Wow, what an un-informed, un-informative and biased article. I wonder how much Intel paid you for it? All things considered, Intel launched it's $1000 Pentium (not so) Extreme Edition (PEE) almost a month ago, and there are still none to be found in the market. The ship date at Dell is 6/13, and as far as I have heard, no-one has gotten one yet. The PDs have just been launched, and they are also nowhere to be found. It's great that Intel launched a dual core processor for $241 that they plan on keeping so scarce for the rest of the year that no-one will be able to find them.

Meanwhile, AMD launched the dual core Opteron processors for servers and workstations (you know, the market where they will actually provide a reasonable advantage over single core processors) at about the same time as the PEE launch. Those processors are readily available across the web. AMD will also be launching the X2 processor for desktops on 6/7, although in very limited quantities, I'm sure. Considering that they are the same as Opteron in a different package, I imagine they will be available immediately after launch.

Lastly, take a look around the web at performance reviews. To put it politely, the lowest rated X2 4200 leaves the PEE sucking wind at about half the cost. And that's just on multi-threaded applications. God forbid you should look at the performance comparisons on single-threaded applications.

In summary, I would hardly call Intel "launching" an under-performing kludge of an unavailable processor an "important victory".

This article must be a joke! INTEL the tech underdog is at least three years behind AMD's rear. AMD designed Hammer in 1999 to be dual core, INTEL hasn't got a design yet, all they do is tie the pins of two CPUs. Performance wise? Google "dual core benchmark", you will see INTEL crushed like a scumbug in ALL tests. AMD's lowest Athlon 64 X2 4200 beats the INTEL $1000 DualCore Extreme edition by a wide margin. That's why AMD is expensive, you get what you pay for. Furthermore, if you use INTEL, its 180 watts of heat will burn a hole on your electricity bill. You can caluclate your self. AMD uses 100 watts less, the electricity savings is more than $300. On the server front, AMD has 8 way dual core opteron 875, which totally dominates INTEL. INTEL is at less than 50% of the AMD performance. Inquirer has a article showing that a 4P AMD Opteron server beats a 16P Xeon 3GHZ/4MB Unisys machine. On the mobile front, INTEL has not yet been able to copycat the AMD64 instruction set.

Sounds like a Newsweek article or something that would air on CBS... the $241, $316 and $530 pricetags fail to include the price of a new motherboard, memory(DDR2) and maybe a power supply and PCIe graphics card. I can drop a new X2 in ASUS A8V Deluxe with nothing more than a BIOS upgrade. Also the performance is higher and the underpinnings(HyperTransport/Memory Controller) are much more advanced with the X2 and all A64's for that matter.... the whole P4 architecture has been a bust from the begining.

There is a REASON these chips are being sold so cheap !!!!!!!!
They contain Digital Rights Management, that allows software vendors to have superior control over your computer than the owner (you).

You wont be able to play any MP3s, unless THEY LET YOU ! No copied software, no copied media of any kind.
I guess thats good for Micro$oft and those nice guys in the recording industry who want to force you to buy their $20 shiny circles of plastic (CD's).
But its a huge blow to you and me. DONT BUY THIS CHIP. The articles on google have clearly been, shall we say, encouraged by Intel. They want a good spin on what is THE MOST AWFUL development in the history of Intel. Especially since last time they tried this everyone boycotted their chips.

To be clear, the new cheap pentium D allows other people to access your computer from the internet, read your files and look at your screen, without you knowing about it.

http://www.digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=4915

WATCH OUT !!!!!
DONT BUY THE PENTIUM D !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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DONT BUY THE PENTIUM D. YOU WILL REGRET IT.

DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT.

INTEL POISIONED OUR FOOD AGAIN.

I am very impressed by the responses here. There are obviously some very intelligent and informed people reading these highly biased and inaccurate articles. Bravo for making ALL the points I was planning to make about this Intel propaganda.