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Posted on Friday, July 28 @ 07:45:16 CDT by silvers_revenge
PCs are cheap today, and soon they'll be even cheaper, thanks to a price war between the two leading chip suppliers, AMD and Intel. Today's expected launch of Intel's next-generation Core 2 Duo range leaves AMD needing to halve the prices of many processors in order to stay competitive. And on Tuesday it did it, more than halving Athlon 64 prices.
As described here before, Intel has been developing three 64-bit chips based on a new microarchitecture developed to replace the old Pentium NetBurst design. They have been code-named Merom (for notebooks), Conroe (for desktops) and Woodcrest (for servers).
We have been looking forward to them because the new chips are faster than the Pentium 4, run more coolly and use less power. This should lead to systems that run more quietly, with less need for powerful fans, and to notebooks that are either cooler or thinner and offer better battery life. They also have virtualisation features to help run multiple operating systems at once, and support TPM (Trusted Platform Module) features that can be used to increase security.
The wait is almost over. Woodcrest was launched a month ago as the Xeon 5100, with testimonials from Pixar Animation Studios and BMW, and support from more than 150 computer manufacturers. Conroe designs have already been tested by several magazines and start shipping in volume at the end of this month. Merom processors should be shipping by the end of August, according to Alistair Kemp, Intel UK's PR manager.
For the past few years, AMD has enjoyed most of the bragging rights in the microchip market, particularly in high-end games machines (think Alienware) and multi-processor servers. AMD also led the way in extending the current 32-bit x86 design to 64-bits, forcing Intel to follow.
View the rest of the story here: Guardian Unlimited
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