I have been looking at overclockersuk selection of hardware here and saw that they are offering the Prescott CPU's at cheaper prices than the Northwoods? Does anyone know why this is?
BigZ if you knew it or not you are actually right . Clock for clock Presscott is slower than Northwood. Infact Prescott has had its guts ripped out of it just to make is so it could run at all. Prescott is a dead duck.
I was making as a bit of a joking comment, because I can see it being much like the Williamette to start with, it'll need a heavy core revision to get it back to where they are with the Northwood core. Intel always seem to strive for too much performance IMO, they should have concentrated on getting the wasted power output down, from what I've heard the P4 3.4 Expensive Edition is outputting around 150W of wasted heat. The A64 3400+ puts out around 90W. I can see AMD taking a little bit of the market share back from the Thunderbird time, but they need to push on with R&D and make the A64 even better than it is at the moment.
I supose it's becouse of the manufacture process. Prescott is 65nm and Northwood is 130nm, so Intel pay less for production those Prescott CPUs, and so it gives us a less priced CPU copared to Northwood. I think it's also becouse of the clock, which is smaller, but faster Prescotts will be more paid i think, just wait a bit and we'll see.
Sorry, but this is untrue, the Prescott is based on the 0.13micron process, and will move to the 0.09micron process over the course of this year (I think it's Q3 04 if IIRC)
woah, i thought that the prescott was due to be launched on a 90nm process so i take it 2x cache and SSE3 is the only new thing in the prescott then? thats a bit cack
The reason its cheaper, which someone picked up on at the OcUK forums, is that there are price drops due on Intel processors, including the outgoing Northwood line, on or very near the same day that Prescott is released (Intel announces in advance when its dropping prices on its cpus, but you don't hear much about because retailers don't like to tell you when you can get something cheaper, and Intel don't actually say how much they'll reduce everything by). Basically it seems OcUK negotiated a deal with their supplier early to get Prescott pricing and stocks secured, so they can make it available to pre-order, at the price they will be released at (but also at the price Intel will reduce the Northwoods to around the time of Prescotts release). So everyone is happy, OcUK get even more pre-orders because of the 'omg its cheaper than a Northwood!' effect, and people get to secure their new Prescott cpu in advance of the official release (since by pre-ordering they'll get one of the first Prescott cpus OcUK get in ).
Man, so sorry about that mistake That'll be of course 90nm. What i was thinking about Than if those new are also 0,13micron i think Intel wants to sell some part of them to become the main product on the market and Northwood will be slowly going to the past. AMD also does this kind of thing with Athlons 64 FX. I supose it's part of those manufacturers politics.
You have to remember that the main driving force behind the price of a chip is the amount of silicon it requires, or working backwards, how many chips they can get from a single wafer. Bearing in mind the (early) prescott is manufactured using the same 130nm process as the northwood, yet it has double the L2 cache (1MB instead of 512KB) so takes up more wafer real estate, it should be more expensive, NOT taking into account the development costs over the northwood. This means one of two things to me. 1. It's crap. Intel know it, and are pricing it accordingly. Lets face it, most people that get hold of new processers do so as part of a package. They do not therefore know the price of the individual component. All they will hear from the local pcworld rep is that "this pc has the latest and greatest chip from intel" 2. They know that this chip is actually not that bad, and gains a healthy benefit due to the onboard 1MB L2 cache. They also know that they will be migrating the prescott over to LGA775 in the VERY near future. So, by selling their latest chip at a very good price, they may be able to get an early bite back into the market share taken by athlon64. They won't have to keep the prices like this for that long, as they will be able to justify a price hike with the introduction of LGA775, as the new mobos will come with various new features. In effect, using the early prescott to create a bit more market share in intel and keep people confident. Or it could be a combination of the two. All I know is, I ain't getting anything until probably Q4 this year. 8-ball
Hey man it's no problem, that's what forums are for! Learning from other peoples experiences and knowledge, while sharing your own experiences and knowledge around for all to take in
Prescott is an 90nm part only. If I am reading some of these posts correctly people are incorrectly saying it is on 0.130 micron
I've done some reading around and yes, it's 90nm from the start, I heard somehwere (but can't remember where) that they were introducing SSE3 on to the 0.13 micron process, I assumed this was a set of instructions for the prescott only, however I seem to have jumped up the wrong tree on this occasion
As far as I know the 90nm process is more expensive, because they need new fab machines thta can do 90nm.
It is more expensive at the start to buy new 90nm fab machines but it becomes cheaper because thye use less silicon.
so this is just a ploy by Intel to gain a larger market share then? They are undercutting their own Northwoods, i suppose so people will think its a better deal and buy from them.
