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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.
...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...
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..
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.
Intel can exhaust its resources too -- by making stupid mistakes (like its Rambus chipsets). Losing consumer confidence is a hard obstacle to overcome.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
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!
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).
b) Use SI units for gawd's sake. Celsius if you must, but real scientists use absolute scales. Kelvins anyone?
Thus one might say "raising water from 372K to 373K takes far more energy than raising it from 273K to 372K". A good example is how long it takes to boil a kettle and how long it takes to boil it dry (your kettle using essentially the same power in both processes).
Lesson over. Drop Imperial. Use metric. Even us Brits managed it years ago.
"Don't get mad, get a monkey!"
What makes you think that a 500MHz increase in CPU speed today is harder to achieve than a 50MHz increase 5 years ago? 5 years ago when the Pentium 200s were hot, another 50MHz would have been as big a deal as 500MHz today. It will take the same amount of time, too. Let me point you to Moore's Law clearly shows that CPU speeds increase at the same rate.
Let me tell you also, that if I'm running a maching on CPU bound tasks, even a 5% speed increase is worth buying. Especially if those tasks I'm running take large amounts of time to complete (weeks for scientific calculations!).
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."