IDF Spring 2005 - New Pentium D, No More 4
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 1, 2005 6:55 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
In the spirit of multi-core at IDF, Intel has officially named the dual core Smithfield based Pentium 4 processors - by ditching the number 4.
The desktop dual core processor is called the Pentium D, and here's its logo:
The 90nm Pentium D will debut at the following speeds:
| Intel Dual Core Performance Desktop Lineup LGA775 | ||||
| Processor | Speed | L2 Cache | FSB | Launch |
| Pentium D 840 | 3.20GHz | 2x1MB | 800MHz | Q2'05 |
| Pentium D 830 | 3.00GHz | 2x1MB | 800MHz | Q2'05 |
| Pentium D 820 | 2.80GHz | 2x1MB | 800MHz | Q2'05 |
Next up we have the Pentium Extreme Edition, also missing the number 4:
The Pentium Extreme Edition will only be launched at 3.2GHz and feature a 1066MHz FSB as well as Hyper Threading (2 threads per core, 4 threads total). The rest of the features remain identical to the Pentium D.
We can't help but think that the Pentium D logo looks a little too much like the Celeron D logo, but Intel has definitely made the Pentium Extreme Edition look somewhat more worth its price tag.
As we alluded to earlier, there is a bit of an issue with the way the Smithfield die is laid out in that it is a single piece of silicon consisting of two Prescott 1M cores. Although one of the cores can be cut away or disabled if it is useless, the problem is that we're now dealing with one very large core at 206 mm^2 and 230M transistors. Remember that chip defects increase by surface area, so manufacturing one very long piece of silicon lends itself to higher defects than two smaller pieces of silicon. Presler, the 65nm chip we talked about earlier today, gets around this by actually using two separate pieces of silicon for the two 65nm cores - Presler also uses the 65nm process to enable a full 2MB of cache per CPU, that's 4MB of total cache on a desktop processor.
More info as we get it...for those that are wondering, Gelsinger's keynote was infinitely better than Barrett's, in terms of interesting information.
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Avalon - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
The D seems to be implying dual core, in which case I think I can see consumers purchasing a Celeron thinking they're going to get a dual core chip because it has the letter "D" in it. While dual core is a good thing, I'm not excited right now. I play games. Dual core is going to do nothing for me for at least a year. I'm sure there are many more like me out there. In time, it will have its benefits.phaxmohdem - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
Pentium "D"amn its hit in here.DigitalDivine - Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - link
#14, so what, extra threads don't hurt, the sad part is that intel will disable perfectly good working chips capable of ht...and btw, the logos look horrible. they should hite the graphics designer of amd... i mean... the athlon 64 logos are just pretty, so is the original athlon.
but the logos that i do hate from amd is the oblong athlon logos... *barf... they are uuuggglllyyyy
ts3433 - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
"On the Pentium D, Intel adds dual-core, but takes away HyperThreading"That's part of the point of dual-core. Two actual cores are going to handle SMP stuff better than one real core acting as two virtual cores, so HT isn't needed.
knitecrow - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
The evil plan is coming together... pretty soon it will be impossible to for the average consumer, (by defination, if you read anandtech, you are not an average consumer) to distinguish within intel's destop offering. They can throw whatever-the-hell they want into dell boxes and no one will be any wiser.Intel is moving towards a consumer attitude towards its chips... no one cares about the power of the motor used in blenders.
The problem is, computers haven't reached that point.
If AMD is smart, they will exploit this stupid naming scheme
IntelUser2000 - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
"The Celeron D and Pentium D will be confused in no time."Well, not really. Haven't you seen the logos for Pentium M? Yes the chip used in Centrino products. So how about Pentium M then? Does people get Celeron M confused with Pentium M? Theoretically Pentium M vs Celeron M is more confusing since its logo with same design and BOTH M.
"D as in Dual core? or D as in the 4th letter of the alphabet? :D"
I think it means Pentium Desktop, like Pentium M is Pentium Mobile(I think).
"Doesn't this all seem a bit artificial? Intel is purposely disabling features on the Pentium D's to give people a reason to buy the Pentium EE... it was one thing when the Pentium 4 EE was a different chip and had different characteristics, but this is a bit silly now. I guess the EE is quite the cash cow for them to go to such lengths to cripple their volume product to support EE sales."
Or you can say that since people with EE has likely has more money then for regular versions, and since adding hyperthreading adds a little to power consumption and therefore heat, maybe Intel thinks the EE guys can afford more for cooling?
"I swear, Intel has an evil plot division specifically to come up with things like the Pentium D/Celeron D naming overlap to furstrate geeks. That or they're intentionally trying to confuse consumers in to getting the cheap Intel chip over the cheap AMD chip because it must have dual cores(it has a D!). Either way, this is a terrible name."
Aren't we "geeks" here to make those non-geeks know the difference? :D.
Pentium D EE at: 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz, and 3.2GHz. I wonder that means. Since the highest price on the current EE's are $999, does it mean the highest price increases for the highest EE's, or the price for the lowest price EE decreases? Like this:
Either for example: 2.8GHz=$999, 3.0GHz=$1299, 3.2GHz=$1499,
OR
2.8GHz=$649, 3.0GHz $=799, 3.2GHz=$999?
I hope its second one.
dm - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
very nice....the logo looks much more like the Mobile logos =)johnsonx - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
So let me get this straight... On the Pentium D, Intel adds dual-core, but takes away HyperThreading and still doesn't support the 1066FSB, even though any chipset that supports the Pentium D will have 1066FSB support (unless artificially disabled by Intel!).Then they give HT back on the Pentium EE, and support 1066FSB.
Doesn't this all seem a bit artificial? Intel is purposely disabling features on the Pentium D's to give people a reason to buy the Pentium EE... it was one thing when the Pentium 4 EE was a different chip and had different characteristics, but this is a bit silly now. I guess the EE is quite the cash cow for them to go to such lengths to cripple their volume product to support EE sales.
And no, before anyone suggests it, I doubt Intel gets a bunch of cores with HT broken or that won't take a 1066FSB. Bad cache and clock speed are the main bin-splits, and now add to that a bad core.
AMD doesn't arificially cripple A64's to make the FX worth buying; the FX is just AMD's current fastest, biggest-cache chip. (though it'd be more worthwhile if the FX always held both a clock-speed and cache advantage over the regular A64's, instead of just one or the other (i.e. FX-55 vs 4000+=same cache, higher clock while FX-53 vs 3800+ was same clock, bigger cache).
And of course, FX chips are multiplier unlocked. Intel doesn't even throw EE users that bone...
(OK, yes, AMD does cripple A64 cores to make Semprons. I think that's stupid too... Semprons should be Socket-A only; if AMD wants to sell low-priced Socket-754 chips, then sell a 1.6Ghz Athlon64 2600+, or even a 1.6Ghz/256k cache Athlon64 2400+ or whatever number they want to give it... disabling perfectly good 64-bit instructions when Windows XP 64-bit is about to ship and even many Celerons will have 64-bit is pointlesss)
Doormat - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
D as in Desktop?I'm more of the mind until there is a major switch (itanium, something else), everything will be a Pentium ?. D = desktop, M = mobile, etc.
Chuckles - Tuesday, March 1, 2005 - link
The new labeling actually makes more sense than previous iterations. Now there is the Pentium D(esktop), Pentium M(obile), Celeron D(esktop), and Celeron M(obile). Makes more sense than Pentium 4, Pentium 4M, Pentium M, Celeron, Celeron M...