Intel budget quad cores ahoy!!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is good news:

http://www.techpowerup.com/82410/Int...PU_Lineup.html

Basically looks like a Pentium Quad Core. Under 150USD would hopefully equate to under under £120 in the UK! They have an 800mhz FSB too and lower power consumption.
The lower FSB should mean a higher multiplier. It would interesting to see how well these chips will overclock!!

Also the Phenom II is undergoing price cuts:

http://www.techpowerup.com/82434/Phe...ice-Cuts?.html

Also there are new budget quad cores coming out from AMD in the next few months too:

http://www.techpowerup.com/?79967

[arthurleung]

I doubt they're going to be terribly good. Intel FSB architecture is NOT really suited to small cache size unlike AMD with integrated memory controller.

[DR]

Cat... read HEXUS?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Cat... read HEXUS?

I know about the Intel price drops but this is supposed to be a sub-150USD processor. It could be priced about the 100 quid mark if we are lucky. This is basically two E2*** series processors in one package running at 2.6ghz.
An E2*** at 3ghz to 3.5ghz is enough for most games so a Q7*** at 3ghz to 3.5ghz should be enough for most things. Considering how easy it is overclock Core2 processors this hopefully will be quite easy. The high multiplier of the Q7*** also helps.
Also the power consumption of this processor will be even lower than a 45nm Q8*** processors making it good to use in media centres and SFF PCs.

[arthurleung]

I know about the Intel price drops but this is supposed to be a sub-150USD processor. It could be priced about the 100 quid mark if we are lucky. This is basically two E2*** series processors in one package running at 2.6ghz.
An E2*** at 3ghz to 3.5ghz is enough for most games so a Q7*** at 3ghz to 3.5ghz should be enough for most things. Considering how easy it is overclock Core2 processors this hopefully will be quite easy. The high multiplier of the Q7*** also helps.
Also the power consumption of this processor will be even lower than a 45nm Q8*** processors making it good to use in media centres and SFF PCs.

But then people wouldn't use a quad core in media centers since the idle power consumption is higher. (most thing offloaded to GPU, even if it use CPU even 1080p stuff doesn't need quad core)
Check out some E2*** reviews. Not all of those went past 3Ghz.

I have to say the Q7xxx is nothing to be excited with. That part of the market have already been occupied by Q6600/Q6700. Overclocking potential will be highly varied since these are FAILED PARTS salvaged from Q8xxx and Q9xxx.

[staffsMike]

There's deffinatly a place for cheaper intel quads but for media centre's AMD are already doing low power quads and better IGP on their chipsets so I don't see why anyone would go intel for an HTPC if building from scratch.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

But then people wouldn't use a quad core in media centers since the idle power consumption is higher. (most thing offloaded to GPU, even if it use CPU even 1080p stuff doesn't need quad core)
Check out some E2*** reviews. Not all of those went past 3Ghz.

I have to say the Q7xxx is nothing to be excited with. That part of the market have already been occupied by Q6600/Q6700. Overclocking potential will be highly varied since these are FAILED PARTS salvaged from Q8xxx and Q9xxx.

I agree that up to a degree you are right. The problem is that the Q6600 and Q8200 occupy the £140+ price bracket now . A quad around the £100 would be a good selling point. The only one which currently is at this price point are older Phenom processors.

There is money to be made as the Athlon X4 without any L3 cache is going to be introduced and this is what the Q7*** is going up against. Many budget PCs could have these processors. I have seen a reasonable number have lower end Phenom processors in pre-built PCs in shops for example.

Most E2*** reviews have managed to get to around 3ghz anyway. As with the Q6600 the later batches may not overclock as well so it is not a given like you said. If there is only a 400mhz difference to get to 3ghz a Q7*** should be able to get there with a 13x multiplier. More quads around mean more software that will be written to take advantage of it(games included) which is a good thing. This is why it is interesting.

[GSte]

Yeah, even though they are failed parts, the higher multis should mean that good clocks are possible..... I had an E5200 up to 3.85GHz easily, which was basically a defective wolfdale.....

Be interesting to see how they perform with the lower caches though, 2MB seems like bugger all to me..........

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Wolfdales seem to be do better with less cache than the Conroe though. IIRC I saw a review which compared an E7200 and an E6600 at the same clock speed and the E7200 was quicker.
When the Q8200 is compared to the Q6600 at stock it seems that it very similar in speed for many applications despite having half the cache and a slightly lower clock speed:

http://www.custompc.co.uk/reviews/23...uad-q8200.html

http://www.matbe.com/articles/lire/9...8200/page1.php

[GSte]

I didn't find much difference with an E5200/E6600:

http://www.clunk.org.uk/forums/user-...pu-review.html

I think the quads will suffer in some applications though, I suppose you'll have to weigh up what you want one for before you buy.

Still, cheap quads are fine by me.

[Webby]

Also dont forget that 4MB of cache is 512KB per core so you need to be comparing a down to the E2*** rather than an E5200 (although it is a better fit for the architecture).

I guess that dropping to 2MB is the only option to differentiate from the Q8*** as it is already at 1MB per core (4MB total) the only question really is does cache have a linear or power relationship with performance, if it is a power relationship then the drop to 512kB could be a real hit on performance compared to the drop form 8MB to 4MB (Q6600 to Q8*00) and i imagine it depends heavily on what is being done, gaming, encoding etc.

[Ciber]

I think it's worth waiting to see what they benchmark/ overclock like. Good news though on the new quad cores coming as well as the price cuts on the current ranges.