Intel To Launch Pentium 4

Monday, November 20th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) â€” Intel Corp. will introduce its long-awaited turbo-charged Pentium 4 chip Monday, reclaiming the title from rival Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. as the maker of the fastest chip in the personal computer market.

The new microprocessor gives the Santa Clara-based chip giant bragging rights and gives computer users a faster, visually richer experience.

Major PC manufacturers, including Dell Computer Corp., Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM Corp., are expected to start releasing products next week using two versions of the Pentium 4 chip â€” one that runs at 1.4 gigahertz and another at 1.5 gigahertz.

AMD had stolen the speed crown from Intel last year with its Athlon chip, which runs at 1.2 gigahertz, or 1.2 billion cycles per second. The fast chip helped AMD boost its most recent share of the overall PC microprocessor market to more than 17 percent, AMD officials said.

Intel would not disclose the cost of the Pentium 4 chips, but industry sources have pegged the price of the 1.4 gigahertz chip in the range of $650 and the 1.5 gigahertz chip in the range of $800.

AMD's Athlon chip costs $612.

And so the rivalry continues.

``These firms upstage each other every other year, and for now, this is Intel's time, and we're waiting for AMD to respond,'' said Rob Enderle, analyst with the Giga Information Group. ``It's sort of like watching ping pong.''

The high-performance Pentium 4 chips will be attractive to the top 5 percent of the PC market â€” the power gamers, the people who push the limits of their computers, Enderle said.

Following historical patterns, however, the high prices of the powerful microprocessors will eventually drop and be incorporated into more affordable products for mainstream consumers, who today are spending between $1,200 and $1,500 for desktop computers.

Intel says the new chips are designed for where the Internet is going â€” a world in which consumers are increasingly using their computers to swap digital music files through Napster, to edit their videos from digital camcorders and to play games that are have more and more sophisticated graphics.

``This is our way of keeping up to the performance trajectory that we think the market is looking for,'' said Jeff Austin, Intel's marketing manager of the desktop products group.

Intel has been working with dozens of companies to take advantage of the power of the Pentium 4. At a media briefing in San Francisco on Friday, company officials showed off how the graphics for Macromedia's popular Shockwave.com game site improves from 2-dimensional to 3-dimensional quality when comparing it to Intel's Pentium 3 1-gigahertz chip. About 60 computer applications are set to launch soon or are in development, using the turbo-charged chip, the company said.

IBM plans to introduce a Pentium 4-based PC, the NetVista A60i, which it says carries powerful multimedia, imaging and Internet capabilities for home PC users. The system, which will cost $2,199, will allow users to turn their PC into a home theater system, complete with capabilities of a personal video recorder for television, DVD playback and home video editing.

Dell will introduce the Pentium 4 in its highest-end desktop PC, the Dimension 8100, at the price of $1,999. ``This will allow us to exceed what the competition is offering with competitive microprocessors,'' said Dell spokesman Tom Kehoe.

Enderle said Pentium 4 users will not only see improved 3-D graphics, but booting and shutting down their computers will be noticeably quicker.