In a bid to catch up with much smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices, Intel will reportedly ship its dual-core Intel Xeon processors for dual-processor servers as early as in October. Dell, the only system maker that sells Intel-based computers only, will start to take pre-orders on serves powered by the chips on Monday.

“Dell is bringing the new [dual-core Intel Xeon] 2.8GHz chip to all of its dual-processor servers and to two workstation models. The products will begin shipping in October,” said Neil Hand, Dell’s vice president of worldwide enterprise marketing, in an interview with ZDNet web-site.

Dell is reported to have claimed that dual-core Intel Xeon processor at 2.80GHz outperforms single-core Intel Xeon processor at 3.60GHz in applications able to take advantage of multi-processor setups, something which is usual for server software. For instance, Microsoft Exchange runs 18% faster, database software performs 37% better and Java applications gain 43% speed advantage with the dual-core chip.

The world’s largest maker of computers will ship servers and workstations powered by Intel’s dual-core Xeon processor in October. Until then customers, who pre-order the systems, have to sing non-disclosure agreements concerning the details.

Intel recently revealed plans to introduce the dual-core Intel Xeon processor MP, code-named Paxville, for servers with four or more processors later in 2005. The Xeon MP processor based on Paxville core will be drop-in compatible with existing server platforms based on Intel E8500 core-logic. For dual processor servers, Intel plans to ship a premium dual-core Intel Xeon processor, code-named Paxville DP in Q4 2005. Paxville DP will use the Intel E7520 chipset.

Dell PowerEdge 1850 and1855 blade servers; PowerEdge 2850 and 2800 servers as well as Precision 470 and 670 workstations are claimed to be compatible with Intel dual-core Xeon processor Paxville DP.

Intel’s arch-rival AMD has been shipping a broad family of dual-core Opteron chips oriented at servers and workstations since April, 2005.