Canterwood, Pentium 4 combo is an Intel paper launch

DESPITE EARLIER DENIALS and later retractions of denials from Intel, we've finally pinned down when exactly the Pentium 3/Canterwood glitch ridden combo will ship.

Intel Europe contacted us a mere half an hour after our original report its fantastic combo was being halted, to deny there were problems. But Intel later changed its mind, as La Intella is allowed to do, after all. It's just technology.

It will ship a 3GHz Pentium4/mit Bonanza board on the 8th of May next, in Europe, and then in limited quantities and at a premium price, so it's all a bit of a paper launch and we suspect there are few chipsets that work properly that aren't in the hands of hacks, worldwide.

Distributors in Europe have also disclosed the prices of these products when they finally ship, just a few weeks before Intel does a launch of its "Springdale" platform.

We think we know what the problem is. There is insufficient quantity of DDR 400 at the right spec, and so Intel daren't announce it's available until the Dramurai catch up. Also, as we revealed last year, this is a very tricky piece of mobo work.

Making motherboards work is not easy, so it's no wonder that all three INQUIRER journalists plus the world+dog of hacks got the full working model. Don't hold your breath for a Dell one, though.

What's the difference between the 14th of April and the 8th of May, you may ask.

Almost a month, we reckon. Once again Intel has gone for the quick hit on a fast chipset with hacks everywhere falling over with amazement, without considering what might happen if the Eurodistributors and the Americandistributors go a'leaking.

All the journalistic samples, of course, work perfectly. Good column inches help to whip up sales.

And if, by the way, we catch AMD playing this sort of game, well, Hector's lot will see a similar sort of story.

Do you think that journalists will come out with reviews of AMD's Opteron on the 22nd of April? Or not... µ

See Also
Intel admits there's a problem with the Canterwood/P3 combo
Intel Canterwood thrashes competition, takes Sun to the cleaners Review of a perfect combo
INQ review of a combo that is perfect apart from the peripherals
Another INQ review Intel delivers perfect products to journalists... for once