Given what's going on right now, I figured it might be worth a quick thread to talk computer hardware real quick. If you're planning on buying a new computer any time soon, my advice would be to wait a bit.

Intel has a new CPU coming soon that will replace the entire Pentium 4 line. It's called Core 2, and it looks like it's going to be pretty special - much faster than a P4, more than a match for AMD's Athlon X2 line, and all with significantly lower power consumption than P4.

The best part about Intel's new offering is the price, and the effect it's going to have on the market. Since Intel wants to reclaim market share that AMD has been chipping away from them for the last few years, these things are going to be priced pretty low.

Even better, because it's been shown that this CPU is faster than Athlon for the most part, the other side effect is that AMD will be slashing their prices to meet Intel head-on. They don't have a choice - they've gone from being the performance leader that can command a price premium to playing catchup. In their dual-core Athlon range, the price cuts are supposed to be up to a couple of hundred bucks.

If you're still looking for a P4, there's effectively going to be a fire sale on those. They don't perform nearly as well as Core, and they suck power, so Intel has to make them much more attractive now to shift 'em.

Competition is a wonderful thing.

Anyway, regardless of whose CPU your next machine will be based on, if you were looking at buying soon, it would be a good idea to wait until the dust settles.

Core 2 will supposedly start appearing in prebuilt machines (Dell, HP, etc.) at the end of this month, and boxed processors available from newegg, scan, etc. are slated for the first week of August. AMD is expected to cut their prices across the board at that time.

Links:

Fairly representative Core 2 performance review

Info on rumoured AMD price cuts

Personally, I'd sit on my non-existent money and wait...

There isn't a version of Photoshop that takes full advantage of Intel duo-core processors yet is there? Certainly not on the Macs anyway, not so sure about Windows users though...

Wait for CS3, then buy if you can: that's what I intend to do!

Can you get this stuff as a note book or lap top, or do you have to accept a desk top?

Katheric

Yup, there's a whole bunch of Intel Duo-Core laptops out there. Including the rather nice new Macbook from Apple :-)

Apple currently uses Core Solo and Duo on their laptops and iMacs. However, the first version of Core they're currently using has nowhere near the performance of Core 2.

Thinking about it, Intel's naming scheme is pretty horrible. Core Duo is not the same thing as Core 2. Core Solo/Duo are basically Core 1, and Solo/Duo means there are 1 or 2 cores in the CPU. There will probably be Solo & Duo versions of Core 2, too.

Confused yet?

I'd expect Apple to refresh their iMac fairly quickly once Core 2 comes out. Now that they're on the Intel bandwagon, they won't want to lag behind Dell and so forth for too long.

I don't know what their plans are for their laptops - they're already struggling to remove the heat from the CPU as it is (as are Dell, etc.). Core puts out up to 31 Watts of heat under full load. That's a fair bit given that earlier models of Intel's mobile processors have been available in 20W and 7W versions.

I don't think there's a version of Core 2 that's rated at under 60W, as it's meant to be a desktop part to compete with Athlon.I'd be very surprised if Apple were to shoehorn one of those into a laptop - it would get hot as hell, and battery life would suck badly.

As for their dual-CPU desktop machines, rumour has it that Apple will make use of the Xeon version of the Core 2 architecture. Xeon is a server CPU - the main difference is that you can put more than one of 'em in a single machine.

aaaaaaarrrrrrrgh! :-)

Oops - that happened a little earlier than I was lead to believe. AMD slashed their prices this weekend.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/...104_609,00.html

To give you an idea of what that means in terms of savings for us monkeys at the end of the CPU food chain. here's a quick comparison with newegg prices as of today (the new prices will take a bit to trickle down through sellers to us):

Dual-core Athlon

• X2 4600+, newegg price $568, new channel price $278 = $290 savings
• X2 4200+, newegg price $355, new channel price $187 = $168 savings
• X2 3800+, newegg price $255, new channel price $152 = $103 savings

In addition, the not-yet-released X2 5000+ will be $301. Given what this would have cost before Core 2 showed up, this is a steal!

Single-core Athlon

• 3800+, newegg price $138, new channel price $112 = $26 savings
• 3500+, newegg price $108, new channel price $91 = $18 savings
• 3200+, newegg price $100, new channel price $81 = $19 savings

There aren't nearly as large cuts on the single-core family of Athlons. They were already marked down significantly compared to their dual-core brethren as these days, dual-core CPUs get all the attention.

The prices on AMD's website are for crates of the buggers direct from AMD, so street prices will be a bit higher. Still, there are some pretty enormous savings to be made.

Oh, and if you look at the likes of Scan back home, they seem to have already updated their prices to follow this cut. Either that, or we're living in some backwards universe where UK prices are siginificantly less than US prices...

All in all, real competition is a wonderful thing.

Hmmm... interestingly the price of Photoshop itself isn't budging.

Yup, that's true. If you're in the software business and you have no real competition, you can charge people's left nuts for your wares.

I mean, with these price cuts, you could build a pretty fast machine for $400 or so that'll photoshop very nicely. Under $500 will get you something with a dual-core CPU and a decent graphics card for casual/older gaming. This assumes you'd be re-using an existing monitor.

However, you still have to pay $100-200 for Windows and another $400-500 for Photoshop, assuming you can't get in on an academic licence.

Bloody software guys. You can't trust 'em. I know, 'cos I am one.

Photoshop won't come down in price. Adobe will just "add more features" to suites that have Photoshop in it, etc. (and still charge you for upgrades).

But it is the "photo editing program of standard". If you need a feature or capability (no mater how esoteric), it will be in Photoshop or available as a plug-in. Eventually, features are duplicated in the competitors but they always seem to be available first for Photoshop (whether incorporated directly by Adobe or as a plugin/extension by third-parties -- they write it for Photoshop first).

Not that there aren't some very worthwhile alternatives at all levels. I'd not recommend Photoshop CS2 to someone who just wants to take out a little red-eye now and then, etc. But even on Windows platforms there are some who prefer Paint Shop Pro and Gimp. (and others who call it PAIN Shop Pro)

Hardwarewise, many factors come into play. Given a reasonably powerful computer, MEMORY is the biggest factor (and usually easily upgradeable to 2GB or more for power users) followed by the processor itself. Don't neglect the disk system (particularly if you don't have a lot of system RAM -- swapfile usage will mire you in mud). Fortunately, with Photoshop you can use several hard drives (physical drives, not just drive letters) and spread your work out so one drive holds the operating system and Photoshop program, another disk has the Windows swapfile (and possibly photoshop's swapfile also), another disk for the work/data file. Most people don't have 4-5 drives in their system, but if you do you can dramatically speed up the overall "working speed" by seperating functions (system, swap space, and work files).

The new Intel processor is eagerly awaited, and some say necessary for Intel to remain in the running.

... But I'm sure AMD hasn't been standing still either once they got ahead!