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?

Comments

Pentium 4 is dogmeat

[slothbait]

All of the current code, including benchmarks, is tuned for the old architecture.

That has always been the case for every new architecture! It is not an extenuating circumstance, it is the norm. Every new architecture has to overcome this hurdle. This excuses the Pentium IV's poor performance none at all.

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.

The thing that worries me about this is that AMD is not playing the game

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

Wait for the Sexium

[allanc]

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'.

Athlon still cheaper

[1010011010]

(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.

- - - - -

Re:Athlon still cheaper

[VAXman]

There are several problems with this:

1) As the article stated, AMD has to price the Athlon frequency for frequency. They are going to have to price the 1.3 GHz Athlon below the 1.3 GHz Pentium, not the 1.5 GHz Pentium 4. 99% of consumers look at frequency for performance, not some other benchmark. This is good for Intel, and bad for AMD; AMD has higher performance per frequency, but they don't know how to market this. Unless AMD educates consumers, gigahertz will continue to be the benchmark. IMHO, they cannot change this since they don't have the credibilty of Intel.

2) The Intel brand is one of the most valuable brands in the world, while AMD is comparatively unheard of. The Pentium 4 itself is a very good brand, because of the marketing campaign. So, the P4 has an automatic price premium above Athlon. Thus AMD has to undercut the P4 price, or they won't sell any (except to zealous AMDroids who are willing to pay a premium for Athlons - and this is a miniscule percentage of the market).

I think this is good for Intel; but it probably hurts AMD a lot more than it helps Intel. This will continue to put enormous price pressure on their ASP, which they cannot afford to lose (they have lots of debt and little cash, while Intel has something like $15 billion in cash and almost no debt).

Platform costs make "budget P4" an oxymoron

[Freedom Bug]

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

The real question ?

[NumberSyx]

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.

A bad chip is a bad chip - no matte the price.

[tshak]

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.

Apple's dilemna;

[2nd Post!]

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 :)

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