Intel will introduce its quad-core desktop processor series, codenamed "Kentsfield," in the fourth quarter of 2006, instead of the first quarter of 2007 as originally scheduled, Taiwan motherboard makers noted. The unit price of the quad-core Kentsfield CPU will be US$999, in 1000-unit tray quantities, indicated the makers.

By launching the 65nm quad-core processors ahead of scedule, Intel is attempting to secure a leading position in the high-end gaming market, to counter AMD's fourth quarter introduction of the Socket-AM2 Athlon 64 FX-64 series of processors, which support a core speed of 3GHz and 2x1MB L2 cache memory, according to the makers. Intel's Socket-775 quad-core Kentsfield, which will be included in the Core 2 Extreme CPU family, has a core speed of 2.66GHz, a built-in 2x4MB L2 cache and supports a 1066MHz front-side bus (FSB), said the makers.

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News source: DigiTimes



There are 13 additional comments
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(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #1 Posted by RAID 0 on 17 Aug 2006 - 19:16
Let's hope AMD can pull it off. Intel can't be top dog for more than a few months! ;-)
Quote this comment #1.1 Posted by Ravensworth on 17 Aug 2006 - 21:04
You should hope they do, AMD had been getting lazy. Maybe this will kick them back into high gear (and bring down the prices too).
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #2 Posted by El Sid on 17 Aug 2006 - 19:17
Go Intel! I've got to admit I was an AMD fan until the start of the month, but Core 2 Duo works juuuust fiiiine .

This Intel/AMD rivalry is really starting to hot up now, and it's really giving end-users benefits! Although "benefits" in the case is a word used loosely when you look at the price tag for vendors, let alone retail prices.

--El Sid
(1 reply) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #3 Posted by Co_Co on 17 Aug 2006 - 19:27
bring on octo-core!
Quote this comment #3.1 Posted by Octol on 18 Aug 2006 - 04:36
I second that motion! I knew Intel would eventually make me my own processor!
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #4 Posted by Jugalator on 17 Aug 2006 - 19:36
Hehe, with this and the Core 2 Duo, seems Intel's on a roll.
(3 replies) Quote this comment Reply to this comment #5 Posted by HawkMan on 17 Aug 2006 - 19:42
Quad core and higher are useless for regular users, and will be for the foreseeable future.

dual core is important and speeds up because it allows you to runa full screen app, and other apps won't steal cycles from it. this way dual core will cause a perfomance icnreae evenf or non multithreaded non multicore apps.


Quad cores however won't be necessary for a logn time, games and program utiliziing multi threading and suign dual core is only now startign to be announced and getting released. And even these will for now probably only barely use dual core, and depite being mulithtreaded probably won't be usign any addition cores outside dual very well for a while.

so instead of goign to cheap route and just add more cores, make faster CPUs, That's what we need, not just gettign stuck with where we are and just doublign the cores every year.

in a few years when multicore arcitechres for consiumershave gotten a good foothold trhought he introduction of the dual cores, THEN we can start talking Quad cores and more, but as of right now Quad core doesn't give you ANYTHGIN unless you run renderign apps like 3DS MAX and such.

Intel just want to be first showing hey look we where a bit slow with our duals but we got twice as many cores as AMD.

it's a cheap upgrade, and without AMD's integrated memory controller it's even cheaper with the bottleneck it'll have.
Quote this comment #5.1 Posted by MrCobra on 17 Aug 2006 - 20:44
Quote - HawkMan said @ #5
Quad core and higher are useless for regular users, and will be for the foreseeable future.

dual core is important and speeds up because it allows you to runa full screen app, and other apps won't steal cycles from it. this way dual core will cause a perfomance icnreae evenf or non multithreaded non multicore apps.


Quad cores however won't be necessary for a logn time, games and program utiliziing multi threading and suign dual core is only now startign to be announced and getting released. And even these will for now probably only barely use dual core, and depite being mulithtreaded probably won't be usign any addition cores outside dual very well for a while.

so instead of goign to cheap route and just add more cores, make faster CPUs, That's what we need, not just gettign stuck with where we are and just doublign the cores every year.

in a few years when multicore arcitechres for consiumershave gotten a good foothold trhought he introduction of the dual cores, THEN we can start talking Quad cores and more, but as of right now Quad core doesn't give you ANYTHGIN unless you run renderign apps like 3DS MAX and such.

Intel just want to be first showing hey look we where a bit slow with our duals but we got twice as many cores as AMD.

it's a cheap upgrade, and without AMD's integrated memory controller it's even cheaper with the bottleneck it'll have.

The same thing can be said about quad core as well. Windows will see it as a single chip with 4 logical processing units and offload its workload. That's a benefit right there. Same with dual core.

I don't think I'd want the Kentsfield chip as it's 2 physical CPUs piggy-backed just like their early dual cores were. The bold part in that quote is very true.
Quote this comment #5.2 Posted by epple on 17 Aug 2006 - 21:57
Just want to point out that the Kentsfield isn't exactly aimed toward the regular user..
Quote this comment #5.3 Posted by MrCobra on 18 Aug 2006 - 09:19
While it does have some appeal to it, IMO, I don't see it as being that great. Unless they've come up with some new interconnect to let the two dual chips talk to one another at higher speeds it will bottleneck big time. I want true quad core. Not the piggy-backed chips. To me it just seems like a halfassed and desperate solution just to be able to say, "We did it first."
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #6 Posted by Osprey on 17 Aug 2006 - 20:39
HawkMan makes a good point. On the other hand, though, they've gotten to a point where it's harder and harder to just add more MHz. If there's a ceiling, they're getting close to it. At least by adding cores, they're adding speed, even if it's only in parallel. I can definitely agree that quad cores will benefit mostly only content creation professionals for quite a while, but this innovation will benefit the consumer sometime, whether it's 2 years from now or 20. For now, I'd rather they keep adding cores, rather than try to pass off on us processors that are a mere 200MHz faster than what they released 6 months ago. The days when increases like that were substantial are long gone.
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #7 Posted by RAID 0 on 17 Aug 2006 - 21:05
Start looking to other materials, besides silicon. Gallium Arsenide has been around for a while, but no one seems to wanna make the switch. There's MANY different types materials to use out there. Should we stay with Silicon??

Check it out, if you haven't already.

GA
Quote this comment Reply to this comment #8 Posted by Ravensworth on 17 Aug 2006 - 21:06
Quad core processor will actually be very important to normal users. The reason, because they will cause the price of the dual core chips to come down.
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