Slashdot Mirror
Intel Introduces 1 GHz Chips
sheck was one of the first people to write about the release of Intel's 1 Ghz chip. Beating Intel to the punch, we already covered AMD's 1 Ghz Athlon. If you want more coverage check out C|Net. This corporate peeing match about who can release these machines first is pretty funny to watch.
It's going to need a wombat heatsink and a 3&1/2 inch fan. I wonder if the power supplies out on the market can adequately power a system with one of these, a DVD, a ZIP, a bleeding edge video card, etc.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
So finally Intel has gotten the Pentium IIIE CPU to run at 1,000 MHz.
There are a few problems, though. First, FINDING a 1,000 MHz PIIIE CPU is going to be just about impossible. Secondly, when it comes to pure FPU performance, the Athlon 1,000 MHz is still better because the PIIIE is still heavily based on the original P6 core from the Pentium Pro some five years ago!
Now that motherboards that use the VIA Apollo KX133 chipset is now becoming available, there's no incentive to use the PIIIE instead. In fact, if you have a graphics card that uses the nVidia GeForce 256 chipset and also run the latest Detonator 3.76 driver, the Athlon in many tests will run rings around the PIIIE 1,000 MHz.
I think the Athlon's advantage will increase even more when the second-generation Athlon (code named Thunderbird) with its CPU-speed L2 cache becomes available in a few months. I think a 1,000 MHz 2nd gen Athlon may perform as much as 20 to 25 percent faster than a PIIIE 1,000 MHz, mostly because the 2/5 L2 cache speed restriction will be gone.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
For a long time processors have been the most important part of a computer. At school I was taught that some day in the future RAM would become the most expensive part, not processors. When this occured a major change in computing would happen, using more processors instead of more RAM. I think this will happen very soon.
Prices of processors are dropping so fast because of this speed race. RAM OTOH stays expensive. We are allready seeing a steady increase in dual processor boxes.
Does anyone have any ideas about how this change from lots of memory to lots of processors will look like.
Dell 1GHz PIII: $5999
Gateway 1GHz Athlon: $3199
Those prices are for otherwise identical systems: 30G HD, GeForce, 19" monitor, 256K RAM (gateway base price is $2999 with 128K, so I added the $200 that their configurator adds for a 256K config.).
The Dell/Intel system is almost **DOUBLE** !!!! the price of the Gateway/AMD system!!!
The Rambus memory used by the PIII is of course the reason, and is why Intel is forced to price the CPU itself under AMD. If you check my history I predicted this yesterday, and stand by my predition that AMD will not drop their price in response - they have no need to!
Intel will release Pentium IIIs running at 1 GHz or faster by the second half of the year as well as the next-generation Willamette chips running at the same speed, Yu said. Quote here
Now isn't the second half of the year starting around July, August? Intel hasn't been doing well meeting its deadlines much less breaking them by months. I seem to remeber something simmiliar happening when both AMD and Intel were comming out with 600Mhz processors, AMD demoed theirs and then Intel came out a close second with their chip that, while it did run at 600Mhz did it using a little more voltage the usual and didn't seem to be as stable and their regular batch of PIIIs.
Remembering my comments about failures of PIII 600 CPUs, actually also reported by several other publications in Germany and the UK, should give you an idea how hard it was to run all the benchmarks with an even overclocked PIII 650. Quote here
It will be interesting to see tests on these 2 new processors to see how good they actually are, but this just seems to be a release by Intel to show that they arn't lagging AMD even though they really could be if AMD can produce good 1Ghz chips in mass when Intel is suck with declaring that there ARE 1Ghz PIIIs but if you actually wanted to find one it would be as easy as finding a Athlon and motherboard when they were`released'.
I hope Intel and AMD continue their little battle - I'd love to see more companies get involved. After all, we're the ones that benefit from it from faster chips and cheaper prices.
Too bad car companies don't put as much effort into improving over each other instead of just advertising better - we'd be driving much safer and fuel efficient things...
---
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Ha!
Reasons for laughing:
Jack Valenti and the MPAA are to technology as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone
There was a /. article a few months ago about this. IBM has the capability now to produce circuits that can handle 90 Ghz. Here's the link...
slashdot.org/articles/99/12/06/ 0823227.shtml
--
"A mind is a horrible thing to waste. But a mime...
It feels wonderful wasting those fsckers."
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
Sheesh - go look at this and see that Mhz nowdays (has it ever?) is irrelevant. A 733 Intel CPU gets a rating of 336 while an Alpha 667 get 413!!! And I forgot where I saw it, but Intel says the 1Ghz rates a 410 on this. STILL lower than the 667 Alpha. (on par, but lower)Total marketing BS. I'll admit the speed wars are great, but let's remember what Intel ISN't telling you - that they HAVE to run their chips faster because they're inherently slower designs (sorry for the rant)
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
Although what it should mean is the drastic lowering of Athlon 700 chips, which I'm thinking would make a good system for me. All hail competition. Price wars are good, price wars are our friend.
Working for the (other) man
Check out this Mac Plus (circa 1980s) running at 1 GHz.
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~schrier/plus.html
AMD's idea of "introducing a 1GHz chip" is that you can go to gw2k.com , order a PC with that chip and expect it to be delivered in a few days or weeks.
iNTEL's idea is that there are a few sample chips for manufactures to practice tweaking motherboards.
AMD has sent chips to the larger retail stores and they should be on the shelf at Comp USSR soon ( if not already ).
iNTEL will be selling Gigahertz chips retail in a matter of months at best.
These people define release in vastly different ways and it will take your typical PC user a few more years to work out the difference. As for me personally, I am just happy that this will hammer the prices of the Celeron or K6-2 I can actually afford farther into the cheap range.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
What makes this siutation interesting in two reguards is this:
First AMD now has corperate attentions. It produced the 1GHZ chip first. That demonstrates that it is a very serious player. My boss didn't know what AMD was a few weeks ago. He does now.
Second Intel is now having to dance to the beat of someone elses drum. How long has it been since they've had to do that?
I'm hoping AMD can keep this up. If they can I could be able to convince upper checksigners to start letting me put in AMD powered servers and such very soon. Trick is they have to keep delivering.