About a month ago, I was talking about the performance of

Vista Beta 2. In that entry, I mentioned how even though Vista seems a little

sluggish right now, every


version of Windows was been slow when it first shipped and that eventually

hardware manufacturers created powerful enough CPUs and systems that the

operating systems worked smoothly. At the end, I quipped that perhaps all we

needed to do was to wait for AMD and Intel to ship quad-core CPUs in order for

Vista performance to be acceptable.

Well, lo and behold – Intel just

announced that its quad-core CPUs, the Cloverton for servers and Kentsfield

for desktops, would appear in late 2006 rather than in the first half of 2007

as originally planned. This timing means that quad-core processors will be

available just in time for Vista’s final release.

By shipping quad-core processors this year, Intel also gets

the jump on AMD which won’t have its quad-core processors ready until next

year. This will be the first time in quite a while that Intel has beaten AMD to

market with an advanced chip.

Once interesting thing to Intel’s quad-core CPU is the fact that

the article notes that the CPUs are essentially dual-dual-core CPUs and not

true quad-cores. What Intel is doing is configuring two dual core CPUs in such

a manner as they fit into once CPU socket. AMD’s quad-core is supposed to be a ‘true’

quad-core.

So what I originally wrote in jest turned out to be fact.

Quad-core CPUs were always coming. It was just a matter of time, but Vista was

supposed to beat them to the market. Now it looks like there will be at least a

few quad-core systems waiting to greet Vista when it ships. I guess I should

have just said something about needing octo-core CPUs or something like that

instead.