Slashdot Mirror
Intel's 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Unleashed
EconolineCrush writes: "Intel has released a 2.4GHz version of its Pentium 4 processor, and The Tech Report does an excellent job comparing its performance with previous Pentium 4 processors, and the latest in AMD's Athlon XP stable. There's more to this story than just another notch on the MHz pole, as the review showcases some new benchmarks in an already diverse set of tests, and shows the new P4 leveraging an impressive performance from RDRAM-based platform. Incidentally, the slack demand for RDRAM has it almost as cheap as DDR SDRAM."
Please oh please let the next article read:
"Average number of offspring has decreased to 2.4"
come up with only 243 pins?
Now MSWord can bring up the Paperclip animation even faster...
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
Interference with the processor...?
I mean, wouldn't that just suck? Somebody walks in to the room with a new Pentium and your network dies????!!!!!
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
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.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
I'd bet that they probably feel somewhat comfortable being a little bit faster than AMD. They will likely keep to smaller speed bumps and go back to the standard update path so long as they keep just a little bit ahead of AMD.
They probably could jump to 3 Ghz if they wanted to, but want to keep their profitable upgrade cycle going as much as possible. They'll stay just with or a little ahead of AMD, but not too far ahead.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Tomshardware has also posted an article today putting it against the latest Athalon XP.
Since they only tested with a single OS, and that OS was Windows XP(a fairly new release of a historically unstable operating system, probably rife with performance bottlenecks that are more apparent on some types of hardware than others) these benchmarks are principally useful to Microsoft Windows users.
It'd be nice to see similar tests with a couple of linux kernel variants (1.0.x, 2.2.x, 2.5.x) and some BSDs, Solaris, whatever. Just get some heterogenity in there and see what difference OSes make, hardware vendors are famous for tuning their systems to meet benchmarks after all.
--Charlie
yeah, I am holding and refuse to upgrade my main box (Orginal Athlon1Ghz) till hammer and presscot next year.
Same thing with graphics cards, there is no reason for me to upgrade my GF3 until it gives more than 10FPS increase in games.
we need a killerapp for all these power.
kawai
There are some benches on *NIX flavors here: link.
They aren't the most recent, but they effectively show that for us theoretical chemists, nothing beats P4+RDRAM+ifc for Gaussian98 (the timings are in minutes, not the sad seconds on most sites). Of course, more processors help, but the benchmarks looked at single chip+motherboard.
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
Take the latest from both Intel and AMD
Run standard stuff on it, AMD moves faster at a much smaller mhz.
Run stuff optimized for P4 on it, Intel now has the advantage.
Pay through the nose for Intel's latest and greatest.
So...whenever one of them releases a chip it comes down to do you run something that is intel optimized where you would get the performance boost? Also, do you want Intel on Intel, which'll work with 99.9% of stuff out there, or do you want to save a bundle and get AMD on Via/AMD/AliMagic/Whatever and have some possible incompatabilities?
Of course, my machines do just fine at 200-550Mhz.
"How long do we have to wait till they start offering 3 ghz ???
Moores law (18mth) equates to 3.85% per month, so you will have to wait approx 6 month for a 25% boots ie 3Ghz
Help fight continental drift.
This shows that it's really time for AMD to release Athlon XP's at .13 um before Intel are too much ahead of them. From what I understood, .18 Athlon are stuck at PR 2100+.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
You mean like when I am waving my cell phone and the mouse pointer moves on the screen? These things happen already. This might be a serious concern. I think that the processor might actually generate som e noise on this frequency. The problem though is, that P4 don't work on such a high frequency anyway unless utilized on 100%. So most of the time, no problems and if you want to test it, start kernel compiles. (At this speed, rather quite a few of them :))
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
...reports of fatal data collisions are up 300% today, due to little 1's and 0's comming down off a 2400mhz processor slamming into 333mhz ram and careening down to a 33mhz PCI bus...that's GOTTA hurt!
:-)
You're theory is all wet...
sorry, couldn't resist the pun, Mr Freely.
If Intel could jump to 3gz, they would, then they would leverage that against a marketing blitz to drive the "We're faster in all area od CPU benchmarking" . drive AMDS "value add" down, which wall street would take as negative(which they should) and cause AMD stocks to slip. Then do "bumps"
Intel would be much stronger short term and long term. Unless AMD has something up there sleeve waiting to use as a trump.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
At risk of sounding like bill gates (no one will ever need more than 64k of ram...) do that many people really care if the mhz line has been pushed forward another couple of yards? In the past it has seemed that the software industry has kept right up with the hardware companies. When they release a new video card they jump on it, a new processor, etc. Now it seems that the hardware companies have gotten so far ahead of the software industry that its going to take years before they take advantage of this. The only people a processor like this will benifit are those doing serious computations in photoshop, digital video or mathamatica and those industry professionals aren't using pentiums anyway. I'm not really sure what my point really is, just that it seems like this war between amd and intel is really pointless. No one is going to need or use this speed for years.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Yes, but if we get a few years down the road and dont have the processors fast enough to handle our software, hardware developers will be in a crunch. Really not much harm done by letting the hardware get ahead so we have the technology when we need it, not to mention getting it to work well, instead of having a quickly developed high-tech piece of crap when we suddenly need some extra speed.
LOTR: Elijah Wood is a munchkin asshat. Yes, asshat. LOL.
I'm about to read the review, but I'm guessing the Intel CPU performed better. Otherwise the headline would have been "AMD Slams Intel Once Again!".
In order to defeat the lameness filter, I will point out that MP Athlon boards are a lot cheaper than a few months ago and that I want one, and that it's about timeto hit Pricewatch.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
HotHardware's Benchmarks and 3GHz Overclock!
Who wouldn't want a 21" CPU? You could cook pancakes while you recalulate your spreadsheet!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Wow! This is 100 times more MHz than in 486 machine running OpenBSD acting as my home firewall
and wireless router (with 1 wireless and 2 ethernet interfaces).
Bullshit.
Intel's P-IV (including 2.4 GHz) datasheet states the power consumption at 49.8 amps @ 1.5 volts. That means nearly 75 watts!
Couple that amount of power with 478 waveguide-like pins to direct it, and you've got yourself a nice little white-noise broadcasting station. Just for kicks, I'd like to see the performance of an 802.11b PCI card trying to coexist with one of these!
How long before some clueless induhvidual brings one of these (in a case with a window mod, thus defeating the Faraday-cage effect) to a LAN party? I give it a couple weeks.
Let's see... P-IV @ 75 watts, vs. 802.11b @ about 1 watt? Which one do you think will win?
The noise floor for 802.11b is going up a few steps, that's for damn sure.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
>my grade school English teacher is now spinning >in her grave
...can she spin at 2.4 megahertz?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I didn't really like this review because the number of variables weren't reduce sufficently. He compares the older P4s with DDR SDRAM to the New P4 with RDRAM.
I still don't really know how the new and old P4s compare. For all I know, it might be the memory difference.
I understand that you probably can't get the new P4s with DDR SDRAM, but he should have used RDRAM on the old ones to compare, not DDR SDRAM. Both would have been fine, so you can compare those as well.
room101 -- how much can you stand before they break you?
(they always break you eventually)
a) 2.4 GHz
b) 2.4 Megabit
c) 2.4 ERA
d) 2.4 Linux Kernel
e) Article 2 Section 4 of the US Constitution
f) 2.4 Cowboy Neals
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Be thankful it's not more fucking "post-911" Katz droppings.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
It seems that the only thing the P4 can beat the Athlon on is anything that's memory bandwidth intensive . . . That's the difference between the Content Creation 2001/2002 suites that everyone seems to be completely baffled by - the new version includes apps that are bandwidth limited.
.
I'd be interested to see the performance of the Athlon XP if it had access to the same amount of memory bandwidth as the P4. . . I'd be willing to put money on the Athlon coming out on top.
So, is there a dual channel DDR chipset for the Athlon? Give the thing 4200GB/s memory bandwidth, and watch it kick the P4's arse even more . .
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
grrrrrrrr
himi da foo'
My very own DeCSS mirror.
I know a doctor who can shorten it to any length you need.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Why are we comparing a ~$600 chip (P4) to a ~$250 chip (Athlon)? Sure, it's fun for a little ego brawl to see who has the fastest chip on the block, but this has little practical information for the consumer. All this says for Intel is "Hey look, I can build a slightly faster chip for SSE2 optimized apps for 250% more!". I'm not impressed. It's not only the MHZ that don't matter, the AMD "model numbers" should be irrelevant too. What really matters is price/performance. I'd rather see a ~$250 Athlon benchmarked against a ~$250 P4. Then simply mention that if you want P4's fastest offering, you can plunge $600 for it.
We don't compare the MHZ or model numbers between the Geforce and Radeon video cards - we only compare price and performance. The same should go for CPU's.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
Unless you're talking about the USB support, which is broken in the latest AMD 760MPX chipset. Most vendors are shipping a USB PCI card to make up for it, but for some that loss of a PCI slot is very painful.
M$ will find a way to make that shiny new P4 2.4GHz crawl along like a P100. A few more security bugs, a couple hundred more features in Office, a few more annoyances like Messenger, and we're there.
This may be redundant since I browse at 4, but I saw no mention in the entire article of the prices of the CPUs and their support hardware.
Pricewatch doesn't list 2.4Ghz P4s yet, but a P4 2.2 mb/cpu combo is $570, and the Athlon 2100 combo is under $300. The fastest Intel mb/cpu combo under $300 listed is 1.9Ghz, which can NOT keep up with an Athlon 2100 setup.
There's certainly more to a purchasing decision than price and performance, and I don't expect every article to cover every angle, but the disparity in price/performance ratios between the companies seems VERY signifiant to me.
Perhaps this article is too targeted for gamers. Business and home users will be more concerned with economy, and professional high-performance users (server/workstation/research) will probably spring for dual processors if raw throughput is so important.
In any case, I look forward to AMD's next moves.
Well lets add another technology to the long list of products that were better than many commonly used products, yet never got significant market share. (BeOs, Alpha Processors, etc. etc.)
For that kind of dough, I can roll a dual 2100+ system and run rings around it in most real life tasks that would require this sort of speed processor (like video encoding).
For the moment, Intel may even have the highest preformance, lower priced processor (so as to exclude the Alphas, Itanics, etc.), but on a total price performance basis, the AMD chips beat them hands down.
- Windows NT. Many people (and most gamers) are still running Win9x. For a variety of reasons, these people will want to migrate to NT/XP/Happy Meal in the future. That takes processing power, both directly and indirectly (e.g. NT uses more memory, which means the OS has to move around more memory, which means it needs a faster CPU, etcetera).
- Improved human computer interaction and other "soft" areas such as localization and internationalization. For convenience I'm including things like 200dpi displays and input devices with very high sampling rates/throughput as well as sane error messages and effective automated troubleshooting -- think Clippy, or the IBM effort towards "self managing" systems (if I got the term right).
- Increased focus on/awareness of security. It is nice if the computer prevents people from tampering with your data by verifying credentials at every step. It also means the computer has to verify credentials at every step.
- Interpreted applications. Someone described Internet Explorer as an "advanced interpreter" on Slashdot the other day. That is a very accurate characterization. Think also of things like Flash, Java(script), and VB.
- Bloat (or, what most of you guys would call bloat -- I don't think many of you could or would want to design their own fonts). Think of things like document templates, fonts (and complex font rendering technology) and desktop backgrounds (200dpi desktop images anyone?). Think also of the incorporation of "real world" quantities into software; things like measurements (pixels, inches, cm), "favorites" lists, ISP lists, stock media, etcetera.
- Backward compatibility, both on the hardware as on the software level. This includes thunking layers, virtual machines, emulators, and what not. Open source software, incidentally, can avoid some of the cost of backward compatibility, because when you change a piece of software, you can usually simply recompile software which depends on it. It is truly remarkable how much code any random application contains because of the requirement for binary backward compatibility.
Obviously this is just a very fragmented list and there is a lot of overlap in the things I mentioned as well. Still you have to ask, why is it that a 2 GHz machines can take anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds just to boot up? That is more than it used to take my CP/M Bondwell to start up Wordstar. And that was over fifteen years ago. Just a thought.Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
AFAIK there are no PCI 802.11b cards. There are PCMCIA 802.11b cards bundled with a PCI > PCMCIA adapter card. Since the PCMCIA cards already have their own faraday shield and the antenna is outside the computers chassis, I doubt that there is very much interference in either direction. Also, I dont think that any of those 478 pins actually cary any 2.4 GHz signals and probably a third of them are power or ground pins.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Yeah, MPEG encoding is a big thing right now but it's not as compelling for me. I agree, doing VDub on my box is a pain.
:)
4Ghz. End of next year perhaps
kawai
Just a little competition and we have cheap ultra high performance CPUs! Back in the 80s, no one would dream of computer hardware with such performance.
One monopoly in the OS market and we have restrictive bloated ultra expensive insecure operating systems! Back in the 80s, I wonder if this is what people were dreaming about...
More information here .. Netgear and 3COM. PCI Cards are really useful when you don't want to rewire an office to provide someone connectivity at their desktop. Ok. I'm just nitpicking. :)
Who else counted the pins in the picture? :-)
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
First, I never said the pins were carrying 2.4 GHz signals. I said they were "waveguide-like". They will likely facilitate the radiation of some of the ~75 watts dissipated inside the chip package. Simple physics: energy goes from source to sink -- there is less similar radiation outside the package, thus there will be leakage. Fact of life. Need to reduce / prevent interference? That's what the grounded metal case is for.
Second, at 2.4 GHz a signal doesn't follow a wire (or a circuit board trace) like it does at 60 Hz. At 2.4 GHz a wire is more of a 'suggestion' than a 'command'. This is why (radar | microwave ovens | certain satellite communication systems) use waveguides instead of wires. It's also one of the reasons everything isn't running at the same clock speed.
Third, one of the Ten Commandments of /. -- Thou shalt query Google.
- Arcowave AWL-1100P
- D-Link DWL-520
- Intel PRO/Wireless 2011B LAN PCI Adapter
- LG Wireless PCI Card
- Linksys WMP11
- Proxim Harmony 802.11b PCI Card
- Samsung SWL-2000P or SWL-2100P
None of these are PCMCIA > PCI adapters, though some of them look like they're using the same innards. I'm not even going to include all the 'Mini-PCI' cards being used in laptops these days. Yes, they all have some shielding. No, it's not as complete as a PCMCIA card -- if I even dare call that complete.PCI Cards are installed with the PCB facing in the general direction of the processor (in the ATX spec). I don't know the shielding capabilities of circuit board material, but it sure isn't a solid conductor -- and... many of your traces are exposed to the radiation inside the case. This is where I expect problems and performance degradation to have their roots.
Perhaps you remember a few years ago when it was trendy to install shielding around your audio card for a greater Signal/Noise Ratio? I saw people use copper flashing (the stuff you use to keep your roof from leaking) to construct a box, doing a very nice soldering job, use stand-offs for installation... all to remove a little static. The whole trick was to construct a Faraday cage that would allow the ISA connector (remember those?) as little clearance as possible, without actually shorting it.
We may see a resurgence of that technique.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
I stand corrected on the PCI 802.11b cards.
As far as waveguides and faraday sheilds go, doesn't a waveguide have to have a greater than or equal to the wavelength of the signal it carries (reasonable multiples and fractions may also work)? Similarly, doesn't an opening in a faraday shield have to be larger than the wavelength of a signal for that signal to get through. Since the wavelength of a 2.4GHz signal is about 5 inches, I don't think that it's likey that these processor pins will function as waveguides for it nor is it likley that any 2.4Ghz emissions that make it past the enormous heatsink and the motherboards groundplane will get through the holes in those shields.
If I am grossly wrong about any of this please correct me.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
"Waveguide"
"Faraday Cage"
You're catching buzzwords and missing the point. The P-IV processor is packaged in materials not known for their radiation absorption. While the heat spreader is nickel-coated copper, the substrate itself is "Fiber-reinforced resin." (P-IV Datasheet, Page 55)
Plastic.
I have never seen a Pentium (MMX | Pro | II | III | IV) use a grounded heatsink, either.
If you were harboring any illusions that Intel puts shielding in its' processors, please check them at the door, thankyouverymuch. That's what the computer case is for.
If you've ever looked at a Class B (that's home use!) shielded case, you'll see the (unused) external drive bays covered with metal. IBM used to put a very nice braided wire rope gasket on the joints of the PS/1 (among others). You'll also find similar leakage prevention in many rack-mount servers.
Heck, the PS/1 was in the original Pentium days, when processors were running at 200 MHz -- that means a 1.5-meter (nearly 59-inch!) wavelength! All that shielding effort wasn't just for fun, you know.
And, since I'm bothering to respond to all this, I might as well make a point about Faraday Cages:
Now, what if I were to cut a 3-inch hole in that window? It's easily smaller than the 5-inch / 12.5-cm wavelength. By your logic, no radiation will escape. Would you be willing to turn it on and stand directly in front of it for an extended length of time?
(Hint: not a good idea.)
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
While you've provided some interesting practical examples, please explain to me exactly where my misunderstanding about faraday cages, and waveguides lies.
As far as I can tell, in order for a waveguide to be functional, it has to have a diameter that is a multiple of the wavelenth (I say again a processor pin won't cut it as a waveguide for 2.4GHz), and faraday cages are generally effective at blocking wavelengths down to about 10x their aperature size (none of the shields on those 802.11b cards looked like they had gaps >.2 inches).
Could you please try a real explanation and not just anectdotes? If there's somthing I'm missing I really do want to understand it and I'm not just being argumentative.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"