Intel releases 450 MHz Pentium II Xeon family

Intel Corporation on Tuesday announced the immediately availability of itsfastest microprocessor ever, the 450 MHz Pentium II Xeon, which comes witha choice of three L2 cache sizes: 512 Kb, 1 MB or 2 MB. The Pentium II Xeonis designed for multiprocessing servers and workstations using four or moreprocessors.

"The challenges faced in the enterprise are never-ending, as the needs forgreater performance, scalability and flexibility increase daily," said JohnMiner, who runs Intel's Enterprise Server Group. "Pentium II Xeon processor-based servers meet these needs by offering industry-leading performance for four-way and greater systems. This performance, offered ata tremendous value to the customer, has made the Pentium II Xeon processor the fastest selling server processor in Intel's history."

Pentium II Xeons come with a hefty price tag compared to Celeron and normalPentium II microprocessors: the 512 Kb model is $824, the 1 MB model is $1980, and the 2 MB version comes in at $3692.

Single processor Pentium II Xeon systems will run in the $7000-20,000 pricerange, while multi-processor systems will hit mortgage pricing. Every majorPC maker, including Dell, Compaq, IBM, HP, NEC, Micron, Toshiba, and morehave announced new systems based around the new microprocessor