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Pentium IV Hits 2 Ghz
A number of people wrote in with the news that Intel released the 2 Ghz chip. The Tech-Report article points out a couple interesting meta-ideas - this is Intel's chance to retake the performance crown from AMD, as well as being one of those round numbers that makes people feel warm and fuzzy. I'm sure there's going to be gobs of benchmarks today - post 'em in the comments as you find 'em.
Here.
Basic conclusion: 2.0GHz P4 == 1.4GHz K7, but when the 2.2GHz P4.1 comes out in November it will take a clear lead.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I use a PIII 500 at home. It is fast enough for everything I need to do, even on those occasions I need to run Windows.
A few weeks ago I had to buy a "server" for a personal usage. I went for the lowest of the lowest, and bought a PIII 800 for considerably less then I thought I would have to pay for the server. Up to that point, a Pentium 100 did the same job, quite successfully.
2GHZ? Unless this gives me cheaper PIII 800 (which it won't, it'll only drive the low end to higher performances, not lower prices), who cares?
1.3 ghz beats them all
".Sig Stealer" was here
...is like a Viper on blocks. 800HP that doesn't go anywhere.
--
I like to watch.
No surprise. Wake me up when they can mass produce them for retail at $100. That would be news.
I sure hope, for the sake of good ol' times, they'll be manufacturing a 4.77Ghz processor soon...
but warm for sure...
One thing that you don't see people talking about much is why all these Mhz matter. In other words, is there really a big difference between 1.9 and 2.0 on the software that people use today? And if not, how long will it take before there is a difference?
I am just remembering that back in the day, you could tell the difference between a 200 and a 233MMX relatively easily. Does that still hold true, say, when playing Counterstrike on a 1.8Ghz vs. a 2.0GHz?
_sig_ is away
"Intel's chance to retake the performance crown from AMD" -- Oops! looks like they droppd that ball!
But when are they going to make Linux take full advantage of all the P4 advantages? Right now, to the best of my knowledge, it's almost like never running your ferrari past the second gear. Sure it's fast, but it's not taking full advantage of the potential.
Anyhow, I've always been a fan of the "more ram and better gfx card" school when it comes to improving performance. Office apps are more than fast enough. The only thing you REALLY need to improve would be the frame rate on Max Payne.
Stop the brainwash
Now it will twice as fast to heat up to the point that it goes to half speed which is 1Ghz. I guess you can call that progress.
:)
They really have to work on cooling those things better. Dell sells em really cheap though. But I am currently in the market for a Mac of some sort. Who knows... Computers are really cheap these days.
Once again, the company with the most resources, experience, and capital has secured their lead. Did you really think AMD was capable of competing?
I'm afraid it's time for all the AMD fanatics to admit that the story of David and Goliath simply doesn't apply to the corporate technology world. The biggest will always win, if only because they are more capable of supporting their management bloat problem. Look at IBM vs. DEC. DEC has suffered a two decade long slow death, from being the most beloved and innovative minicomputer manufacturer, to being an unwanted subsidiary of a PC manufacturer, to finally being eliminated. AMD is heading for the same chopping block.
The key to understanding the difference between intel and AMD, is to realise that intel doesn't have to run flat out all the time to put the best chip on the market. They're big enough to coast, and take a break sometimes. AMD needs every minute of developer time they can get just to keep up! Sooner or later, AMD just exhausts it's resources and slips back into the low-end slot, where it belongs. Also remember, intel can weather a lot more damage to their markets than AMD. AMD doesn't have much of a war chest.
My advice to everyone here is to realise that there are no prizes given for rooting for the underdog. It doesn't benefit you if AMD "wins", and you shouldn't even be thinking in those terms. While the intel architecture dominates the low-end computing market, intel will be the market leader. Accept it, or mourn it. You can't change it by wishing.
Denial isn't just a river in Italy
First Pentium CPU released at 60Mhz: 1993
1Ghz Pentium CPU released: 2000
2Ghz Pentium CPU released: 2001
Moore who?
I posted to
...if each individual instruction takes up to three times as much cycles to execute. We've been having 667 Mhz Pentium III's for ages...
HardOCP
Source Mag
Cpu Review
Acid Hardware
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I mean, they're talking about how the 1.8Ghz Intel chip was trailing behind AMD's 1.4Ghz chip.. and now they're excited because their *2Ghz* chip might just beat AMD's *1.4Ghz* chip?! Hello? Geez.. sounds like AMD has a MUCH better design going. What will happen when AMD releases a 2Ghz Athlon? Will Intel have to bring out a 3Ghz chip to match it? I can't see how Intel can be too happy with this..
How in Bob's name are those "meta-ideas"?!
They are not ideas about ideas, they are simply ideas. Why do people feel the need to adorn their words with unnecessary cruft? I guess the old gearhead saying applys to prose as well: "If it don't go, chrome it".
<sigh>
This should be listed as a special case of Rule 17.
Most usability scientists agree that no one can distinguish much of a difference in PC performance 25% greater than the base value. When PC ran @ 200Mhz it was no big deal to squeeze ~50Mhzout of it since that was simply a quality control variable in the manufacturing cycle. Now with 1.4-1.9Ghz PCs you need to squeeze another ~350-500Mhz out of it before anyone notices so difference between old and improved performance. Just to keep pace with perceived performance you have to add nearly 500Mhz - that is, for lower values there is NO perceived benefit. Which translates into people willing to pay roughly ZERO for anything less than a 500Mhz improvemen. ZERO dollars for which
Intel may have invested billions of dollars to generate. You see it's kind of like boiling water. Nobody cares if it is difficult to raise the water temperature to 211 degrees - it's the 720x more energy required to raise the water that last degree. So it better be worth it to you to spend the energy doing it because investing only 600x more energy will not boil the water.
It's cool that Intel hit the 2GHz mark, but all that clock speed is really going to waste for the moment.
Right now, you should go for a Thunderbird (AMD Athlon). Later on a Palomino (AMD next-generation Athlon) or the upcoming Northwood (0.13 micron Intel P4) is a better option.
Am I just saying this? No, take a look at this.
.: Max Romantschuk
But:
(1) 1.4 GHz Athlon "MP" will still beat 2 GHz Pee-4;
(2) No upgrade for Pee-4 (423-pin Mobo soon to be out of date);
(3) Should have compared Pee-4 with 256 MB RDRAM vs. Athlons with at least 512 MB (or even 1 GB) DDR (on a same-cost basis)--the Athlons will smoke the Pee-4s, at whatever GHz;
etc.
.. for people who like to compare engine sizes. it's like comparing a 1.8L VTEC with a 1.8L in a Hyundai? Hey, the car salesman said they've got the same size engine, i bet they're the same :)
People who don't know anything about processors obviously rate clock speeds like engine sizes. They don't really understand that 1.4Ghz == 2.0Ghz. It just doesn't make sense to them.
AMD needs to start gettin the word out that numbers aren't the only thing that matters. On a side note, no one will ever have the crown permanantly. Intel may have it for now then the Palominos will hit 2GHz and then Intel will come out with something faster, then AMD, then Cyrix, then....wait a minute scratch the Cyrix comment.
Go check out the benchmarks, the 2.0GHz P4 is at best equal to the performance of the 1.4GHz Athlon that has been out for month's and costs 1/4th the price (and has halfway good MB's available for 1/2 the price).
I notice very little difference between my new GHZ machine and the 333 MHz machine it replaced. Compiles run faster, but I spend very little time compiling. I spend most of my time editing, and the processors have been able to keep up with my typing speed since the days of the 486-25. Web surfing? I/O bound. Video output? Also I/O bound. Most everything is I/O bound these days. Bus speed is more important than processor speed today. After all, when was the last time you saw anyone discussing spreadsheet recalculation performance?
Best Slashdot Co
I'm curious where power supply requirements are headed. A year or two ago, 230-250W was fine, now I'm seeing Intel and AMD demanding 400W. The HFCs that come with these things are now two or three times the size of the socket. With PCs outnumbering vehicles (saw that stat somewhere) I wonder how the power demands and the heat generated will effect global warming and such.
Sure, its probably not much more than a few light bulbs right now (in both aspects). But like I said, where is it headed.
This page is pretty old, so somebody has probably done better by now, but this guy overclocked a 1.33GHz Athlon to 2174 MHz (using extreme techniques I guess).
Still though, if it's stable at such high speeds when it's supercooled, surely AMD will be able to make it stable at room temperature, no?
I'm waiting for 4GHz Athlons.
The ocean parts and the meteors come down
Laid out in amber, baby.
(0) $562 for 2 GHz P4 vs. $135 for 1.4 GHz Athlon
(1) 1.4 GHz Athlon "MP" will still beat 2 GHz P4;
(2) No upgrade for P4 (423-pin Mobo soon to be out of date);
(3) Should have compared P4 with 256 MB RDRAM vs. Athlons with at least 512 MB (or even 1 GB) DDR (on a same-cost basis)--the Athlons will smoke the P4s, at whatever GHz;
Etc.
etc.
I do 95% of my work on a PII 400Mhz laptop, and have an Athlon 550Mhz as my home office server.
I'm not interested in games, and frankly can't imagine what I would use a 1Ghz cpu for, never mind 2Ghz. In fact, these days I'm more interested in what I can get my Palm m505 to do.
Strange isn't it. A few years back I always used to shop for the most horsepower I could get for my money. Now I'd be inclined to shop for the 'least' horsepower; secure in the knowledge that it will easily do what I ask of it, and will be cheap to boot.
The only exception to the rule I can think of at the moment (sticking with home office) would be a Mac. I'm very tempted by the iMac's (I like the package) but am concerned that MacOS X really needs the grunt of a G4 to handle the accelerated screen work well. And of cause you can't get one yet in an iMac yet. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the newer and faster G3's running the optimised MacOS X 10.1
Macka
Let's see, we have a Firingsquad review...
An AnandTech review.
And let's not forget ExtremeTech's review.
And finally Kyle and the gang at [H]ardOCP did a review.
Incidentally, [H] got their p4 to over 2.2ghz, but ran into heat issues at 2.3.
Seriously, who *needs* 2ghz?
:)
Frankly, I'm still recommending 600 at max to most people.. The average user doesn't need 2 ghz to check their e-mail and such.
The fact is, very few people need a processor this large. However, thanks to the clueless in such grand stores such as Best Buy and Circuit City, as well as the good folks at Dell, Gateway and the like, everyone will be convinced that yes indeedy, they need to shell out ubercash because their kid won't be able to browse the web without one!
Argh. IMHO, chip makers should stop the ghz battle and look at cooling. I'd like to be unable to fry an egg on my processor. And I'd love to get rid of some of these nasty, noisy fans.
(Insert rant about processor speed being 'it' as told by the clueless salespeople, and that people should realize that ram, hd rpm, etc play just as much as a part, if not more, etc, etc.)
I guess I have to stop my Pentium bashing now.
Don't believe the hype!
Comparing desktop 1MHz P3 to 1MHz Athlon, the P3 uses half the power (25 vs. 49 watts). My current PC is an Intel for this very reason, I can make it nearly silent because it doesn't need heroic fan efforts. If convergence between consumer electronics and PCs ever happens, it won't happen with AMD. Thermal and acoustic considerations become more important than raw speed; would you want an Athlon with a screaming fan next to your TV?
Maybe when the 4 ghz chips are out, they'll have figured out how to lower the power requirement so that our computers don't sound like small jet turbines.
Hell... I live in Scandinavia and I'm having one hell of a trouble dissipating the heat from my two P4s out of my apartment, they're overdoing that heating part badly.
Anybody got some good advice on getting rid of heat? Right now I've stuffed my boxes in a closet (to get rid of the noise) and put some fans in there for ventilation, but the heat just creeps into neighboring rooms (as predicted -- though it gets way too hot in those rooms). A regular AC is too weak to deal with this, a friend of mine tried that.
What's your favorite domestic heat dissipation solution?
Again with the MHz/clockspeed ?! C'mon, who cares if my processor can calculate PI out to the nth degree, if bussing that information from the CPU gets bogged down traveling down through the backplane/motherboard into memory that has been gobbled-up by a greedy and leadky operating system, which is only slowed even further by crappy disks using an archaic file system ?
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
Specfp2000
Intel D850GB motherboard(1.8 GHz, Pe 1 618 628
Gigabyte GA-7DX Motherboard, 1.4GHz 1 426 458
AlphaServer DS20E Model 68/833 1 643 784
Sun Blade 1000 Model 1900 1 438 467
Specint2000
Precision WorkStation 330 (1.80 GHz 1 599 619
Gigabyte GA-7DX Motherboard, 1.4GHz 1 495 554
AlphaServer GS320 Model 32 68/1001 1 561 621
seti@home
(hope this is an error) Intel Pentium 4 37 hr 07 min 51.2 sec
22) AMD K7 Thunderbird 4 hr 29 min 36.4 sec
Alpha 0 hr 59 min 25.3 sec
sparcv9 8 hr 08 min 30.1 sec
mips4 3 hr 13 min 22.9 sec
Note: above are what looked like the best times from each test and processor. (I didn't check every single one, but usually they arent too far off. P4 seti time was the only specific p4 time.)
The P4 should be able to easily beat the k7 (athlon is too long). however it doesn't in the real world. Given that a p4 has about the same time as a k7 in the seti (I think the 37 hours was an error, otherwise, intel is really screwed up.) It still gets creamed on the (fpu intensive) seti@home, and has even slightly better specint scores than an alpha (running @ 800 MHz slower). However, these tests (spec) are basically only of the CPU, as is seti for the most part, and not the RAM, HD, etc. So Theoretically yes, the P4 is nearly as good as an alpha, or anything else. However, Intel's design and marketing decisions appear to have crippled it.
Of course, the 3rd computer in the specint one would cream all the others in the real world, if this were a real world test. Then again a single 1GHz alpha would be alot easier to beat than 32 1GHz alphas.
OK, yes, this is the obvious comment from an Apple-enthusiast turned Linux-wannabe-uber-geek. But, don't all the comments people are making about "I don't really noticed the speed increase from my XXXmhz machine to my new X.Xghz machine..." kinda' make Apple's whole point in a roundabout way?
I mean, sure, they are arguing that mhz don't matter because the PPC chips are just as fast because of other factors. But the argument has another edge -- any modern chip is going to outpace you 99% of the time anyhow.
So, all the benchmark's in the world don't mean squat...
Oooo-ahhh! 2 gig clockrate! A billion watts power consumption! How about improving design so that power consumption goes down significantly rather than just the minor power use reductions we've seen that only PARTIALLY offset the increase in consumption due to higher clockrate?
I used to run my computer 24/7 but with higher power costs and the evils that go with higher power consumption (pollution), I now shutdown my system for about half the week. If power consumption/energy efficiency were more a target rather than clockrate, laptop batteries would last longer, power consumption and heat production would be lessened.
I'd like to see a headline from Intel (and AMD for that matter) stating "10 Watt power consumption reduction in 1 gig chip!".
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
shouldn't the headline read "Pentium IV shits 2GHz"? ...sorry, the devil made me do it.
While astute computer users know that raw MHz does not automatically translate to application/game speed, not so in the case of the typical user.
When AMD broke ahead of Intel in the MHz race, their marketing department was quick capitalize on this with a media blitz that even included some TV commercials.
However, now that Intel once again taken the lead in the MHz race, astutely AMD has once again retreated its marketing tactics to the knowledgeable and computer savvy.
Every unbiased hardware review page has said pretty much the same thing, clock cycle for clock cycle the AMD is still faster. However, the average computer buyer is still tied down to the more is better idea.
And honestly, that is something that is hard to refute. More RAM is better, bigger HDs are better, bigger monitors/screens are better, faster modems are better...why don't CPU's follow the same rule?
The answer is a pretty complicated one and to explain that would require some basic knowledge that you just can't squeeze into a 30 second commercial. AMD has made noise about a marketing campaign that will educate the public, however so far it has been just that, noise.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Ah, the good old days.
If the P4 ran at 4.77GHz I still wouldn't buy it because I refuse to support the Rambus law firm.
I was wondering when I would be able to break 300fps with Quake 3. :)
Hello? Microsoft has stopped being the goldfish to your larger fish tank, Intel. There's nothing around that needs even the past-1GHz processors we have today. Well, gee, thanks for bringing your broken processor across the 2GHz boundary. I'll be right on it. *shrug*
3 Athlons at home, and none of them are worried.
it crashes windows in half the time as my 1Ghz. ?
Sit... Speak.... Shake.... Good Dog!
in video and pro-audio care a lot.
An extra chunk of processor cycles = more effects plugins, virtual instruments, etc. This is a big deal for folks with native studio setups.
You're not going to notice a difference in Word but I sure as HELL would notice a difference in Cubase.
http://www.mp3.com/vanderrohe
a beowulf cluster of these
... and the Marketing Guru's at Intel have won another round. Can't wait till this hacked together attempt at MHz backfires on Intel when they have to sell the Itaniums... at 1/3 of the MHz. Hahahaha. Perhaps they should focus on price/performance instead of arbitrary numbers?
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
It seems pretty unlikely that Intel will be able to take the performance crown, if someone can get a dual Athlon for less than a single Pentium. (Well, unless the qualifications for owning the crown, are to give your subjects less value for more money. This does happen to be roughly what political speakers say about monarchy, so maybe a crown is indeed appropriate.)
Let's see, do I buy a 2GHz uniprocessor P4 with its performence-killing 20 stage pipeline, miniscule 8K L1 cache, and high-latency/overpriced RDRAM, or do I buy a dual processor AthlonMP, 128K L1 cache, DDR SDRAM, and 64-bit PCI slots (Tyan Tiger MP) for LESS MONEY?
These days, Intel CPUs are for people who don't know any better (or are forced to buy Dell).
Yeah, nobody will ever need more than 640GB of memory either.
Hi Folks, Once you are done with the Tech Report article, please schwing on by our humble abode and check out our findings on the 2GHz. P4 from Intel. Right here: http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/CCAM/p42g.htm Thanks!
All processors emit some kind of electromagnetic radiation in accordance with its frequency. You actually need some kind of shielding around processors above 1 GHz. The interesting part is that around 2 GHz the radiation enters the microwave area of the spectrum.
Now you can 2-in-1 a computer and microwave combined!!!
Or you can have a lead shielded computercase... I don't think they've had that since the original Olivetti's.
Here is the article from tomshardware.com entitled Intel beats AMD to 2GHz And here is another from sharky extreme.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
I'm typing this on an Athlon 950MHz system, which I used to replace a P-III 350MHz system, and the biggest performance boost I got was from switching from IDE to Ultra160 SCSI drives. I don't plan to upgrade the processor again until the 3GHz systems are out, debugged by the bleeding edge fanatics, and reasonably priced.
correct me if i'm wrong, but doesn't this beat moore's law (for intel chips anyway) by a good 3 or 4 months? crazy.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
I just finished upgrading my motherboard and processor to an amd 1.4 ghz. The same thing happened to me with the Mac LC. Bought it two months before the LC2 came out. Well if I always waited to see what's next to come out, I'd still have that LC.
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
I'd much rather believe Anandtech's benchmarks, but Tom's Hardware Guide finds completely different results.
Anandtech has the Athlon winning almost every category...and with the example of the Flask MPEG encoder, Anandtech has the Athlon smoking the P4 by a lot and Tom's has the P4 winning by a convincing margin...who is fudging data?
I don't have time to look into it right now so any analysis someone can provide is appreciated!
I would think that the Slashdot community would be the one to harbor some bad vibes towards Intel for their involvement in the 4C project, or whatever the hell the copy-protected drive is/was. Maybe I'm just too political though, I dunno. Whenever I scrounge up enough money to replace the piece of junk I'm on now, there'll be as little M$ and Intel brand crap in it as possible. I know you're impressed but really that last sentence was included just so that I could plug responsibleshopper.org. It's not my site, but as the kids say, it's keen.
Pretty soon they'll be able to relax FCC radiation tolerances on these fast computers. Why?
The 2 ghz band is the unlicensed band where cordless phones and microwaves (not to mention 811 (B) devices) live.
Can you imagine this: My new 2 Ghz computer wipes out my wireless network!
Intel had a great deal of lead because of their SMP capabilities. Thats no longer a problem with AMD and no longer a banefit of all the Intel processors. So I'd guess, put the money where the real benefit is and not just into sounding numbers.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I care. When using 3d and video I really care about my processor.
Listening to people like you, a 25 mhz would be fine? Sorry, I'm targeting 100 GHz for my neural network programming, genetic programming, collision detection, radiosity rendering, realtime advance 3d gaming...
Go back to neolithic with your stone!
louis
Seeing how CPU's don't make noise and all....
The 2.0 GHz P4 will still lose to the T-bird 1.4 in floating point math, rendering, and basically all that matters for most people. However, the high numbers attract companies like Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc. because consumers are stupid. Hopefully the company with the better product will prevail, but I'm not going to make any assumptions.
They still claim the fastest multimedia experience on x86.
Too bad. I'm still an AMD purist.
-... ---
To all the people saying "We don't need any more speed."
There are quite a few applications in which CPU speed is never fast enough. _Never_ fast enough.
I'm a 3D animator. I render a lot of architectural flythoughs, mechanics, medical visualizations, etc.
Most of my clients need output to videotape or MPGs on CD. Now as I'm sure you are aware, NTSC playback is 30fps. So in one minute of video there are 1800 frames. Now, if each frame takes two minutes to render, your're looking at 3600 minutes, or 60 hours to complete.
I don't know about you, but 60 hours is a long time to be waiting.
Would you please stop linking Tech Report?! Their poor little server can't handle being slashdotted.
Worked for me. Course my wife is "nerd-girl" and at my house when someone gets a new "latest & greatest" CPU it's not a lock that I'm the one doing the upgrading but yeah, last time I bought a new CPU I got laid.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I agree. The fastest thing that I ever did for my computer was stipe two 40gb IBM Deskstar 60GXP 7200 RPM UDMA 100 drives in a RAID-0 array. I figured that it was a much wiser decision to spend my money on an extra drive and a good mainboard with IDE RAID, than spend the cash on a faster CPU. Of course, since 1.4ghz Athlons are about $100 on www.newegg.com right now, even that is really affordable.
Anyway. The best things that you can do to add speed is add more RAM and faster drives. Granted... For some things, a faster CPU will make a difference, but for most things, slow drives will be a bottleneck.
That a 1.4ghz Athlon is 45% slower than a 2ghz P4? I think not.
Didn't see these posted, so check these out:
;o)
SharkyExtreme, and pcmag.com.
Naturally, those seeking the zdnet advertising-big money-enhanced (tm) view should choose the latter, while those seeking that of an enthusiast should check out Sharky's.
-S
- - - - - - - -
Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
Average as in, "Not-power-user."
:P
;)
Despite the public outcry for faster and faster processors, as I said, the average person has yet to need them.
When I say average, I mean, "Man goes to play a few mp3s, maybe frag a bit in Half Life, then check his e-mail."
Not average as in, "Gee, Bob, ya reckon how fast I can query that 3 TB database?" or, "I know what'd be fun; creating movie-quality special effects on my PC!"
I'm running on a 600 mhz box. Half Life runs fine for me. Sure, it's 'old', but I have yet to see a more modern game that has problems. My e-mail comes through in a burst of less-than-blazing speed, but only because of my nice lil 56k. The Gimp, and various Windows-based image editting software, runs fine. Hell, I can even, while in X, recompile a Linux kernel and utilize XMMS, without any distortion/skipping/pauses in the mp3.
Yes, the average person still doesn't need a 2ghz processor. The average person still doesn't need a 1ghz processor.
The fact is, for what the average person uses their computer for, more ram or a faster hard disk would do more for them than an overly-hot running CPU.
Penis-length comparing might be fine for techs who want, and sometimes need, the latest, greatest, beefiest box, but where the wallets of my friends and family are concerned, if they don't need it, they shouldn't be wasting money on it.
And as for, "Well, they'll need it for XP this, and XP that..".. I actually don't know anyone who's going to be upgrading to XP when it comes out. Most are sticking with 98, some are grabbing 2000, and there's even a few switching to Linux. Yes, Linux - despite the people who think it's impossible to learn for 'newbies', as of RedHat 7.1, even someone's pet rock could do an install. It's not that it's hard or challenging to use, it's that it's 'different'. People aren't stupid; they just need someone there to ask questions of.
And no, I'm not a consultant, but I hope the lot of you aren't either. If someone came up and said, "I need something that I can do my taxes on, write up a few papers, and play some solitaire." and I told them they needed a 2ghz box with a gig of ram and a 60 gb hard drive.. Gah, I'd have moral obligations to fire myself.
(Of course, if you're an office worker by day, a member of the Durah Cell by night, an AK-totin' Counterterrorist munchin' terrorist machine.. That'd be different.
If you can grab the edge from the competitors by using the extra 50W to grab an extra 100MHz out of the processor, you're going to flow as much juice through that processor as you can.
Look at the VIA C3 (aka the Cyrix III)...a 700MHz chip that takes so little voltage that you can almost run it without a heat sink (almost...which says quite a lot compared to these 5 lb. heat sinks on the P4). So? No one's buying it. Even if it had the biggest battleship of a FPU (though it doesn't), the fact that they're not running the processor fast enough to save energy is not going to sell the processor.
If someone could come up with a power transformer which charges 1000W into the computer case just so that you can get an extra 200-300MHz out of your processor, people would buy it.
Rambus RAM price is artificially lower now (though still about three times as much as DDR), because nobody wants them, and their makers are selling RDRAMs at a loss. Mitsubishi (or Toshiba), one of the only three RDRAM makers along with Samsung, is getting out of the RDRAM business. When their inventories are sold and the price is no more subsidized by Intel, you will expect a huge increase in RDRAM price.
You rarely notice the increase unless it's a significant one, but you will most likely notice a decrease.
After you've had your fast machine for a several months, halfway through a normal day go back to your old one (or in the case of upgrades, pull the fast CPU and put the old one back, remove that extra 512 meg RAM, VooDoo2 instead of the GF2).
It could also be that software and hardware are advancing at a more stable rate, rather than leapfrogging each other every year?
It's a function of how many wafers you can bake within a given tolerance. The difference between 1.4Ghz and 2Ghz is a function of how many wafers you can make that don't melt when you push that many Watts through them as opposed to any material difference in the design of the chip. It's straight up manufacturing process quality control. Each stepping represents a higher yield way of making the same chips. When chips are rated at 1.4Ghz that represents a given economic value of making at least X chips that can pass that QA test. Certainly SOME of them can be made to go faster but not enough so that you wouldn't have to throw out most of the wafer sheet. When the process gets sufficiently better and the yield surpases Y number of chips that can survive a 2Ghz QA test then you have an officially branded 2Ghz chip.
I have the press release posted on my site. here is the link .
It's strange game we are playing at these days... Does anyone remember good old days, when there were people who were able to 'optimize' code for speed. What happend to us guys? Now we are just able to optimize code for size (And really, I don't mean getting it smaller)
I think that at these days no one is paying attention to optimization, generally. If something is slow, just buy new mobo+cpu, more memory or faster (and/or bigger) disk.
- Huge
-- Reality checks don't bounce.
Basically all this crap is Intel trying to put AMD out of business. They are busting their asses to up those CPU speeds, which is just a marketing scheme so they can say on TV: "We have the fastest chip out there". That, combined with the price wars, is Intel's way of trying to bully AMD out of the competition.
http://dark-techno.org
Everyone knows including apple that my 6100/60 is just as fast a P4 1.2 ghz at similar tasks :).
The fact is that while the majority of posters on /. rant and rave about how much better AMD chips may be, as far as the consumer (general and corporate) is concerned AMD makes the chips you have built into the custodian's computer.
As far as it concerns most people cheaper is less good. That's why Hyundai's are $12,000 and Daimler-Benz's are $80,000+. You may be able to go faster in the Hyundai, but after a few months you'll see a cloud of blue smoke trailing behind.
This isn't my personal belief, but I work for government agency which makes this ideology perfectly clear. More money = better product.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
There are also a good number of people, myself included, who run computer simulations for physics or chemistry or the like. I'll take every additional bit of speed I can get, and use it. I know we are the minority, but a couple of AMD 1.4's sure beat the heck (in price) out of some big iron.
Intel has spent oodles of money pushing their new processor, the Pentium 4. As opposed to the Pentium IV, which no one has heard of. Trademark, trademark, trademark!!!
Yes. $ for $ the AMD chips win. But you need a computer engineering degree to understand why. Consumers still measure Sony TV's horizontally to determine if they're 27 or 35 inches (try it! Sony makes them that way so they don't have to educate the public).
However, the 1.4 GHz Athlon with DDR SDRAM was about par on the benchmarks with the 1.7 GHz P4 with RDRAM.
1. You can't get 1.5 GHz Athlons yet, and the P4 has gone on to 1.8, 1.9, and 2.0 GHz.
2. Intel and VIA are releasing motherboards that will run DDR SDRAM, reducing memory cost significantly with an unknown but predicted to be very small performance hit vs. RDRAM.
Ergo, if you want the fastest commercial desktop, you buy the newest P4 platform. And the early adopters, speed queens, and obsolescence anxiety victims have always justified exhorbitant price differentials.
Businesswise, Intel made a bad, bad mistake putting all its chips in the Rambus basket. AMD was also able to leverage some serendipity when Digital went belly-up, leaving a lot of Alpha engineers with nowhere else they could stomach to go. But Intel has been through this before (remember the PowerPC? Apple, Motorola, and IBM combined are about 40x the size of AMD, and they couldn't take Intel...) and has already reposition itself.
Intel can be bloodied, but it's never been knocked down, much less knocked out.
Am I cheerleading? Maybe a little. I own a ton of INTC. But I have always known they make inferior products. 6502, m68k, Alpha, PowerPC, even Intel's own i960 line are superior products to any chip that eats x86 assembly. But if you get prejudiced on the characteristics of a product you will totally fail to understand the value of the company.
Intel will rule in the end. Start from that premise, and then try to prove otherwise to yourself.
--Blair
"It's not an 800 lb gorilla. It's an 800 lb gorilla with a PhD in process technology and 30 Superbowl rings."
but when the 2.2GHz P4.1 comes out in November it will take a clear lead.
That's getting pretty close to the magic 2.4 GHz number.
Computers might upset the global microwave oven infrastructure we've already established. Chaos will ensue, as networks of Amana RadarRanges and Panasonic Genius are disrupted. People might have to make a choice between counting with rocks or defrosting TV dinners over a campfire.
Even worse, there might actually be grounds for newbies calling the CD-ROM tray a "coffee warmer".
This will also be a new problem for overclockers who are managing to get processors up to the lofty 2.4 GHz range. RF heating of their water cooling systems will have to be addressed.
Welcome to a brave new world.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
It's sad seeing every other post whining about how you don't need a 2GHz processor. It's even worse seeing people being proud that they run a slow (600MHz processor) and recommend their friends and family do the same. You don't really NEED a computer on any clock speed in the first place and second, 600MHz is not slow. The first computer I ever touched with an Apple IIc. That was slow. The Powerbook I'm writing this on is more powerful than all of the computers that existed in the 1960s. I'd recommend the faster computer someone could afford if they asked me. You can get a 1.4GHz P4 from Dell or Gateway for under a thousand dollars, same with an Athlon system if you can find an OEM that makes them. I'm amazed now at how cheap computers are for how much computing horse power they have. Systems 15 year old Linux zealots see as slow (600 MHz with a hard drive almost six thousand times bigger than the first drive I ever used) I'm impressed by because those didn't exist just a couple years while said zealot was still playing with Power Rangers. Getting hot and bothered because Intel has a faster processor that AMD is pretty sad and gay. AMD is no better a corporation than any other corporation and getting upset and flaming people because they don't like your processor or your OS is also sad and gay.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Prediction:
/. first
The P V 5 Gz
"Triple Nickle"
You saw it here @
I am me...I think
Athlon was the first to break the "1 GHz barrier" but has stalled ever since in increase.
Yes, the performance is there, but not the _increase_ in performance.
Most probably the Athlon, which started out at then fabulous 450 MHz, is starting to reach its maximum performance.
The P4 _started_ at about 1.5 GHz, and is predicted to surpass 3 GHz.
My prediction is that Athlon in its current architecture will never reach those speeds.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6982283.html? tag=mn_hd
AMD to slash prices... you can get your cake and eat it too... er... nvr mind.
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Unless you really need 2.0 Gig in your box as a substitute for a large penis as soon as possible...it would be wiser to wait for the next generation of Dual AMD boards ( hopefully OC friendly ) and throw a few Morgan Core Durons in it...The whole setup will probably run about $320...and it surely will kick the p4s butt.
...more modern than Quake 3! Who the hell still plays that game anyway?
:)
Since everyone always has to state the disclaimer, "We all know this game is optimized for SSE, so Intel wins again" why is it used as a benchmark? It shows nothing about the relative performance of the two processors versus each other, and only shows that each processor scales linearly (or roughly at least) with clock speed relative to their own architecture.
The other thing I'm sick of are the benchmarks with setups like:
QUAKE 3 -- LOW QUALITY 640X480 8-BIT COLOR NO SOUND 1 PLAYER BLANK MAP WITH NO TEXTURES
FPS=2000
Well no crap!??!? What do you expect?
I'd like to see this setup:
QUAKE 3 -- HIGH QUALITY 1024X768 32-BIT COLOR EAX SOUND WHILE DOWNLOADING 4 MP3's AND PLAYING A CD
Much more realistic
Get real. SSE, 3dnow and MMX are hacks. Until any of these happens to entirely replace the functions of x87 FPU, the true compiler advantages of SSE is useless..
That is, of course, you equate how fast Quake runs on a P4 to how many Queries you have on your server running at one time, or how much longer until you find out if the Mersenne number you're testing is prime.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Yeah, sales people are always trying to get people to spend less money ... on some planet that I've never visited.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
The price for an AMD 1.4 266 frontbus chip is $107 today on pricewatch. If you want DDR ram, its $46 or so for a 256 stick direct from crucial for registered ecc. Tyan dual mobo is $250 delivered today for the S2460. So. I can put together a dual 1.4 machine with a gigabyte of ram for about $600 plus the cost of the heatsinks, case, drives, etc. Make that $700 if you want dual 1.2 pallys (at $163 each).
Cheaped price on a 1.8 (!) P4 chip is $261.Cheapest 256 RDRam is $77. Cheapest dual P4 mobo (that I can find) is $670 for a Supermicro. That means that I can put together a dead end P4 dual system with 1 Gb of ram for $1200+ plus the case, cooling etc. This machine cannot be upgraded. The AMD machine can when the 1.5 pallys, etc. come out.
Don't get me wrong, $1200+ for a machine with that kind of performance is a miracle, its just that it is twice the price it has to be.
Sex is heriditary, if your parents didn't have it chances are good you won't either.
cause I still can't buy it anywhere
Alyia (?) is dead now, too.
Have an honorary tossing tonight.
PCs were never IBM's bread and butter. They aren't even Compaq's bread and butter, and Compaq is the largest PC manufacturer in the world. The mark-up on PCs is just far too low for them to be a real money-spinner.
Let me first start off and say that I am not an Intel zealot. I own an Athlon box. Now, with that out of the way...
I can't believe people are stating that AMD chips are the better chip, just because they beat Intel clock-for-clock.
Intel was not considering a clock-for-clock pissing match with AMD when they designed the P4. The 20-stage pipeline was built for high-clockspeeds, which Intel hasn't started to seriously ramp towards.
The P4, assuming the core has a similar shelf life to the P6 core (166MHz PPro-->1000MHz PIII) will ramp to 7.83GHz. The Thunderbird core is already wheezing at 1.4GHz. Will the Athlon be able to ramp to the ~4-5GHz that will be needed to keep up with the P4? No, I didn't think so. Basically, once Intel really starts pushing the P4 core, AMD will be left in the dust, and the AMD zealots will be left to wallow in the misery of an inferior processor.
One more thing. There have been many technological advancements used in the design of the P4. Trace Cache was an EXCELLENT way to combat the inherent difficulties of the deep pipeline.
Actually, most Windows applications will still run faster on the 2Ghz P4, since they don't know how to take advantage of SMP. Now for a _server_, the dual MP is a big win. Not sure how many Linux applications see a performance improvement with multiple CPUs...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Personal computer and microwave in one! It bakes! It fries! It dices! It comes with a free set of steak knives... well, no, actually, it doesn't do any of those things - but with an appropriately shaped waveguide and a metal-free ceramic mug it could heat your coffee (or my herb tea) directly.
Cool!
Er, no, that doesn't sound right, either...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I am just starting to _finally_ save up for a AMD-1000 and now the Intel 2000s are comming out. Its just my luck, I am still running an AMD-500
Maybe one day, I will have a fast machine. Which will still be slower then everyone else in the world ...
until (succeed) try { again(); }
Your sig:
Leftist: Force the world into slavery. Liberal: Vote the world into slavery. Libertarian: Let us alone!
You left out one ---> Right/Republican = Sell the world into slavery.
Wow, post number 2221222.
Has it been 20 seconds yet?
They make a great keyboard and mouse. Their "OS" isn't something I'd call a product... I think "disease" is more appropriate.
The answer is a pretty complicated one and to explain that would require some basic knowledge that you just can't squeeze into a 30 second commercial.
Here's an eight minute video that aims to do that. It's in QuickTime, btw.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
It's called O-VER-CLO-CKING
You can go pretty steep in that direction, AND warm your flat on the winter time 8)
Actually, as long as AMD didn't find a way to reduce its wafer size, you won't see any 2Ghz AMD, coz it'd cost too much in processing....
BUT ! please use and OC a dual AMD 1.4.
First, it'll kill the cold and provide you with fried bacon anyday,
Second, it'll beat the S..t out of any friend of you trying to outpower you 8)
Being the author of the linked page, I wish to add just a simple thought: if multiplies requires 8 cycles to execute, you should put up to 7 other independent instructions between the scheduling of the multiply for execution and using the result in a subsequent dependent instruction; given the scarce number of registers available (only 8), it is quite difficult to schedule more than 2 or 3 threads of computation at the same time, so it is unlikely that there will be lots of instructions to execute while the multiply is being executed.
Another weak point of the P4 core is that there's only one MMX execution unit instead of two in the P3 (even if they have some usage limitations). I've been simulating some common code sequences on both the P3 and the P4, and the P4 is always at least 50% slower (i.e. it needs at least 50% more cycles to execute the same code).
But I am speaking about carefully optimized code, which does not stall due to cache misses (so uses optimal prefetching and streaming stores), when running not-so-optimized code that stalls often, the latency of instructions becomes a minor problem and the P4 might shine, due to the hardware prefetcher and huge memory bandwidth.
Best regards
Stefano Tommesani
You are simply wrong and you need to read some history books before you start spouting off your unsubstantiated stuff. Give me some facts to support your wild claims. Tell me what percentage of IBM's gross profit or revenue was accounted for by PC sales. Don't get on Slashdot and try to rewrite history.
Now Netscape will crash faster than ever!