WE LEARNED about the Intel Prescott launch date just before IDF started but we didn"t want to create panic in already hectic days for Intel employees. Aren"t we sweet? Prescott is a 2004 chip in case you didn"t figure it out before. We understand Intel will release this chip to the world on December the 3rd, at least that is their current cunning plan. Till then Intel has to tap its fingers and growl over the AMD 64, FX euphoria and that"s why Pentium 4 Extreme Edition makes perfect sense now.
Its 2MB more will give Athlon FX a run for its money and Athlon 64 with its single channel memory controller is not faster than the current P4 so Intel does not have to worry much about that. Prescott simply is not ready to be launched in October to drop a shadow on AMD"s offering. Intel always said that Prescott will come in Q4 and December is the time when it will have enough samples to send to the press and of course to its loyal and first always customer Dell. The company will have some units in retail and some Prescott machines will be for sale for Xmas shopping just to give you the feeling that the CPU is there.
IDF reports confirmed our magical number of 103 W consumption and we reckon that the primary focus of the Intel team is to make it less hot or otherwise to buy some company that would produce water cooling for it. Prescott will be born at 3.2 and 3.4 GHz and still there are no news about its. The current plan is to expand its availability in Q1 so you can easily say that Prescott is 2004 more then a 2003 phenomenon.