ALTHOUGH INTEL will only have a small proportion of Socket T LGA 775 chips available when it launches in the second quarter, by the end of this year those chips will account for 40% of desktop processor shipments. That has emerged as Intel prepares for what it's telling is its partners will be an extremely speedy shift from the current 130 nanometre (Northwood) technology it's using to the bright new shiny 90 nanometre (Prescott) process. Further, in the second quarter of this year, Intel will push Prescott-core "Celerons" into the marketplace, and they're estimated to account for around 17% of total Celeron shipments during the second quarter.
While many motherboard makers are saying that current Pentium 4 boards will be useable with Prescotts with a BIOS update, the LGA 775 Socket T is of course a brand new Intel bag. As Intel's Grantsdale and Alderswood chipsets will support DDR-2 memory, you can also expect to pay if you want to plug the 240 pin modules into future motherboards. Most firms are likely to support DDR 1 as well in their motherboards, thanks god.
How confusing is 2004 going to be? Well, if you add in Celerons, Intel will be offering four different flavours of Pentium 4 Prescotts during 2004. Chips clocking higher than 3.2GHz will have 800MHz buses, FMB1.5, then there will be 800MHz FBM1s, and there will be a few 2.8GHz Prescotts running with 533MHz front side buses but not supporting hyperthreading.
News source: The Inq
