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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.
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I sure hope, for the sake of good ol' times, they'll be manufacturing a 4.77Ghz processor soon...
...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
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--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
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
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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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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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!
it crashes windows in half the time as my 1Ghz. ?
Sit... Speak.... Shake.... Good Dog!
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).
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
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.
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.
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.