Asus jumps the gun with final Presler specs

ASUS REPS sent out a press release with details of its Intel 975X, CrossFire supporting a "workstation" motherboard. Under the name Pentium Extreme Edition 955, Intel will deliver two 3.46GHz clocked cores on the same substrate. Did we say two cores? Unless you've been living under a rock, the thing is that Intel decided to raise the yield by putting two cores on a substrate and make 'em work together. Very brave concept indeed, only problem is - it has some stability problems for now.

Each of the two cores comes with Hyperthhreading technology, making a total of four threads in Windows Task Manager. Each core also spots 2MB of L2 cache, bringing a total of 4MB cache - a record in consumer CPU area - OK, Extreme Edition isn't exactly consumer, but it ain't a Xeon either. With the price set at $999, Intel is heavily under pricing AMD's FX-60 and 5000+, which will sell for a daunting 20% more.

Imagine if we wrote that Intel would undercut AMD prices just one year ago, we would probably hear the sound of men in white uniforms coming to pick us up.

Biggest news of the whole 955 CPU is the launch of Vanderpool Technology, VT or simply - virtualisation technology, which will tie the four cores together and enable multiple operating systems to run at the same time. Can't wait to see Mac OSX and Windows running on the same machine, but hey, there's an Apple saviour tech inside, also known as La Grande technology. TCPA is a bad bad thing.

You will be able to plug the CPU only into motherboards that support 1066MHz FSB, which means Graphzilla's nForce4 SNAFU-Breaking Edition, and the latest 975X chipset. Also, a big surprise is the support for the CPU coming from the "Blast from the Past" of the chipset world - both 865 and 875 Kicking PAT Gelsinger Edition.

This also means you'll be able to have a sleek new 65 nano CPU on a motherboard with AGP graphics and DDR-I memory. So, if Nvidia and ATI do not want all these AGP users to spend money on their precious 7800 or X1800 boards, that money will probably end up in Intel's or AMD's pocket. Because the 955 certainly packs a punch of power.

Anyway, luau with the new Extreme Edition is set for January 16th. µ

L'INQ
Asus spin release