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Pentium III 1.13: Tops For Speed, 'F' For Price?
fjordboy writes: "CPUscorecard has some multiple reviews and benchmarks of recent CPUs. Somewhat surprisingly, the Pentium III 1.13 GHz processor tops the list, but only for speed. CPU Scorecard also gave the Pentium III an "F" when it came to pricing. Is the high price tag worth it for the top-notch speed? Click here to see how the Pentium III stacked up to the other CPU's."
Actually, as far as I can make out, they only used the iCOMP tests for Intel's processors. All other processors were converted from the manufactures benchmark to iCOMP compatible numbers using a "magic formula". The quote from their site is:
Sounds like a recipe for biased, unreliable, PHB numbers to me. I'll make a note to avoid this site in the future.
Hi!
Some subsystems of a core OS (or applications) aren't multithreaded and won't take advantage of a second (or third, or forth, etc) processor. In Windows 2000 for example (I know, BOOOOO!) the NTFS compression and EFS (Encrypting File System) subsystems are single threaded. If you are reading or writing a lot of compressed or encrypted data, you are MUCH better off having one fast processor versus two slower ones. I guess the lesson is to pick which setup is best for the job.
ALG
Male chauvanist.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
And this has to be said.
All you memory bus freaks get off of it.
These procs aren't made for servers. If you put these procs in a server you are wasting your time (put slower procs and more memory and/or SMP) Otherwise, for games, 3D rendering, video editing, and 70% of the things that these procs are used for, CPU speed is still king. Example: QuakeIII uses about 200MB/sec of bus bandwidth. That's less than half the sustained (not theoretical) bandwidth of PC100 SDRAM. All the tests between PC100 and PC133 (or even PC66) show very little performance difference compared to bumping up the CPU speed a 100MHz or so. (Check www.sharkyextreme.com the Celeron vs. Duron tests)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
95% of all computing done on 100% of all computers purchased requires no more processing power than the Pentium 200. (and that is only because of bloatware- to actually get the work done, you can use a 486) there is a top 5% that actually use the computer, and of them only 25% of that 5% actually would use the processing power in a 1ghz processor. (and as posted above they would prefer multi-processor to the screamer)
So Why? why are they busting their butts to get these processors to market? Does George Lucas need more processing power for the Star Wars episodes's rendering?? Maybe NASA is trying to do some astrominical trajectory calculations? weather modeling? a 250000 user SQL server? (only a moron would make one server do that.. use a farm)
I'm betting that every one of you out there would have to really stretch to come up with a use that would require anything faster than a PIII 400 in your company/personal use. (AVID users dont count!)
someone tell me - what the hell does 95% of the computer buyers need it for?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Fixing any of these problems is almost certain to cost much more than a really fast processor. OTOH, a really fast processor only gives you a tiny edge performance-wise over a pretty fast processor.
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A 500 MHz G4 is twelve percent slower than a 1.1 GHz Pentium III? If that's true, then that's the real story here. Isn't this what everyone was trying to vehemently deny a while back, that a G4 is equal to a Pentium of double the clock speed?
They have already recalled this chip. Tom's hardware Guide has had numerous articles on just how crapped up this chip actually is. He even has another hardware site to back him up; HardOCP. Maybe the Pentium III 1.13 Ghz can go that fast. Its possible...but the damned thing fails to work 20% of the time, do you want to spend the money to take that chance? Assuming you can actually get a hold of one? You'd have better luck getting someone to give you a porshe or something
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
When you get a true blue, Intel Inside processor, you are assured of a) having received the best technology,
That's debateable. For the longest time people bought IBM computers because of the brand, and the thought that they were the best around. Then people realized that they could get the same thing for much less by going with an 'off-brand' like Dell or Gateway.
Of course, now Dell and Gateway are two of the major brands, and they put together the overpriced systems.
b) that the company that sold your processor will be around for many years,
An assumption, and given the tech field of the last couple of years, not necessarily a good one. Given the speed of the 'game' out there, it's possible for Intel to make a couple of bad decisions and be belly-up by this time next year. Now, do I think that this is likely? No. But it is possible.
Of course, it's also possible for an AC to make a calm, rational post. Haven't seen one of those either...
c) that your processor will be the standard (if the AMD offerings behave differently due to a design error, AMD is the one in the wrong, not the other way around!), that you can get the latest technology that everybody will cloning the earliest, and many such advantages.
I've been using an AMD chip for over a year. The only times I've had any issues with my machine have been because Windows didn't like something.
(Ok, I never really did understand why MM:VII wouldn't run from my C drive, but did run from my D drive...)
Now, I realize that this isn't necessarily indicitive of AMD performance in general, but they do put out a comparative product at a more competitive price.
The higher price also pays for the incredibly talented marketing crew that informs you of all these factors that g**k websites such as the one linked in this story neglect, so you have a chance of not getting screwed over in your choice by unreliable or incomplete data such as the cited in the linked article.
I'd rather pay for tech people that marketing wankers any day... After all, anyone can do marketing.... All you need is a smoke machine, some mirrors, a pair of hip waders, and a shovel.
Slashdot g**ks, however, seem to be massively oblivious to these factors, due to their ideological commitments, aversion to the science of marketing and irrational sympathy for the underdog.
Hmmm... I can't tell if this is sarcasm, or you just being bitter about something.
*shrug*
NecroPuppy
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Godot called. He said he'd be late.
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
Seriously though, it wasn't as bad in the good old days when the price premium was maybe 10% or so. These days, with all the money you save, you're much better of getting another 256Meg or RAM or something. Also, the Athlon prices really aren't bad at all. Something like $650 for the 1.1 GHz Athlon (on pricewatch) Score!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
But you can't just buy a G4 like you can a PIII. You have to buy the $3500 system around it. Apple won't give you a choice.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
- Tbird's (and Duron's) 200DDR bus *does* help memory access.
- Tbird's FPU *is* much more powerful.
- What Linux application actually uses SSE? (Which is the only reason any P3 vs Tbird benchmark *ever* shows a decisive victory for the P3.)
More generic x86 and FPU power, a larger cache memory, and faster bus, are all things which to geeks (at least this one) totally outweigh a 1 or 2% performance margin on SSE-enhanced MS Windows applications, not to mention the hideous price differential. And finally, is the P3 1.13 even selling again, after having been recalled??? If it's selling again, can you actually FIND one on the street, or will it be another 3 months like it was with the 1.0G?? I mean wtf is the deal with writing this article??????KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
That's right, this site gives the impression
that P3 1.13 Ghz is the fastest CPU in the industry.
In fact, both Alpha and U-Sparc-III are TWICE faster.
Well, no. By far the most credible cross-platform CPU benchmark is SPEC; if you had bothered to check the SPEC CPU2000 scores you would find that a 1GHz P3 is precisely as fast as a 900MHz US-III on SPECint2000_base (438) and only 30% slower in SPECfp2000_base (327 vs. 427). Assuming linear scaling (not generally a great idea but close enough in this case), a 1.13GHz P3 will be 13% faster than the USIII-900 in SPECint, and 16% slower in SPECfp. In other words, they will be essentially equal.
Now, the Alpha actually is quite a bit faster than the P3, with SPECint/fp scores of 514/591 for an 833MHz chip. That makes it 17%/80% faster than our 1GHz P3, and an estimated 4%/60% faster than a 1.13GHz P3.
Now, on the other hand, both the Alpha and the US-III systems tested cost many times more than the i840 1GHz P3 system; not only do the chips cost a good deal more, but they get the benefit of much faster (and more expensive) buses to memory, etc. This makes quite a difference even in the SPEC CPU tests, and if the chips could somehow be placed on equivalent platforms, the P3 would easily win SPECint outright, and might be rather competitive even on SPECfp. (In case you were wondering, the reason the P3 sucks at SPECfp is because it is saddled with the register-starved x87 floating-point implementation for backwards compatability reasons; the P4 will go quite a ways towards solving this problem--at least as far as newly compiled code goes--with its SSE2 instructions.)
On the third hand, as has been pointed out, the 1.13 GHz P3 does not exist, and never did. (Intel "launched" what amounted to several engineering samples which turned out not to work properly anyways. Other than a couple dozen sent off to review sites and OEMs for validation, no 1.13 GHz P3's ever left the company.)
On the fourth hand, a chip which does currently exist in much higher quantities, the 1.5 GHz P4, looks like it will quite forcefully take the SPECint crown away from Alpha, and depending on Intel's progress in optimizing their compilers for SSE2, might even take the SPECfp crown as well. We'll get to find out when it is officially released in about a month or so.
On the fifth and final hand, though, the real advantage of the Alpha and US-III is their platforms, which give them much greater i/o throughput--often more important than CPU power for server applications anyways--and allow them to scale to configurations of 32 and 64 CPUs and beyond; Intel has a long way to go to compete on these measures.
When buying new hardware you need to look at two price points and choose in the middle. There is the point when the price takes off to catch those who will pay through the nose to get the 'best' (only to realize in two months that something better came out), and the other price point is where they catch those who try to be cheap (yea, it's the cheapest, but for $5 more you can get something twice as big/fast). Those who go the cheap way get disappointed and lose money on upgrades.
When I buy a new machine I mentally graph out cost vs. performance. Usually you will see a slow rise in price and performance takes off. Then it will level out somewhere in the middle and then about 2 generations from the top the price will skyrocket while the performance just creeps along. I buy at the point just before where the price takes off. This way I get very good hardware that only a little behind the best, and it doesn't cost much more then the junk I would get if I was cheap. I can then use the money on peripherals (a good monitor is better than a 50 MHz jump any day).
I have a second rule of computer buying: When you own a computer you need to put $XXX into it every year. The more you put into it the closer to cutting edge it will be. If you put $1000 into you machine every year you will have the best machine on the block. If you only put $50 or less into the machine you will be facing obsolesce. Custom PC's don't become obsolete, they only become obsolete through neglect. They are more like a car than a VCR.
Yes, I know my two rules sound obvious to any geek, but there is wisdom in there. This is the same spiel I give to anybody who comes to me for advice in buying a computer.
I've never known it to make sense to pay top dollar for Intel's fastest CPU. From a value perspective it just doesn't make sense, especially with SMP boards so cheap. The CPUs one, two or even three steps down from top of the line running in pairs often deliver *better* performance than the top CPU and at a lower cost(YMMV, IANAL, etc etc). Even in single-CPU installations the price differences are so great and the performance advantages so minimal between Intel's #1 CPU and the lower-clocked family members that the marginal gain doesn't exceed the marginal cost.
It would only seem to be of value in those rare situations where the marginal gain in processing is so profitable or desirable that it outweighs the marginal costs -- but places like that probably already buy bigger machines than Intel boxes.
The thing is, its always been this way. I remember buying a P150 when P200 was out and the price difference was astronomical. To this day, when I use my P150 (running @ 166) I still don't feel the performance difference is substantial over a P200.
... Duh!
I'm also going to say something I swore I wouldn't: WTF is this doing on /. ????
Cutting edge processors are always going to be far more money than their relative speed indicates - it's the premium you pay for getting the complete best-of-the-best. Given the CPU turnover these days, only those with more $$ than common sense would buy a top-speed chip (or, those with a hard performance-is-absolutely-priority-one requirement (though they should probably be looking at an Alpha or PowerPC chip instead of an x86 one)).
Like I said before, this article doesn't add anything, so I'm reduced to complaining.
Slow news Monday, eh folks? Hemos, go back to bed, and we'll wake you up if we need anything.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
The CPU, although the 'heart' of the computer, is nothing without the muscle.
I for one, as a large corp IT purchaser, would rather have a dual-proc box:much cheaper, more power/price performance. When everything in the corporate market place must be carefully budgeted to provide bang for the buck, these CPU's just don't cut it.
In a similar, take a look at these guys, their SMP scaling is fantastic.
Since the Pentium !!! 1.13GHz has been withdrawn, its price seems pretty irrelevant.
The pricing of the Pentium 4 is much more interesting...
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This comment was brought to you by And Clover.
Every respectable hardware site has known and reported for a long time now that Intel's PIII 1.13 GHz chip was unreliable when it was out, impossible to get when it was out, and has since been withdrawn. Furthermore, this article doesn't make reference to the Athlon 1.1 GHz chip (out and and available in quantity). With the Athlon 1.2 coming within the month, this article is out of date. Lastly, all major hardware sites use a suite of benchmarks to compare chips in order to have a more fair comparison of x86 chip performance. Well, Intel's I-Comp is not an unbiased benchmark suite, and doesn't point out the Athlon's FPU strength. I-Comp also probably includes SSE instructions and not 3D-Now instructions. All of which makes this article irrelevent at any time, but absolutely irrelevant now.
before a million other people waste bandwidth by asking the same question:
The last line of his post was a flamebait.
I responded seriously to the remainder of the post.
Now can we get back on-topic?
Your comments I can say that without a doubt SMP is the best price/performance solution in contrast to the fastest uni-proc on the market is BS. It really depends on the application. Honest. For general purpose use, e.g. running a workstation at home, you are absolutely right: SMP is an excellent solution, usually very cost-effective (by allowing you to use less than state-of-the-art processors) and is in fact what I use at home.
But if you have a single CPU intensive process that can not be multi-threaded, then you are probably better off with the faster CPU.
And even in a more generic situatuion, if the newer CPU has a bigger cache, you may -- again for some applications -- be better off with the single CPU and the bigger cache (basically if the bulk of your problem fits in the bigger cache but cannot be split in two parts that would fit in a two-way SMP's cache -- two CPUs are no competition against memory latency).
Hi!
the speed of a chip in Mhz means nothing, when comparing two different types of chips. People are never going to realize this though, they have to start looking at mips and flops to get the low down on how the chip performs...
Tiger Direct dumped my 650MHz Athalon and a motherboard for $200. Weeee! It runs Red Hat OK for me. Does CFD calcs at least 3 times faster than my 180 Media GX board. Mother board can be upped to 1GHz one day. I might just do that if the price is right, but I get the feeling I'll be better off just building a new machine when the time comes.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Context? Where's the context?
People who post benchmarks without explanation of their particular yardstick ought to be flailed.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I think I responded to the wrong person. I agree with you, that the G4 has a worse price/performance than the PIII. I was talking to the guy who said that the G4 chip was cheaper than the PIII.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The program they make the speed tests with is Intel's iCOMP. Is it any wonder that Intel's CPUs come top?
Does my bum look big in this?
Unless you're so rich that throwing away $1000 matters nothing, don't buy the fastest CPU available for your desktop box. Spend your money on a better-quality digital video camera (if you're a video junkie), or a surround-sound speaker system (if you're a game junkie), or a 21-inch monitor. Better still, spend the money taking your partner on a holiday. Much more fun than 2 extra fps in Quake III :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It's always nice to see the chip at the top of the list doesn't work.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
But you don't have a clue what you're talking about.
8 70.html
Intel's technology is so very good that they had to recall the 1.13GHz PIII, because it quite simply didn't work.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/12
AMD on the other hand are shipping 1.1GHz Athlons in quantity, and 1.2 GHz Real Soon Now.
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Peter
This is not exclusive to CPUs. You can apply this to quality and/or performance of pretty much anything. The best is always disproportionally higher, because you are paying off the R&D, production improvements, public relations and not just a little subsizing of the next thing in the pipe.
There's nothing really to complain about, just pick what works for you and get off the fence.
--
Chief Frog Inspector
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Look at your history. Any time in the past 8 years that x86 has come close to Alpha, something happens where Alpha again leapfrogs in speed. That's not about to change.
.25um to a hybrid .18/.25um process. The only change we can expect there is a higher clock speed--around 1 GHz by January. A full .18um EV68 will ship by maybe March or April; that ought to hit 1.2-1.3 GHz and might include an on-die L2. Still, we're safe assuming that the EV68 will scale linearly with clock speed at best, with perhaps a slight bump from the on-die L2 in March or April.
.13um process, will have much lower power, voltage and cooling requirements than Willamette. This sort of thing happens with every new Intel core: the first implementation is big, hot and power hungry and is aimed at a niche workstation market; then they do a die-shrink and move it into the mainstream. Thus the fact that P4 systems will cost around $2500 (*not* $4000) at introduction really doesn't mean anything. Even at $4000 they'd still be a full order of magnitude cheaper than an 833MHz Alpha system.
Look at your history. x86 actually did briefly leapfrog the Alpha in SPECint95 when the PPro was first released; Alpha took the crown back with the EV6. In any case, the PPro was Intel's only new core introduction of the past 8 years! Thus, judging from our exactly and precisely 1 datapoint, we can conclusively predict that the P4 will indeed take the SPEC crown away from Alpha for a short while.
I mean, come on--this is engineering, not history. You're not going to get anywhere with a teleological theory of CPU performance over the last 8 years--that's just ridiculous. We don't need to guess or play "history" here; there is plenty of solid evidence about both Intel and Compaq's upcoming designs, how they will perform, and when and at what speeds they will be released. It is a known fact that the P4 is going to be released on November 20 at speeds of 1.4 and 1.5 GHz. It is also a known fact that the Alpha looks like it is stuck at 833 MHz until the release of the EV68 die shrink. It is moreover a known fact that the EV68 is behind schedule and that it will *not* be released before November 20.
Next, we can look at the again well known design specs of the P4 and EV68. The initial EV68s are essentially just a process shrink of the EV67 from
The P4, on the other hand, is a completely new core, full of some really pretty impressive design features. From the point of view of SPEC, the most important are the 3.2GB/s FSB, trace cache, 2-cycle data L1, and larger reorder buffers. In addition, the half-clock-latency ADD will be a tremendous help for much of SPECint and the double-precision SSE2 instructions may allow the P4 to be the first x86 chip to compete or even win on SPECfp. (The much maligned 20-stage pipeline is largely compensated for by the improved larger branch predictors.) In other words, it is very likely that the P4 will achieve higher IPC on SPECint than did the P3. Oh, and it runs at 1.5 GHz.
So, assuming that the P4 will have the same SPECint IPC as P3 (an assumption generous to your argument) and the EV68 the same as the EV67, Compaq would need to release a 1.066 GHz Alpha before the 1.5 GHz P4 (i.e. in a month). Assuming the more likely occurrence that the P4 achieves ~20% better IPC on SPECint, Compaq will need a 1.266 or 1.3 GHz Alpha to win. Very very doubtful. Looking ahead, it doesn't appear that the EV68 will be able to keep up with the P4 in ramping clock speeds over the next 18 months, either; while the lead will likely go back and forth, it will probably be Intel, not Compaq, with the SPECint lead the lion's share of the time. This is all up until the release of the EV8, which looks to kick some serious butt. Note that I'm not claiming the P4 is a better design than the EV6x, just that Intel has access to better fab process than Alpha.
In any case, as you see, this is something that can be analyzed with known facts, engineering principles, and informed industry predictions, not with some blind appeal to (false) generalizations made over an entire 8 year period. In other words, "Alpha always wins SPEC" is not quite on a par with "never start a land war in Russia."
I'd like to see a P4 using LESS power, as small a power supply, and in the form factors that Alpha can get in today. Not to mention price. It'll be interesting to see all the same people who bitch about Alpha not having this or or that or being too expensive when they see P4 systems at $4000 using non-standard power supplies and cases.
LOL! The P4 *does* use less power than an Alpha; around 50W vs. an astounding 100W for an 833MHz EV67. And as for form factors, I truly have no idea what the hell you're talking about. Yes, the initial implementation of the P4 requires a somewhat ridiculous heatsink compared to the typical x86. That's alright, because the initial implementation of the P4 is being positioned essentially like the original PPro was. The P4 won't become Intel's mainstream chip until around 9 months from now, with the Northwood revision and die-shrink. Northwood, being made on a
You think the Alpha can beat the P4 in form factor?? Uh...which do you think is going to come out first, an EV68-based laptop or a P4-based laptop?? Or howabout this: an EV68-based tablet computer or one with a P4?? Sun can make a stab at offering embedded CPUs, but I've never heard of anyone even considering an embedded Alpha. Why?? Well...power and form factor constraints, obviously. This is absurd.
The FUD is so thick, you can cut it with a knife.
You can say that again. Luckily, come Nov. 20 the FUD will be cleared away, for better or for worse. Now, I'm not arguing that the P4 or even Foster (the "P4 Xeon") will be able to replace Alpha for most of its markets. But it looks as if after years of failing to take advantage of their one clear selling point--unambiguous SPEC superiority--the Alpha is going to lose even that. Here's hoping Compaq finally decides to pour the resources necessary into making this excellent architecture prosper as it deserves. But let's not pretend that Intel is standing still just because the Alpha has been.
But check out the typical desktop price: C$5,300
3 3
Eh? The page I'm looking at says:
"Typical desktop: C$3,800 (US$2,500)"
http://www.cpuscorecard.com/top_cpus.htm#IP3-11
Not that this number really makes sense, because you can't really buy a single-processor G4/500 machine anyway. Only the G4/400 comes in a single CPU flavor.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
So Intel makes the most powerful Intel or Intel clone CPUs. What would be interesting is how it compares with the CPUs that run inside most modern servers. Is a 1.13Ghz Intel processor as fast as a 400MHz 64 Risc processor.
Why the suprise that Intel, the company with the most money and who designs the basic platform, can be the fastest in their own backyard. If they were to challenge the server machines then it would become interesting.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi