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No Pentiums on Bearlake?
Author: Richard SwinburnePublished: 27th March 2007
No more chipsets for Pentium CPUs? Has anyone even shed a tear?
Intel has, so far, not certified the entire upcoming bearlake chipsets to work with the old netburst architecture Pentium chips. This means the new P35, X38, G31, G33, G35, Q33 and Q35 chipsets won't officially support Pentium D, Celeron D, Pentium 4 or Pentium Extreme Edition CPUs.
The Netburst CPUs are inherently compatible with the Core architecture, but Intel has decided enough is enough, certifying and optimising the next generation of its chipsets for use with the more recent Core architecture only. It seems it's up to individual manufacturers to decide whether they are willing to add the microcode and test their new boards with the older LGA775 CPUs.
With no very cheap Intel Core 2 CPUs available yet (at least, compared to the Celeron range) this may force an expensive upgrade for customers, but to an ultimately far superior Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad CPU. However, future quad releases and the new 1333MHz FSB "50" CPUs are due very soon, and we've already reported that Intel is planning some massive price cuts later this year.
In a way this is hardly surprising as Intel wants to push forward its quad core and kill off its Netburst line of bad memories come the end of the first half of this year. It can make money on both fronts, as people are forced to upgrade CPUs and motherboards. But then again, it makes technological sense since a having of a brand new DDR3 chipset with PCI-Express 2.0, paired with a Pentium 4, or heaven forbid a Celeron D CPU, will cripple its performance.
Will the optimisation for Core architecture afford for some large performance increases on the P35 and X38 performance motherboards? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Comments (8)
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My AM2 platform is gonna be about as good as a plate of cold chips once AM2+ and even AM3 come into play. Intel users have been able to swap and change mobo and CPU on the 775 platform for AGES - about time it got updated to exclude the chaff (netburst/celeron D)
Actually I think this is a good move by Intel - the sooner they drop the old chips and move C2D chips into all ranges the better.
Cheers, I've completely re-written the tag line. I brain dumped into it and forgot to edit it when the article was being changed.
Sam
it is about time they streamlined the platform and killed netburst for good.