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Two Approaches to the Next-Generation Desktop
puppetman writes: "Tom's Hardware has a review up of a pre-production P4/2666 using 533 mhz Rambus memory (and shows it stomping the competition). The Pentium 4 needs memory bandwidth, and DDR doesn't supply it. Or does it? Anandtech, ironically, has a preview of the E7500 chipset from Intel - dual channel DDR with support for up to 16 gig of RAM. With a new bus architecture, this looks perfect for high-load databases that need wide pipes to hard-drives, memory, and ethernet. Both of these technologies look great for mid-range database servers.
Anandtech claims that dual DDR200 will provide 3.2 gig/second bandwidth, where Tom claims that DDR266 (single channel) offers only 2.1 gig/second. Intel is sure hedging their bets. I wonder what AMD has up their sleeves."
The Pentium 4 needs memory bandwidth, and DDR doesn't supply it.
Do *users* need this memory bandwidth or does the proverbial Quake benchmark need it?
Show me "desktop" (as the headline implies) application that requires this. Even the most cutting edge 3D games don't use current 3D processors to their potential, these days.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Nothing above 1GHz is needed right now for most users. However, history has shown us that every time we say this (processors are faster than they need to be, blah blah blah), someone comes out with killer apps that drive the need for faster machines. You know by the time Warcraft 4 (or its equivalent) comes out, 1GHz will be painful to run it on.
Until we have machines that can perform (near) perfect speech control/dictation, face recognition (in real time, reading expressions), and can make realistic holograms (ala STNG Holodeck), I will not even begin to believe that CPU's have come far enough.
In the meantime, AMD rides the gravy train.
AthlonXP 2000+ runs at 1,666MHz at a bus which is the equivalent of 266MHz.
The P4 is running at 2666MHz (a full Gigahertz higher frequency) with a bus at the equivalent of 533MHz.
How come so many people rant and rant about how clockspeed isn't everything, then they go and use the same argument in a different way to establish the "clear superiority" of the Athlon? Who cares how many Hz one is than the other? (Don't argue about consumers here, that's for another discussion...).
Sorry, but if you're going to paint it as an achievement that the Athlon performs so well 1000MHz slower than the 2.6GHz P4, then why can't the Intel fanboys paint the fact that the P4 runs at 2.6GHz as an achievement?
The (essentiually overclocked) Pentium 4 has a full SIXTY PERCENT CPU clockspeed advantage and a ONE HUNDRED PERCENT front side bus (FSB) advantage, yet look at its real-world performance:
"Essentially overclocked" Pentium 4? It's not a new Pentium 4 chip, it's a new motherboard. Of course it's an "essentially overclocked" Pentium 4. Why add in the negative connotations?
I just thought I'd point out that the only conclusion that you can really draw from these tests is that, as many in the hardware community know, the P4's architecture is designed for high clockspeed, with zero regard to actual real-world performance. Which matters more to you?
I dunno, looking at these benchmarks I'd say the Pentium 4's architecture is damn fast. It's scaling up incredibly fast. Remember when it was first released and everybody called it a disaster?
Intel could easily release those 2.6GHz chips today, but they aren't doing it for marketing reasons. The architecture of the Pentium 4 is incredibly fast, but the management of the company is spreading out the releases over time. You can get a 2GHz today and overclock it to 2.6GHz. People are doing that all over.
The Athlon is a different design: It's very fast. The Pentium 4 is another design: It's very fast. The Athlon is cheaper, by a fair margin, especially at the highest end chips. But painting the picture that the Pentium 4 is so very much slower than the Athlon, especially with benchmarks like this, are just plain stupid.