Intel Launches New Pentium Extreme Edition 965

RL-20 II Rider writes "Although Intel is hard at work readying their next-gen Conroe core for a proposed 2H '06 release, it seems engineers at the company are still improving upon the existing 65nm Presler core. This review of the brand-new 3.73GHz Pentium Extreme Edition 965 dual-core processor shows that the CPU is based on a new stepping of the Presler core that runs cooler and overclocks higher than older chips, while consuming a bit less power as well."

Intel should be ashamed.

[LibertineR]

My AMD Athlon 64 X2 chugs along at 2.2Ghz, and STILL blows Intel out of the water due to its superior design, while managing a cool 29C. AMD has fought the good fight, and until Intel gets faster AND cooler, AMD has my computing dollar. To me, the only thing 'Extreme' about Intel processors right now, is the number of CPU cycles wasted.

extreme?

[matt328]

I donno, brand new chip, catchy performance implying name, about the only thing extreme about this chip will be the price. All of you people who get off on bragging about their box's specs in your little forum sigs prepare to shell out your 2 grand to upgrade from that now outdated 3.4 ghz piece of crap you've somehow been putting up with.

Not trying to troll, just pointing out the extremely narrow audience this chip would appeal to given that they are moving on to a different core soon. I'm just hoping this will drive down costs of the 'lower end' dual core chips soon.

It's misleading advertising

[Bullfish]

I think by now most of us on these kinds of discussion boards know that the price differential between the extreme and non-extreme versions of Intel chips is not worth the extra punch that the cache increase extreme denotes. Unfortunately, they will sell a lot of these to people who don't know any better. Some of them will be to people we know who will then wonder why our cheaper machines perform the same or better. Others will remain convinced that they bought the best and will lash themselves to believing they were not duped.

To me, this is indicative of a lot of the market now. Really, you don't need a 700 dollar video card to play any game out on the market. True, with the more expensive card you will get better resolutions on very large or multiple monitors, but most people don't have them. I know people whole have 17 inch monitors who were almost suckered by the hype that you need a high priced card just to play FEAR at all. Ditto, BF2. This really has been driven by the hardware companies and hardware sites that like to torture test hardware. Not in and of itself a bad thing, but to the uninitiated, it can be misleading. Especially when coupled with hardware companies that implicitly promote this untruth.

Unfortunately, the extreme edition etc, is symbolic of companies that feel a loss because their profit slipped from the previous year, in spite of the fact they are still making good money. No doubt some of these execs still sleep at night dreaming of another Y2K scam to rake in the dollars from sales of hardware most people don't need, or in the end, even want.

That is what I believe is at the root of this kind of marketing. And I don't see it going away, I see it becoming more rife.

Re:Intel should be ashamed.

[default luser]

Hey, I agree wholehartedly, and I've been an AMD fanboy since the release of the P4.

Anyone who can look at this breakdown of the new Core design [realworldtech.com], understand it, and STILL proclaim AMD the performance leader is retarded. The extra simple decoder means potentially 33% more thoroughput out the gate, and the fused micro-ops can add another 5-10% performance improvement (assuming you have enough execution units to use all this). The 128-bit SSE unit, plus the ability for simple decoders to handle packed SSE instructions, also means double the speed at vector operations.

That said, at least I had my just desserts. I always said superpipelined Netburst was a retarded design, and the fact that Intel went and developed Conroe only validates my claim.

I am still curious to see the power usage of Core. It should be less than the P4, but whether it is competitive with AMD may be another story. Hopefully AMD will finally get off their ass and improve their own design, which hasn't changed much since the K7 (onboard memory controller aside). Who knows, I may end up buying Conroe, and becomean Intel fanboy again.