Today Intel officially released the Intel 820 processor which is a dual core Smithfield CPU running at 2.8 GHz.  It has 2 x 1 MB L2 cache and an 800 MHz FSB.  Performance on it so far looks to be right where we expect it to be: low on single threaded apps, acceptable on multi threaded apps, and really good for multitasking machines as well.  I currently have mine in our 945G reference board for testing, hopefully it will be done in time that I can write the review on the flight to Computex.

The other CPU released was the Intel 670 processor that runs at 3.8 GHz on a Prescott core with 64-bit, Execture disable and Enhanced SpeedStep support.  Other than that, we are merely seeing a 200 MHz speed bump up from our 660 processor review this past Februrary.  I have one of these on the test bed as well, but I don’t expect to have it done in time for next week.

In other news, I am planning on having an X2 processor review online some time tomorrow, courtesy of a couple of friends of mine.  AMD still hasn’t supplied us with any X2 or FX-57 samples, so it looks like PCP is going to be on its own for AMD CPU samples for the forseeable future.  Oh well, this just means I don’t have to conform to any sorts of NDAs or information restrictions, as my look at AMD’s upcoming Rev F showed

I haven’t check on the house in a while, but I plan to head up this weekend to have one final look before I head over to Taipei for Computex 2005 convention.  My day planner is booked solid already with meetings with chipsets vendors, motherboard manufacturers, GPU vendors and more!  We should see ATI’s multiple GPU technology in action, though in demo form only, and also NVIDIA will be showing off more on the G70 at that time as well.  It looks like it should be a very exciting week.

I’ll keep everyone posted as I learn it!