Intel doles out unannounced old chipsA little bit on the CheapsideBy INQUIRER staff: Thursday 29 September 2005, 09:29A REPORT said Intel was shipping chips that haven't even been announced yet to cater for the lower end of the gentleman's and gentlewoman's market.The chips are Pentium IV 516 processors, which belong to an ancient family whose scions have now shuffled off Intel's mortal coil.Eweek said these "low end" Pentium IVs don't even have hyperthreading but are tipping up in branded desktop PCs ths autumn, made by Gateway and others.They may not even have as much power as Intel Celeron Ds, but could be positioned against AMD's Sempr0n family - marketed as fully fledged Pentium IVs.This isn't the first time Intel has done this sort of thing. There was a point once when Intel offered its distributors Pentium IIs rather than Pentium IIIs, even though the "IIs" were supposed to be deader than a dead dodo.
Desktops & Notebooks HeaderIntel Sneaks out Cheap PentiumsBy John G. SpoonerSeptember 28, 2005 Be the first to comment on this articleIntel is quietly offering a handful of low-end Pentium 4 processors to large PC makers.Normally trumpeted as Intel Corp.'s flagship chip brand, chips such the new Pentium 4 516, which do not appear on the chip maker's public price list, are actually closer to its Celeron D value brand chips.ADVERTISEMENTLike the Celeron line, the low-end Pentiums lack features such as hyperthreading—which promises to bump up the performance of a computer—found in the mainstream Pentium 4 500 and Pentium 4 600 models.PointerRead details here about Dell's decision to drop Intel's Itanium chip.The low-end Pentiums represent the latest example of a company practice of offering special processors to meet the needs of certain PC makers, a company spokesperson said in an e-mail to Ziff Davis Internet.Intel had previously offered a Pentium 4 505 and a Pentium 4 519, for example.Chips such as the 516, which have been showing up in some brand-name desktop PCs this fall, appear to be designed to help manufacturers market relatively inexpensive PC models with Pentium 4s inside them.eWEEK.com Special Report: State of the DesktopGateway Inc., for example, uses the 516 chip in a $499 eMachines desktop. However, they could also be used by Intel to compete for business against rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. in some segments, analysts said.See more stories on PC Magazine"Intel offering unusual SKUs at the trailing edge of their product lines makes sense, as it lets them target specific customers' low-cost PC lines without endangering the price structure for mainstream Pentium 4 processors," Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research Inc., said in an e-mail."This allows Intel to compete with lower-priced processors from AMD without sacrificing pricing for all Pentium 4s."