What 1.7Ghz Is Like

Beanie writes: "Today Intel announced their 1.7GHz Pentium 4. It's crazy to think about the fact that just one year ago we were breaking the 1GHz barrier and now we're almost up to 2GHz. AnandTech has a review of the Pentium 4 1.7GHz and they compare it to the recently released AMD Athlon 1.33GHz." And Otis_INF writes "Tweakers.net had the oppertunity to run some benchmarks on a system with an Intel Foster CPU on board, placed on an early i860 based board. The complete sneak preview (in english) is here. It smokes the P4 in some benchmarks."

Comments

i860

[booch]

What a stupid name to use for their new motherboard chipset. They had previously used the i860 name for a series of CPUs (which are not compatible with the x86 series). The i860 was widely used for embedded applications. It's successor, the i960, is still available for Intelligent I/O (I2O) usage. Searching for i860 on Intel's web site is really going to be confusing.

Re:Sounds hot

[Jethro73]

On a related note, AMD is testing a new silicon that is said to help with the heat issues, which will help their own 1.7 GHz chip.

Jethro

Ehh, there is a myth about this myth..

[Pengo]

I have a G4 466 (OSX), a Dual CPU Intel 800, a Origin 3000 class server (Work of course) .. 4 CPU model.. A SGI Indy (RS5000 180mhz), a Sun Blade (500 Mhz Mips IIe), Athlon 700 (Windows 2k), Sony Viao 650mhz PIII laptop.

I would say the only machines that don't perform in relation to the mhz rating is the SGI Origin 3000 and the Sony Viao. The SGI is clearly much much much faster than my PIII w/equiv total equiv mhz (~1600)... and the Sony Viao laptop is much slower than my Apple G4 466.

But, my Athlon 700 kicks the crap out of my Sun Blade workstation at just about everything I give it. My Dual PIII workstation absolutely blows away my G4 Workstation running OSX at just about everything I do. (Fair enough, my Dual 800 is SCSI, my G4 is not)... and funny enough, my G4 seems to be just a hair slower than my 500 mhz Sun blade workstation.

Of course there are no numbers or hard benchmarks. these are just my personal observations on equipment that my company and myself owns (it's my company) ;-) .. For the most part I believe that the MHZ myth is a myth in itself. At the core you will find that the G4 and the Athlon are not that much different. the CISC / RISC architectures made a huge difference a while ago, but now it is all bus and bandwidth. (Hense SGI performance with ccNUMA).

But again, without this myth alive how would I be able to justify my 2-3x pricetag in buying commercial Risk hardware over Intel? ;-) I use SGI kit because it's very specialized on our needs of performance and scalability. Could I have done it on intel w/a better architecture? Probably.... ;-)

Anyway, thats my take..

geez.. and what a rant.


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Re:Eh...

[selectspec]

I agree and disagree. Your premiss is correct, that clockspeed is only a factor in performance. The one area of improvement in the P4 is the instruction set and the instruction pipeline have been vastly enhanced, so most of the features long implemented within say a SPARK pipeline are now in a Pentium. However, the P4 suffers from severe memory starvation (worse than a P3) due to the architecture of its caching. This keeps its actual performance down with a frank, zero increase over the P3 of roughly two-thirds the clockspeed.

But, you are dead on with the practical point, who cares? As it currently stands, the P4 is a complete waste of money. For the PC, nobody needs a 1.7Ghz chip. For a server, that clock speed would be handy, but only with about 1Mb of onboard cache.

The real news here...

[selectspec]

The real story today is not the P4, but the prices. Intel is slashing prices big time, ahead of their .13 micro manufacturing process which wont be operational until the end of this year. Basically, they are starting a price war with AMD, and it looks like it will be vicious. Why? PC Manufactures can read, and the verdict on the P4's real performance frankly no good. The P4 has a long way to go before it can be considered an improvement. Of course, consumers are idiots and they buy CPU's based on clock speed alone. However, the PC market is hosed right now. By the time the PC market recovers, AMD will be there with its next gen chips. This price war is something that Intel can afford. I wonder if AMD can afford it? AMD's manufacturing costs have always been more competative than Intels. However, a 50% price reduction has to sting, and AMD wont have .13 micron technology by the end of this year.

Norman Bates, please call your mother.

[bill.sheehan]

The rational part of my mind dismisses this story as trivial. 1.7 GHz. Not far from 2 GHz. But I surely don't need to concern myself with that - my work box is 800 MHz and my big home box is an Athlon 1 GHz. All my software performs quickly and efficiently.

The irrational part of my mind cries, "Look! 1.7 GHz! That's almost 2 GHz! Blazing speed! Raw, brute, merciless POWER! More!! MORE!!! I'm still not satisfied!!!"

I can hold off the irrational only so long. When that magicical hertz hits two gigs, the irrational is going to sneak up behind my rational mind with an icepick.

"Everything louder than everything else!" -- Meatloaf

Re:Another p4 iteration

[VAXman]

And let me guess - you didn't even bother to read the article, did you? Because this issue is specifically addressed. Here's the relevant section:


During our tests the Pentium 4 1.7GHz always operated at 1.7GHz and did not fall victim to any clock throttling because of heat. You shouldn't worry about the Pentium 4 dropping its clock speed because of heat unless you are running the processor without a heatsink/fan installed.

1.7 GHz is a lot like a 1.2GHz Athlon

[startled]

First off, I read a good portion of the reviews that I found linked from Blue's News:
Source Magazine
Target PC
Hardware Unlimited
Tech Report
Gamer's Depot

What's the upshot? That even with each processor's "ideal" system (DDR on the Athlon, RAMBUS on the P4)-- well, the P4 kicks ass at Quake 3: Team Arena. I mean, it's really really good at Quake 3. So good, in fact, that-- well, you won't be running anything else, I hope?

Because in almost every other app, the cheaper Athlon 1.2 equals or outperforms the P4. That even includes apps such as POVRay that did some early optimizations for the P4's extended instructions. I recommend reading the Tech Report's overview if you're interested in that; they have more details on exactly which instructions were used, and the current state of Intel's compilers for the chip.

Keep in mind, of course, that the compilers are still a bit beta-ish-- sometimes they actually make the programs run slower. But they never appeared to actually make it faster than an Athlon 1.2.

Debate what you will about future extensibility, and so on-- but unless you're going to be playing a whole lot of Quake, if you're looking for a new system you should grab one of those cheap Athlon CPU/Motherboard combos selling for $300 at Fry's.

Recalled...

[FortKnox]

New /. poll:
How long until the new 1.7GHz gets recalled
- 1 month
- 1 week
- 3 days
- When cowboy neal gets one
- its already recalled.

I still find it humorous that they compare the 1.7 Intel to the 1.33 AMD...

Re:One Pound Heatsink

[Golias]

I'm sure you meant to rip on Intel a little with that comment, but the truth is if Intel shipped a computer with a heatsink that doubled as a Grillmaster, I would buy it.

Mmmm... burgers.

"double every year and a half"

[Golias]

It's crazy to think about the fact that just one year ago we were breaking the 1GHz barrier and now we're almost up to 2GHz

Was progress at the speed of Moore's Law always crazy, or did it just become do today?

Re:"double every year and a half"

[UltraBot2K1]

It's been said before, but Moore's Law states that the number of transistors on a processor, not the clock speed, will double approximately every 18 months.

Inconsistancies in benchmarking

[RedWizzard]

But they never appeared to actually make it faster than an Athlon 1.2.

That's the interesting thing though. Look at the SYSMark2001 scores on Tom's Hardware and the SYSMark2001 scores on AnandTech. The Athlon scores about the same in both (145) but in Tom's review the P4 performs very poorly (115 @ 1.5GHz and 124 @ 1.7GHz) and in Anand's review it scores very well (154 @ 1.5GHz and 167 @ 1.7GHz). That's a 35% difference between the two sites. So what's the difference? Tom's using a Asus motherboard and Anand's using an Intel motherboard, other than that not much. But then Quake and UT show much the same results on both sites. The lesson is don't rely on one review site. Still it seems that you'd want to be very careful if you're buying a P4 for anything other than games. Get the wrong motherboard or maybe the wrong BIOS settings and you'll suffer.

unless you're going to be playing a whole lot of Quake, if you're looking for a new system you should grab one of those cheap Athlon CPU/Motherboard combos selling for $300 at Fry's.

Yep, and that's still the case. Even with the radical price cuts the 1.7GHz P$ is $350 which is still considerably more than the Athlon 1.33GHz. Of course if you're into games you're generally better of upgrading your graphics card anyway.

Re:Noticeable bias on slashdot

[gtx]

well, quite bluntly, intel has fucked us over time and time again... let's go for a walk down 'intel memory lane' for a second...

what's the difference between a 486DX processor and 487 co-processor? the pin arrangement! that's right, intel realized it would make more money by selling a 486DX as a '487 math coprocessor' even though that by installing it, you disable your 486SX. (effectively making your '487 math coprocessor' the main processor)

what's the difference between a 486DX and a 486SX? intel intentionally fucked up the FPU on the 486SX! yeah, on the original 486SX's, there WAS an FPU, but it was disabled. thanks intel!

difference between the older celerons and their pentium 2 brothers? nothing! well, except for the fact that intel broke the l2 cache on them so they could sell value chips. the cache was THERE, you just couldn't use it. if you've ever opened a PII cartridge, you'll notice that it's a socket 370 chip on a slocket. surprise...

the pentium series bugs. F00F!

intel has driven me out of my mind. i'm an amd convert till they start fucking it up.


"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears

One Pound Heatsink

[UltraBot2K1]

In a related story, in an effort to promote their latest 1.7 Ghz P4, Intel has solicited the endorsement of former boxer George Foreman, and will be giving away a free drip tray and jar of grilling sauce with every P4 purchased.

In a recent press conference, Intel stated: "Not only is the new Pentium 4 a technological breakthrough in terms of processing performance, but users can cook 4 hamburgers in under 10 minutes on it's new larger-sized heatsink"