BeHardware - News - March 21, 2008

Although it still only involves very small quantities in channels of official distribution, two and a half months after their official launch, the first 45 nm Core 2 Quads are starting to appear.

For the moment, it’s ‘’only’’ a question of the Q9300 set at 2.5 GHz and with 6 MB of L2 cache. You may recall the Q6600 which it replaces is at 2.4 GHz but has 8 MB of L2 cache. Unfortunately, while they were supposed to be at the same price as the latter at around 200 €, the rarity of the product makes it much more expensive at the moment and they are therefore reserved for more impatient buyers.

You may recall, Intel is faced with two problems involving its quad core CPUs. The first is a bug detected at the last minute which required a new core revision that officially delayed availability until the end of February/early March. The second is a problem between the supply and demand of its 45nm products. Intel isn’t managing to keep up with the demand to the point that dual cores are already hard to find. So it’s difficult to monopolize two dies to make a single CPU when you can make two in the same conditions.

A propos, the initial availability of the Q9300 has probably not been left to chance. In fact, on each die only 3 MB of cache are activated of the 6 that are present. We could think that here is possibility for Intel to recycle those with a partially defective cache, something which isn’t possible with any other CPU in the line.

So when will there be large volumes of Intel 45nm CPUs? As we said a month ago, things should rapidly be resolved for dual cores; however, we should normally have to wait until the end of the second quarter for quad cores. A long wait!