Intel Unlocked Anniversary Pentium CPU Available Soon
Soon we'll be seeing a new unlocked Pentium processor from Intel.
It's not the first time we've seen information about the Intel Pentium Anniversary Edition processor, but now Intel is revealing a number of the missing details, namely the official technical specifications for the unlocked Pentium processor. And yes, by unlocked we mean that the multiplier is unlocked.
The chip is clocked in at a base frequency of about 3.2 GHz and comes packed with two cores. It drops into the LGA1150 socket, so it should work in almost all 8-series and 9-series motherboards, and because it has an unlocked multiplier, it can be overclocked when dropped into Z87 or Z97 motherboards. The chip also has 3 MB of cache, dual-channel DDR3-1333 memory support, and comes with Intel Quick Sync Video enabled, which is a nice surprise.
Why is Intel building this processor? Quite simply, the Pentium brand has been around for 20 years now, and Intel wants to celebrate, but the company probably also sees an opportunity to explore a segment of the market that might be interested in an unlocked $80 CPU. We're curious, too.
All in all, this chip should be a nifty little overclocker. Its exact purpose in the market remains questionable, though it will be a nice learning platform for overclocking. It probably won't be too expensive, and it looks like certain manufacturers are building budget-oriented Z97-based motherboards to accompany the launch.
Pricing is expected to sit around $80 per chip. They are set to hit shelves this month for those of you who are aching to learn to overclock an Intel chip without dropping hundreds on an unlocked Core i5 or Core i7 processor, nor want to use a possibly faulty secondhand chip.
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And people go nuts over the thing...
I see you clearly don't know what "unlocked" means in this context.....
And people go nuts over the thing...
And people go nuts over the thing...
I see you clearly don't know what "unlocked" means in this context.....
If Intel had really wanted to make their 20th Anniversary edition Pentiums super-special by making them at least somewhat relevant in the enthusiast market like they were 15-20 years ago, they should have enabled HT and sold them in the $120-150 range.
If Intel had really wanted to make their 20th Anniversary edition Pentiums super-special by making them at least somewhat relevant in the enthusiast market like they were 15-20 years ago, they should have enabled HT and sold them in the $120-150 range.
Or, y'know. An i3. (Dual-core with HT)
Releasing a special edition i3 to celebrate 20 years of Pentium would not sound right.
Breaking the branding convention by releasing a Pentium-branded unlocked i3 on the other hand would would be something super-special and far more useful in today's market.
Some tasks are still limited to 1 or 2 threads, such as ProE, in which case a Z97
based on this chip could be rather good, eg. I observed very decent ProE results
with an i3 550 @ 4.7GHz. Beyond such specific examples though, I don't know...
Ian.
The "crap" material Intel uses is actually better than most of the best aftermarket crap you can put in its place.
The problem is there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100-200 micrometers worth of it between the IHS and the die itself, which is a huge gap. If you put a 200 microns thick layer of your favorite "best" aftermarket paste, it would fare horribly too.
200 microns is no big deal for solder-based TIM but with pastes, it can ruin your day.
Something this cheap is just begging for a delid and Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra if it uses the same design as the other Haswells. My 4770K dropped almost 20°C with CLU under the IHS.