Does anyone know when the new T42 with dothan will come out? What will be the specs?

You will find a LOT of supposition on the WWW about the pending release of the T42s and their configuration.

Just bear in mind that those who REALLY know anything are almost certainly constrained by non-disclosure agreements.

Regards,

James

Dothan news is finally starting to shape up (what the rumor sites like The Inquirer were reporting is apparently true).

http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-5201338.html?tag=nefd.top

CNET confirms that Dothan will launch on 10 May, at speeds of 2.0, 1.8, and 1.7 GHz. Assuming the architectural tweaks give it about 1.5x more processing power per clock than the latest Pentium 4, this should be one hell of a processor (a 2.0 GHz Dothan dissipating 21 Watts while providing the performance of a 3 GHz Pentium 4 ought to shake things up).

I din't see that 21 Watts reference... I thought it would be more in the range of 30 Watts (as they had overheating problems with Prescott which is also based on 90 nm fab process).

If it's indeed 21 watts, then it would be one hell of a processor!

xbitlabs picked up the exact same info as CNET, but about two weeks earlier. Overall I think xbitlabs is a pretty reliable source:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20040416131314.html



There has been rampant speculation that Intel's 90nm process is to blame for the Prescott Pentium 4's excessive power consumption, but I suspect that this has more to do with the fact that Prescott has an enormous amount of logic transistors due to its 31-stage pipeline (39 stages if you include x86-32 decoding) and the fact that some of these transistors run at 6+ GHz (simple ALUs are running at 2x core clock). Intel keeps maintaining that the 90nm process chemistry is fine, and Prescott steppings keep changing, which leads me to beleive the 90nm process is fine, and that the Prescott design simply wasn't all that great.

Yeah, XBitLabs is a pretty reliable source on Intel Processors.

If its consuimg less power than the Banias processors, then we can expect higher speed Dothans in even smaller cases - maybe T50p would be even slimmer than T41p

Thanks for that info.

So when the dothans come out, will it be possible to upgrade my T41p's processor with a 2.0ghz one? I'm guessing no, but maybe someone else knows.

I believe that the Dothan uses the same chipset and socket, (at least according to Intel's docs) however... I believe the T series has its processor soldered in. So that would be a no go.

The T40 and T41 all have the processor in a ZIF socket.

Regards,

James

Ok Mr. Maughm, you got me again. What is a ZIF socket? Is it known by another name?

ZIF = "zero insertion force" (aka "that socket thing with a lever on it")

a ZIF socket has a lever on it that when lowered, snugs and locks the chip in place.   these are popular on desktop motherboards and eeprom burners, so i'm sure you've seen one before.  

-erik