Intel Developer Forum Fall 2003 - Day 1: Introducing Pentium 4 Extreme Edition
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 16, 2003 5:33 PM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Intel just announced their first microprocessor aimed at the gaming market - the Pentium 4 Processor Extreme Edition. The Extreme Edition will be available in the next 30 - 60 days and will run at 3.2GHz.
The major improvement to the Extreme Edition over the current Pentium 4 is the inclusion of an on-die 2MB L3 cache. This on-die L3 cache is in addition to the 512KB L2 cache, giving the Extreme Edition a total of 2.5MB of on-die cache. Note that this is identical to the Xeon MP (Gallatin) core, other than the fact that we're talking about a CPU that runs at 3.2GHz and has an 800MHz FSB.
The 2MB on-die L3 cache takes the Northwood's 55 million transistors and balloons it to an incredible 169 million transistors. We will have some benchmarking time with the Extreme Edition very soon...
Intel's decision to launch this processor a week before AMD's launch of the Athlon 64 should give you an indication of the performance AMD is offering under gaming environments. The integration of an L3 cache will hide some of the latencies of going to main memory, similar to what AMD's on-die memory controller does when compared to conventional PC platforms. Unfortunately, such a large L3 cache increases the die size of the processor significantly, which will be reflected in its price. Given the price of AMD's forthcoming Athlon 64 FX, we'd expect the 3.2GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition to be priced accordingly. We are hearing that the processor will be priced around $740 in 1,000 unit quantities. You can expect systems based on the Extreme Edition processor to be due out in November, but Intel won't be following up with boxed CPUs until the beginning of next year. You will probably see some OEM CPUs for sale in the next 30 days or so.
Intel demos the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition
Given the timing of Prescott's release, we'd say that this CPU is definitely a preemptive attack against AMD's Athlon 64. Let the war begin...
Intel demos the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition
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Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
Sounds like a paper launch to me, by the time these chips are available Prescott will be ready. This smacks of desperation on Intel's part due to the gaming performance of Athlon 64 and 64-FX. My dilemma is whether to get an athlon 64 next week or wait till the 939 pin version is out.Anonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
u can always use some spare cache to surf some porn sitesAnonymous User - Thursday, September 18, 2003 - link
What the hell. Figures Intel is going after the idiots. More cache isn;t going to do cr@p for games.Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 17, 2003 - link
..hmm but i'll after the opteron anyway..btw price is always a considerable factor (in my opinion) =>Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 17, 2003 - link
I assume this chip will need a new motherboard compared to current C core P4's. If it does - then people wanting to get one of these will PROBABLY go Athlon 64 + new motherboard for longevity purposes instead of slightly-updated-p4 + new motherboardDoug
Anonymous User - Wednesday, September 17, 2003 - link
Yeah, I don't know what happened to my account - I go by KalTorak everyplace else...Anyway, yeah, I was in the back of the room for Louis's keynote, and I taught a session this afternoon.
If ya get a chance, check out the demos at booth 16 in the Intel pavilion; there're some pretty cool glass-box demos there of forthcoming stuff.
sprockkets - Tuesday, September 16, 2003 - link
Or We can't look so far behind AMD.Xelloss - Tuesday, September 16, 2003 - link
Let the war begin indeed... :) This market needed some renewed competition. Things were getting too predictable!sprockkets - Tuesday, September 16, 2003 - link
Sad. Guess 1MB on the Prescott just wasn't enough. Hell, next generation we'll have 5, cause that's the only way to succeed!!!Desparation? Not really. It's total domination. Intel has to maintain a step ahead, or at least be competative. We can look so far behind.
AMD can never really kill Intel. Perhaps IBM/AMD can...
dvinnen - Tuesday, September 16, 2003 - link
Ummmm, Aga, I think you;ve had to many drink tonight. Sure the extra L3 will reduce some latency, but nothing like how an onboard memory controler. But it won't have that much effect. On the Xeon it gives a 10% increase max.