Why does the athlon 64 "NEED" ECC ram? Can't you run it with normal ram? What keeps it from working?

ummm.... 1k for a EE? Are they serious? It puts out 100w's of heat? Is this a joke?

No seriously it took me a minute to get my jaw off the floor. How could Intel have to go to such phenomenal measures? Maybe I’m easily amazed or something but this EE fiasco takes the cake.

One thing puzzles me - Northwood had it's cache doubled, and performs quite a bit better than Willamette. P4EE has it's cache quadrupled, and performs about as well as a 3.4GHz P4 would do. How exactly does that work?

Before plunking this kind of cash down on these chips, even if you do have the cash, I'd carefully consider the changover in chipsets that will be all the rage 6 mo from now. I would tend to guess that PCI express, in both AMD and Intel formats will be a changover many enthusiasts will want to be doing, and it could well entail changing cpu's based on socket patterns and the like.

I would not want to be someone who spent the nasty sums they are asking for these chips, only to realize that you want to changeover mb's in 6mo and you have to change chips again.

My $ is on waiting at least till I have a mb I plan to use a couple years then pricing a cpu that makes sense on that mb.

Just $.02

Yeah, 1K for an EE, and yeah, it is an utter heat monster. That is one area where FX-51 is clearly, clearly, better--not only cheaper, but a lot cooler.

Extreme as in Extreme Graphics?

I disagree with with Zenith on both the P4EE and the Opteron. Rather I'd say this: Both of these chips are wastes of money for the average or maybe even not-so-average consumers. If you look at the numbers, however, there are places where the P4EE's cache gives it a massive boost over the P4 3.2--20% or more in some areas.

The question is always what kind of work you are doing as to whether or not a chip is worth the money. A 20% boost for 1.75x the cost isn't a great deal, but we've honestly seen much worse deals at the high-end before.

I don't think FX-51 or P4EE are entirely a waste--as with anything else, they have properties that could make them quite valuable to the right kind of user, spurious in the hands of most others.

Both the A-FX and the P4 EE are total wastes of money. Nuff said.

Diss can we expect a news post claiming EE shortages, or will you say that's because demand is high? snicker
Also will it really be available or just from dintelell?

Usually AMD releases new products with an NDA of Sunday night at midnight.

It's an even guess - if the EE is coming out Monday - that the FX53 will be also. Of course I'm hoping the 3400+ will be released too.

Stay up late Sunday and check the headlines right after midnight.

I'm rather perplexed at this myself. Intel is targetting this at gamers/enthusiasts and charging nearly a grande for the chip. Yet the FX-51 which is a far superior chip mostly from a gamers/enthusiasts perspective is 2-3 hundred cheaper and faster too boot.

Kind of a no brainer to me.

The thing that makes me wonder... This was never on any published roadmaps... Intel came up with this pretty quick and announced it on the same day the Athlon64 was released. As I understand it's an overclocked 2ghz, large cache Xeon server part.

Not on any roadmaps, out of the blue on FX-51 launch day. No kidding. Knee jerk reaction to the FX. It's not overclocked in any way. Overclocking means 'running faster than designed/marked'. The core is designed for 3.0-3.2-3.4GHz, so it's just fine on that count.

Sounds more like a reaction to AMD's 64 bit launch.

You catch on real quick, for an AG.

Also, this chip is much faster than the Prescott that is due out in Feb '04. Will they still make the Prescott?

Of course they're still going to make Prescott. They have to, the Northwood/Northwood-EE core is tapped out, the heat is too high to ramp the clocks any more. Prescott is hopefully going to ramp P4 up to 640GHz or some ridiculous clock speed goal.

Are there future versions of the EE that I can upgrade to later?

Almost certainly not. Once Prescott is out, Intel can just sell those and get a much better profit margin.

I mean, I hope it's not an end-of-platform chip! You make me laugh so much! Hahaha! No, really!

Damned near EVERY P4 is an end-of-platform chip.
There's socket 423 and Williamette. Died post-haste.

Then there's 100/400 FSB i845D s478 and Williamette/Northwood 1. Dead.

Now we've got 100/133 400/533 i845E/i845PE and Northwood on 533. All new mobos! All new CPUs for the new FSB!

Everything settles, then we get 800 FSB and HT. New mobos again! New CPUs for your new 800 FSB!

Now you've got P4 EE S478, which runs on the 875P... But the happy ride is over! Now you've got Prescott, which aside from a few token launches and a new .09 micron line of Celerons, is all about the new LGA 775 socket!! Any future 'EE' type P4s will be Prescott based, and thusly on LGA 775. Seeing the trend? Intel never even pretends to forward compatibility. All the new features require new mobos and new CPUs, not just one or the other. Intel has learned from the 'failure' of 440BX, which was #1 for years, and thus nobody needed to buy new mobos for their new CPUs. The horror!

Will they be making a 64 bit version of it to compete with AMD's FX51&FX53 when WindowsXP64 is out next year?

Looks likely, since MS apparently has decided that each chip vendor gets only one 64bit flavor of Windows, and Intel used theirs up on Itanic. Intel will have to eventually embrace x86-64 simply because MS has. They will probably take their damned sweet time enabling it, though, like how all Northwoods and probably all Williamettes have the hardware for HT, but Intel only turned it on in the 'C' P4s, once demand got high enough. x86-64 is probably in Prescott in hardware, but won't be enabled till Joe 6pack asks for 64bit stuff.

Can my EE mainboard be used for the 64 bit version - or will I need to replace that too?

Of course you'll have to get a new mobo! Intel is all about forced mobo upgrades. Since the 3.0, 3.2 and 3.4 P4EE's will probably be the only Northwood/478 ones, the newer 775, Prescott-based P4EEs will need a nice new 775 board!

Welcome to the new Intel.

I'll wait.. and wait.. and wait, until either AMD gets dual-core/multithreading or Intel makes a CPU that produces less than 100W of heat.

As I understand it - the Athlon FX53 and the Athlon64 3400+ are both due out in November.

Both of these are too pricey for me - but I'm hoping the price will fall on the Athlon64 3400+ to under $400... if it does - I'm getting it.

In addition to the raw speed - I'm excited about running UT and some of the other 64 bit games as they come out.

/Me hugs his 2500+ @ 3000+. Talk about value.

Post #9 and Post #14......

Forge, you iz in great form, today !!
Good points.
Keep up the good work.

I think I read when the P4 EE was launched that it's multiplyier was unlocked? Still doesn't justify the price, but at least you could crank that chip up to 3.6GHz with 2mb L3 cache......drool. still too exspensive, but for those with padded wallets........

It's times like these that I see Pentium 3 550 Xeon chips that went for $2/grand alone now selling for a mere $250/dual, within the server and all parts a mere few years later.

Whatever the costs, the "must have" fanaticism is an amusement in it's own to watch amongst the lower tiers. Plus, like, I'm a poor bitter bastard.

People haven't been giving the P4EE flak for being a re-badged Xeon MP, they've been giving it flak for being an overpriced, paperlaunched, cynically timed marketing ploy which hardly performs any better than the normal P4.

The thing that makes me wonder... This was never on any published roadmaps... Intel came up with this pretty quick and announced it on the same day the Athlon64 was released. As I understand it's an overclocked 2ghz, large cache Xeon server part.
Sounds more like a reaction to AMD's 64 bit launch.

Also, this chip is much faster than the Prescott that is due out in Feb '04. Will they still make the Prescott?

Are there future versions of the EE that I can upgrade to later? I mean, I hope it's not an end-of-platform chip!

Will they be making a 64 bit version of it to compete with AMD's FX51&FX53 when WindowsXP64 is out next year? Can my EE mainboard be used for the 64 bit version - or will I need to replace that too?

What a tough decision...

I was seriously contemplating a FX51, but I simply can't justify $1215 for a new processor, no matter what the improvement (CPU $740 / MB $207 / RAM $268 for 1gb... all from NewEgg). The EE is interesting, but again I'd have to replace the MB and end up spending well over $1000.

I'm starting to look at the A64 3200... don't need to scrap my memory, and will only end up around $625 lighter.

right now i have a 875p/3ghz combo. yes, i am happy and no i wont buy anything anytime soon. but i can tell you i salivate at a dual athlon64 system with win64 when available. that is something to wait for.