache | FSB | Launch |
| Pentium 4 840 | 3.20GHz | 2x1MB | 800MHz | Q2'05 |
| Pentium 4 830 | 3.00GHz | 2x1MB | 800MHz | Q2'05 |
| Pentium 4 820 | 2.80GHz | 2x1MB | 800MHz | Q2'05 |
Also note that the dual core processors on the desktop do not support HyperThreading. The server implementation of Smithfield, "Dempsey," has HyperThreading enabled. For database applications, this makes sense - although we have known for a long time that single threaded applications take a performance hit when a HyperThreading processor exclusively runs that program. Interestingly enough the Smithfield lineup has some very competitive price points according to the launch data. The 820, 830 and 840 models will launch at $241, $316 and $530 respectively - compare that to the Pentium 4 lineup today [RTPE: Pentium 4 775]. At today's prices that's only an $80 premium on the second core.
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mikecel79 - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#12 it's right there on the first page under Top Insider Stories.Zebo - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#10 I've seen some testing... On the 6 series about 5% gain in games due to fat cache not nearly enough to overcome AMD's 15-25% lead in games right now not to mention when they release E0's and faster chips like 57.. not much gain on anything else.For the dual core chips battle, just go look at any opteron vs.xeon/nocona to see domination by the little company that could.
so in effect, 2006 minimum before intel strikes back..prolly with some dothan derivative.
Zebo - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
your aticle does'nt show on main site even written today/.. luckly I found it by clicking CPU tab looking for an older article.JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#10 - I'm not overly concerned with who has the *lead*, as I'm not into spending $3000+ on a new computer. The Prescott 2M and Smithfield processors will certainly increase the price/performance ratio of Intel processors, which has been lagging for a while. Assuming we don't have another "Prescott" with the transition to 65nm, that's where I expect things to get really interesting though, and you're right that it won't really be until 2006 before that happens.Reflex - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Well, this was interesting, but I did not see anything that would allow Intel take the performance lead. I think it will be 2006 before that happens(and it is inevitable that it will see-saw again) unfortunatly, which is too bad because it keeps prices stable.JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
#3: Cedar Mill is a single core 65nm NetBurst chip (presumably) while Presler is a dual core 65nm NetBurst (again, presumably) chip.JarredWalton - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
One of the scariest things for AMD, when you consider that they're like 1/8 the size (in terms of cash flow) of Intel is that they're *just* getting 90nm chips out the door, and Intel is already talking 65nm in the relatively near future. I wouldn't be surprised to see AMD go fabless at some point, as you can't continue to spend billions of dollars every year on new fabrication facilities when you're "only" making a few billion each year.IBM and Intel are about the only companies that can afford to keep making faster, smaller fabs if trends continue. With IBM already helping out AMD in quite a few ways, I wouldn't be shocked to see them start fabbing most/all of future AMD chips.
Darth Farter - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Nice 4 intel.But It seems like a total revamp still based on the less stellar prescott core...
anyway, I hope it works out for them, but I'm really interested to see AMD's tricks and I hope on a fierce but healthy competition. (though a bit in favor of the lesser company for it to grow) as it pushes both to give us great value, performance & technology for our money.
remember, "Without AMD, Intel would still be letting us work on expensive 166MHz pentiums" as the popular saying goes lol!!
Doormat - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
Hmmm.. I thought 2005 was going to be a bum year in PCs... dual cores everywhere!!! I wanted to upgrade in April but that might have to wait until June or July to see how it all shakes out. AMD and IBM need to get on that strained Si/SSE3/dual core A64, and get ramping 200MHz per quarter if Intel delivers on time..KristopherKubicki - Wednesday, January 26, 2005 - link
mikecel79: had a problem with that graph, its fixed now though.Kristopher