Intel's installations in the Chinese province of Sichuan were not actually damaged by the earthquake, but it looks like that disaster will find it's translation into the PC market. More specifically, that of chipsets and motherboards.

The G31, G33 and 945GC (which means 45% of all Intel desktop sales) will see their price rise when sold in the thousands, to motherboard manufacturers. Changes will be: from $15 to between $18 and $19 for the 945GC, from $23to between $25 and $27 for the G31 and from $28 to $31 for the G33.

None of these rises should bother you, since you're not interested in buying from Intel and motherboard manufacturers are supposed to take the hit, but something tells me that even if the boards remain at the same price, they will do so for a longer time than otherwise they would've (i.e. it will take longer for the price to go down).

Link: DigiTimes

Until now, AMD has limited the use for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company capacities to it's graphics division, but from July on, we should see how more responsibilities are transferred to said company. Specifically, part of the CPU production it's expected to shift from AMD to TSMC.

According to sources in the sector, TSCM is already testing SOI manufacturing (Silicon On Insulator) that should allow them to get orders for the Fusion CPU.

The plan is: alleviate the load of the CPU production so some of their equipment may be sold, that should cover their goal to obtain benefits for the first half of 2009. What's not so clear is how their next goal of regaining a 30% market share will be achieved.

Link: DigiTimes.

AMD wants to keep as much of it's market share as possible, and they must think the mobile sector is their best bet for now. First, HybridPower is only developed for mobile computers, and now they say that the initial incarnation of Fusion will be a dual core mobile processor.

It's name will be "Swift", and Patrick Moorhead (AMD's marketing vice president) was the one to unveil it . It will house a couple of x86 cores and a graphics one probably based on a yet to be released graphics card from the ATI R700 family.

“The dual-core notebook processors will be available in the second half of 2009,” said an AMD's spokesman.

Link: X-bit labs.

If your apps of choice take advantage of them, Intels Quad performance is untouchable (just try an overclocked Q6600 and you'll agree), but maybe you're not among those users. Price could also be considered another drawback (even though the Phenom 9500 is quite affordable), so dual core processors are still a reasonable buy.

At this point, the question is to find out which one offers the best quality/price ratio. By "quality" we basically mean performance per watt, and no less than 17 processors (eight from AMD and seven from Intel) are put through the paces. As a side note, the variety of cache sizes for the Core 2 based chips turns out to be quite entertaining and shows how lyou can go "down" before actually killing the performance.

Looking at the results, it's hard to recommend an AMD processor, so we won't. You could say that the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ makes for a good el cheapo PC (integrated graphics, of course), but performance per watt leaves no doubt about the superiority of the Pentium E2160. On the "upper side", the Wolfdales dominate, specially the 8200 (which can be had for about 150€).

Link: X-bit labs.

Wolfdales are here, and they offer competitive prices compared to their Conroe equivalents. Continuing and intensifying a trend that started with the advent of the Core 2, the new technology isn't more expensive, but up to a 40% cheaper.

That battle is already won, and there isn't much to worry about in the performance department, so let's see what these puppies can really do by answering the question you probably ask yourself: how well do they overclock? Conroe was very close to 4 GHz already, and Yorkfield has managed that much, so the dual core version of Penryn should do even better.

With it's x9 multiplier, you could be fooled into thinking "9" is enough, but don't forget they reach 4.4 GHz, which means you will be needing a motherboard capable of nearly 500 MHz FSB. If yours doesn't go above 400, you can take solace knowing that the sweet spot may be around 3.6 GHz. At that speed, and with a Thermalright Ultra-120, it remains below 40ºC, while at 4 or 4.4 GHz it exceeds 60ºC. Having to raise the voltage to 1.45v, both temperatures and power consumption will be hard on your nerves and the environment (respectively).

Link: Legion Hardware.

If you like AMD and plan on buying one of their processors, let's see what can you make out of that purchase. At Xbit-labs we find a detailed article about how to squeeze all of it's performance through overclocking. The first thing you'll need is an unlocked Phenom (Black Edition) and a good motherboard choice among the Spider platform. The DFI LANParty UT 790FX-M2R should fit that bill.

With an Intel processor, you don't have to worry about much when you hold an unlocked CPU, but here, the simplest method of raising the multiplier doesn't yield a phenomenal result, stopping at 13. That means we've gone from 2300 to 2600 MHz, which is not nearly enough (even if we consider that the voltage remains unchanged). Unfortunately, any attempt to reach 2700 MHz also fails no matter how much Vcore is fed to the CPU.

But we aren't talking about an Intel processor, and sometimes you need to step down a little to go further. Particulary, what's called for here, is a reduction of the multiplier of both the Hyper Transport and the CPU. The Hyper Transport frequency (the closest thing to the FSB you'll find on an AMD CPU since the K8) must be controlled in order to attain stability, lowering it's multiplier if needed. In this case, by leaving the CPU at default and raising the Hyper Transport speed, a final score of 2.69 GHz @ 1,44V is achieved. Far away from what the Core 2 can do, but if you must go the AMD way, at least go all the way.

A brief German article centres on the cheapest of the upcoming quad core penryn processors from Intel, To see just how far the performance of the family Benjamin goes when working at no less than 3500 MHz. And what better opponent to compare it to than the Q6600?, you may say "the QX9770" is the best point of reference for top performance, and you would be right, so it's also included, as well as several AMD processors. They even find a "simulated 2300 MHz" Phenom X3 (?) among them.

If you consider this clock frequency to be "low", you should start looking elsewhere for a better overclock, because the Q9300 doesn't go much higher without losing stability. The lowest clocked Wolfdales also report a similar behavior in several tests conducted around the web, so Yorkfields made from them don't turn up to be very good.

In any case, why these Penryns don't go any higher than their 65nm Core 2 predecessors, you can make your argument in any way, and the article's authors wanted to show that the more modest of the Q9000 series could beat an extreme  processor that costs more than one thousand dollars. Of course it can, that's what overclocking is good for.

Link: PC Games Hardware.

It looks like the B3 will be the last "B" stepping the Barcelona core will get, and wherever Barcelona goes, Phenom can't be far behind. The "C" stepping will already be a part of the 45nm Shanghai core family, so everything should be in order to proceed with the next manufacturing process.

There were rumours, floating around, about the need for a fourth "B" stepping, which would indicate that the problem with the B2 wasn't over, but AMD has vigorously denied that. Let's rephrase that: it's confirmed that the B3 stepping doesn't suffer from any TLB bug.

Surely, by the time AMD begins selling their 45nm Phenoms, Intel will have solved their own "problems" with Penryn and we'll be able to buy them at sub-extreme prices. You can also buy a Phenom if you like them, of course.

Link: The Inquirer.

Not one, not two, not three... but a whole lot, and all of them at once. We've got laptop procesors, server processors, Quads and dual cores, whatever you like.

The dual core CPUs (Wolfdale) should be available already, as they were announced quite some time ago. Quads (Yorkfield), on the other hand, will be released in Q1, with no specific release date  (this was also known, but contrary to the initial announcement). This delay affects Xeons too, even though there aren't a lot of four layered server motherboards (the excuse given) around.

Price ranges will be held, with the Q9300 substituting the Q6600 and the E8200 (E8190) doing the same for the E6550, starting at the bottom of the list. Having desktop CPUs with a FSB of 333 MHz (x4), you will need a damned good board to fully squeeze them. Either that or you pay a little bit more for the Q9450 or the E8400.

At Vr-Zone they have a complete list with all the Intel microprocessors currently (or shortly) available. The six last columns are very interesting, as they tell us that a price cut will take place on the 20th of April. We're only talking about 10 or 20$ for a Celeron or a dual core, proportional to their low price, but the Q6700 is getting the same treatment the Q6600 had this summer: from 530 to 266$! Intel must have noticed nobody bought them. And speaking of the Q6600, you will get it for only 224$.

Link: AnandTech.

Not satisfied with their current 45nm processor line-up, the folks at Intel are starting to give us a glimpse of the following architecture and the models that will be out first. There'll be a test later so I hope your remembering all these new names - anybody getting their Nehalems mixed with their Havendales will be forced to buy AMD instead.

Nehalem will be among us this year (if no motherboard issues arise, if you know what I mean), and it won't be cheap with the most expensive Quad version of Nehalem - Bloomfield, or Bloominexpensive - set to break your wallets. Then, in the first quarter of 2009, Lynnfield will come, also with four cores, targeted at a market segment that wants performance (just not so badly). The dual core, Havendale, will be postponed for the second quarter of next year. Havendale will also have an integrated graphics unit for the entry level market in mind.

If we talk about laptops, the Quad (Clarkefield) and the dual core Auburndale will also debut in the first half of 2009. Auburndale will also have an IGP, but is nevertheless expected to suck less power than Penryn.

No mention at any time of a single Octal, serves us right for not buying AMD.

Link: DigiTimes.