AnandTech has posted an Intel 850 motherboard roundup, comparing nine of these Pentium 4 boards.

UKGamer.net has posted it's interview with Intel which was held at ECTS a week ago today. They talk about various aspects of Intel's processor line-up, including the Tualatin, Pentium 4 and Itanium processors. Other technologies looked at are USB 2.0, RDRAM and other general bits

Ah this is a bit amusing this morning. As was expected and mentioned a few days back, Intel has filed suit against VIA for that P4 chipset they released that has DDR memory support for Pentium4 chips because Intel doesnt like people making stuff compatible with their products without their permission. VIA was so impressed by this that they have decided to file a countersuit (more details here) just to make it more interesting:

VIA said Intel's top-of-the-line Pentium 4 processor, and the 845 chipset that supports it, infringe on company patents. ``Not only Intel has chipset and CPU (central processing unit) patents. We have a lot of patents also,'' VIA Vice President Ted Lee told a news conference. VIA also accused Intel of anti-competitive behaviour, related to allegations that the U.S. firm has threatened Taiwan's motherboard makers with legal action if they use VIA's products.

As expected Intel vs VIA has gone to the courts. Intel is filing suit againt the VIA guys for their recently released P4 chipset that allows DDR memory to work with the CPU. An interesting note is that Intel sued Cyrix 4 times for all kinds of things, and never won.

According to the boys at Hardware Extreme, AMD and Intel have both cut prices again even though they already did that last weekend too. AMD processors already were balls cheap, now they're even cheaper.

Intel has unveiled 3 new Celeron chips breaking past the 1ghz mark for the CPUs as their "economical" CPU choice. They are being offered in Dell and Gateway computer systems immediately.

Amusement for the afternoon, someone is actually going to attempt to come out with another RAMBUS supporting chipset for the P4 motherboards. "I'm not sure what the market opportunity is" said one expert. Yeah...

AnandTech has posted an Intel Developer Forum write-up for Day 2 of this Intel event. This time they talk about non-CPU things like Serial ATA, ATI, Rambus, NVidia and even a little bit about AMD.

AnandTech has a report up about the CPU stuff on display at the Intel Developer Forum that will go on this week. Intel had a chip running at 3.5Ghz there, which is pretty speedy.

CNet has a story about Intel's latest buzz-word technology, "hyperthreading". Using some previously unused Pentium 4 circuitry, the CPU can operate more efficiently. On a Xeon workstation they got a 30 percent improvement using this technology. However, just like SSE2, developers will have to program in support in their programs for this to work. They have some time to adapt though, as the technology is coming out for servers and workstations next year, with desktop support not coming until 2003. Of course, they managed to involve the Internet again!

Ideally, hyperthreading, which has been under development for four and a half years, will show meatier benefits. An individual could play games while simultaneously downloading multimedia files from the Internet with a computer containing the technology, Poulin predicted.
Hyperthreaded chips would also be cheaper than dual-processor computers. "You only need one heat sink, one fan, one cooling solution," he said, along with, of course, one chip.

Play games and download multimedia files from the Internet at the same time? Wow!

Intel is officially releasing the 2Ghz Pentium 4 today, surely another milestone in processing speed. It was just over a year ago that AMD and Intel hit 1 Ghz with their processors at some $1300 per CPU, and now you can buy a 1.4Ghz AMD for just a little over $100. The 2Ghz P4 should be around $550, but is it actually worth that? There are reviews at AnandTech, HotHardware, Tech-Report, FiringSquad and HardOCP. Looks like thanks to a superior FPU still has the Athlon beating out the Pentium 4 in several FPU intensive applications, while the Pentium 4 is faster in games for the most part.

With its breakthrough clock rate and 478-pin packaging, today's Pentium 4 2.0GHz is an extremely attractive solution for the consumer with an unlimited budget, but for the rest of us, AMD continues to offer the price/performance advantage. However, Pentium 4 has certainly come a long way in this department since it was first released, as Intel moves closer each day to transitioning from Pentium III to Pentium 4.

The Register has posted a list of anticipated price changes by Intel for the introduction of the 2Ghz and 1.9Ghz Pentium 4 processors. The 1.8Ghz price is cut by 55%, and will be $256 now. Go here for the rest.

New on AnandTech this morning is a roundup of Dual Socket-370 motherboards. Even dual processor boards are compared to each other, with the usual benchmarks and such.

Looks like Intel is getting more nervous about that new VIA chipset for P4's. They have taken to warning motherboard manufacturers that they will get dragged in to a "costly legal battle" if they produce boards based on the chipset. Go Intel!

"They are not licensed to sell products that are compatible with the Pentium 4," Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy said. [snip] "Yes, they told us this was happening. Certainly the pressure is very intense right now," said Richard Brown, Via's marketing director, reached at the company's headquarters in Taipei. "But I think you'll start to see motherboards come out very soon. There are customers that we are talking to, and we're very confident you'll see our product on the market."

The VIA guys say they are "comfortable" with the decision to put the chipset out on the market. Anyone wanna bet that on how many patches we'll have to download before it's stable? Took forever to get my Win2K box running smoothly with I dont know how many of those "4in1" drivers. Runs great now though. :)

Along with the announcement of the new VIA P4 chipset that supports SDRAM, there are a few previews available.. Check out HardOCP , AnandTech ,  VIAHardware , and Digit-Life.

VIA today officially announced their chipset for the Intel Pentium 4. Its called the P4X266 and start shipping today to several motherboard manufacturers.

This should be pretty entertaining stuff. VIA Technologies is about to release a chipset for motherboards that will be compatible with Intel CPUs. Apparently Intel isnt very happy with it though and they are threatening the legal stuff. Most likely because the VIA chip will support SDRAM.

The launch will see Via first out of the gate with full production of a Pentium 4 chipset that supports low-cost PC-133 SDRAM memory. Also pushing similar products through are Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS), which is to begin volume production of the 645 chipset next month, and Acer Labs, which will launch its M1761 by the end of the year.

After rumors of the introduction of the 2Ghz Pentium 4, as well as hefty price cuts, Intel has now done some talking of its own. Intel VP Anand Chandrasekher pretty much all but confirmed the rumors, saying Intel will start pushing the P4 more aggressively and getting a 500Mhz lead over AMD by the end of August. Intel will also beef up the Celeron processor.

According to the CBS Market Watch, Intel is preparing a "price bomb" on August 26 to get back market share lost to AMD. High end processors will be slashed by some 50%, and low end will be cut as well but probably not by as much. This means a CPU like the 1.8Ghz P4 should be around $260 whereas its current price is $562. Intel is even prepared to cut prices further in October if the cuts in August don't have their desired effect. More info here. Thanks Chris Whiteford.

Further cuts are anticipated in October if merited, he told clients. "For those who thought the price war was already aggressive, you haven't seen anything yet," Niles said. AMD has increased its share against Intel from 13 percent to 21 percent over the past two years, Lehman said.

The boys at CNet are saying Intel has scored a "PC-redesign victory". Basically their 3GIO design to rework the old PCI technology (story) has been approved. Will be a few years until we see actual products though. Thanks Laxman.