Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Massive Price Cuts

http://www.anandtech.com/ We finally have it! After well over a year of asking nicely, rudely and creatively - we know when AMD's next generation microarchitecture is being launched.

Well, sort of.

Barcelona, as you maybe remember, is the code name for AMD's next-generation server processors. AMD recently announced that in August, it will unleash Barcelona unto the world at clock speeds of ''up to 2.0GHz.'' But Barcelona only applies to the server world, and today we're reviewing a desktop microprocessor, so when do we get to see AMD's brand new Phenom processors on the desktop?

We'd expect Phenom in our hands 30 days after Barcelona's launch, making it approximately September/October by the time you'd see a preview/review and widespread availability about 30 days from that. If all goes perfectly, AMD's Phenom chips should be in customers' hands by November or December at the latest.

Penryn, Intel's 45nm update to its current Core 2 processors, will also make its debut at the end of this year, potentially spoiling AMD's launch party. A few possibilities exist with Penryn:

1) Penryn could launch across the board at all clock speeds and at competitive prices, quite possibly the worst case scenario for AMD, or
2) Penryn could launch strictly at upper clock speeds/price points, allowing AMD to have an easier time competing at lower speeds, or finally
3) Penryn could launch at lower clock speeds and price points, giving AMD an equally hard time as in the first scenario

It's important to recap AMD's impending launch as we've had yet another round of price cuts, making buying a new CPU today very attractive.

Today is supposed to mark the introduction of the first 1333MHz FSB quad-core Core 2 Extreme processor, the QX6850 (mouthful anyone?), as well as the official launch of the entire 1333MHz FSB lineup. But this is the second Core 2 Extreme launch that coincides with a ridiculous (in a good way) price drop, so we can't help but shift our focus for this story, at least for starters...
CPU Clock Speed FSB L2 Cache Pricing Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3.00GHz 1333 4MBx2 $999 Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.00GHz 1333 4MB $266 Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 2.66GHz 1333 4MB $183 Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33GHz 1333 4MB $163 What's launching todayIntel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Massive Price Cuts
hmmmm, very informative. Thankyou.Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 and Massive Price Cuts
Great job.WTH is AMD thinking? Are they trying to get beaten on 2 generations of CPU ''competitions''? From what I hear, the new Barcelona X4's will be clocked under 2.5 GHz, while Penryn's will be clocked at 3 GHz and above.Well, I like how the Q6600 is only going to be 299. =)
Did you wrote all that? O.OGood info BTW :)
Nothing at all, just expectations, that in my opinion intel vs. amd will resolve as nVidia vs AMD DX10 GFX did.
all of this info came from http://www.anandtech.com/read there for more information. i will be getting my core 2 e6850 soon enough
You should've given credit to Anandtech in the first post. :P
[QUOTE=''JAMullins'']all of this info came from http://www.anandtech.com/read there for more information. i will be getting my core 2 e6850 soon enough[/QUOTE]Might want to put that in your original post...
[QUOTE=''frost_mourne13'']Great job.WTH is AMD thinking? Are they trying to get beaten on 2 generations of CPU ''competitions''? From what I hear, the new Barcelona X4's will be clocked under 2.5 GHz, while Penryn's will be clocked at 3 GHz and above.Well, I like how the Q6600 is only going to be 299. =)[/QUOTE]They did what no silicon manafacturing company should do; Develop a new architecture (K10) on a new fabrication process (65nm). Further more, they're not like Intel--AMD can't afford to throw money at a problem and launch products aggressively. AMD are probably facing nightmares with low clock speeds and most likely low yeilds.Personally, I'm not expecting a show stopper from AMD. Something just feels different this time around for a company who says they have a superior product to launch. They haven't released much demos, haven't allowed the press to benchmark and have been too tight lipped.Whatever happens, they can't make any foolish mistakes from here on out. They aren't facing the same Intel that pushed a piss poor architecture onto consumers, they're facing an Intel who have their sights set on efficiency and innovation (e.g. Larrabee aka Teraflop Computing).
[QUOTE=''Wesker776''][QUOTE=''frost_mourne13'']Great job.WTH is AMD thinking? Are they trying to get beaten on 2 generations of CPU ''competitions''? From what I hear, the new Barcelona X4's will be clocked under 2.5 GHz, while Penryn's will be clocked at 3 GHz and above.Well, I like how the Q6600 is only going to be 299. =)[/QUOTE]They did what no silicon manafacturing company should do; Develop a new architecture (K10) on a new fabrication process (65nm). Further more, they're not like Intel--AMD can't afford to throw money at a problem and launch products aggressively. AMD are probably facing nightmares with low clock speeds and most likely low yeilds.Personally, I'm not expecting a show stopper from AMD. Something just feels different this time around for a company who says they have a superior product to launch. They haven't released much demos, haven't allowed the press to benchmark and have been too tight lipped.Whatever happens, they can't make any foolish mistakes from here on out. They aren't facing the same Intel that pushed a piss poor architecture onto consumers, they're facing an Intel who have their sights set on efficiency and innovation (e.g. Larrabee aka Teraflop Computing).[/QUOTE]wow, thats a very nice and non biased opinion.
[QUOTE=''Wesker776''][QUOTE=''frost_mourne13'']Great job.WTH is AMD thinking? Are they trying to get beaten on 2 generations of CPU ''competitions''? From what I hear, the new Barcelona X4's will be clocked under 2.5 GHz, while Penryn's will be clocked at 3 GHz and above.Well, I like how the Q6600 is only going to be 299. =)[/QUOTE]They did what no silicon manafacturing company should do; Develop a new architecture (K10) on a new fabrication process (65nm). Further more, they're not like Intel--AMD can't afford to throw money at a problem and launch products aggressively. AMD are probably facing nightmares with low clock speeds and most likely low yeilds.Personally, I'm not expecting a show stopper from AMD. Something just feels different this time around for a company who says they have a superior product to launch. They haven't released much demos, haven't allowed the press to benchmark and have been too tight lipped.Whatever happens, they can't make any foolish mistakes from here on out. They aren't facing the same Intel that pushed a piss poor architecture onto consumers, they're facing an Intel who have their sights set on efficiency and innovation (e.g. Larrabee aka Teraflop Computing).[/QUOTE]Sorry, that is a bit bias.
Core is Netburst Part II if you haven't noticed...

Where you in the tech world when K8 was launched Wesker?
AMD did the exact samething with K8 Opterons as they are doing now with K10.
[QUOTE=''LordEC911''][QUOTE=''Wesker776''][QUOTE=''frost_mourne13'']Great job.WTH is AMD thinking? Are they trying to get beaten on 2 generations of CPU ''competitions''? From what I hear, the new Barcelona X4's will be clocked under 2.5 GHz, while Penryn's will be clocked at 3 GHz and above.Well, I like how the Q6600 is only going to be 299. =)[/QUOTE]They did what no silicon manafacturing company should do; Develop a new architecture (K10) on a new fabrication process (65nm). Further more, they're not like Intel--AMD can't afford to throw money at a problem and launch products aggressively. AMD are probably facing nightmares with low clock speeds and most likely low yeilds.Personally, I'm not expecting a show stopper from AMD. Something just feels different this time around for a company who says they have a superior product to launch. They haven't released much demos, haven't allowed the press to benchmark and have been too tight lipped.Whatever happens, they can't make any foolish mistakes from here on out. They aren't facing the same Intel that pushed a piss poor architecture onto consumers, they're facing an Intel who have their sights set on efficiency and innovation (e.g. Larrabee aka Teraflop Computing).[/QUOTE]Sorry, that is a bit bias.
Core is Netburst Part II if you haven't noticed...

Where you in the tech world when K8 was launched Wesker?
AMD did the exact samething with K8 Opterons as they are doing now with K10.[/QUOTE]O rly? How am I biased?Core is anything BUT NetBurst, dude. I'd also like to know how you think it's NetBurst 2.Also, AMD was A LOT more vocal with K8, through its launch and its lifecycle.
[QUOTE=''Wesker776'']O rly? How am I biased?Core is anything BUT NetBurst, dude. I'd also like to know how you think it's NetBurst 2.Also, AMD was A LOT more vocal with K8, through its launch and its lifecycle.[/QUOTE]How is it different?
Minimum tweaking to the marchitecture, pushing it down to a smaller PP as fast as possible to push speeds higher. Intel has never had any elegance in this recent battle. It is about raw speed, raw transistor count(i.e. L2 cache) and raw profit.AMD was showing a 1.4ghz K8 Opty a MONTH before launch...
As for being vocal, not really...
[QUOTE=''LordEC911''][QUOTE=''Wesker776'']O rly? How am I biased?Core is anything BUT NetBurst, dude. I'd also like to know how you think it's NetBurst 2.Also, AMD was A LOT more vocal with K8, through its launch and its lifecycle.[/QUOTE]How is it different?
Minimum tweaking to the marchitecture, pushing it down to a smaller PP as fast as possible to push speeds higher. Intel has never had any elegance in this recent battle. It is about raw speed, raw transistor count(i.e. L2 cache) and raw profit.AMD was showing a 1.6ghz K8 Opty a MONTH before launch...
As for being vocal, not really... [/QUOTE]http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/core.arshttp://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=2748%26p=1Erm, I suggest you have a good read of those two articles. Yes you are right about Core having more cache, but putting more cache to a dead weight architecture (NetBurst) does nothing. You need to make use of that extra cache, whether it be execute more instructions at once, reduce cache access latency or the ability to keep instruction registers full, you can't deny that Core isn't like NetBurst.Following that logic, one could say that AMD's Barcelona is nothing but a 65nm quad core variant of K8, in which everyone can expect no increase in performance...which we all know is wrong. Also, are you saying that AMD doesn't care about raw profit? Is AMD a charity now?[QUOTE] AMD was showing a 1.6ghz K8 Opty a MONTH before launch... As for being vocal, not really...[/QUOTE]Things were different. The fastest Pentium 4 was floating around was around 2.4GHz (IIRC) and we all know how efficient the Pentium 4 core was! Hell, the Athlon XP flogged Pentium 4 Willamette and was still competing quite well with the Nortwood. Then came Prescott...Then AMD stepped out if its territory by releasing the FX CPU line. For a company taking on Goliath, that is very vocal IMO.
[QUOTE=''Wesker776'']Also, are you saying that AMD doesn't care about raw profit? Is AMD a charity now?[/QUOTE]I didn't realize they took the easy way out...
Where are the AMD quadcores with 2 dualcore die in a single package?Sorry, I was comparing Core to Netburst due to the fact that Intel just throws all it's resources into taking the easy way out. What did they do with Netburst? Speed it up and shrink it. What are they doing with Core? Speed it up, shrink it and give it more cache.I'm just saying, I did all the calculations in a diff post, that AMD will be competing against Core with at least 25% less transistors. I personally have a feeling that they will do very well.BTW- you can't make any comments about K10 being K8 while they are slightly similar they are very, very different, unlike Netburst and Core.
[QUOTE=''LordEC911''][QUOTE=''Wesker776'']Also, are you saying that AMD doesn't care about raw profit? Is AMD a charity now?[/QUOTE]I didn't realize they took the easy way out...
Where are the AMD quadcores with 2 dualcore die in a single package? [/QUOTE]:lol: Just had to revive this topic, didn't ya?AMD can't make a dual die quad core because the memory controllers on each of the die would clash with eachother and create a massive bog overhead. AMD even said this a while ago in a Dailytech/TD Daily interview.Also, what was QuadFX? ;)
[QUOTE=''Wesker776'']:lol: Just had to revive this topic, didn't ya?AMD can't make a dual die quad core because the memory controllers on each of the die would clash with eachother and create a massive bog overhead. AMD even said this a while ago in a Dailytech/TD Daily interview.Also, what was QuadFX? ;)[/QUOTE]I didn't realize they mass produced QuadFX chips... Where are those numbers?
They took a completely different path and you know it... I just don't understand why you won't admit it.Technically they could have done a dual die chip, it would have just taken a little more work then Intel, though a heck of a lot less then native quadcore.
[QUOTE=''LordEC911''][QUOTE=''Wesker776'']:lol: Just had to revive this topic, didn't ya?AMD can't make a dual die quad core because the memory controllers on each of the die would clash with eachother and create a massive bog overhead. AMD even said this a while ago in a Dailytech/TD Daily interview.Also, what was QuadFX? ;)[/QUOTE]I didn't realize they mass produced QuadFX chips... Where are those numbers?
They took a completely different path and you know it... I just don't understand why you won't admit it.Technically they could have done a dual die chip, it would have just taken a little more work then Intel, though a heck of a lot less then native quadcore.[/QUOTE]Intel doesn't even mass produce quad cores either (at least not for desktop). Something like only 10-20% of all processor shipments consist of quad cores. But that's all beside the point. A product launch is a product launch. Also, what do I have to admit to? That Intel made a smarter choice (*ding* AMD slogan) in how it approached a new product? Please don't tell me that you think that the MCM approach of Intel's is lame like the other AMDroids on this forum. Sure it might be ''lazy'', but it works absolutely fine and should tide them over until they make their native octo/quad core design for Nehalem. [QUOTE] Technically they could have done a dual die chip, it would have just taken a little more work then Intel, though a heck of a lot less then native quadcore. [/QUOTE]Yes, and as you said, it would've been quite tricky. All cores (at least in the K8 architecture) need to be in contact with a memory controller. If you shut off one memory controller in one of the dies, how is that die supposed to access the memory? You would need the other die to send/receive data to the other die, and that would add huge latency.
[QUOTE=''LordEC911'']they are very, very different, unlike Netburst and Core.[/QUOTE]

Core's more based on the Pentium M processors, which are themselves loosely based on the Pentium 3. Very different from the P4/Netburst stuff.
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