Intel is expected to announce the release of its 2 GHz P4-M on Tuesday 25 June, Australia time, and laptop manufacturers are gearing up to be the first to market.
Although Intel beat AMD to the desktop dual-core market last Monday in the US, AMD has one-upped its rival and released dual-core CPUs for the server.
AMD Australia is remaining silent about the Australian launch of its Athlon XP processor, despite speculation that it will take place at a mystery "product launch" this Thursday.
Every five to six weeks between now and early next year, AMD will introduce faster Athlons -- beginning at 1.1GHz, Monday.
In a year when PC chips reached new heights of performance and efficiency, customers simply weren't buying.
Find out how Peter Gebhard's PC analysis application, Dr. Hardware 2003, can tell you almost anything about your Windows PC.
If you want beefy processing power without paying a premium for the latest Pentium 4 or Athlon system, then consider the Dell Dimension 4100, which is the fastest 1GHz Pentium III, Windows Me-based system we've tested. While it might not satisfy ardent home-theatre addicts, the system offers fine video performance and solid audio, although the included monitor had some problems. Even with a disappointing keyboard and merely adequate software bundle, the 4100's performance makes it a good value.
Commentary:Historically, Intel drops a technological grenade of sorts at the doorway as it exits its current processor area, to confuse and misdirect the competition. Bill O'Brien thinks this could be the case with Intel's latest Pentium 4 release.
We test the P4 2.2Ghz chip in one of Intel's latest motherboards. In our test the performance is measured with a Winfast Geforce 3 graphics card, under Windows XP.
AMD's new range of Athlon 64s introduces no brand-new features, but consolidates and rationalises the chip-maker's high-end desktop options, while making it cheaper to build the fastest systems.
Intel's new'Prescott' Pentium 4 has double the L1 and L2 cache of its 'Northwood' predecessor. An extended 31-stage pipeline accounts for the fact that the new chip is mostly slower than the CPU it replaces.
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