Eight weeks until Intel's new architecture
Here are two launch dates you might want to put on your calendar, July 23 and July 11. AMD will introduce its widely hyped LGA 1207-pin Socket on July 11, followed by Intel's introduction of its widely hyped Core 2 Duo Conroe processor on July 23 -- just in time for Kristopher's twenty-third birthday.
Conroe, now officially known as Core 2 Duo for desktops, is officially scheduled to launch on July 23. Intel has already stated that the company plans for Conroe to account for 40% of its desktop sales by Q1'07 -- a massive undertaking for a completely new architecture. The pricing for July 23 on Conroe is still exactly as we had published back in April. Intel allowed some benchmarks of Conroe earlier this year, with reasonably favorable results. Intel has also put out an advisory saying it will aggressively sell its 9xx and 8xx dual-core processors between June 4, 2006 and July 23, 2006 in order to dump inventory before the Conroe launch.
With the Opteron Revision F launch, we will see the new processor cores Santa Ana and Santa Rosa. Santa Ana is actually a dual-core AM2 component targeted specifically for workstations and 1U servers, while Santa Rosa is an LGA-1207 dual-core Socket F processor. There are no single-core Opteron Revision F processors. Quad-core Revision G Opterons (Deerhound) are not anticipated for at least another year.
AMD's new 1207-pin socket, dubbed Socket F, has made a few appearances on DailyTech already. The socket will be AMD's first land-grid-array (LGA) socket using the same method of contact pads for the processor found on Intel LGA-775 and LGA-771 processors. The retention clip is also a radical change for AMD.