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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."
I am partly curious what kind of OC'ing results you will be able to get out of the 2666 MHz P4 w/ the 533 Mhz RDRAM, I would like to see it't benchmarks compared to the OC'd 2200 (to 3760 MHz) w/ slower FSB that was posted not so long ago.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
"And that, my friends, is why AMD is well on its way to winning the war."
I bought my computer with a 1.2Ghz Athalon in September. At that point about 1/3 of the computers in stock were AMD. Since about a month after that I've been in that and several other computer stores, multiple times and NOT ONCE have I seen a computer with an AMD chip. I'm sure the companies will only be too happy to oblige when you order (as I ended up doing with mine) but I've stopped seeing them in the stores. Could this have something to do with the fact that I'm in Canada, some bizarre business decision on AMD's part or perhaps we just like intel a lot more? Or is this happening generally in computer stores? If I recall this sudden shift away from AMD happened around the time of the release of the P4s. Don't underestimate the publics willingness to succumb to hype and a feeling of security. Most people will gladly hand over the extra one or two hundred to make sure their two grand machine can surf the net and doesn't explode.
I stole this Sig
Of course a not-yet-released equivalent of an overclocked P4 is going to beat the competition vs. AMD's AthlonXP which is out and available NOW.
I would like to note that while the P4 did pounce the AthlonXP, take a look at the numbers (and i'm not talking about price, as I don't even want to know how much that P4 will cost!)
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.
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:
MP3 encoding: 6.2% faster than the Athlon. (woop)
DivX encoding: 30% (note that the program is highly optimized, by Intel themselves, for the P4. How many programmers have an Intel engineer handy?)
Xinema 4D: 12.8%
3DMark 2001: 4.9%
Note that that Lightwave was not included--the only common test that runs faster on the P4 is the raytracing test. Guess which one Tom's Hardware used?
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?
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
Don't be too impressed with the numbers of the Lightwave rendering benchmark, the scene used is heavily Radiosity-based, which Newtek (makers of lightwave) publicly said that was SSE2-optimized, if they'd run the same application benchmark but with any other math-intensive scenes like raytrace, etc.. the gap wouldn't be that impressive. I use Dual Xenon and Dual MPs at work, I've noticed the difference, and Tom being tom, he still goes on doing flawed benchmarks (flawed because he doesn't mention that little fact even if a lot of people told him).
At least he does other benchmarks to round-up the possibilities of errors.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Desktop users don't need anything faster than 1Ghz. So what's Intel's brilliant strategy? Why, they're going to develop chips that are even faster than the overpriced 2Ghz P4s they're having difficulties unloading right now.
You're missing the second part of the the story, here -- while increases in top-end processing speed are nice, they are not the only result of faster/more efficient processors.
Another major feature is that for the same clock speed, it can be run on less power and with less heat, meaning that even if they only sold the chips to run at 1 GHz, they would be able to run on half or a third of the power that a current 1 GHz chip could.
I recently replaced the 700 MHz celeron in my home entertainment machine with a 1.2 GHz Pentium 3 -- not because I needed more power, quite the contrary. I underclocked the P3 to 600 MHz and took off the processor fan, thereby reducing the total noise on the system. It's been running fine, only a few degrees warmer than the old chip with active cooling. Total power use and waste heat is down.
In a few years, the 20 GHz chips mean that we'll be able to run our wristwatches off a battery for months at 600 MHz without any cooling at all. THAT is the point...
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Depending on luminance levels, contrast, etc. the eye can perceive at much higher rates than 40Hz. Film appears "okay" at 24fps because the film itself has motion blur, and because most people are used to it (and filmakers work within it's limitations). But I work in a vision research lab where we have a 240Hz monitor (120 Hz for each eye with high-speed shutter stereo). For some things, it does matter.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
His entire conclusion is absurd. Piece by piece:
:)
"Our detailed tests show that forthcoming P4 CPUs with 133 MHz FSB clock used in conjunction with the 845E chipset (DDR SDRAM support) will effectively be castrated."
Intel castrated it their selves. Compare its performance to VIA's P4X266 Chipset's performance and you will see that Intel crippled it to prevent it from competing with Intel's Rambus chipset. Notice that Intel is suing VIA for that chipset because it ruins the facade that RDRAM is better than DDR. Also note that Intel has refused nVidia's request for an Intel license for a DDR chipset. Intel knows that a dual channel DDR chipset would show RDRAM for what it is: A fraudulent attempt to maintain a high performance monopoly. Whatever company "causes to be sold" the most RDRAM gets to own a controlling interest in Rambus Inc. At this point, Intel is the clear winner even though Sony made a race out of it by packaging Rambus with the Playstation 2. Intel suppresses their own DDR performance to make people believe that RDRAM is the fastest stuff out there. AMD would be committing suicide by using RDRAM to capitalize on Intel's marketing hype because that would place them directly under Intel's thumb.
"This is because the Pentium 4 has a problem: the increase in clock speed (e.g. P4/2533 or P4/2666) will be rendered useless by the slow DDR SDRAM memory bus of the 845 platform".
Again, this is Intel's doing for product placement purposes as was done with the Celeron when it competed with the Pentium III and was done by Apple on the new iMac's 100fsb 800mhz G4. A 133fsb does not cost any money, it is just an easily achievable clock frequency with available current chipsets.
"And one shouldn't forget that even a dual DDR platform for P4 should be priced at a level that is similar to a Rambus system, considering that it's from Intel."
Rephrased: "And one shouldn't forget that even a dual DDR platform for P4 will be priced as high as an RDRAM system because Intel will not license the platform to nVidia and Intel KNOWS it will outperform a Rambus system, ruining 2 years of carefully crafted marketing and gamesmanship" The fact is, a dual channel DDR chipset from Intel may be available for the Pentuim 4, but only for the Xeon, a processor not available except from Intel's favored OEM Parteners, such as Dell.
Before you defend Intel remember that Craig Barrett, after AMD went from 10% market share to 40% in a year, said "the market is dropping" to justify Intel's reduced profits. Well, Intel is a bellwether stock and the market believed everything Craig said. The market did drop. We all lost our jobs. We can now say in hindsight that at least a part of the market was due to drop. But because of Craig's statement, it was the tech sector that was hit first, and hardest. Instead of simply saying, "Intel has reduced profits because of competitive pressure", he brought the entire tech sector down with him. The recession that was due could have been placed entirely on Enron's shoulders. The energy sector was in fact dropping. Enron's insiders were cashing out at the same time Craig made his statement. People got scared and pulled their money out of the market. There was less money in the market than there had been and it came out of the tech sector when it should have come out of energy.
Go ahead and defend Intel. They have made poor greedy choices, sold inferior products at exorbitant prices and done it at the expense of all our livelihoods. Shame on them.
Intel's 1.7 trillion dollar market cap has been cut by Tom Pabst on more than one occasion. A series of articles he has had deriding Rambus, causing the 1.13 Ghz recall, and showing the Pentium 4 for the paper tiger it is has seriously hurt Intel. But Tom, like all hardware websites is cash poor. Tom's hardware has resorted to doing marketing research among their readership for Socratic Technologies. Sometimes they have been overt, sometimes they have sent readers to secure servers just for simple popularity polls. Tom's latest revenue generation technique is the introduction of "Editorial Content Sponsorships" which I'm going to guess prompted the recent editorial change of heart toward Rambus. Please notice that in the most recent article no AMD processors were over clocked according to their projected roadmaps and the test is presented as if it was fiction. Unfortunately, it seems we have lost another fair and unbiased journalist. Another because Sharky's Extreme was the first to go into Intel's pocket, prompting Sharky himself to leave the website. Sharky's is owned by INT Media Group. Noteable investors in INT media include Dell Computer Corporation, International Business Machines Corporation, Lucent Technologies Inc., Macromedia Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Nortel Networks Corporation and Oracle Corporation.
Expect wonderful reviews of Intel hardware on Sharky's and unfortunately now, Tom's. Look to [H]ard OCP, The Inquirer, The register, Anandtech and Ars Technica for relatively unbiased hardware news.
Post Intelligently, Thanks
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Keep in mind that, on the day the 2GHz P4's were released, Tom's was running Intel-sponsored P4 ads on its front page. The 2Ghz P4 they overclocked to 3GHz was an engineering sample while their overclocked Athlon XP was retail. They're hardly objective.
Screw that, I _NEED_ the extra performance.
/PAINFUL/. Running any sort of complex filters meant going out to a friggin lunch break, bleh).
:) ) we should have MP3 encoding speeds of a few MINUTES per second passed.
;) ) that cost me $40 per CPU (ok so at that price I bought two, wish I'd bougthen four or five. :) ) will have to suffice.
Hell, I was DISAPOINTED with the ABYSLEMAL results that came in.
Huh?? You ask?
Well yah.
You see how that MPEG4 video took TIME to encode? Time that could be measured in MINUTES per video?
Tell me when I can do MPEG4 encoding at over 1000x real time speed with shitloads of Virtual Dub filters running and without out my CPU even going up to 10% utilization, and THEN I will say that we have (maybe) gone fast enough.
As it is I still have to hit the render button, wait... wait... wait... wait... wait... wait... wait... wait... wait... wait... Run it through my post production filters and repeat the waiting (seen above) if not for an even longer time, and THEN I get to compress it down to some sort of video stream (choose a codec folks).
Ooooh great...
Royal pain in the arse when rendering takes longer then creation.
Oh yah, and did I mention that I am not even using over $1k of software here? I am not even running some sort of fancy high end effects house, I am just doing regular quicky animations. But rendering those Terrains sure is a pain in the arse, and then those realistic clouds, ooh ouchies MAJOR performance hit there folks.
Heck even photoshop still takes times to run filters. Not even complex filters either, just single ones. (It has gotten A LOT better since the 'old days' of running Photoshop on those "brand new Pentium 166mhzs!!!" Oh man, that was
What about even transfering images from a digital camera? You know how bleeping long it takes to load previews of all images in a folder? You know, all 100-200 images? Or more? Most likely of varying resolutions to boot. How lovely.
That _IS_ enough to annoy a Grandama and encourage her to upgrade to a new machine.
You think people want to WAIT to encode their MP3 streams? Why? By the time we hit 10ghz or so (and if HD speeds hopefuly start scaling up a bit faster.
Or at least we sure as friggin better, heh.
Until then my 700mhz Duron OC'd to 950mhz/1ghz (depending on time of year
(well that and my 80gb + 20gb Hds which are quickly filling up. Screw CPU time, I can always play Gameboy, but I _NEED_ more HD space damnit! I filed up 40GB in two weeks, and I wasn't even trying!! )
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My company sells many, many Pentium 4 cpu's and systems, we have tested time and time again RDRAM and DDR memory on this platform (admittedly, we haven't seen this newer tech yet). Anyway, our findings in the past will probably still hold true to these newer techs and that is that while RDRAM provides higher bandwidth the latency is so high that if your applications is retreiving small amounts of data very often, the performance is very much decreased. RDRAM works great for things like games, graphics, video, etc because retrieving "large" chunks of memory is far more optimized. Most database accesses are going to return much small amounts of data, and considering the high initial latency each time, I think that the DDR will really provide a much more responsive database server. (Of course this depends on the data you're storing....)
I think that speech data entry is inefficient and not appropriate in most office environments. Think of how noisy it would be if everyone spoke to their computers!
What would be really wonderful is a Gregg Shorthand recognition system, for palmtop, laptop, and desktop digitizer pads. It would be a lot faster than the current text recognition systems, and maybe even faster than a keyboard for prose input. I don't think that Gregg is being taught as much as it used to be, but a freely available Gregg input system would bring it back for sure. There are already several gesture recognition programs out there. Gregg is something like that.