Intel has released the quad-core chip family. The family includes the Xeon 5300 and Core 2 Extreme QX6700 for the server market and the gaming PC segment respectively. According to Intel, the Xeon 5300 will be 50% faster than Intel’s own Xeon 5100 chip, and the QX6700 is 80% faster than the X6800.
The quad-core Xeon 5300 CPU has four versions. The 1.60GHz E5310 (selling for US$455 - NZ$690); the 1.86GHz E5320 (selling for US$690 - NZ$1,045); the 2.33GHz E5345 (selling for US$851 - NZ$1,290) and the 2.66GHz X5355 (selling for US$1,172 - NZ$1,775). The quad-core gaming chip Core 2 Extreme QX6700 2.66GHz will cost US$999 (NZ$1,510).
Up to now, server vendors including Dell, HP and IBM have announced systems using the quad-core processors, and others including Fujitsu etc. will join the list soon. Gaming desktop manufacturers including Alienware, Dell, Gateway and Voodoo Computers etc. plan to use the QX6700.
Will the quad-core CPUs make a big impact on the performance? For servers and workstations, the answer is “yes”. However, normal desktop and notebook users won’t see a big difference between dual-core processors, unless they’re running high-end video games or editing high quality videos and photos.
Actually, there is not many application software in the market that can support multithread processing yet. Adobe’s Premiere Pro is one of the few desktop multithreaded software. We’ll also need operating systems which can support multi-core processing and Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems are developing versions of their current operating systems so that they can utilize the full strength of the new chips.
Intel will launch two more quad-core Xeon chips and mainstream Core 2 Quad processors in the first quarter of 2007, and AMD is also planning to introduce its quad-core Opteron server chip in the middle of 2007.
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