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Four Atom chips sneak out of Intel, soon to appear in netbooks and nettops
Rarely do you hear of new chips sneaking out of Intel, Escape from Alcatraz-style. But that's (figuratively) happened today, with a quartet of processors appearing with little fanfare from Chipzilla. Two of these you might recognize as members of the delayed Cedar Trail series, the D2500 and D2700. The former clocks at 1.86GHz and 2.13GHz, with the latter upping that to 2.13GHz and 2.4Ghz; both have a thermal design power of less than 10W. The other two chips sip power even more judiciously: the N2600 has a TDP of less than 3.5W at 1.6GHz or 1.86GHz; the N2800 has a 6.5W TDP, running at 1.86GHz or 2.13GHz. All include GPUs, with the N2000 series destined for netbooks, while the D2000 series should end up in nettops. To dig deeper into the specs, see Intel's datasheet at the source link below.
Intel's Cedar Trail gets some specs, combines CPU and GPU on a single chip
That new processor smell has barely started to fade from Oak Trail and we're already getting some tantalizing details about the next generation of Atom chips -- Cedar Trail. As expected, Intel has moved to 32nm, which allows it to cram the GPU and the CPU onto the same sliver of silicon. The first two models, the D2500 and D2700, will be dual-core, sport 1MB of L2 cache, and have a miserly TDP of 10w -- 3w lower than current dual-core Atoms. The former will be clocked at 1.86GHz with Hyper-Threading turned off, while the D2700 flips the switch on those two extra threads and kicks it up a notch to 2.13GHz. The new integrated graphics will boast better HD decoding and support for Blu-ray playback which, when combined with the taunts of fanless designs and WiDi, make Cedar Trail a natural fit for the living room.
Intel rolls out 10-core, 20-threaded Xeon E7s, shows everyone who's boss
Someone deep down in Intel's development dungeons must be laughing a haughty laugh of disdain at us mere mortals getting excited about dual-cores in smartphones. The old Chipzilla has just turned out its 10-core Xeon E7 processor family, which can work on 20 simultaneous computational threads courtesy of the company's Hyper-Threading knowhow. Needless to say, there aren't that many casual workloads that will ever properly harness such extremely parallelized prowess, but then Intel isn't really gunning for the Facebook crowd here anyhow. The new E7s are for those dealing with truly data-intensive tasks, meaning that Facebook itself would be a good candidate to buy up a few, provided it's tempted by such things as 40 percent performance improvements over the Xeon 7500 tied to dynamic power adjustment for increased energy efficiency. Pricing for the Xeon E7s starts at $774 and climbs up to $4,616 per 32nm chip, with the usual proviso that Intel won't sell them in batches of less than 1,000. More details follow in the press release and video after the break. [Thanks, Khan]
Intel's Core i7-980X Extreme Edition 'Gulftown' review roundup
Six cores. Twelve threads. A new flagship processor in Intel's stable. Here at GDC in San Francisco, the world's most widely recognized chip maker is dishing out its latest desktop CPU, and to say it's a niche device would be greatly understating things. We spoke to a number of Intel bigwigs at tonight's media event, and everyone confessed that the Core i7-980X Extreme Edition was a low quantity, high performance device aimed specifically at gamers and content editors that simply refuse to live anywhere other than on the cutting edge. Intel's planning on selling these in retail, standalone form for $999 (MSRP), while they'll soon be available in a variety of gaming rigs from the likes of Dell, Alienware and whoever else wishes to keep with the times. As for Apple? The company stated that Steve and Company "sort of call their own shots," and that we'd have to dig at Apple if we really wanted to know what their refreshed Mac Pro would hold. We chuckled, nodded in understanding, and then learned that this here slab of silicon is a bit ahead of the software out there, with Intel noting that only games optimized for 12-thread use and benchmarking utilities that did likewise would really demonstrate the performance boost. 'Course, anyone who spends a great deal of time multitasking will appreciate the extra headroom, and power users can always find ways to make use of more horsepower. Oh, and for what it's worth, the company stated that this will be its lead desktop chip for some time to come, and if you're looking for a mobile version in the near future, you can keep dreaming. As for the critics? Just about everyone with a benchmarking license managed to get one of these in-house, and everyone seems to feel (mostly) the same way. There's no denying that this is Intel's speediest consumer chip ever, but you won't find 50 percent boosts just anywhere. Yet. When the software catches up, though, there's no doubt that this chip will make even the other Core i7s look downright sluggish. 50 percent more cores and 50 percent more threads than the prior kings of the line leads to fantastic gains when serious number crunching is involved (audio and video editors, we're staring at you), with some tests showing upticks in the 30 to 50 percent range. As a bonus, the power consumption here is also extremely reasonable, with the shift to 32nm enabling it to even use less power in some circumstances when compared to the Core i7-975 Extreme Edition. Dig into the glut of reviews below if you've got a cool grand with "chip upgrade" written on it -- you'll be glad you did. Read - Hot Hardware Read - AnandTech Read - Techgage Read - Computer Shopper Read - Bit-Tech Read - PC Perspective Read - Neoseeker Read - Hardcoreware Read - TweakTown Read - PC World Read - TechReport Read - Benchmark Reviews Read - Hardware Canucks Read - Overclockers Club Read - Hexus Read - Legit Reviews
Intel's new Nehalem-EX CPUs rock servers with eight cores, 16 threads, infinite sex appeal
What's that, you have an array of six-core CPUs in your rack? That is so last year. You're going to feel pretty foolish when all the cool admins start popping eight-core chips up in their closets this fall. That's the number on offer in Intel's latest, the Nehalem-EX. It's an evolution of the architecture that some of you may be spinning in your Core i7 machines, but boosted to support up to 16 threads and 24MB of cache. 2.3 billion transistors make the magic happen here, and Intel is pledging a nine-times improvement in memory bandwidth over the Xeon 7400. Chips are set to start hitting sockets sometime later this year, and while nobody's talking prices, staying hip in the enterprise server CPU crowd doesn't come cheap.
eMachines releases five desktops for cash-strapped students
Even though summer has only barely begun, Gateway's eMachines is already looking ahead to the upcoming school year, having just announced five new Vista-ready desktops for the student on a budget. Starting at the "top of the line," we have the T6536 (pictured, with optional monitor) and T6534, which both feature Athlon 64 processors from AMD (3800+ and 3700+, respectively), nVidia GeForce 6100 graphics, and 250GB of storage, but the extra $90 you're spending on the $540 T6536 doubles the RAM from 512MB to 1GB and bumps the OS up to Windows XP Media Center Edition. Next in line is the T5046, which will set you back the same $450 as the T6534 but changes up the specs with a hyper-threaded Pentium 4 processor, Radeon Xpress 200 graphics from ATI, 512MB of RAM, a 200GB HDD, and the same dual-layer DVD burner found in both members of the 6000-series. Finally, the super-budget-conscious consumer has the option of either the $350 T3506 or $380 T3508, with the former machine offering a Celeron D352 CPU, Radeon X300-based graphics, 512MB of RAM, 120GB HDD, and a CD-RW/DVD combo drive, while the latter rig steps it up to a Celeron D356, Radeon Xpress 200 chip, 160GB hard drive, and that good old multi-format DVD burner. All of the new machines are available immediately, which gives you plenty of time to load up the software you'll need for surviving next year's vigorous academic schedule -- namely tunes, vids, and games.Read- T6536Read- T6534Read- T5046Read- T3508Read- T3506[All models via Yahoo]
