This weekend, Intel is expected to have one of their most important product launches to date. Intel will be launching six new desktop processors, and the 915/925 chipsets (Grantsdale and & Alderwood). The office debut will be on Monday June 21st. The two new chipsets (915 and 925) will both support DDR2 memory, with a total of three different chipset models being offered. The 915G will come with Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900, the 915P is designed to work with 3rd party graphics cards (Nvidia & ATI), and finally the 925X will support PCI Express.
Intel will also be launching five new 775-pin Pentium 4 chips, which will be using Intel"s new naming system. The five new chips are: 2.8GHz Pentium 4 (520), 3GHz Pentium 4 (530), 3.2GHz Pentium 4 (540), 3.4GHz Pentium 4 (550), and 3.6GHz Pentium 4 (560). It"s also expected that Intel will show off another version of its Pentium 4 Extreme Edition clocked at 3.4GHz using a 775-pin seat. Though no clock speeds have been announced yet, Intel will also be launching new Celeron models. However, don"t expect them to be available for a couple of days after the main products have been released (Pentium 4 and new chipsets).
Lately Intel hasn"t been winning too many battles. Ever since AMD released its Athlon 64 FX 51 Intel has been down and playing catch-up. Sure, they"ve launched the Pentium Extreme Edition, which although has been extremely competitive has come at a steep price. Designed to act as a good chip for competing with AMD"s recent chip releases, limited supply has acted as a bottle-neck for these plans. As time passes by, its probable that Intel will drop the Pentium Extreme Edition from its product line; with this new lineup of goodies Intel is hoping to get back on top. The introduction of new processors and new chipsets (Grantsdale and & Alderwood) might be a good indicator for things looking up for Intel. Do these new releases mean a return to the chip wars? We hope so! A good bit of competition between these two chip monoliths will only mean better prices and better chips for people in the long-run.