Intel screws up Paxville launch

IT'S DAYS LIKE TODAY that Intel VPs earn their keep.

The Paxville launch was a whimper, not a bang, and almost entirely number free. There were enough carefully crafted datapoints to confuse the casual observer, but not much of substance.

Let's start with the techy stuff, and not much at that. There is a Xeon DP 2.80Ghz launching, basically a dual core 2MB cache per core 65nm* P4. They are not a true dual core, instead Intel takes two cores and slaps them together on an MCM. It has an 800MHz FSB, uses DDR2-400 and plugs into the tried and true Lindenhurst platform.

The MP variant, called the Xeon 7000, runs at 'up to 3.0GHz', and has either a 667 or 800FSB. The 667 plugs into the old E8500 boards, and the 800 variants plug into the new E8501. Guess what the difference between the two chipsets is? Other than that, they support all the Lindenhurst features, and add memory RAID and hot plug on top of it. Overall a nice feature set.

But back to the massage. Intel is woefully behind in the MP server space, no make that a really distant second. The DP space is closer, but unless you pick really curious benchmarks, it would be hard to touch an AMD x80 in the respective markets. The Paxville twins will lessen the gap, but that's about it.

Article - The Inquirer