It's All About the Pentium (4)

Submissions about the P4 flow in like the tides, so here's a batch of them. Rooster sent us the Hot Hardware take. TBM sent us Ace's extensive comparison of the P4 and K7. Piete submitted a fairly negative review of the chip (between the RDRAM thing, the motherboard thing, and the fact that the chip just isn't much faster for normal use, that's not surprising). Slashdot Minion sent in Hard OCP and Sharky Extreme's respective reviews (including 200fps Quake).

Comments

Gotta get in those pro-AMD mentions, don't we?

[Junks Jerzey]

Am I the only person who finds all it annoying that most anti-Pentium retorts always include something positive about AMD? It's not like AMD is breaking amazing new ground. They're still keeping the x86 family alive, with all of its standard troubles (too many instructions, overly complex addressing modes, too much legacy baggage, too few registers, stack-oriented design of the floating point processor). The processors from both Intel and AMD are too expensive for what you get, and use too much power, especially when compared against other chip designs outside the x86 world. So both these companies are having a high-end pissing contest that only seems to be advancing the so-called state of the art in minor, expected ways, trading more power consumption and die space for speed increases of a few percent. Yee-haw!

I would love for another company to walk in and set things straight. Too bad Motorola seems to have trouble figuring out where to go with the PowerPC.

This is a bad kind of message to post, I think, considering the preponderance of crazed AMD supporters. But let's not let fanaticism for a corporation get in the way of real progress, okay?

Missing the point

[yamla]

Yes, the Pentium IV is substantially slower, Ghz-for-Ghz, than the Athlon Thunderbird. And yes, I'm sure it is slower, clock-for-clock, than the Pentium III.

That is not the point.

Intel is not trying to beat the competition immediately, despite appearances to the contrary. They are, instead, looking on the Pentium IV as a long-term solution.

Take a look at the chip. The whole thing is designed to run at faster and faster clock speeds. Now, I am not taking a stand on whether AMD will be able to out-clock Intel (though personally, I hope so) but their CPUs do not sacrifice as much to clock speed at the moment. That is, AMD prefers to produce more complex, slightly less highly-clockable CPUs.

Of course, these chips could be clocked higher than Intel's Pentium III chips, and they were more stable as well. But now Intel has redesigned.

Really, the question comes down to how well AMD can scale to faster clock speeds. If AMD can hit even only 3.5 gigahertz by the time Intel hits 5 gigahertz, AMD will have won. But it is quite possible that AMD will not be able to do this, at least not without a redesign. Of course, if AMD can match Intel Ghz-for-Ghz, Intel is in serious trouble.

And that, my friends, is the point.

About the P4

[GrandCow]

I am currently in a position to be able to use the P4, right next to high end P3's and Athlons, and I've spent the day putting it through real world use (games, MP4 encoding, mp3 encoding, and any other stuff that I could think of). It's been said already, but from someone who is not just running benchmarks, but actually using it like it would be used, there is a noticable difference between the P4 and the P3/Athlon. This does not bode well for the P4, since the motherboard is stocked like it is supposed to be with dual RDRAM chips, that monstrously large heat sink, and everything else in the specs. I'll repeat it again: in real world use, the P4 seems noticably slower than both the P3 and Athlon. This isn't just with the 1.4 gHz, it's with the 1.5 also.

Well, anyways, just thought I'd throw out my opinion, based on the real world use I would have put on the comp anyways. This just reinforces my thought that the P4 is gonna flop, and take a large chunk of Intel's marketshare with it. The only thing that's gonna save it is if Intel gets the speed up to 2gHz+ very soon, and even then I still have my doubts. My advice is that noone buy this version of the chip, since once the chip moves to the .13 micron process, the existing chips and MB's are gonna be completely worthless, since they are not gonna be forwards compatible.

Well, anyways, feel free to disagree with me. I don't claim to be some computer genious, I'm just someone with enough knowledge to use a computer and do some basic testing.

-C

P4 'advantages'

[Tumbleweed]

Okay, so my interpretation of the problems with the P4 platform are:

• Much more expensive than Athlon
• Rambus DRDRAM more expensive RAM than DDR, and doesn't consistently outperform it - often performs worse than DDR!
• Very few motherboards, which will likely be quite expensive
• More expensive system requirements (new rev of, and higher-power power supply, higher cooling needs, etc.)
• limited-life platform (that particular socket goes away in less than a year)
• no dual-proc chipsets for awhile for the P4
• VIA controlling the Intel DDR chipset market
• and of course, lackluster performance of P4/DRDRAM vs Athlon/DDR, even with a significant clockspeed advantage over current Athlons

Also note, performance-wise to compare to the Athlon - in 1Q2001 AMD releases the Palomino version of the Athlon, which should perform even better than the current Thunderbird Athlon, plus be at higher clock rates. At the same time, SMP systems will start coming online for the Athlon, which you can use Durons, Thunderbird Athlons, or Palomino Athlons with, so you can grow your system slowly if money is tight. Take two 900mHz Durons and start SMP slowly. Most people probably won't need to go to the Athlon at all! Sweet.

Also note: DDR will get better - current comparisons are being done with systems using, I think CAS 2.5-3-3 memory. Faster DDR is coming soon (though, of course, that'll obviously cost more). I don't mind paying for performance, but I _do_ mind paying for uneven performance (better in some ways than old, worse in others, like Rambus DRDRAM and the Pentium 4).

This all adds up to some pain for Intel in 2001.

No black holes, but...

[dmatos]

As the P4 and the K7 recognized each other, each would vie for more and more system resources. This would cause a radical increase in power consumption, which is of course eventually released as heat. The intense heat from the resource battle would strip all electrons from your video card, essentially reducing it to a glob of molten plasma. Due to the strange interactions between the Intel and AMD products, both would begin feeding off of this plasma as a power source, and it would grow, eventually consuming everything it comes in contact with, including, but not limited to, your house, your pet cat, and your neighbour's swimming pool. Essentially, you will be accelerating the eventual heat death of the universe by approximately 82%.