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Pentium IV As A Budget Processor
nutbar writes: "Intel, seeing a slow uptake of its latest processor, the Pentium 4, are going to slash prices by as much as 50% this month. Full full story at ZDNet." The article mentions the goal of P4 systems, including monitors, for under a thousand dollars by the end of the year. Will these price cuts invert the price / performance ratio which has led people to scoff at the P4 in favor of AMD chips? Maybe it's best to wait for odd-numbered chip generations ... Pentium Pentium?
Well, with both the AMD and Intel Pentium Pro - you didn't have much choise - you could use the Pentium or the Pentium Pro. That what you had as an options...
Today Intel and AMD are pushing to 64 bit. AMD goes a bit more "conservative" approach with their X86-64 bit, which will let your old 32 apps runs like they're running on an avrage Athlon, while Intel is pushing a completly new approach for 64 bit while running 32 bit apps on it will run like on an ancient Pentium II..
Intel is aiming to release their McKinly processor (the next generation Itanium) this year and they want people to write apps for it. AMD will release their 64 next year. Both of them wants you to write your applications for their processors - AMD is hiring SuSE to port Linux to their SledgeHammer and Intel is with VA Linux, Rehdat, Turbo-Linux, SuSE (who now looks like they are the best company to port Linux to any processor on earth..), and other.. Windows XP has code for both 64 processors (AMD and Intel)
So if I was a developer, I wouldn't optimize my code on a P4. Instead I would start learning about both AMD and Intels newer processors.
Hetz (Heunique)
Couldn't you just put a few dabs of hot glue on the case underneath the processor to keep the motherboard from flexing too much?
Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.
I read the internet for the articles.
Hell, buy two hard drives, a big 60 or 80 GB IDE monster for MP3s, ect, and a small (9 GB or so) fast-as-hell drive for your OS commonly-used apps.
[1] When I'm not running OS X, which is never anymore, but I digress...
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
Unfortunately, even if they gave away P4's for free, a P4 system will not be a budget system, at least not until it supports SDRAM.
Agreed! P4 in a budget system is like a Yugo that only runs on aviation grade fuel.
When Intel released the first generation Pentium it also got a very bad rap.
:)
The Pentium 60 used a signifigant amount of power, generated a hell of a lot of heat, and the new 75 and 100 Mhz 486 chips from AMD ran just as fast in benchmarks at well under half the price.
I suppose you could say they released too early then as well.
Then even after the next generation 75/90 chips came out, they used less power and created less heat, but they had a floating point bug.
But eventually Intel overcame the criticism.
Remember... "Release Early, Release Often"
We're both wrong.
I just verified, and the FDIV bug affected 60/66 and the 75/90/100 series of Pentium processors.
I had forgotten than the 100Mhz was released at the same time with the 75/90, had thought it was released along with the 120.
I never noticed this impacting us either, but it sure created a lot of bad press for Intel.
Intel increased their pipeline length so that they could more easily ramp frequency. That's fine -- that's an engineering tradeoff. However, it is only a good tradeoff if it allows them to ramp the frequency enough to overcome the performance lost to branch misprediction. However, current top of the line Pentium IV's are beaten by PIII's and Athlons, so obviously this didn't happen. It was not the correct time to make this change in architecture.
The Pentium IV was ill-conceived and rushed to market. Pentium IV is Intel's half-baked, panicked reaction to AMD's continued dominance in benchmarks. Intel was banking that they could market it enough to sell the thing, but it isn't working. The price is too high, and the performance is too low. The market just isn't biting, and with damn good reason.
And I'm really sick of hearing Intel apologists whine that current software is written for Pentium II/III's. AMD has never had software written towards their platform, but they are still winning in benchmarks. There are optimizations that people could do for Athlon that would make it look even better in the benchmarks. AMD has always dealt with running apps optimized for competitor's chips. So I don't exactly have sympathy for poor old Intel that broke their own optimizations with this generation.
You mean AMD is not playing Intel's game. Intel's decision was a bad one. Lengthening the pipe will be required eventually to ramp clock speed, but you don't release non-competitive processor and say "we know it sucks, but future products will be better, so buy this one now". What do consumers care about the design? They just want the performance ramp, and maintaining that ramp is effectively AMD and Intel's mission in life. Intel failed in their mission.
Intel shouldn't have fielded a chip in this new line until it was competitive. They released too early because they were scared. It wasn't a good engineering decision.
--Lenny
AMD has been running banner ads on news.com for weeks now (at least), and they've run two page ads in Forbes ASAP. Best Buy, CompUSA, and all the other big-box retailers advertise AMD machines in their newspaper ads. Beyond that, AMD hasn't had any need for *expensive* TV ads that would whack their profit margins.
Besides, while most people don't know squat about computers, they know that they don't know, and ask someone who does know (like me) for advice. Everyone who does know buys Athlons. I even got my employer to let me custom build the last PC we bought for our project team because Dell still hasn't undone their rectal-cranium inversion and started selling Athlons. AMD's going to be alright.
That's just Intel propaganda, as one would expect after P4 benchmarks started being published.
Posted from an AMD processor in an Intel-free Windows-free household
(Score: 0 - Obvious)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
In this is day and age most programs run well on a 233 or less, the most processor intense thing we do is watch DvD's ripped to DiVX and this can be done on 350 or 400. My point is don't bother with any of the high end stuff, very likely anything faster than 600 M processor on a 100 M bus will be fine for the forseeable future. Spend your money instead on a large fast hard drive, a good Video Card, decent sound card/speakers and tons of memory. You will probably save yourself enough money take take your Sigificant Other out to dinner and a movie.
:)
AMEN.
It feels like I am shouting at a bunch of non-believers when I've been espousing that getting a faster hard drive and a lot more system RAM is substantially cheaper and offers performance increases as much as 50 to 75 percent. Once the Intel Celeron went to the on-die L2 cache design running at CPU clock speed, that made the CPU extremely viable for 90% of computer users out there.
A Celeron 400 MHz or faster is easily capable to decoding MPEG-2 video from a DVD completely in software. With a fast enough HD and enough RAM, the decoding actually goes pretty smoothly.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I agree! :-)
One thing that is really killing Intel is their insistance on supporting that expensive RDRAM technology. Why pay US$140-$160 for 128 MB of PC800 RIMM when you only need to pay US$60-80 for 128 MB of PC2100 DDR-SDRAM DIMM? Or even less for PC-133 SDRAM DIMM?
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
If your computer supports 168-pin DIMM's, there's NO excuse to save money by not installing more system RAM in the computer and getting a modern, higher-capacity hard drive. Hard drives are dirt-cheap on a per-megabyte basis nowadays, and RAM is also extremely cheap even with the very recent slight rise in prices.
Regardless of operating system, installing more RAM and installing a fast ATA-66/100 7200 RPM hard drive makes a huge difference in performance, sometimes as much as 50 to 75 percent faster; this is due to substantially reduced need to use the hard drive as virtual memory and faster hard disk access.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
The P4 philosophy was that it wasn't going to be cost competitive at 1-2 GHz speeds, but will be
at 3-5 GHz speeds, due to better clock scaling.
But if Intel keeps on losing high-end market share,
this hope will be academic.
What the fuck are you talking about? Memory has little to do with the integer or floating point performance of a fucking processor. Apple already has a bit of alliance with IBM as partners in development of the POWER series processors. Your god box sounds like a sad joke. Dual CPUs adds more pressure on your memory bus as it now needs to feed two processors instead of just one. Besides that alot of programs (especially windows ones but a large percentage of GNU apps) aren't really designed to take advantage of multiple processors. Instead of trying to jam two processors in pick something that you're going to get the most operations per second with good memory bandwidth. Along with bandwidth you need macho amounts of RAM.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I'm wondering if Intel's dogged pursuit of MHz above all else isn't going to come back and bite them. Eventually, they might actually try to start shipping Itanium systems to the general public. Right now, Intel's FAQ on the Itanium state that it will start shipping at 733MHz and 800MHz. On one hand, their marketing department is saying that you need to pay big bucks for a P4, and look how fast it is! 1.6GHz! Then marketing has to turn around and tell another group of people that they should pay even more money for an Itanium running at half the clock speed! Maybe they just figure that the unwashed consumer masses will buy the "more MHz is better" line, and the people who will buy Itanium's are smart enough to realize that Intel marketing is full of it when they sell to the masses.
The pentium 4 offers no new ingenuity into the buisness///
It's just another marketing hike onto the world of no where.
Kind of what is exactly hitting the business as a whole is lack of real ingenuity.
Come on, revive the whole industry with real foresight like we saw in the early nineties.
I doubt it....
lamers....
No one ever wants to be the first to say that we're in a "recession".... just for marketing reasons.... but the fact is....
we all know we are really/B?
Actually, the majority of your articles are years old.... amazing what you can find on the internet, isn't it.
I would like to belive you, but the timestamps just don't figure...
blooody hell
karma to kill...
bully for you...
As long as AMD remains profitable and remains competitive, I don't give one of my Black & White ape's poos about which company makes the most money. I don't care about whether they're "winning" or not. I don't care who sells more processors. I think it's GREAT that AMD's brand is so "weak" that they can sell insane fast processors for small amounts of money. I'd just as soon have my processor dollars funneled into R&D, not another goddamn commercial with people in bunny suits.
(and I'm really annoyed that Blue Man Group sold out and is now doing the Intel commercials. I LOVE BMG and I'm sad to see them shilling for these Intel jerks. However, if Intel brought me a wheelbarrow full of money, I'd have probably done the same thing. : )
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Yep. I am aware. I saw 'em in Boston, and they were friggin' brilliant.
However, I bet you a dollar that the whole distributed troupe agreed to the marketing deal.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
...what exactly led you to believe that I was unaware of AMD's recent successes? I think they're doing FINE. I was pointing out that making stockholders happy is not the same thing as making good processors.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I'm just waiting for Intel to abandon the Pentium line altogether and move on to the Sexium. They have a great slogan ready-made for them: "The Intel Sexium processor--Turn it on."
Then later they can introduce the Septium and, for a greatly reduced price, lower quality versions called 'Deviated Septiums'.
You've been living in a cave for the last two years, right? AMD's been thrashing Intel on price and performance for about 18 months now and there's no sign this will turn around in the foreseeable future (1-2 years). Intel's in trouble, and has been ever since their marketing schemers wrested control of corporate strategy away from their engineers.
Intel has made many missteps:
* Buggy, late, and missing chipsets (one that supports DDR SDRAM for the P4 won't be out for months yet).
* Devil's bargain with RAMBUS attempting to force ISVs and consumers to expensive, high-latency RDRAM in return for a $40M stock option kickback.
* Releasing then recalling unstable overclocked P3 chips in a desperate failed attempt to stay ahead of AMD.
* The unbalanced P4 chip design that: buys high Mhz at the expense of a 20-step pipeline imposing a huge branch mispredict penalty; includes a 128-bit cache line that performs on a par with AMD's 32-bit cache line but overworks memory bandwidth; uses a new instruction architecture requiring new compilers and recompiling all software in order to realize even decent performance let alone better performance; needs a new 2 lb. heatsink/fan, power supply, and case; is clock-limited to 750 Mhz when its power drain exceeds 54 Watts (1.5 Mhz, except when you need it). The P4 is a major strategic mistake for Intel.
Not to mention the uninspiring Itanium server chip (deservedly nicknamed "Itanic" - rhymes with "Titanic" - by The Register).
P4 1.5GHz
524 536 549 558
Athlon 1.33GHz
482 539 414 445
Alpha 833MHz (Compaq AlphaServer ES40)
518 544 590 658
As you can see, the Alpha has a slight lead in peak int, a very close base int, and, of course, is far ahead in fp. The Athlon is all over the place, managing to beat the P4 in peak integer speed. The really important lesson, though, is that benchmarks are crap. The P4 is no where near 20% faster (or whatever, math is the first thing to go when my brain shuts off for the night) than an Athlon on any other benchmarks I've seen, nor in the experience of anyone I've heard from. In the "real world" benchmarks -- that is, games for the most part -- the P4 has been closer to 20% slower (except in Quake III, for whatever reason). Those results are probably crap too.
My own uninformed belief is that the relationship is more like P4 > Athlon > Alpha in integer, and Alpha > P4 == Athlon in fp, and that somewhere out there are chips that beat all of them, from manufacturers that have better things to do than make up numbers about their products.
(Courtesy of Pricewatch):
$460 - P4 1.5GHz, 100MHz FSB
$216 - Athlon 1.33GHz, 266MHz FSB
With alleged price reduction:
$230 - P4 1.5GHz, 100MHz FSB
$216 - Athlon 1.33GHz, 266MHz FSB
Hmmm... Athlon is still cheaper, and faster. I think I'll stick with AMD.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
AMD processors are sooo good, and P4's are sooo expensive, that I don't think even half price is going to shift the balance in favor of the P4.
Although I am surprised to see such a radical move. Maybe the arsenal of benchmarks showing how crappy the P4 is finally got through to upper management.
With the release of the 1.4GHz Athlon around the bend, and the fact that a 1.5Ghz palomino + MP will be out this summer makes me think that AMDs market surge will continue. The biggest thing that hurt the P4 is that it is not SMP capable. By doing that, they just prevented it from entering the market share where people need the fastest processors (2p workstations for CAD, graphics, etc). The AMD Palomino can hit intel hard, especially with the news that the P4 cuts its clock speed by 50% when power consumption is above 55W. See
d wi dthmain.htm
http://www.inqst.com/articles/p4bandwidth/p4ban
for info now how the P4 reduces its duty cycle during the time when peak performance is needed the most.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
First off, I am an AMD owner and user and I'm way happy with it. Right now the price performance of AMD is killing Intel. That said I don't exactly agree with all of these assessments of the p4. Everyone is talking about how slow P4 is in benchmarks, well doh it's a new architecture change. All of the current code, including benchmarks, is tuned for the old architecture. Now when (if?) the software industry embraces the new achitecture, recompiles everything, then we might see the exact opposite of the scenario we have now.
Now I know that sounds like a bunch of crap, but keep in mind that we had almost this exact same scenario when Intel introduced the original Pentium. When the Pentium 60mhz came out it was -slower- clock for clock than then current 486 systems on most benchmarks. The reason is that most software was very closely tuned to the 486 cpu. The benchmarks where the P60 shined were in the ones that took advantage of it's faster system bus. That is the thing Intel was pushing then, a new architecture that would make it easier for them to ramp up clock speeds and have a faster bus because those were becoming the limiting factors. Now here we are at the same point we were back then!
The thing that worries me about this is that AMD is not playing the game, they are continuing the current achitecture where they are beating Intel, but what if we need to make this change? AMD might be able to ramp up speeds more than the P3 now, but will they continue to or will they hit a wall like Intel did and have to make core architecture changes also? What happens when we get to that point and neither architecture is winning? Where do consumers go? What do software engineers optimize for?
Oh well, I guess it's not a big worry really, there might be a bit of confusion but in all likelyhood the consumers are going to win either way.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Unfortunately, even if they gave away P4's for free, a P4 system will not be a budget system, at least not until it supports SDRAM.
1) Motherboards for P4 are almost $100 more expensive than for P3's or Athlons. The cheapest P4 motherboard on Pricewatch is $175. This will go down somewhat as volumes get better, but not much. A P4 motherboard has two strikes against it: It's hard to lay out because it has to support the 400MHz Rambus clocks (dual channel, even), and because the Intel chipset that supports the P4 is more expensive than the Via chipsets you can get for P3 or Athlon
2) RAM is way more expensive. You need 2 sticks of RDRAM. A single 64Meg stick of rdram costs $60 ($120 for 2). You can get 128Meg of PC133 for $30. I put 256MB in the last budget PC I put together, so that makes things even worse.
3) You need a special case. Add a few more dollars.
4) You need a good power supply. Well, so does the Athlon. A 1.333GHz Athlon and a 1.5GHz P4 both have about the same max power (73Watts). (comparing apples to apples). But the P3 and the Via C3 (now that's a budget processor) both can get by with cheap power supplies.
In total, you have to add about $200 to the price of that P4. You can get a high end Athlon for about $200. Kind of makes it hard for Intel to compete, doesn't it?
Bryan
I think this is a good question. The current Celerons are P-III's with half of the cache disabled and a 100MHz FSB. The Durons really kick their ass in performance at the same clock speed. With the move of the P4 to the mainstream and the P-III to the lowerend space now sort of occupied by the Celeron, what becomes of the Celeron. One would hope that Intel would just ditch the Celeron totally soon and sell P-III's with both the 100 and 133 FSB's. I am not sure that Intel is going to do this though. Intel might change things around a little and modify the Celeron again or simply call P-III's new Celerons and stop most P-III production. For example, Intel could stop selligng the current Celerons and rename the 100MHz FSB P-III's Celerons and continue to call the 133MHz FSB P-III's P-III.
In any case AMD may be put into a more difficult situation because a P-III will outperform clock for clock a Duron.
If you think AMD has anything remotely close to 30% of the market, you are high on some seriously bad crack. In '00 AMD had $4.6 billion in revenue, and Intel had $33.7 billion in revenue. AMD had $1 billion in profit, and Intel had $10.5 billion. Last I heard, Intel had 84% of the market, and AMD had 14%. Remember, AMD has all but relinquished the sub-$1000 market to Intel (Celeron currently has 95% of this market), where most of the volume is. Not to menton mobile, corporate desktop, workstation, and server. AMD's mainstay is mid-range retail, which has a lot of visibilty, but little real impact.
As analyst Ashok Kumar said a couple of weeks ago, "I wouldn't buy AMD stock at any price." I concur. (Though I wouldn't buy Intel at its current price either).
Hey AMD fans....wake up: AMD would dearly love to charge as much (or more) per Mhz, but their brand value, distribution channels and other market factors dictate what they CAN charge for them. They would very happy to "gouge" you like Intel does. Welcome to the free market.
Indeed. The Celeron is priced at more than double the price of the Duron, and has lower performance (I forget how much exactly - perhaps 50% or 25%). But yet, the Celeron was a whopping 95% of the budget PC market.
Anybody who thinks that a company who makes a substantially superior product, and sells it for less than half the price, but still fails to capture more than 5% of the market, is a company who appears to be winning, or whose stock looks like a good buy, is living in some kind of alternate universe.
A lot of people forget that in business, the winner is not who makes the best product, or who has the lowest prices, but who makes the most money. In '00, Intel made over 10x as much profit as AMD, and we'll see next week if Q1'01 was any different.
If Intel was smart, they would go to year-based naming. A Pentium '97 would like a lot more outdated today now that the Pentium 2001 is out, motivating people to upgrade, while the difference between Pentium II and Pentium 4 seems negligible (in name). I guess they depend on the clock speed to plan obsolescence.
The P4 beats every processor in the world (including Alpha) at integer, and outperforms every processor except for the fastest grade Alpha at FP. P3/Athlon are similar at integer, and signficantly worse at FP. The P4 also outperforms every processor (including RISC) at memory bandwidth (P3/Athlon do not come close). I suspect that Alpha might catch up to P4's memory bandwidth in 2003, when EV7 is released (which uses, I believe, quad-channel Rambus). AMD won't ever catch up unless they switch to Rambus (unlikely).
First of all, don't look at peak, look at base. Anybody can get a high peak score, and they are not representative of the performance you can get.
The P4 is definitely faster than Athlon. On Tom's Hardware, P4 beat Athlon on 3 out of 4 benchmarks. P4 beats Athlon so easily on SPEC (especially FP). The only benchmarks which Athlon beats P4 on is old sysmark type benchmarks which contain lots of P6 optimized code, which have long been retired by their authors. AMDroids see one benchmark where AMD wins, and declare P4 a failure. Whatever.
As you can see from the scores you posted, P4 absolutely wipes the floor with Athlon on FP. Athlon FP performance is so dismal, it's not even funny. What _is_ funny though, is that Athlon has three FP units, and P4 has one, but P4 still beats Athlon clock-for-clock with its hands tied behind its back. In the spirit of AMD mangling benchmarks, I'd like to propose a new benchmark: performance vs. clock * execution units. At this benchmark, P4 is way over triple as efficient as Athlon.
The 1.7 GHz P4, scheduled for release in a week (?), will put P4 as the fastest CPU in the world at both FP and INT assuming it gets at least a 10% performanced boost (unless Compaq pulls a fast one and releases the 1 GHz EV68 in the next week). Athlon is not even close to a contender for fastest CPU.
Sure the price will be cut in half, but it will still be more money for less performance.
This would be a great time for AMD to get some advertising in. Everyone's heard of a Pentium, many people don't even know who AMD is.
If AMD started running a couple ads showing how much better their chips are than Intels, I'm sure they'd sell quite a few more...
-- Dr. Eldarion --
. . .
Forgive for answering directly to the story but I think your question "invert the price / performance ratio which has led people to scoff at the P4 in favor of AMD chips" is badly qualified.
It seems from these price cuts that Intel is more concerned with instruction set deployment / share than direct competition.
If AMD - and they rightly deserve this - gain a stronghold in volume machines, they will continue to have the upper hand in the extension to x86-64, whereas Intel actually have a fight on their hand to get developers actively retargeting code at new ISAs (IA64/ Itanium).
If I also understand correctly, games - that omnipresent cunsumer "killer app" are historically, and may remain, heavily optimised. You can't just unroll loops in IA64, no way. You have to use modulus voodoo and preferably live higher in the compiler algorithms to eek out performance.
I was reading yesterday an interview with an AMD honcho (I think on Toms') and when asked about SSE/2 support for Palomino there was a decidely vague / no comment response.
If I understand correctly, SSE is far closer to VLIW in form aka Altivec than usual x86 "core" ISA.
P4 is a big developent for SSE instructions and maintaining developers' optimisation attentions is a key issue for them. AMD x86-64 could otherwise become too attractive.
I cannot think how Intel could consider price cuts unless they had volume. They've enjoyed enormous gross margins for years, and AMD seems to still be volume constrained, German and M'sia plants notwithstanding.
If AMD is forced to cut margins - further - as well as compete on fab capacity, they will have difficulty *notwithstanding* actual processor performance.
For my part, I just cannot understand P4 in a budget context otherwise. My main machine is a PIII w/ i840 (a nice server targetted mo'bo and Rambus and dual capable for upgrade). As it goes, I do feel proc constrained, but for even simpler graphics apps I use I wouldn't even be feeding the processor with less IO - and I don't believe regular consumers will be any different given the growth in MPEG4 and DVD sware processing.
So, as a result, I don't believe this will invert price / performance perceptions at all.
Oh, and believe me, consumer word will travel fast in response to the ridiculously demanding (compared with Word, anyhow) media apps already mentioned.
[pray that I'm right at least for consumers' sake in the awful event such a scenario goes ahead, but curse me that it might kill off some cpu dev and make slashdot a place where posting about SCSI chipsets becomes *the* thing]
However, if AMD shipped *all* its CPUs with chip speed, not bus speed, decent sized caches aka the worthy PPro, then they might KILL Intel across all these cheapo IO constrained systems.
Ah, but then they'd be not so such cheap CPUs. Darn Pity.
=====================
Took me long enough to write I'm probably just repeating what you already thought, already said.
====================
50% will not be enough when I can buy a 1.33Ghz Thunderbird for $216, and a 1.5Ghz P4 for $460 (www.pricewatch.com). $230 is still more expensive for less overall performance. You also have the issue of being forced to use RDRAM, which is still a good deal more expensive than SDRAM or even DDR SDRAM. The only possible way I would ever buy a P4 is if they started ramping up the clock speed substantially (3Ghz or so) without gouging the consumer on pricing.
I currently am running a Duron 850, would buying a Pentium IV, along with a new motherboard and memory gain me any real world speed ? If benchmarks are to be trusted, the answer is no, I wouldn't see much of a performance gain. This is especially true when you consider we must seperate benchmark differences and precievable differences. Meaning, just because the Pentium IV or even an Athlon scores higher on any given benchmark, does not neccessarliy mean I will notice any difference in my day to day usage. I will go out on a limb here and say most people, even power users, would be hard put to tell the difference between a 1.5 G Pentium, a 1.3 G Athlon and a 1 G Pentium III or for that matter a Duron 850, when using the systems for basic tasks, such as web browsing, email, word processing etc. Even when considering 3D gaming, the Video card has a bigger impact on the FPS then the processor.
In this is day and age most programs run well on a 233 or less, the most processor intense thing we do is watch DvD's ripped to DiVX and this can be done on 350 or 400. My point is don't bother with any of the high end stuff, very likely anything faster than 600 M processor on a 100 M bus will be fine for the forseeable future. Spend your money instead on a large fast hard drive, a good Video Card, decent sound card/speakers and tons of memory. You will probably save yourself enough money take take your Sigificant Other out to dinner and a movie.
Jesus died for sombodies sins, but not mine.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
"You keep using that word... I do not think it means what you think it means..."
Seriously though... if everything went faster on my computer - things would just be better...
Moe: Oh, boy! The deep fryer's here. Heh heh, I got it used from the navy. You can flash-fry a buffalo in forty seconds.
Homer: Forty seconds? But I want it now!
BlackNova Traders
Perhaps you should find your bottle-neck...
If my dual celeron can do it in 3 minutes... you have an issue.
BlackNova Traders
Just because some killer game doesn't force you to upgrade your hardware doesn't mean you don't need a faster CPU.
/. post, or maybe checking /. an additional time that day for new news...) but it would also be very cool to have a system that compiled a kernel in the time it takes to say "I'm compiling a kernel!".... doncha think?
Just think about kernel compile times - I've only got a dual celeron 500 system... it compiles kernels in under 3 minutes... now if I had a quad Xeon system... I could be compiling kernels in under 30 seconds... or faster. (IO depending of course).
That's 2.5 minutes I get back in a given day (that I happen to compile a kernel in). Wow!
Now just think about when someone work related sends me a word document - and I have to open up star office to view/edit it... if I had a faster set of CPUs (and more ram, and faster IO) StarOffice would come in in a few seconds - rather than say 20 seconds... again - I've raked back valuable seconds in my day...
That doesn't sound like a lot does it? Well, let's say that I have to do a kernel compile every day - and open a staroffice document everyday - and it takes 3 minutes total each day. Expand that to 365 days - that's 1095 minutes (or 18.25 hours) a year...
Okay, so all things considered - fat people use more soap --- a valuable statement meaning that I probably would just fritter away that extra time each day (say typing up some gibberish in a
As the Tick has said "Always remember: less is less, more is more. More is better, and twice as much is good too... Not enough is bad, and too much is never enough except when it's just about right." That pretty much sums it up right there...
BlackNova Traders
The CAD folks will get their SMP workstations in Q3, along with a ServerWorks DDR chipset with PCI-X and 6.4 GB/s of memory bandwidth. It'll cost an arm and a leg, but they'll get it.
But if you don't want to pay > $5K for an SMP system, AMD looks like the way to go.
Let's see if Linux can do the same to Microsoft. One of the engineers who worked on the alpha EV6 bus is now working fror AMD and gave the Athalon the same bus. 5 year old Alphas are still faster than Intel's Itanium. What I am really trying to say is AMD has broken Intel's monopoly with a superior product at a superior price. We must do the same! Linux could take out MS even if the DOJ can't. Vote with your time. Find a bug in the kernal and fix it!
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I really hope they slash the price by 50%, however, I don't think this will increase the likelihood of me buying a P4...I do hope that this sets a precedent for the other brands to lower their prices to stay competititive with intel...if this happens, and a P4 system costs less than 1k...I can certainly see an AMD or celeron and other lesser intel processor systems being sold for under 500$. That would be nice.
The anti-salmon
Running "old" code is neat. But the real trick for AMD-64 will be to find some new 64-bit code to run.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
One of the nice thing about getting past 1 Ghz is that CPU speeds have less marketing impact.
A 1.7 Ghz chip doesn't really sound that much faster than a 1.4 Ghz chip. Compared to the visual impact of 900Mhz versus 600Mhz. Stupid, yes, but so is Mhz-based marketing. (Now, if Intel scaled quickly up to 2.5 Ghz, then it would sound like a lot versus 1.7 Ghz...)
Although Slashdotters overstate the marketing value of Mhz, I think. Most buyers don't care that much, whether they be home users or big MIS purchacing managers. Only when you get into the game/home power user crowd do you see the dicksizing going on, and those folks are generally informed enough to understand that AMD benches faster.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
We scoffed at the price because you paid more for less. Now you pay a little more for less. Even with a 44% price cut, the chip is worthless for non-SSE2 optimized software. Combine this with the fact that AMD is cutting their prices tomorrow, and RAMBUS memory is still... RAMBUS memory, I still don't see how the current P4's could have an edge.
Now, if the second generation P4's (the "real" P4's) come out around these price levels, and with support for DDR memory, we may have some good competition.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Probably got submitted a few times - The weekend crew must not read up on things during the week. although I can't blame them.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What I'm liking even better, though, is all of the hammer stuff coming down the pipe. If I remember right, AMD's line will go be 64-bit as well but will be backward compatible with x86.
IA-64 will not.
Yeah, yeah, I know... "Kill X86!"
Well... why? If AMD's 64-bit series turns out to outperform IA-64 and it will still old x86 software faster than IA-64 as well and it's cheaper than the same generation Intel CPU (once again), then why in the hell should I buy Intel?
Add to that the fact that AMD is entering the SMP world with superior bus technology borrowed from Alpha and I think AMD has it won for a while, memory bandwidth not withstanding.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
That's the problem Apple faces squarely, except they don't have the option of faster processors.
:)
They have machines that can do DVD burning, mp3 ripping, movie making, and game playing. Is the GHz issue hurting them? I dunno, they seem to be marketing their other strengths, such as wireless networking, style and fashion, and plain useability.
I hope it works out, I happen to enjoy my Titanium PowerBook
Geek dating!
GPL Deconstructed
It can not be figured out for the Pentium 4 yet because we don't know how many units are going to be made and what price they will be sold. The R & D and construction costs could be gleaned from the financial statements on line. (chech the stockholder info)
The truth shall set you free!
Intel's cost structure is such that they have to get better than $200 asps. The coin money at $400. AMD has a much better structure and can do the smae thing at 1/2 the asp that Intel can. By my recon, Via sold 12.5 million sock-a chipsets in the first quarter. During the same period, Tiawan shipped only 80,000 Pentium 4 mobos.
Go ahead and commit Intel-inside. Underpowered, overpriced and Michael Delled.
Sex is heriditary, if your parents didn't have it chances are good you won't either.