Retro chips
If Intel is going to update its price list, it likes to do it on a Sunday, so it's always worth a butcher's on Monday morning to see if there's anything new. While their hardly earth-shattering launches, the list today revealed a few unexpected surprises.
Just when the market is trying to get its head around the Core i7/5/3 nomenclature, Intel has sent out a signal that it won't be putting the anachronistic Pentium and Celeron brands to bed anytime soon.
As you can see in the table below, we have a new top-end 45nm desktop Pentium (the presence of a 32nm Pentium - the G6950 - was news to us too), a new top-end desktop Celeron, a mobile equivalent and, signifying another brand that won't go away, a new Core 2 Quad that renders the Q9505, Q9400 and Q9300 obsolete.
All the featured CPUs are manufactured on the 45nm process and we've also included processors that have had their prices changed to acommodate the new ones.
Nice to see Intel's drive to simplify its CPU naming is progressing well.
| Name | L2 cache (MB) | Cores | Threads | Clock (GHz) | FSB (MHz) | Price ($) (change) |
| Core 2 Quad Q9500 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 2.83 | 1333 | 183 |
| Pentium E6600 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3.06 | 1066 | 84 |
| Pentium E6500 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2.93 | 1066 | 74 (-12%) |
| Pentium E5400 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2.70 | 800 | 64 (-14%) |
| Celeron E3400 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2.60 | 800 | 53 |
| Celeron E3300 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2.50 | 800 | 43 (-19%) |
| Celeron T3300 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2.00 | 800 | 86 |
| Celeron T3100 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1.90 | 800 | 80 (-7%) |
