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Pentium III 1.13Ghz: The Real Story
NoWhere Man writes: "Tom's Hardware has posted up their dealings with the new PIII 1.13GHz processor. Apparently without a special board with a new bios from Intel it will not even run correctly. Any motherboard that has not got the special micro code update for this very processor will ultimately fail. The review has some interesting facts about the processor as well."
But you must admit AMD is getting the best of intel simply because intel has streched itself too far and isn't innovating any more. Let's face it all they have been doing any more is shrinking die sizes by going to smaller processes and adding instructions. We need to simplify again and go back to a RISC processor and away from making the chip better by adding instructions to it. SSE is a crock, MMX was good, but mainly a marketing ploy. AMD's 3DNOW technology isn't much better, but at least they don't use that as the reason for raising the price of their CPU's
And how about naming a CPU "Coppermine" when it is still using Aluminum interconnects. The thunderbird and Duron are using copper. As it stands AMD has a greater potention in the future at the least cost. Their Dresden plant, .18 micron process, copper interconnects, and a much better yield on their chips than Intel could ever dream of. Oh yah and they don't have to deal with Rambus.
Yhcrana
The voices in my head don't like you
Saying intel isn't innovating anymore is more of a bad choice of words than it is incorrect. Obviously you've seen intel is working on some intersting things, however, the original poster is referring to what they actually bring to market. In the end, thats all that matters.
It's easy to say this now, but you could see intel starting to falter a few years ago. What wasn't so easy to see was the emergance of AMD.
Intel has been around a long time. They made good stuff for a long time. They made huge dough. The shareholders were happy. But shareholders always want more. Profit margins have to keep increasing. They can only increase to a point until the rubber band snaps. Their high prices, the RAMBUS fiasco, and others point to this. Eventually you really piss off the customer.
There are other reasons too. The older a company gets, the more bureaucratic it becomes. A Very Bad Thing in this industry. Intel is also very engineering "top heavy". Too many engineers who have been around for too long, all thinking they know exactly how it should be done. This can stifle innovation very badly.
Intel will have to go through some sort of rebirth eventually, something like what IBM went through. They haven't hit bottom yet, though. I love to see intel suffer, but I don't ant them to go away: AMD needs competition. There is no reason AMD can't turn into intel in a few short years. They're just another corporation, who have to answer to a group of shareholders who are no different than any other.
Read the Sharky's article. Skip the garbage and go straight to the hardware specs. Sharky got Intel's VC820 board -- which Tom didn't get. He tested (or tried to test) the 1133MHz chip with other boards (BX, i820, i840, Apollo133) and it didn't work. *That* is what Tom is saying. The mysterious 1133MHz CPU requires a brand new board to work properly. Also note that Sharky didn't test any game in 32 bit color. Oh I can play Quake 3 at 640x480 at 150 FPS. Great! But useless. I want to play Quake 3 at 1024x768 (or above!) and 32 bit color. The 1GHz+ CPU doesn't help here. At this resolution even 800MHz is enough to max out GeForce 2. And in general, at high resolutions the performance is limited by the video card.
Intel could release the "Jesus Processor" that would save our souls and send us to heaven eternally if we just asked. Tom would say it was a cult so they could get our money, and would lead to mass suicide.
Intel could release the "Olympic Processor" that ran faster, harder, higher and broke every single record. Tom would say it was just the doping.
Intel could release the "World Peace Processor" that automatically altered documents from world leaders, causing world peace. Tom would say Intel was spying on everyone and abusing the information to generate massive profits.
Intel could release the "3rd World Processor" that cost five cents, ran off sand, had built in voice input in every spoken language and had a holographic display built in so you wouldn't have to buy expensive peripherals. Tom would say they were trying to create a monopoly for their lousy video cards in the lucrative market of people who can't afford monitors.
I'm not saying Intel has any of this stuff; obviously they don't, but Tom's comments about Intel are neither surprising nor credible.
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
> Is there even a market for 1GHz+ right now?
Yes, but it may not be the mass market.
I, for example, need all the Hz I can get because I play around with CPU-intensive tasks like running genetic algorithms, training simulated neural networks, and running cellular automata on game-sized maps.
For a slightly broader market, analysts were saying a few months back that NT users upgrading to W2K should upgrade by 300 MHz at the same time if they want to keep their current performance level, so that will put a number of people up in the ballpark of 1GHz.
But for most people, I share your doubts about the need, at least until the next generation of bloatware makes 1GHz absolutely essential.
For now, even kooks like me sometimes buy less than the top of the line, since the performance/price ratio improves so much. If I bought today I would probably only buy 800 MHz, CPU hog though I be.
I'm certainly not going to buy extra gidgets to stick on my computer so I can run 1.13 GHz instead of 1 GHz.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
To quote amzone who put it bluntly, but accurately (of this tweaktown article):
~full tide~
"Linux is only free if your time has no value."
I have had much more luck pumping my machine full of fast RAM, rather than jumping up the CPU every 8 months. At 512MB, there is a VERY noticable increase (for me, YMMV of course) in stability with apps like Netscape, that are known to crash. I got better performance out of Quake, I think, but I haven't clocked it. Overall, my machine works better. I keep thinking if I had spent the money on a new CPU, and kept it at 128MB RAM, I would have seen Netscape just load faster between constant crashes.
Bottom line, which has been said here already, is that its all about marketing and "prick waving", look at us, we have the fastest CPU.
Everyone who asks me about what to upgrade, I tell them "Aim for 500Mhz, and spend the extra dough on RAM and a fast HD and good video card". I agree that I just don't see the need for that much speed when good RAM and good video makes all the difference, IMHO.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
First and foremost we must all take every site at their word and not beleive them always. I read multiple sites and get as much information as I can then make my own decisions based on intelligence rather than what a site told me.
Yhcrana
The voices in my head don't like you
From what I have been seeing from Intel I don't see much of a future for them, releasing a chip in slot 1 format when they are obviously trying to go to Flip-Chip socket format. This simply seems like a reason for you to have to go out and buy a new CPU sooner.
With the Rambus fiasco, 64 bit CPU fiasco, this, and the i820/i810 problems I find that Intel needs to sit back and take the marketing department out of the driver seat. AMD has the idea release products that are reliable and available to the general public.
Oh and btw if you want to claim that AMD sucks because of the Ge-Force problems that were occuring that was a driver issue and not a CPU issue. I do however agree that AMD needs to add better sealant to their duron and new Thunderbird chips as Anandtech talks about in their web news sections. Where if you apply a heatsink just a little wrong it will crack the die of the chip. Other than that AMD has intel by the short-hairs and intel isn't capable of doing anything about it right now
Yhcrana
The voices in my head don't like you
I've noticed a trend in processors. Many people are doing fine with the 300-450mhz processors purchased 2 years ago. Do we need all this speed? I know no one who owns more than 800mhz, and most people I know have around 500mhz. Is there even a market for 1GHz+ right now?
Sometimes you by Force overwhelmed are.
...I immediately read "Pentium III 1133" as the Pentium III 'leet
M$: "We're #2!"
V2 = V1 * (1 + DeltaV)
I2 = I1 * (1 + DeltaI)
P2 = V2 * I2
= V1 * I1 * (1 + DeltaV + DeltaI + DeltaV * DeltaI)
neglecting the higher order term, for
DeltaV, DeltaI 1
P1 = P1 * (1 + DeltaV + DeltaI)
And since that higher order term is positive, Tom's statement that 3% and 13% sum to "over 16%" makes sense; the exact answer would be 16.39%.
When you've got no calculator handy, knowing that 1.03 * 1.13 is about 1.16 isn't a bad thing, especially if you dump more digits in there.
Anandtech has a review of the Pentium 3 1.13 GHz where he had used motherboards using the VIA Apollo Pro 133 Chipset which Tom Pabst said did not work with the boards on that chipset. Anand did not say anything about the microcode nor did he use the motherboard that Tom said did not arrive.
I'm tired of hearing all these people saying we don't need more power. It all depends on what you use. There will always be those who need more power, and not just in a "Tim Allen-esque testosterone induced" way, but genuinely. People have been saying that nobody needs more power ever since the 386 days. Even Intel used to say that the 386 wasn't really meant for consumer space, it was a server/workstation chip. Yet always, some clever dude found a use for that power. Back in the 386/486 days it was multimedia and video. Just when the Pentiums seemed fast enough, those crazy gaming guys came up with 3D, which needed a lot more proc power. I think 3D will carry processors until the 50+GHz region, at which point somebody will find something else to use the proc for. Even then there will be morons saying "oh, is there really a USE for this 100GHz proc?"
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Reading the reviews of this part, it's obviously just a really overclocked part (yes i know all processors are created equal, some just run reliably faster than others) They are really pushing the die to get this processor to run at 1133 Mhz.. using 2 of the mainstays of overclocking.. a LARGE heatsink (did you see the pics?) with 2 fans, and increasing the voltage the processor runs at.
Anyone could have done that stuff, but the microcode issue Tom talks about is just wierd/suspicous... unless its a multiplier problem, the same processor that runs (underclocked) at 850 Mhz fine with a given microcode, should run fine at its full rated speed with said microcode version.. do you think they are deactivating processor features to save heat as Tom seems to insinuate? I'm eager to hear from the rest of the slashdotters on this...
Either way the first 2 issues show that Intel is really struggling to get product out the door at or above 1Ghz... they should have just sanely clocked these puppies and sold them as Gig models instead of going to crazy lengths to get an maginary victory in the CPU wars
I agree with the sentiment, but you seem to imply that some tasks can't benefit from more speed.
There is no general task that can't be done better with more power. You don't need to go around dreaming up new things for computers to do, almost everybody who writes a program throws out features because the computers wouldn't be fast enough to run them.
Sure, you can have "adequate" tools that work with current hardware, but if you don't see how all of them could be better, it's a failure of imagination.
3D will carry processors far beyond the 50 GHz region. Virtual reality is an obvious bottomless computation pit, you can always do better with more.
A few other computational bottomless pits (there are many more):
-compression
-physical simulation
-genetic algorithms
-natural language processing
Even in a thing like word processing, consider how much more computational power is needed to give consistently good advice on things like grammar and spelling. Yeah, the current software is pretty bad, but I don't believe good software can be written for this enhancement without more speed.
Perhaps most important of all is freeing up programmer time. The less you have to worry about conserving resources, the more you can get done. It's a shame when programmers waste resources inappropriately, but having computers fast enough to be able to just hack up a quick Perl script, rather having to write optimized C and assembly, can make incredible increases in productivity. Another example is being able to emulate old programs, rather than having to rewrite them.
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Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.
This is really not surprising, the processor wars have had their casualties in the marketplace. With the competition drivi9ng hardware prices down, you would think that this would be the best time to buy/build a new PC. But with the problems encountered with the high end PIII, and the Slot A, no wait, Socket A, no wait, Fonzie says "Aaaayy..", this is undoubtedly the worst time.
Both companies are far more interested in getting a product out the door, and not interested in getting a working product out the door. The result of this could be interesting to watch.
My guess is that the end result will just add to a growing contempt for the multipurpose PC adding to the appeal of small embedded devices. (Unless the small embedded devices try to go the same route...) As we know, all of these races to be first usually signal the death knoll for at least one of the companies involved, if not both.
End analysis? My next PC purchase will be after the market calms down, which may be never. If all else fails, we might have to go with "OSH", Open Source Hardware...
HamNRye
"My only hope is that they don't breed..."
-Said about "pet" penguins that have escaped or been abandoned by their owners.