Originally Intel planned to unveil its Xeon 3.06 and 3.0GHz processors only later this quarter, but on Wednesday, the 5th of December, Dell and HP started to advertise their new workstations powered by the new Xeon chip on their web-sites.

According to ZDNet, the upcoming Xeon 3.06GHz is part of Dell's Precision 450 and Precision 650 workstation models. The 3.06GHz chip is a $200 upgrade over a 2.8GHz Xeon in Dell's Precision 450, bumping the most basic configuration of that machine from $2037 to $2237, as written at Dell's web-site. HP is also advertising the microprocessor in two workstation models, its HP xw6000 and HP xw8000. The 3.06GHz chip is a $400 upgrade from the 2.8GHz Xeon in HP's xw8000, pushing the least-expensive configuration of that model from $2046 to $2446. Servers are based on Intel E7205 core-logic.

Both 3.0GHz and 3.06GHz Xeon chips with 400 and 533MHz Quad Pumped Bus respectively are expected to cost about $700 each when announced later this quarter. I believe this will happen very soon.