quad-core

After last week's post about Xtreme Notebooks squeezing a quad-core processor inside a laptop, another small laptop vendor, ProStar Computer, contacted me to say such a feat is impossible. In his email, the ProStar rep claims that Clevo, the manufacturer of the chassis used in the Xtreme Accelerator 917V, has not approved any quad-core processors for use inside the Clevo D900C. To my eyes, it looks like the Accelerator 917V uses the gray D901C chassis. Either way, the product pages for both Clevo chassis list the supported CPUs as Core 2 Duo E6300/E6400, E6600/E6700, and the Core … Read more

The "complicated" design that AMD chose for Barcelona, its first quad-core server processor, caused more than six months of delays before the chip was ready, CEO Hector Ruiz told the San Jose Mercury News.

In an interview published in Sunday's Mercury News (the excerpts don't seem to be online yet), Ruiz said "every time we ran into a gotcha (or a technical glitch), it created a six-week-or-so hole in the schedule as we went back and fixed it. We hoped we wouldn't get many of those, but in the Barcelona case, we got more … Read more

Never mind that there's little-to-no software that can take advantage of four processing cores, Xtreme Notebooks has released the first quad-core laptop in the U.S. With no mobile quad-core parts in existence, the Xtreme 917V Accelerator turns to desktop CPUs, giving you a choice between the Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 and the Q6700. Pricing starts at $3,359. Other niceties on this gaming laptop/mobile workstation include: a glossy widescreen 17-inch display (up to 1920x1200 resolution), one or two Nvidia GeForce Go 8700M GT or 7950 GTX graphics cards, and up to three hard drives in RAID … Read more

Intel is telling its resellers to get ready for new server chips in November.

DailyTech spotted a pricing list on an unprotected Web page at Intel's Reseller Center that reveals seven Xeon processors with 12MB of cache memory are scheduled to launch on November 11. The thing is, Intel doesn't have any server chips with 12MB of cache memory right now.

But the chipmaker has already disclosed that its Penryn generation of processors will have up to 12MBs of cache memory, making it pretty clear what to expect in November. All Intel has said is that Penryn chips … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--Apparently sometimes, you just can't say no, even when you know it's going to hurt.

That seems to be where AMD finds itself, as it tries to reconcile a draining price war against the high demand for its chips. Intel has been squeezing AMD's margins for over a year through processor price cuts, but AMD has still managed to expand its foothold inside customers like Dell and gain new customers like Toshiba.

The problem is that much of that growth is coming at the low end of the market, where less profits can be had. … Read more

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--AMD will unveil a new chip design in 2009 for the server market and faster versions of its Barcelona quad-core chip later this year, company executives said Thursday.

AMD's near-term goal is to get its Barcelona quad-core chip out into the market. The company has already said it plans to launch Barcelona chips at 2GHz later this quarter, but it also plans to ship faster versions of those chips in the fourth quarter, said Randy Allen, corporate vice president of AMD's server products division, at a technology analyst meeting at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters. … Read more

Intel's running a special on quad-core chips this summer just ahead of the back-to-school rush.

The company cut the price of its Core 2 Quad Q6600 (PDF) processor in half on Monday, just a week after it introduced a new quad-core chip for desktop PC customers. This is how it has worked in the chip game for years: new processors push older ones down a series of pricing steps until they become obsolete.

But while $266 may seem like a bargain (though remember, that's the 1,000-unit price), most PC users don't need four cores. Unless you … Read more

In addition to bringing its "Extreme" high-end CPU brand to laptops, Intel also announced a handful of new desktop quad chips today. The highlight is the top-end $999 Core 2 Extreme QX6850, a 3.0GHz chip with a new 1,333MHz front side bus. Intel also announced three dual-core CPUs that also get the newer, faster bus, the 3.0GHz Core 2 Duo E6850 ($266), the 2.66GHz E6750 ($183), and the 2.33GHz E6550 ($163). Rounding out the announcement, a new 1,066MHz front side bus Core 2 Quad chip makes its debut as well. The Q6700 … Read more

We love it when we're right. Okay, so it isn't exactly a surprise, but AMD's announcement that its native quad-core Opterons will ship in August means that, as long as the company hits that ship date, we don't have to update the old CPU road map feature. What it means for you is less certain.

If AMD's plans stay on track, the quad-core tech that comes late this summer to AMD's server/workstation Opterons should roll into AMD's forthcoming Phenom desktop and laptop CPUs later this year. And on paper, AMD could have … Read more