According to a new report of the Japanese PC Watch Intel is still having troubles with his Prescotts processors, which could lead to them being pushed back to the second quarter of next year.
The article says that Prescott – which was plagued by heat problems as we reported in spring this year, is also suffering from bus problems and difficulties related to the 875 and 865 chipsets. Many motherboard makers have released Pentium 4 boards which have the same socket for 478 pins that initial Prescotts will use, so for customers hoping to upgrade, this is a serious problem.
The Japanese article says systems won't work with 800MHz front side buses, while Intel is frantically attempting to create fresh packaging and a further stepping – C1 – for the chip.
But qualification samples, the article continues, aren't likely to go out the door until December. That means that if Intel makes its own February deadline, volume is unlikely to appear until the second quarter of next year. And Intel's most recent roadmaps suggested that it would start using the LGA775 design for Prescott in Q2 as well, which is when its "Grantsdale" chipsets are supposed to appear.
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