News

Intel Delivers New Features for Home and Office PCs (6/6/2005)

Intel Corporation today unveiled two new platforms for home and office PCs. The new platforms, which combine key hardware and software technologies, are designed to provide consumers the ability to do more with their digital content simultaneously, and better allow businesses to enhance PC security, system management and collaboration capabilities.

The platforms package together Intel's latest microprocessors, chipsets, communications silicon and software technologies, along with several chip design innovations, to more effectively meet the needs of consumers and businesses.

For home PCs, Intel developed technologies that deliver new features to enrich and improve the entertainment experience. The new technologies include the Intel(R) Pentium(R) D processor with two processing cores -- or "brains" -- and the Intel(R) 945 Express Chipset family with support for such consumer electronics-like features as surround-sound audio, high-definition video and enhanced graphics capabilities.

Consumers today are using their PCs to enjoy the growing amount of digital content including music, videos and photos, and accomplish more tasks simultaneously -- for example, playing a game while recording a TV show in the background. With a home network and a PC based on Intel's Pentium D processor and 945 Express Chipset, multiple audio, video or gaming streams can be routed to different people in the home simultaneously.

For a new category of office PCs, Intel introduced the Intel Professional Business Platform, which combines the company's advanced security, management and collaboration technologies, and packages them together at mainstream price points. The enhancements include the introduction of Intel(R) Active Management Technology (AMT), which will help enable IT managers to monitor, install security patches or diagnose problems for all Intel AMT-enabled PCs on their networks even if they are turned off or have a failed hard drive or operating system.

Intel's Professional Business Platform is based on the new Intel(R) 945G Express Chipset and the optional Intel(R) PRO/1000 PM network adapter, and the recently introduced Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 Processor with Hyper-Threading (HT) Technology(1) 600 sequence. Several systems manufacturers will also offer dual-core processor based PCs for businesses in addition to these offerings that are part of Intel's Stable Image Platform Program.

"Intel's new home and office platforms mark a new era in personal computing that matches the way people are increasingly using their PCs to work, communicate, entertain and play," said Robert Crooke, vice president and general manager, Business Client Group, Intel's Digital Enterprise Group. "The new platforms are tailored for specific market segments and provide business and consumer-friendly features."

Surround Sound Audio, Enhanced Graphics, TV on the Home PC

PCs based on Intel's platform for the digital home also help consumers to create a theater-like experience right inside the home. Consumers can enjoy incredible audio quality on their PC with Intel(R) High Definition Audio that supports up to 7.1 surround-sound and the ability to send multiple audio streams to multiple rooms or devices in the home simultaneously through the PC's output jacks.

With the new Intel(R) Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950, 3-D graphics performance can increase nearly two times over previous generations. It also enables delivery of vivid colors and enriched picture quality on the PC, and support for a number of wide screen displays, including the latest high-definition TV formats such as native 1080i. The Intel GMA 950 provides support for an optional Media Expansion Card to bring TV shows right to the home PC, including capabilities for picture-in-picture to view two TV channels at once, and personal video recorder features to watch, record or pause live TV.

The optional Intel(R) Matrix Storage Technology adds improved support for new RAID 5 and 10 levels to the previously supported RAID 0 and 1, effectively increasing storage performance and also helping protect irreplaceable files and personal digital content stored on the PC by safeguarding the files on multiple hard drives.

Security, Manageability, Collaboration Innovations for Business

The Intel Professional Business Platform is part of the Intel(R) Stable Image Platform Program (SIPP), a program Intel introduced two years ago in which the hardware and driver image of the platform will not change for at least 12 months from the start date of the program. This popular program benefits IT managers because it can help reduce the number of PC configurations they have to manage and validate, with the potential to significantly reduce the cost and complexity of maintaining their desktop systems and the need to deploy new applications or security patches.

Intel's Professional Business Platform also evokes improved models for the way people work together. The combination of such technologies as Intel GMA 950, Intel High Definition Audio and HT Technology opens the door to high-quality video, voice calling over the Internet (VoIP) and improved online collaboration applications that can make geographic differences more transparent. The Intel GMA 950 graphics engine is also targeted to support the graphics capabilities in Microsoft Corporation's next-generation of the Windows(2) operating system, codenamed "Longhorn."

"Microsoft and Intel are working closely together to deliver a totally new experience for mainstream business computing," said Will Poole, senior vice president, Windows, Microsoft Corporation. "Windows XP(2) with the Intel Professional Business Platform ensures optimal performance and productivity for today's business environments, and we will continue to work together to advance security, reliability and collaboration capabilities in Windows moving forward."

Both of Intel's new platforms for the home and office come with additional features including Dual-Channel DDR2 at 667 MHz for higher speed memory and thus potentially faster PC performance, Intel SpeedStep(R) Technology, which can help enable quieter and more energy-efficient systems, the Execute Disable Bit security feature that can help reduce the effects of some "buffer overflow attacks" when working with certain new operating systems, and Intel(R) Extended Memory 64 Technology to enable larger amounts of memory addressability for software that needs it.

Pricing and Availability

The Intel processors introduced today include the company's mainstream dual-core processor, the Intel Pentium D processor and a new processor in the Intel Pentium 4 Processor 600 sequence. The Intel Pentium D processors 840, 830 and 820 are priced at $530, $316 and $241, respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities. The Intel Pentium 4 Processor supporting HT Technology 670 is priced at $851 in 1,000-unit quantities. The Intel 945G and 945P Express Chipsets are priced at $42 and $38, respectively, in 1,000-unit quantities.

Systems and motherboards based on Intel's new platforms are shipping today and will grow in volume with solutions available from major systems manufacturers and Intel(R) Resellers around the world.

(1) Hyper-Threading Technology requires a computer system with an Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 processor supporting HT Technology and an HT Technology enabled chipset, BIOS and operating system. Performance will vary depending on the specific hardware and software you use. See http://www.intel.com/info/hyperthreading for more information including details on which processors support HT Technology.

(2) Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

www.intel.com