Posted by
ryuzaki0
on from the cut-on-out-speed-one-up dept.
INicheI writes "According to Intel, the plans for a release of a 2GHz Xeon for dual processor servers have been cancelled. Instead Intel is planning to debut a 2.2GHz chip codenamed "Prestonia" that will be ready the first quarter of 2002. I would love to see Quake running on a 4.4GHz computer."
For an ordinary PC consumer? And let's not talk about Quake for this. Everyone knows that nobody can really see the difference between 40fps and 100+fps, so 3D gaming really is a shuck. Between today's modern graphics cards and even mid-range CPU's there's enough computing power to do high-quality 3-D rendering at high frame rates. I haven't upgraded my system (AMD K6-2 450) in two years, mainly because I've never found a good reason to do so. It does everything I need to do.
What the hardware industry needs is a new killer app like DOOM was in the early 1990's. DOOM may have made Id software millions, but it made Intel and its cohorts billions in hardware upgrades. If all you want is word processing, spreadsheets, and a few games here and there, nobody in his right mind would use a gigahertz-class processor, unless MS and Intel are in cahoots in making Office XP the bloated monster it is!:)
-- Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Re:what is it good for?
by
OmegaDan
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Everyone knows that nobody can really see the difference between 40fps and 100+fps
This is true but you've missed the point... FPS is a measurement of *average* framerate. Ultra fast cards are an attempt to raise the *worst case* performance of the card not the average case. A mere side-effect of this is raising the FPS.
Re:what is it good for?
by
WasterDave
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
There is a big difference between 40 and 100 fps, particularly if you have a monitor that refreshes at 100Hz. Not wishing to harp on and get even more off topic, but if you turn 180 degrees, aim and fire in a quarter second that gives you:
40Hz 100Hz (apologies for lame fmt)
Turn 6 15
Aim 3 8
Fire 1 2
..frames in which to perform the operation. Those couple of extra frames for aiming with actually do make a difference. I actually got noticeably better at Quake (particularly the rail gun) when moving to a faster card and an optical mouse.
Back on topic, this is good for databases. Faster processors means fewer processors, less cache contention, good for all concerned really. And this is a really good move on Intel's part - rather than support a.18 micron part they really wish they hadn't made, in a socket they will use for precisely one processor, on a chipset for precisely one processor, they're swallowing pride and just getting on to the next one. Sensible. Very. Particularly when you consider how much the P4 needs its' on die cache to come up before it starts working properly.
Speed is very nice, but....
by
Splezunk
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
What about reducing the power required, or the heat. How about the cost etc. I have no idea what really needs that sort of power? I know the Xeon is more of a server chip, so speed is important, but this trend is happening on Desktop chips too.
All this speed is encouraging programmers to be lazy and not use good code that works fast, but rather rely on the hardware being fast.
Just a bit of a rant...
Spurred by AMD and IBM?
by
Zergwyn
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I wonder if this delay to increase performance might also be to head off IBM and AMD. Intel says that they will release the new Xeon in the 1st part of 2002. This coincides with AMD's roadmap plans to release its own server.13 micron processor(the Thoroughbred). In addition, that is about the time that the G5 is supposed to be released. While obviously neither Apple nor Motorola do servers, the G5 will be the first fully Book E compliant chip to come out of the AIM alliance, and IBM has plans for Book E chips. From IBM's site:
Since 1991, IBM and Motorola have collaborated on the PowerPC architecture for personal computers, workstations, servers and embedded processor product lines, yet have developed and marketed separate implementations. Driven by the tremendous success of PowerPC microprocessors in the embedded marketplace, the companies announced in September 1997 the start of a joint effort to further enhance the PowerPC architecture to ensure greater consistency in their future embedded products. The Book E project and the new architecture it defines is the result of that effort.
With the chips being 64bit and fully capable of supporting multiple cores, it could give IBM servers and workstations a boost. The chip architecture wars are about to start to hit another exciting stretch, as long research programs begin to produce results for Intel, AMD, and AIM. 2002 should be a big year.
For pc-emulation
by
Baki
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Such extremely fast computers might be good for virtual-PC environments such as vmware. You Windows-in-a-virtual-PC always takes a huge performance hit due to emulation, so much that it isn't even possible to emulate 3D graphics hardware acceleration (direct-x) in such products.
Having an obscenely fast PC might make it possible to run Windows under Linux, and still have Windows including direct-x run with enough performance to do some serious gaming.
I have heard that you *May* be able to run Windows XP on these machines..
Re:Stupid Question
by
Dwain_Snyders
·
· Score: 3, Informative
There are several advantages to a setup as described in this story... a dual-processor Xeon can have benefits on the desktop. Of course, I'd never push a Xeon processor in this enviroment as I honestly don't think it will be the overall best solution in the near future. With dual-Athlons and Durons on the horizon, I'd take a closer look at them before considering a dual Xeon system, if only for the price aspect. However, I will attempt to explain why the Xeon architecture is superior to a standard Pentium III and why it potentially matters on the desktop.
Intel produces a version of the Pentium II and III called the "Xeon", which contains up to 2 megabytes of L2 cache. The Xeon is used frequently in servers as it supports 8-way multi-processing, but on the desktop the Xeon does offer considerable speed advantages over the standard Pentium III when large amounts of data are involved.
Basically, the larger the working set of an application, that is, the amount of code and data in use at any given time, the larger the L2 cache needs to be. To keep costs low, Intel and AMD have both actually DECREASED the sizes of their L2 caches in newer versions of the Pentium III and Athlon, which I believe is a mistake. (AMD is working on this in the new chips - new technology will be used to increase the size of the L2 cache while retaining the full data-shuttle flexibility).
The top level cache, the L1 cache, is the most crucial, since it is accessed first for any memory operation. The L1 cache uses extremely high speed memory (which has to keep up with the internal speed of the processor), so it is very expensive to put on chip and tends to be relatively small. Again, from 8K in the 486 to 128K in the Athlon.
The next step is the decoder, and this is one of the two major flaws of the P6 family. The 4-1-1 rule prevents more than one "complex" instruction from being decoded each clock cycle. Much like the U-V pairing rules for the original Pentium, Intel's documents contain tables showing how many micro-ops are required by every machine language instructions and they give guidelines on how to group instructions.
Unlike main memory, the decoder is always in use. Every clock cycle, it decodes 1, 2, or 3 instructions of machine language code. This limits the throughput of the processor to at most 3 times the clock speed. For example, a 1 GHz Pentium III can execute at most 3 billion instructions per second, or 3000 MIPS. In reality, most programmers and most compilers write code that is less than optimal, and which is usually grouped for the complex-simple-complex-simple pairing rules of the original Pentium. As a result, the typical throughput of a P6 family processor is more like double the clock speed. For example, 2000 MIPS for a 1 GHz processor. You'll notice that the Athlon outperfoms the P3 family in this regard by a large margin.
--
2DUP *;
Re:At what point...
by
Kynde
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I have trouble distinguishing between anything above 20 FPS or so.
I'm getting awfully tired of people mixing fps of normal video and 1st person 3D games. Having played quake and it's offspring online for 4 years now, without a shread of doubt I can say that Q3 offers you such playability that telling apart 40fps and lunartic 125fps (which btw is optimal for Quake3 engine physics, which alone would be enough reason for some ppl to go for 125) is relatively easy.
Where you easily notice it is quick glances backwards, i.e. when in midair you just lay a glance what's right behind you and turn right back. Such rapid motions and the smoothness there are actually rather essential in quake-like games (once you get past the shooting-everything-that-moves-along-with-your-tea m-mates-phase anyway).
In other words, the rant usually is that when looking at a screen the human eye cannot distinguish FPS's over 20 (...50 depending on who's ranting), but they usually neglect that with 1st person 3D games it's whole world ahead of you that keeps turning all around and in a very quick fashion even. We're not talking about a rotation of some teapot in a 3D animation. And what's worse, it's usually people that have zero or very very little experience in 3D gaming. The kinda "I've played through quake in hard core mode, I know what I'm talking about". Those people have very little idea how competative things have gotten in the online gaming scene.
I can't understand why people also forget that 20 FPS would mean 50ms rate of flow. Not directly comparable, but still, anyone (experienced) who has played on the net and in a lan know that's there's a huge difference between 50ms and 10ms.
Besides, try telling to some sprint athlete that wether his shoes weigh 10 grams less or more makes jack difference.
-- 1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
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Why quake...i wanna see pong on that beast!
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For an ordinary PC consumer? And let's not talk about Quake for this. Everyone knows that nobody can really see the difference between 40fps and 100+fps, so 3D gaming really is a shuck. Between today's modern graphics cards and even mid-range CPU's there's enough computing power to do high-quality 3-D rendering at high frame rates. I haven't upgraded my system (AMD K6-2 450) in two years, mainly because I've never found a good reason to do so. It does everything I need to do.
What the hardware industry needs is a new killer app like DOOM was in the early 1990's. DOOM may have made Id software millions, but it made Intel and its cohorts billions in hardware upgrades. If all you want is word processing, spreadsheets, and a few games here and there, nobody in his right mind would use a gigahertz-class processor, unless MS and Intel are in cahoots in making Office XP the bloated monster it is! :)
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
All this speed is encouraging programmers to be lazy and not use good code that works fast, but rather rely on the hardware being fast.
Just a bit of a rant...
Since 1991, IBM and Motorola have collaborated on the PowerPC architecture for personal computers, workstations, servers and embedded processor product lines, yet have developed and marketed separate implementations. Driven by the tremendous success of PowerPC microprocessors in the embedded marketplace, the companies announced in September 1997 the start of a joint effort to further enhance the PowerPC architecture to ensure greater consistency in their future embedded products. The Book E project and the new architecture it defines is the result of that effort.
With the chips being 64bit and fully capable of supporting multiple cores, it could give IBM servers and workstations a boost. The chip architecture wars are about to start to hit another exciting stretch, as long research programs begin to produce results for Intel, AMD, and AIM. 2002 should be a big year.
Having an obscenely fast PC might make it possible to run Windows under Linux, and still have Windows including direct-x run with enough performance to do some serious gaming.
I have heard that you *May* be able to run Windows XP on these machines..
There are several advantages to a setup as described in this story ... a dual-processor Xeon can have benefits on the desktop. Of course, I'd never push a Xeon processor in this enviroment as I honestly don't think it will be the overall best solution in the near future. With dual-Athlons and Durons on the horizon, I'd take a closer look at them before considering a dual Xeon system, if only for the price aspect. However, I will attempt to explain why the Xeon architecture is superior to a standard Pentium III and why it potentially matters on the desktop.
Intel produces a version of the Pentium II and III called the "Xeon", which contains up to 2 megabytes of L2 cache. The Xeon is used frequently in servers as it supports 8-way multi-processing, but on the desktop the Xeon does offer considerable speed advantages over the standard Pentium III when large amounts of data are involved.Basically, the larger the working set of an application, that is, the amount of code and data in use at any given time, the larger the L2 cache needs to be. To keep costs low, Intel and AMD have both actually DECREASED the sizes of their L2 caches in newer versions of the Pentium III and Athlon, which I believe is a mistake. (AMD is working on this in the new chips - new technology will be used to increase the size of the L2 cache while retaining the full data-shuttle flexibility).
The top level cache, the L1 cache, is the most crucial, since it is accessed first for any memory operation. The L1 cache uses extremely high speed memory (which has to keep up with the internal speed of the processor), so it is very expensive to put on chip and tends to be relatively small. Again, from 8K in the 486 to 128K in the Athlon.The next step is the decoder, and this is one of the two major flaws of the P6 family. The 4-1-1 rule prevents more than one "complex" instruction from being decoded each clock cycle. Much like the U-V pairing rules for the original Pentium, Intel's documents contain tables showing how many micro-ops are required by every machine language instructions and they give guidelines on how to group instructions.
Unlike main memory, the decoder is always in use. Every clock cycle, it decodes 1, 2, or 3 instructions of machine language code. This limits the throughput of the processor to at most 3 times the clock speed. For example, a 1 GHz Pentium III can execute at most 3 billion instructions per second, or 3000 MIPS. In reality, most programmers and most compilers write code that is less than optimal, and which is usually grouped for the complex-simple-complex-simple pairing rules of the original Pentium. As a result, the typical throughput of a P6 family processor is more like double the clock speed. For example, 2000 MIPS for a 1 GHz processor. You'll notice that the Athlon outperfoms the P3 family in this regard by a large margin.2DUP * ;
I have trouble distinguishing between anything above 20 FPS or so.
a m-mates-phase anyway).
I'm getting awfully tired of people mixing fps of normal video and 1st person 3D games. Having played quake and it's offspring online for 4 years now, without a shread of doubt I can say that Q3 offers you such playability that telling apart 40fps and lunartic 125fps (which btw is optimal for Quake3 engine physics, which alone would be enough reason for some ppl to go for 125) is relatively easy.
Where you easily notice it is quick glances backwards, i.e. when in midair you just lay a glance what's right behind you and turn right back. Such rapid motions and the smoothness there are actually rather essential in quake-like games (once you get past the shooting-everything-that-moves-along-with-your-te
In other words, the rant usually is that when looking at a screen the human eye cannot distinguish FPS's over 20 (...50 depending on who's ranting), but they usually neglect that with 1st person 3D games it's whole world ahead of you that keeps turning all around and in a very quick fashion even. We're not talking about a rotation of some teapot in a 3D animation. And what's worse, it's usually people that have zero or very very little experience in 3D gaming. The kinda "I've played through quake in hard core mode, I know what I'm talking about". Those people have very little idea how competative things have gotten in the online gaming scene.
I can't understand why people also forget that 20 FPS would mean 50ms rate of flow. Not directly comparable, but still, anyone (experienced) who has played on the net and in a lan know that's there's a huge difference between 50ms and 10ms.
Besides, try telling to some sprint athlete that wether his shoes weigh 10 grams less or more makes jack difference.
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW