wadetemp writes: "CNET has a story with details on the release of Intel's newest chips. Supposedly 1.4Ghz P4 will be out in time for the holidays, with numerous other models at some random date in the near or far future." And just when I finally got a P3!
"New, from Intel. The [something] will be coming out in X months and will be way faster than [competitor's chip]. Not to mention the other versions of [something] that will be [superlative] and really [synonym for kick-ass]. We really will ship it when we say. No, it's not just another turn of the x86 crank, it's really new architecture [sweat]. Please, just leave us alone, we haven't had competition for 15 years, and now this is starting to wear on us. Yes, it's the [oldchip +1], but really, it's all sorts of new and different. No our coppermines don't actually use copper, but we really thought we were going to... don't be mad... Dave? What are you doing, Dave?....... Daisy... Daisy...."
--
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Re:Vapour - yawn. Give me 2ns disk instead.
by
tolldog
·
· Score: 2
Not always...
With RAM being cheap and cache on chip, disk speed will only give certain gains.
The work that I do (software rendering) is as much or more CPU bound than it is I/O bound and it is all over the network from a new RAID system.
Boosts in CPU speed is big news. Compare 42 dual 600's vs 42 dual 1,400's... the difference is worth being excited about.
Also... space efficency. More power in a chip, the less boxes (in theory... we all know projects expand to use what you have) needed.
-- -I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
We all know this is just a figment of your imagination, put there by the Intel PR dept.
I mean, look at the availability of the 1Ghz PIII, can you even get one today? Even PIII's as low as 900 Mhz are hard to get. Then there's the supposed 1.14Ghz (which sucked), what happened to that one? And now they try and convince us that a chip almost 300 Mhz than their previous and on a new platform (supposedly), will be not only stable and fast but available anytime in the near future? Put down the crack pipe Intel.
-- -- Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people.
Guns just make bullets go really, really fast.
And what about the 4004 and the 8008? Intel produced these as well, before all of the ones on your list.
I don't have enough figures about these. Do you ?
And the 80186 was used quite a bit, there were Research Machines (UK Education Computer) that had it, and quite a lot of ol' hard disk controllers used to use it.
Does it mean these were superiorly powerful ?
Like all the Intel chips, these have been (relatively ) widely used. This is a question of marketing, not of performances.
IMHO a very good Intel proc was the i860, the one that powered the NeXTdimension card so that it could perform complex operations in color using Display PostScript in real time (I made the tests of zooming details captured in real time from a handycam using this device.).
Now, the most advanced processor that Intel provides is the StrongARM. It is also the simplest but it is still far away the ARM10. --
does anyone else remember the userfreindly sunday strib featuring the purple-suited intel engineer with a white pen adding a third "I" to a pentium II to make the pentium III ?
All processor upgrades seem to give you very little performance gain compared to what you expect them to give you because the CPU is not the major performance bottleneck of the machine. The biggest offender is the hard disk drive which explains why things run so slow when you have to rely on virtual memory. The amount of idle time my distributed.net client gets on a 266MHz machine when in normal use is amazing, you may need faster machines to play games on but for normal use (at least in Linux) it still performs well. So should I buy one? Perhaps if I want better distributed.net stats but that's about it. We need something more than increased clock speed to make it worthh upgrading.
there are finally one or two folks offering the 1 ghz processor on pricewatch (at $1100+). this is almost 6 months after the announced the product. even if this processor is worth anything (and given their approach to the instruction set, the compiler support necessary to obtain full optimization of instruction scheduling is problematic), i figure its going to be a looooooong while before any of these see the light of day. intel is having to fight amd off amd bigtime has to play its fud card early and often. folks are beginning to catch on though, so its value is becoming less and less. somehow, i think you will see "hammers" in things before you see this hunk of silicon vaporchip.
I don't think the moderator caught what I was saying...
People will continue to use the X86 arch because the cost of software migration is huge. Think of all the apps that are on your office machine and the servers.
Most of these are licensed and in some cases are platform specific.
For Intel to move to the next arch, it has to be backwards compatible, which tends to slow it down (or at least make it slower than a native chip at this speed).
Extending the life of the X86 is a double edged sword. It is delaying the transfer cost but it is possibly slowing down the potential of the desktop.
I for one would love to have the next arch out and running, but I would hate to have two machines... one for all of my legacy software and one for all of my new stuff.
-- -I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
There is a difference between the x86 architecture (actual silicon), and the x86 ISA (more like an API).
The actually technology behind x86 processors has moved one, and updated. Transmeta is, prehaps, the most extreme example of this, but all modern processors use microcode to 'emulate' x86 (Or, at least, the least commonly used instructions).
So, what has happened is that the 'good' instructions have got faster, but the old cruft, whilst it still works, is slow. Like, I could probably write out some Z80 machine code, and expect it to work on a PIII. But not to maximum efficency.
Hmm... we could stop using the X86 Arch...
Like we could all use DEC Alpha's... those are prety darn fast.
Wait... the apps aren't ported... and those that are cost money for new licenses? Whoa... maybe not such a good idea.
We are going to be stuck on the X86 as long as it is cheaper to make them run faster than it is for all of corperate america to make the binary switch to the new platform.
-- -I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
Supposedly 1.4Ghz P4 will be out in time for the holidays
Those puppies will run hot enough that Intel had better get them out before the Spring thaw...
Always trailing edge
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2
I am always trailing edge. There's a price curve, and if you stay below it your cost is always less than half that of the 'latest-greatest.'
It goes way back for me. My first PC was a clone 8088 motherboard, 4.77 MHz, no turbo, thankyou, that I bought at a swapmeet and shoehorned into a 'Leading Edge' case that it wasn't even intended for. (the expansion cards were spaced differently, so I had to go in with a hacksaw to the case). At the time everyone was buying shiny new 'Turbo' XT clones for what to me seemed like huge amounts of money. I upgraded to the XT clone long after they had been out, as I held onto my BigBoard machine (Xerox 820 clone) running CP/M-80 with two 8" floppy drives. Later on, my first hard drive was a 5 MB full-height Shugart drive that I picked up at a surplus store for $29 (at the time everyone was spending $2-300 on Seagate 20 MB ST-225s).
Now my newest machine is a Pentium 3 450 that I bought after the faster ones were out. I don't feel left out or way behind the curve. It just doesn't make sense to me to pay top dollar for what will be an average machine in a few months.
OK, I know intel is pushing this (somewhat) as for gaming and such, but does it really matter? Right now it seems to me the graphics card is the limiting factor. If you look at Q3A/UT benchmarks, and decide that you wish to run your game at say 60FPS, then a 1GHz processor only does marginally better than a 700MHz processor. Granted, it goes significantly better at 640x480, at 150FPS, but who really cares? When you get to the resolution where frame rates drop to 60FPS, its b/c of the graphics card not the CPU. The fact that it can drive 150FPS in ANY resolution means that the chip is not the bottleneck.
That's not to say there aren't uses, like any kind of simulation or software rendering, but not for the mass market. *maybe* high quality speech recog will benefit, but currently I think this is only useful for commercial apps. Of course, that doesn't stop me from running a 900MHz Duron (as soon as it gets here...)
---
Re:Vapour - yawn. Give me 2ns disk instead.
by
Azog
·
· Score: 2
Disk speed is a problem for a lot of average apps, but there are solutions:
New motherboards from ABit (and probably other companies) have built in RAID 0/1 for ATA100. If you put two nice fast 7200 RPM ATA100 drives on those, you get a major boost in hard drive performance for very little extra cost. Better than SCSI for many applications (but not servers).
And with RAM so cheap, you can always just add another 128 MB DIMM and get extra caching. Just about every operating system, even Microsoft's, does a pretty good job of using extra memory to speed up disk access these days.
< daydream >
My next machine will be the dual theme:
dual Athelons, (when the motherboards come out), dual video cards (one wicked-fast AGP 3d, one cheaper PCI), dual monitors, dual ATA100 hard drives in a striped RAID config, and dual data rate SDRAM -- dual 256 MB DIMMs = 512MB, hopefully interleaved.
</daydream >
(sigh).
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
-- Torrey Hoffman (Azog) "HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
"In time for the holidays" - yeah, right.
by
Animats
·
· Score: 2
Supposedly 1.4GHz P4 will be out in time for the holidays...
Yeah, right. "In time for the holidays" in
retail means "in the warehouses by September".
Intel isn't even shipping 1.0GHz PIII in high volume yet. If you go to Compaq and select
a top-of-the-line desktop, they try to sell you
a 1GHz AMD Athlon. Dell tries to sell you an
800MHz PIII.
Intel is struggling to catch up.
That's OK. But instead of pumping 1GHz machines that work out the door in volume at a reasonable price, they're announcing new vaporware machines to confuse customers. That's not OK.
IBM used to get into antitrust trouble for that
sort of thing.
AMD is still on top...
by
MSisNOT4Sale
·
· Score: 2
..when it comes to the price/performance ratio. I got a Slot A 700Mhz Tbird and I'm running it at 977Mhz. An equivelant P3 would cost at least 200 to 250 dollars more (comparing a p3-933 and a k7-950 TBird). Not only that, AMD is really aggressive with prices now. $470 for a gig chip? Compared to a $1,199 premium for an Intel P3 @ 1 gig. Which makes more sense?
-- Begin included email--
From: XXXXXXXX@intel.com
To: XXXXX@intel.com
Subject: New marketing plan
Ok guys, looks like we've been getting some criticism about the new 1.4 GHz chips. Here's the new marketing stratagy for those.
"The new 1.4 GHz Pentium fron Intel is a milestone in computer chip technology. Beign so revolutionary, it requires a case and motherboard pgrade, to a new style called MacroATX. An example of this case can bee seen here. Note the stylish design, and improved form factor. Cooling is handled by the ultradisctrete cooling network in the case specifications.
- Improved performance [0]
- Fewer devices required [1]
- Next generation technology [2]
- Complient with all currnet standards [3]
There. That aught to do it.
[0] Of our shares.
[1] The 1.4 GHz pentium will replace the toaster, waffle iron, and desktop fan. All in one box. Value, huh?
[2] Yep, definitly technology dating from 1980, the generation of the NeXT.
[3] All the buzzwords: Client-server, Internet, Intranet,.NET, Linux, Windows, HTTP, HTML, WAP, HTCPCP [4], mobile office etc.
[4] See RFC 2324.
Intel successively made the following (reads like a new dance) :
8086 (16bit) - technological advance
8088 (8bit) - technological step backward
80186 that nobody remembers - technological "sur place"
286 - technological advance
386 DX - technological advance
386 SX - technological step backward
486 DX - technological advance
486 DX - technological step backward
Pentium 60-66-90 - aborted technological advance (its bugs make me think of a publicly available prototype)
Pentium 75-100-133 - small technological advance
Pentium Pro - technological advance
Pentium II - technological step backward (It was intended to be 16bit OS -aka Win9x- compatible which the PPro wasn't;
What made the PII look faster than the PPro was SDRAM, period.)
MMX - small technological advance
PIII - technological step backward
PIV - technological step backward
IA64 - technological advance
OK, now, you might ask yourselves why I consider some step as a technological advance or not ?
Look at the Power/Frequency figures.
The drops they encountered were even so obvious between the PPro and the PII that Intel just changed its iComp index meanwhile, hence the iComp 2 (R)(TM) and soon the iCompIII (R)(TM).
Now because of complexity, the only way they have to make a CPU quicker is to increase its clock frequency. But, we have to be honest. Their efficiency slowly diminish as there are more and more units intervening in their processings.
Today, Intel promises a 1.4GHz chip which performances could be reached at home by overclocking some liquid-nitrogen-cooled older Pentium.
Even when I try to believe they are sincere and they technically trust their products' advance, their are still these details like the *quite* recent announcement of the VIA chip, faster AMDs, Faster G4, etc.
Come on Intel. Years ago, you really happened to introduce new, twice-as-fast-as-the-previous chips on the market. Now, you just wait for somebody around you to announce a product to announce something supposedly (a little) faster that takes time to reach the market because of produciton problems.
I suggest we just publish actual products availability announces on/.
--
The reason the 1.13's are so unstable and difficult to produce is because they are trying to squeeze that last little extra bit of tartar-control MHz from the ancient tube of P6-brand toothpaste in a stupid attempt to regain their image as maker of the 'fastest' chips (but instead gaining an image as maker of the most faulty chips).
The Wilamette is a brand new core (like Athlon was a year ago), and is designed from the beginning to run at high speeds. It's been running at 1.4GHz for some time now. 2GHz is not a pipe dream at all, any more than 1GHz was for the Athlon (which was introduced at half that speed).
I heard that the next price break (after this one) is supposed to be September 20th. The 1000 should be under $500.
I usually try not to pay more than $150 for processors. The 800 Thunderbird should be in my range at the end of September. The DDR motherboards should be out by then, too.
The big decision will be - do I get a motherboard the supports SDR, so I can salvage my RAM, or do I get a DDR motherboard and new RAM. (I can always put the old RAM in my K6-3) Maybe someone will make a motherboard that supports both. Hmmm....
-- ---
"So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
It would be like going to the unveiling and choking on the smoke.
This kind of post reminds of a Dennis Miller quote: "There's a reason 'Wheel of Fortune' is on right after 'Jeopardy': Once you've been forced to choke down the foul tasting tequila shot of your own abject ignorance, it's always nice to be able to bite into the refreshing lime wedge of other people's incredible fucking stupidity."
Woz
Re:yeah, they do these things to steal from you...
by
FeralChicken
·
· Score: 3
To be fair, at the moment the P4 is primarily being aimed at use in large servers, and not at the average home user.
Basically, every PC which you can buy nowadays is ludicrously overpowered for "anyone who uses only the wordprocessors". Most of the people I know in this category tend not to upgrade their PC's until they actually notice their software running too slowly (or their kids nag them about not being able to play Quake3:) Everyone I know who does fall into the "I bought an 800Mhz P3 2 months ago, but now there are 1Ghz ones out so I'll have to buy one of them" category are people who do know enough to know better, know it isn't worth it, but do it anyway.
The "average" person/family looking to buy a new PC tends to think along the lines of "I want a PC and can spend about $1500 on it". For this person the consequence of these frequent increases in processor speeds probably means that they'll get an 800Mhz machine for their $1500 rather than a 500Mhz one. Overall I don't really see this as a bad thing.
Re:yeah, they do these things to steal from you...
by
Xoro
·
· Score: 2
I don't get this "overpowered" argument. First of all, take the issue of "just word processing". If current processing is sufficient for document display, why is the speed of browser rendering engines such a big issue? Add a few graphics and charts to your document and scroll -- you'll see what I mean.
And not just MS Word -- Wordperfect & Lotus aren't any better. A Windows problem? "You should do your DTP w/ crappy X fonts instead!" Please. And Mac isn't much different, either.
Also, it's ironic that you bring up "style vs safety". Surplus power allows you to run useful daemons that improve safety and reliability of your system, from background disk checking to virus scanning. And apps designed for a faster "average" platform can build in more layers of checks and safeguards without having to weigh them against performance costs.
There is also the frequent argument about more power enabling new apps, such as voice commands and the like. That's a given. But extra cycles also enable workarounds to other current bottlenecks, like with heavy compression.
If your current processor meets your needs, don't get a new one. But I've found a way to max out every upgrade so far. I just don't get this (very common) resentment of constantly falling prices and constantly increasing capabilities. To me, it's magic.
As far as this incrementalism goes, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Sure, there's no usually reason to upgrade from 1GHz to 1.4. But for someone running at 733 and starting to feel a bit pinched, 1.4 might start to sound interesting. Especially when it falls to 1/2 price after they release the 1.8.
Maybe I'm just too tired to be reading these sorts of things.. perhaps I feel like pissing people off with my worthless commentary, but either way I think this can all be summarized as:
Intel announces plans for faster chips in the next 6 months, even faster next year.
yeah, the 1.4GHz will be out, but to Dell and Compaq. Curse me if i ever buy from them...
we've had enough of Intel "releasing" processors to two-three vendors, and we're tired of it.
just got my AMD Athlon 1GHz last night.
tell me when Intel can get me a GHz for less than $2000...
The real message (by omission from the C|Net article) is that Intel has no clue when their 64 bit chip will be ready.
The other real message (again by omission) is that Intel won't or can't tell you their forthcoming chips' interface plans. Are we talking Slot 1? Slot 2? PGA? Flip chip (ugh!).
So, if you want to buy a computer now that you can upgrade when the P4s and beyond come out, good fscking luck guessing which interface, which memory type, which bus speed, etc. The main thing we're getting out of Intel's "diversification" in CPU interfaces, cache, bus speed and memory types is screwed out of the ability to just upgrade the CPU when a new one comes out. Instead, we're mostly stuck needing at least a new mobo to go with it, and (while we're at it), why not just get a whole new system?
1 Thz Processor Announced!
by
-|Oblom|-
·
· Score: 2
The delay in shipping Intel's next processor will double every six months.
--
-- Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
yeah, they do these things to steal from you...
by
Anaplexian
·
· Score: 4
It's nothing but downright robbery.
In the old days you had a 386, and a major leap to the 486. Now every other day they release a processor only *Marginally* Better than the one before. and Spend huge amounts on marketing and ads, and you have people switching to the newer one. I mean 1GHz, 1.2 or 1.4; how much difference is it going to make to anyone who uses only the wordprocessors?
Some thing similar to the Cars in the 70's and 80's, where the Big Three spent a lot of money in Style than in Safety.
Hope people come to their senses and act sensibly.
"What looks like a good thing, might just be a Beta Version."
[More stuff at iotaspace.net]
From what I've read about the 1.13 GHz Pentium-III (for example in the article and update at Tom's Hardware Guide), I seriously doubt that Intel is the position of being able to ship a stable 1.4 GHz CPU within a year, not to think about 2 GHz...
The Pentium IV is NOT the "Williamette"
by
BitMan
·
· Score: 2
Microprocessor Design was quoted as saying that MHz for MHz, the Pentium IV will lose badly to the Athlon, especially when AMD matches Intel's 0.13um feature sizes. Why?
The Pentium IV is still the aged-old Pentium Pro core. Intel keeps pushing back the release of a new core design, simply slapping on instructions or widening the path internal datapaths, but doing nothing about the inefficiencies nor the stalling 10-12 stage pipelines in their design.
"Williamette" was supposed to change that and bring 17-20 stage pipelines that are much more scalable, like the Athlon's 18 stage design. Unforunately Intel is having design issues with the Williamette and holding off on Williamette's completion means Intel can get to market faster. Hence, this is what they have been doing to keep up with AMD.
Without "Willamette", AMD will still continue to beat Intel MHz for MHz on even Pentium optimized code with a reverse engineered AGP spec. Kinda makes you wonder if the odds were even if AMD wouldn't dominate Intel?
Now image that "Pentium optimized" FPU code still runs slower on a Pentium IV 1.4GHz than a 1.1GHz Thunderbird. Would I continue to make my code and compilers "Pentium optimized"? Imagine a world where code and compilers came "Athlon optimized"? I think you'd see the Athlon really slam Pentium.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- -- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Slashdot Mirror
That was my thought when I read it.
"New, from Intel. The [something] will be coming out in X months and will be way faster than [competitor's chip]. Not to mention the other versions of [something] that will be [superlative] and really [synonym for kick-ass]. We really will ship it when we say. No, it's not just another turn of the x86 crank, it's really new architecture [sweat]. Please, just leave us alone, we haven't had competition for 15 years, and now this is starting to wear on us. Yes, it's the [oldchip +1], but really, it's all sorts of new and different. No our coppermines don't actually use copper, but we really thought we were going to... don't be mad... Dave? What are you doing, Dave?....... Daisy... Daisy...."
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Not always...
With RAM being cheap and cache on chip, disk speed will only give certain gains.
The work that I do (software rendering) is as much or more CPU bound than it is I/O bound and it is all over the network from a new RAID system.
Boosts in CPU speed is big news. Compare 42 dual 600's vs 42 dual 1,400's... the difference is worth being excited about.
Also... space efficency. More power in a chip, the less boxes (in theory... we all know projects expand to use what you have) needed.
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
We all know this is just a figment of your imagination, put there by the Intel PR dept.
I mean, look at the availability of the 1Ghz PIII, can you even get one today? Even PIII's as low as 900 Mhz are hard to get. Then there's the supposed 1.14Ghz (which sucked), what happened to that one? And now they try and convince us that a chip almost 300 Mhz than their previous and on a new platform (supposedly), will be not only stable and fast but available anytime in the near future? Put down the crack pipe Intel.
-- Guns don't kill people, bullets kill people. Guns just make bullets go really, really fast.
And what about the 4004 and the 8008? Intel produced these as well, before all of the ones on your list.
I don't have enough figures about these. Do you ?
And the 80186 was used quite a bit, there were Research Machines (UK Education Computer) that had it, and quite a lot of ol' hard disk controllers used to use it.
Does it mean these were superiorly powerful ?
Like all the Intel chips, these have been (relatively ) widely used. This is a question of marketing, not of performances.
IMHO a very good Intel proc was the i860, the one that powered the NeXTdimension card so that it could perform complex operations in color using Display PostScript in real time (I made the tests of zooming details captured in real time from a handycam using this device.).
Now, the most advanced processor that Intel provides is the StrongARM. It is also the simplest but it is still far away the ARM10.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
does anyone else remember the userfreindly sunday strib featuring the purple-suited intel engineer with a white pen adding a third "I" to a pentium II to make the pentium III ?
All processor upgrades seem to give you very little performance gain compared to what you expect them to give you because the CPU is not the major performance bottleneck of the machine. The biggest offender is the hard disk drive which explains why things run so slow when you have to rely on virtual memory. The amount of idle time my distributed.net client gets on a 266MHz machine when in normal use is amazing, you may need faster machines to play games on but for normal use (at least in Linux) it still performs well. So should I buy one? Perhaps if I want better distributed.net stats but that's about it. We need something more than increased clock speed to make it worthh upgrading.
there are finally one or two folks offering the 1 ghz processor on pricewatch (at $1100+). this is almost 6 months after the announced the product. even if this processor is worth anything (and given their approach to the instruction set, the compiler support necessary to obtain full optimization of instruction scheduling is problematic), i figure its going to be a looooooong while before any of these see the light of day. intel is having to fight amd off amd bigtime has to play its fud card early and often. folks are beginning to catch on though, so its value is becoming less and less. somehow, i think you will see "hammers" in things before you see this hunk of silicon vaporchip.
As much as I love Intel (kinda a love-hate thing), and you guys. And I am typing this on a PIII.
X86 Architecture is played out and breathed its last a long time ago.
How about they quit just raising the bus speeds, and give us some new technology.
Eh...
Those puppies will run hot enough that Intel had better get them out before the Spring thaw...
I am always trailing edge. There's a price curve, and if you stay below it your cost is always less than half that of the 'latest-greatest.'
It goes way back for me. My first PC was a clone 8088 motherboard, 4.77 MHz, no turbo, thankyou, that I bought at a swapmeet and shoehorned into a 'Leading Edge' case that it wasn't even intended for. (the expansion cards were spaced differently, so I had to go in with a hacksaw to the case). At the time everyone was buying shiny new 'Turbo' XT clones for what to me seemed like huge amounts of money. I upgraded to the XT clone long after they had been out, as I held onto my BigBoard machine (Xerox 820 clone) running CP/M-80 with two 8" floppy drives. Later on, my first hard drive was a 5 MB full-height Shugart drive that I picked up at a surplus store for $29 (at the time everyone was spending $2-300 on Seagate 20 MB ST-225s).
Now my newest machine is a Pentium 3 450 that I bought after the faster ones were out. I don't feel left out or way behind the curve. It just doesn't make sense to me to pay top dollar for what will be an average machine in a few months.
That's not to say there aren't uses, like any kind of simulation or software rendering, but not for the mass market. *maybe* high quality speech recog will benefit, but currently I think this is only useful for commercial apps. Of course, that doesn't stop me from running a 900MHz Duron (as soon as it gets here...)
---
Disk speed is a problem for a lot of average apps, but there are solutions:
/daydream >
New motherboards from ABit (and probably other companies) have built in RAID 0/1 for ATA100. If you put two nice fast 7200 RPM ATA100 drives on those, you get a major boost in hard drive performance for very little extra cost. Better than SCSI for many applications (but not servers).
And with RAM so cheap, you can always just add another 128 MB DIMM and get extra caching. Just about every operating system, even Microsoft's, does a pretty good job of using extra memory to speed up disk access these days.
< daydream >
My next machine will be the dual theme:
dual Athelons, (when the motherboards come out), dual video cards (one wicked-fast AGP 3d, one cheaper PCI), dual monitors, dual ATA100 hard drives in a striped RAID config, and dual data rate SDRAM -- dual 256 MB DIMMs = 512MB, hopefully interleaved.
<
(sigh).
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
Yeah, right. "In time for the holidays" in retail means "in the warehouses by September". Intel isn't even shipping 1.0GHz PIII in high volume yet. If you go to Compaq and select a top-of-the-line desktop, they try to sell you a 1GHz AMD Athlon. Dell tries to sell you an 800MHz PIII. Intel is struggling to catch up. That's OK. But instead of pumping 1GHz machines that work out the door in volume at a reasonable price, they're announcing new vaporware machines to confuse customers. That's not OK. IBM used to get into antitrust trouble for that sort of thing.
..when it comes to the price/performance ratio. I got a Slot A 700Mhz Tbird and I'm running it at 977Mhz. An equivelant P3 would cost at least 200 to 250 dollars more (comparing a p3-933 and a k7-950 TBird). Not only that, AMD is really aggressive with prices now. $470 for a gig chip? Compared to a $1,199 premium for an Intel P3 @ 1 gig. Which makes more sense?
Here's the link for slashed AMD prices
http://www.theregister.co.uk/cont ent/1/12489.html
And Sharky's Weekly CPU prices
http://www.theregister.co.uk/cont ent/1/12489.html
When death looks you in the eye, smile. Someone needs to cheer him up.
-- Begin included email--
From: XXXXXXXX@intel.com
To: XXXXX@intel.com
Subject: New marketing plan
Ok guys, looks like we've been getting some criticism about the new 1.4 GHz chips. Here's the new marketing stratagy for those.
"The new 1.4 GHz Pentium fron Intel is a milestone in computer chip technology. Beign so revolutionary, it requires a case and motherboard pgrade, to a new style called MacroATX. An example of this case can bee seen here. Note the stylish design, and improved form factor. Cooling is handled by the ultradisctrete cooling network in the case specifications.
- Improved performance [0]
- Fewer devices required [1]
- Next generation technology [2]
- Complient with all currnet standards [3]
There. That aught to do it.
[0] Of our shares.
[1] The 1.4 GHz pentium will replace the toaster, waffle iron, and desktop fan. All in one box. Value, huh?
[2] Yep, definitly technology dating from 1980, the generation of the NeXT.
[3] All the buzzwords: Client-server, Internet, Intranet,
[4] See RFC 2324.
-- End included email --
PS: Spoof.
- 8086 (16bit) - technological advance
- 8088 (8bit) - technological step backward
- 80186 that nobody remembers - technological "sur place"
- 286 - technological advance
- 386 DX - technological advance
- 386 SX - technological step backward
- 486 DX - technological advance
- 486 DX - technological step backward
- Pentium 60-66-90 - aborted technological advance
- Pentium 75-100-133 - small technological advance
- Pentium Pro - technological advance
- Pentium II - technological step backward
;
- MMX - small technological advance
- PIII - technological step backward
- PIV - technological step backward
- IA64 - technological advance
OK, now, you might ask yourselves why I consider some step as a technological advance or not ?(its bugs make me think of a publicly available prototype)
(It was intended to be 16bit OS -aka Win9x- compatible which the PPro wasn't
What made the PII look faster than the PPro was SDRAM, period.)
Look at the Power/Frequency figures. The drops they encountered were even so obvious between the PPro and the PII that Intel just changed its iComp index meanwhile, hence the iComp 2 (R)(TM) and soon the iCompIII (R)(TM).
Now because of complexity, the only way they have to make a CPU quicker is to increase its clock frequency. But, we have to be honest. Their efficiency slowly diminish as there are more and more units intervening in their processings.
Today, Intel promises a 1.4GHz chip which performances could be reached at home by overclocking some liquid-nitrogen-cooled older Pentium.
Even when I try to believe they are sincere and they technically trust their products' advance, their are still these details like the *quite* recent announcement of the VIA chip, faster AMDs, Faster G4, etc.
Come on Intel. Years ago, you really happened to introduce new, twice-as-fast-as-the-previous chips on the market. Now, you just wait for somebody around you to announce a product to announce something supposedly (a little) faster that takes time to reach the market because of produciton problems.
I suggest we just publish actual products availability announces on
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
The reason the 1.13's are so unstable and difficult to produce is because they are trying to squeeze that last little extra bit of tartar-control MHz from the ancient tube of P6-brand toothpaste in a stupid attempt to regain their image as maker of the 'fastest' chips (but instead gaining an image as maker of the most faulty chips).
The Wilamette is a brand new core (like Athlon was a year ago), and is designed from the beginning to run at high speeds. It's been running at 1.4GHz for some time now. 2GHz is not a pipe dream at all, any more than 1GHz was for the Athlon (which was introduced at half that speed).
The enemies of Democracy are
I heard that the next price break (after this one) is supposed to be September 20th. The 1000 should be under $500.
I usually try not to pay more than $150 for processors. The 800 Thunderbird should be in my range at the end of September. The DDR motherboards should be out by then, too.
The big decision will be - do I get a motherboard the supports SDR, so I can salvage my RAM, or do I get a DDR motherboard and new RAM. (I can always put the old RAM in my K6-3) Maybe someone will make a motherboard that supports both. Hmmm....
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
It would be like going to the unveiling and choking on the smoke.
This kind of post reminds of a Dennis Miller quote: "There's a reason 'Wheel of Fortune' is on right after 'Jeopardy': Once you've been forced to choke down the foul tasting tequila shot of your own abject ignorance, it's always nice to be able to bite into the refreshing lime wedge of other people's incredible fucking stupidity."
Woz
To be fair, at the moment the P4 is primarily being aimed at use in large servers, and not at the average home user.
:) Everyone I know who does fall into the "I bought an 800Mhz P3 2 months ago, but now there are 1Ghz ones out so I'll have to buy one of them" category are people who do know enough to know better, know it isn't worth it, but do it anyway.
Basically, every PC which you can buy nowadays is ludicrously overpowered for "anyone who uses only the wordprocessors". Most of the people I know in this category tend not to upgrade their PC's until they actually notice their software running too slowly (or their kids nag them about not being able to play Quake3
The "average" person/family looking to buy a new PC tends to think along the lines of "I want a PC and can spend about $1500 on it". For this person the consequence of these frequent increases in processor speeds probably means that they'll get an 800Mhz machine for their $1500 rather than a 500Mhz one. Overall I don't really see this as a bad thing.
P
I think Intel was just pissed that AMD is going to cut their prices in a few weeks.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/cont ent/1/12489.html
I don't get this "overpowered" argument. First of all, take the issue of "just word processing". If current processing is sufficient for document display, why is the speed of browser rendering engines such a big issue? Add a few graphics and charts to your document and scroll -- you'll see what I mean.
And not just MS Word -- Wordperfect & Lotus aren't any better. A Windows problem? "You should do your DTP w/ crappy X fonts instead!" Please. And Mac isn't much different, either.
Also, it's ironic that you bring up "style vs safety". Surplus power allows you to run useful daemons that improve safety and reliability of your system, from background disk checking to virus scanning. And apps designed for a faster "average" platform can build in more layers of checks and safeguards without having to weigh them against performance costs.
There is also the frequent argument about more power enabling new apps, such as voice commands and the like. That's a given. But extra cycles also enable workarounds to other current bottlenecks, like with heavy compression.
If your current processor meets your needs, don't get a new one. But I've found a way to max out every upgrade so far. I just don't get this (very common) resentment of constantly falling prices and constantly increasing capabilities. To me, it's magic.
As far as this incrementalism goes, I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Sure, there's no usually reason to upgrade from 1GHz to 1.4. But for someone running at 733 and starting to feel a bit pinched, 1.4 might start to sound interesting. Especially when it falls to 1/2 price after they release the 1.8.
Sorry, I've turned bitter.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Maybe I'm just too tired to be reading these sorts of things.. perhaps I feel like pissing people off with my worthless commentary, but either way I think this can all be summarized as:
Intel announces plans for faster chips in the next 6 months, even faster next year.
yeah, the 1.4GHz will be out, but to Dell and Compaq. Curse me if i ever buy from them... we've had enough of Intel "releasing" processors to two-three vendors, and we're tired of it. just got my AMD Athlon 1GHz last night. tell me when Intel can get me a GHz for less than $2000...
The real message (by omission from the C|Net article) is that Intel has no clue when their 64 bit chip will be ready.
The other real message (again by omission) is that Intel won't or can't tell you their forthcoming chips' interface plans. Are we talking Slot 1? Slot 2? PGA? Flip chip (ugh!).
So, if you want to buy a computer now that you can upgrade when the P4s and beyond come out, good fscking luck guessing which interface, which memory type, which bus speed, etc. The main thing we're getting out of Intel's "diversification" in CPU interfaces, cache, bus speed and memory types is screwed out of the ability to just upgrade the CPU when a new one comes out. Instead, we're mostly stuck needing at least a new mobo to go with it, and (while we're at it), why not just get a whole new system?
Coming soon:
1 Thz Processor Announced!
The delay in shipping Intel's next processor will double every six months.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
It's nothing but downright robbery. In the old days you had a 386, and a major leap to the 486. Now every other day they release a processor only *Marginally* Better than the one before. and Spend huge amounts on marketing and ads, and you have people switching to the newer one. I mean 1GHz, 1.2 or 1.4; how much difference is it going to make to anyone who uses only the wordprocessors? Some thing similar to the Cars in the 70's and 80's, where the Big Three spent a lot of money in Style than in Safety. Hope people come to their senses and act sensibly. "What looks like a good thing, might just be a Beta Version." [More stuff at iotaspace.net]
From what I've read about the 1.13 GHz Pentium-III (for example in the article and update at Tom's Hardware Guide), I seriously doubt that Intel is the position of being able to ship a stable 1.4 GHz CPU within a year, not to think about 2 GHz ...
Microprocessor Design was quoted as saying that MHz for MHz, the Pentium IV will lose badly to the Athlon, especially when AMD matches Intel's 0.13um feature sizes. Why?
The Pentium IV is still the aged-old Pentium Pro core. Intel keeps pushing back the release of a new core design, simply slapping on instructions or widening the path internal datapaths, but doing nothing about the inefficiencies nor the stalling 10-12 stage pipelines in their design.
"Williamette" was supposed to change that and bring 17-20 stage pipelines that are much more scalable, like the Athlon's 18 stage design. Unforunately Intel is having design issues with the Williamette and holding off on Williamette's completion means Intel can get to market faster. Hence, this is what they have been doing to keep up with AMD.
Without "Willamette", AMD will still continue to beat Intel MHz for MHz on even Pentium optimized code with a reverse engineered AGP spec. Kinda makes you wonder if the odds were even if AMD wouldn't dominate Intel?
Now image that "Pentium optimized" FPU code still runs slower on a Pentium IV 1.4GHz than a 1.1GHz Thunderbird. Would I continue to make my code and compilers "Pentium optimized"? Imagine a world where code and compilers came "Athlon optimized"? I think you'd see the Athlon really slam Pentium.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Mr. Ska