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."

Comments

Re:Tom Cracks me up...

[Yhcrana]

Tom may be wrong here, but when I worked inside Intel they were all worried about it also, A couple of the bosses in my department told me that Intel was having some problems with their stock and outstanding shares.... never followed it up but wish I would have bought into the company when it split that August 1997

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

its all about RAM, to me

[banky]

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.

This doesn't surpirse me at all

[Yhcrana]

Paper releases seem to be all that Intel can do anymore. All they do with this is apply simple overclocking techniques most of us have been using for years to overclock the celeron and the AMD thunderbird CPU's

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

I've been reading too many slashdot trolls...

[Mark A. Rhowe]

...I immediately read "Pentium III 1133" as the Pentium III 'leet

He took a linear approximation

[roystgnr]

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.

Could it be a bad chip?

[katmaikni]

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 this.

[be-fan]

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?"

Official Overcloclocking from Intel

[badmonkey]

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