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YOU'RE PROBABLY wondering what happened to the 800MHz front side bus Xeons that Intel was promising its customers they'd see early this year. We know we are, so we decided to ask some people and some Intel partners just what the flipping heck isn't going on.
It now appears to be some time before Intel launches its 1M 3.6GHz 800FSB Xeon at $850, its 3.4GHz one at $695, its 3.2GHz one at $450, its 3.0GHz one at $315 and its 2.8GHz one at $210.
And it won't be until much later in the year that it will introduce its 3.8GHz 1MB Xeon at $850.
But the firm will cut prices on a whole raft of those old fashioned 533MHz Xeons with 1MB of memory at the end of May, with price drops averaging $150 or so as it moves to discount them.
What's the problem? It's partly to do with its engineering efforts on 64-32 bit emulation, as it struggles to meet the promises Dr Craig Barrett made at the Intel Developer Forum in February.
We're hearing word that Intel will paper launch its Nocona 3.6GHz thing probably in July right now, but production samples won't reach the PC vendors until August, and it's hoping they'll go into mass production in September. Will there be a 3.8GHz Nocona out by the end of the year? It will be a close run thing.
And guess what. Because Intel is in such a state of deshabillé, AMD isn't in any great hurry to get new Opterons out of the door. Why should it, when it takes Intel four speed bumps to AMD Opteron's three?
AMD had better not get too cocky, however, just because on the performance stake its Opterons are "making mincemeat" out of Xeons at least until February of next year.
Intel has several weapons at its disposal, just like the Spanish Inquisition in Monty Python's Flying Circus. One of those is the soft cushion of yet another hefty price cut on Xeons later in the year.
Will that weapon work anymore? While the tier one Intel customers are promising Chipzilla that they'll introduce 1U Noconas, for example, that's apparently "subject to heat validation".
And we all know what that means.
2005 has turned out to be the year in which Chipzilla has been caught with its knickers down and its naked bum hanging out at the back on the server front - hence our use of the word deshabillé.
Source:
The INQ!
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