By Tony Smith
3rd May 2006 09:33 GMT
Intel has begun shipping its latest top-of-the-line 65nm
dual-core Pentium D desktop processor, the 3.6GHz 960. The
chip maker has yet to launch the part formally, though it did get a
casual mention in CEO Paul Otellini's analyst day presentation last
week.
The 960 was expected to ship late April, and that indeed appears to
have been the case despite Intel's own lack of fanfare. Presumably,
the company is keener now to promote the upcoming 'Conroe' desktop
chip, due to ship in July and which it claims will deliver 40 per
cent more performance than the 960.
Current 960 pricing suggests that Intel is offering the part for
the anticipated $637 when sold in trays of 1000 processors. The
older 9xx series chips will have come down in price accordingly,
though Intel has yet to update its public price list to reflect the
change.
Like other 9xx Pentium Ds, the 960 supports an 800MHz frontside bus
clock frequency, has twin 2MB L2 caches, and supports Intel's
Virtualisation Technology, Enhanced SpeedStep, 64-bit addressing
and the execute-disable bit. ®
