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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.
See, the fun thing here is the fact that the public doesn't give a damn about the benchmarks. They'll walk into local computer store "foo" and demand the highest speed they can get, so that they won't go obsolete as quickly. (this is THEIR perception)
"But sir or ma'am," the salesman will say, "for about 2/3 of the price, you can have this computer, which is arguably better and faster than the Intel Pentium 4."
"Oh no, we don't want ANYTHING other than Intel," says the mommy or daddy "We KNOW how important reliability is, and we KNOW that the 2 g-H-z (pronounced by letters) is MUCH faster than the A-M-D AthAlon you got there".
right.
--endcycle--
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.
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?
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Apparently you don't quite grasp Moore's law. Actually, if I remember correctly, Moore's law states that the density of transistors doubles roughly every 18 months. However when people talk about Moore's law these days, they tend to mean that processor speeds double every 18 months. So, assuming your numbers are correct:
1993-2001 = 8 years = 96 months = ~5 doublings
Start: 60
1. 120
2. 240
3. 480
4. 960
5. 1920
Wow! Looks as if you're dead wrong.
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.
You're not doing your friends any favours by recommending they get low-end machines. What happens when they decide they want to run their new copies of Windows XP and Office XP with all the bells and whistles and voice recognition turned on? Or use that Firewire port for something and start messing around with some funky video effects processing? Or play the latest flight-sim or FPS at full-res and maximum reality and physics? A fast CPU isn't everything, obviously, but it's sure as hell not going to hurt.
Software almost never gets faster, and consumer-type applications, like games and multimedia are some of the biggest CPU/graphics hogs outside of 'professional' level computung. I always recommend to friends to get the fastest machine they can afford. It might seem like overkill now, but you can bet in 12 to 24 months it won't be looking like an extravagance. Not everyone wants to run vi to edit C source code and marvel at how small and lean they can get their Linux kernel down to...
Hey,
is there really a big difference between 1.9 and 2.0 on the software that people use today?
Well, that would depend on what you are doing. If you were, for example, word processing, you would notice practically no difference, since for the majority of the time, the processor is not being fully utilised anyway. In word processing, bottleknecks are more likely to occour from a program being slow to load (i.e. hard disk speed), or the fact Microsoft Word sometimes likes to move things on the page around for what seems like no reason at all.
If, however, you are doing a highly processor intensive task, like rendering a 3D scene in Caligri TrueSpace 4, you would (in theory, at least) notice a reduced render speed, if you cared to time it, because the processor is being used extensively in the rendering operation.
The problem with this, as with many things, is that the ultra-high-end chips are almost always disproportionately expensive. A 2Ghz chip will likely cost more than twice what a 1Ghz chip costs. Furthermore, a second-hand processor takes a big price hit, so staying 'bleeding edge' isn't really an option. If you have enough money to upgrade every time a new chip comes out, you have enough to get a rendering cluster, which will be faster.
So, where will a 2Ghz chip find a market? Firstly, among 'Power-stupid' people. They will buy ir because hey, it's... like... TWO gigahertz, which is twice as fast as a one gigahertz chip. They likely won't actually need the power, but they have more money than they know what to do with, and iw will be good to brag about.
Secondly, when it's cheaper. As the price drops off, if it can beat AMD's best offerings, people looking for high-end systems will like it.
Thirdly, corperate types who were considering making the switch to AMD because the performance was so much better. If Intel can beat AMD's performance, then AMD will be less attaractive because the performance isn't better, and 'Nobody ever got fired for buying Intel'.
Just my $0.02
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
2.0GHz P4 == 1.4GHz K7
I know it's been posted already, but $560 == $107 according to Pricewatch this morning. Explain to me how you can even make an educated comparison on these chips. You're paying an extra $400 for the ability to tell your friends you're running at 2 Ghz, and to heat your home. IMHO Intel is shooting themselves in the foot with their ridiculous pricing. The 1.3 P4's are still more than a 1.4 T-bird, and the T-bird smokes the 1.3 P4 in every test. I have to wonder why anyone without Pointy Hair would consider purchasing one.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Actually, according to Firingsquad, if you're an unreal player, this tells us that the AMD 1.4ghz is STILL faster than the latest P4 offering! Aside from Quake, the P4 2ghz is only marginally faster. The 2.24ghz (OC'd) does take a bit more of a lead. So, for only $400 extra you can get 10% speed increase on a FEW programs!
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
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.
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.