Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, expensive!

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fmah
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Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, expensive!

Post by fmah » Tue Dec 02, 2003 9:46 pm

Wow, didn't realize the extreme Pentium 4 is over $1000. I would wonder if a Athlon 64 is comparable.

Trip
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show me the money

Post by Trip » Tue Dec 02, 2003 10:02 pm

newegg has a really low price, only $1025. Too bad they limit 3/customer...
Last edited by Trip on Wed Dec 03, 2003 1:46 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by MGP » Tue Dec 02, 2003 10:15 pm

Plus Athlon 64 (FX-51 I believe) outperforms the P4EE in most benchmarks...

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Post by Trip » Tue Dec 02, 2003 10:20 pm

the Athlons range from $400 all the way up to almost $900, what's the deal?

Yeah I keep reading the Athlons perform better, but the new P4 is supposed to come pretty close now.

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Post by ez2remember » Wed Dec 03, 2003 1:03 am

Yeah, I think that's why it's called the 'extreme edition', extreme on the price that is. :lol: :lol:

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Post by silvervarg » Wed Dec 03, 2003 1:42 am

The 'extreme edition' is a futile attempt to stay ahead of AMD that doesn't really seem to work out. It is just a last resort that Intel had to take since Prescot was delayed. I would advice you to stay away from the extrem edition. If you want an Intel and get the very best thing you should wait for Prescot.
If you want the best possible today go with Athlon64 instead.

If money is any concern going for a 'normal' Intel P4 or a Barton seems like a much better choise.

Looking in the rear view mirror we see that a decade ago the top notch processor was at least 100% faster than the cheap budget processor.
Today that gap is lowered to ~50% faster. In addition to this the graphics card becomes more important (at least for gaming etc), so the conclusion
is that spending lots on money on the latest processors are much more of a waste today.
Spending more money on graphics card, more and faster RAM, faster HDD, solid state storage etc seems a lot more resonable.

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Post by Trip » Wed Dec 03, 2003 1:52 am

What it might be is that since Intel is going to dominate the performance market with their Prescott series, Intel wants to raise the price bar now. By charging $1000 for the P4 extreme edition, people won't freak when the Prescott comes out for $750 and the top model $1000. That's just my guess...

It's that or they only want to use the extreme edition to appease the "I've got to have the best" Intel only gamers who will pay anything, so they don't loose at Doom III to their AMD gamer nemesis across the street.

Prescott won't affect me though, I'll still be sitting here with my Coppermine, trying to decide between upgrading to a P4 or waiting for the M. I figure just before I upgrade I'll have the computer just as I want.

EDIT: clarity, I have a bad habbit of using too many pronouns...
Last edited by Trip on Thu Dec 04, 2003 1:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by engseng » Thu Dec 04, 2003 12:46 am

Intel has got to lower the prices if they want to sell them to us! And is the chip already available in the US? Us Malaysians get it 3rd quarter 2004. :(

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Post by Trip » Thu Dec 04, 2003 12:54 am

The chip is available, check pricewatch.com look under P4 3.2 and check the highest priced listings. Newegg.com is up there with a relatively well priced $1025 CPU!

Oh, were you asking about the Prescott? No, it's not out yet.

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Post by engseng » Thu Dec 04, 2003 1:01 am

NO, I was talking about the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. Local vendors have confirmed it'll be out 3rd quarter 2004. By the time, many would've bought AMD Athlon 64 systems.

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Post by Trip » Thu Dec 04, 2003 2:41 am

couldn't you just order from the US?

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Post by silvervarg » Thu Dec 04, 2003 3:47 am

Just checked the prices on newegg.com for fun.
P4 3.2GHz extreme edition retail $1045

Ahtlon 64 3200+ including HSF and ASUS motherboard $529

I just can't see any good reason to buy the extreme edition at the price difference.

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Post by Ralf Hutter » Thu Dec 04, 2003 5:16 am


Trip
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Post by Trip » Thu Dec 04, 2003 7:01 am

Newegg's price went up!

lol, people must be buying them.

I wonder how hot the Prescott line runs...

Maybe the 2.8 Prescott is cooler than the 2.4C?

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Post by silvervarg » Thu Dec 04, 2003 7:26 am

Newegg's price went up!
No, it just depends if you look at retail or OEM version.
From other posts the general reccomendation is to buy retail.

Looking at the anounced prices for Prescot we can really look forward to a price war at the end of Q1 2004.
Prescot 3.2GHz $278 (in quantities of 1000 I guess) will probably force AMD to lower the price on Athlon64.

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Post by HokieESM » Thu Dec 04, 2003 1:22 pm

silvervarg wrote:Just checked the prices on newegg.com for fun.
P4 3.2GHz extreme edition retail $1045

Ahtlon 64 3200+ including HSF and ASUS motherboard $529

I just can't see any good reason to buy the extreme edition at the price difference.
Pointless comparison. The P4EE is MUCH faster than the plain old Athlon64.... its the FX51 that competes with the EE.... and *gasp* it costs $800 at Newegg--and motherboards for the A64 FX51 are much more expensive (not to mention requiring registered RAM) than a decent i875 board. So when you break it down.... the FX may enjoy a slight price/performance margin... its not by much. Of course, that's not mentioning that the EE is a heat-producing beast, though.

The old saying "there's no such thing as a free lunch" is true. Neither AMD or Intel is nearly as stupid as a lot of "all knowing people on the iNtarWeb"..... top-end processors are expensive.

Plus, the "competing" product--a Prescott at 3.4GHz will debut at sub $500 prices in February.

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Post by prodeous » Thu Dec 04, 2003 1:38 pm

Ahh, the P4 Emergency Edidtion. It was just an Intels quick gap measure agains AMD. Its been anounced two months ago and its finaly hit the retail. AKA Paper launch. But I do aggree about the total cost of the system

P4 EE with normal 875 and non registered ram
AMD FX51 OpteronMB and registered ram

Luckly before Prescot comes out AMD will rerelase the FX on a new platform the 939 pin socket vs current Opteron 940 socet. The new platform will not require registered ram, just plain DDR ram.

For both AMD and Intell, these are just braging rights issues. As both are overpriced with a tad more performace. The problem is that Intel doesn't have that many P4EE's available because of manufacturing problems.

And heat. Try around 100W. Now I wonder if anyone here would be able to cool this quitely?

100W, based on intel is "OK for the desktop" Just an excuse for lack of efficient engineering.

I'm still sticking with my trusty AXP cause I would liek to be able not to hear my system outside the house.

As for the Prescot, anything 3Ghz and above is paper launch. Won't be availabe till 2Q of 2004. Anything below that will be out.

Its almost like politics. Lies, lies, and statistics.

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Post by chylld » Thu Dec 04, 2003 2:16 pm

engseng wrote:Intel has got to lower the prices if they want to sell them to us! And is the chip already available in the US? Us Malaysians get it 3rd quarter 2004. :(
At least you get your software 2 years before everyone else :lol:

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Post by engseng » Thu Dec 04, 2003 6:26 pm

I don't know whether I should be proud to say that Malaysia is the second largest producer of pirated CDs,VCDs and DVDs in the world.

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Post by chylld » Thu Dec 04, 2003 7:03 pm

probably shouldn't be too proud :) who's the largest?

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Post by AzN jonzOrz » Thu Dec 04, 2003 8:11 pm

anyone know how much the 939 pin athlon 64 (FX or not?) are gonna cost? This is the processor i've been waiting for to upgrade from my xp 1600+! :lol:
I better not have to save up for like 6 months just to buy one! :x

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Post by Rusty075 » Thu Dec 04, 2003 8:15 pm

Malaysia is second to China, I think.

A couple of points about P4EE pricing that haven't been mentioned yet:

A P4EE is essentially a rebadged Xeon MP, only re-ported to socket 478 instead of socket 603. For that reason alone it has to be priced way above the price of the Xeon. If it were even close to Xeon pricing the Xeon customers would buy it, and the much cheaper and more feature-rich Socket 478 mobo's instead of the Xeons. With the Itaniums DOA, and the Opterons putting up impressive benchmarks, the weary Xeons don't need anymore strikes against them.

Both AMD and Intel have been just chomping at bit waiting for a chance to raise CPU prices. The price wars of the past couple of years have seriously hurt both companies. But neither could unilaterally double their CPU prices midstream. The introduction of new classes of chips gives them the excuse to do so.

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Post by fmah » Thu Dec 04, 2003 9:11 pm

Well it will be interesting to see how much 64bit programs will improve with the Athlon 64.

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Post by Rusty075 » Thu Dec 04, 2003 9:17 pm

Fmah brings up a good point.

Most (actually all) of the current benchmarking reviews are running the 64bit AMD's against the 32bit Intel's in a 32bit OS, with 32bit apps. On one level you have to do that to be fair, but you're not really comparing apples to apples. If you run real-world apps, such as 3D rendering or video encoding, in a 64bit world on the AMD, the price/performance ratio changes geatly.

Of course there aren't many 64bit apps and OS's yet, but at one time there were 32bit processors and few apps that could all of their features either.

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Post by engseng » Thu Dec 04, 2003 9:50 pm

I believe that there is a beta version of Windows XP 64-bit and Internet Explorer 64-bit. For Linux, there's the 64-bit version of RedHat and SuSE.

But other than that, I don't know any other 64-bit programs that can run on Athlon 64. Looks like we've to wait a while before things start to pick up. And it probably won't pick up as fast as the 32-bit programs. Remember Windows 95?

And Hong Kong/China are the largest producer of pirated discs.

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Post by Trip » Fri Dec 05, 2003 12:21 am

heh, who comes up with those official numbers?

I wouldn't be suprised if that were true of Malaysia, I remember reading that about a quarter of Malaysia is made up of ethnic Chinese; they probably would have brought along their tradition of pirating discs or at least continued close ties with relatives in China who would hold such traditions.

Heh, I read about the Chinese presence in Malaysia in an article about a highly controversial book written by a past Malaysian president. engseng, heh, you probably know what I'm talking about, the guy said some crazy things... (EDIT:he said the chinese were responsible for the booming Malay economy - that the Malay themselves could not have done it on their own, which is crazy)
Last edited by Trip on Sat Dec 06, 2003 7:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by engseng » Fri Dec 05, 2003 9:16 pm

Wait a minute, the Pentium 4 Extreme Edition is not the Prescott. It's a souped-up Pentium 4 with the 2Mb L3 cache.

The Prescott is supposed to be the Pentium 5, that comes standard with a small heatsink attached to it. And last I heard it's due out in 2005?


p/s: Trip, I'm not really sure what book you're reading, but perhaps it's by ex-Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir (Malaysia doesn't have presidents). And yes, the Chinese form the second largest ethnic group in Malaysia, and I'm a Chinese myself. We do have close ties to Hong Kong and Taiwan, and we do carry down the entrepeneur spirit and opportunistic trait from our ancestors. :)

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Post by Rusty075 » Fri Dec 05, 2003 10:00 pm

engseng wrote:It's a souped-up Pentium 4 with the 2Mb L3 cache.
Actually its a souped-down Xeon MP.

(souped-down? I think I just invented a new phrase) :wink:

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Post by RaynorWolfcastle » Fri Dec 05, 2003 11:54 pm

Rusty075 wrote:
engseng wrote:It's a souped-up Pentium 4 with the 2Mb L3 cache.
Actually its a souped-down Xeon MP.

(souped-down? I think I just invented a new phrase) :wink:
Actually, it IS a Xeon MP core in a 478-pin package as far as I can tell.

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Post by Rusty075 » Sat Dec 06, 2003 12:11 am

Primarily, but it does lose a couple of things in the re-porting: Such as SMP support (not an issue since there are no SMP socket 478 mobo's) and 2 of the DDR channels are gone.

But it does gain the 800Mhz bus of the 478, and support for ordinary (unregistered, without ECC) DDR400 SDRAM.

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