Intel Moves To 533MHz FSB

homerj79 writes: "Intel has launched an upgrade 850 chipset and faster Pentium 4's today. The new chipset, dubbed the 850E, supports a 533MHz (133MHz x 4) front side bus, as do the processors. Supporting processors come in speeds of 2.53, 2.4 and 2.26GHz. The 2.4GHz part is denoted as supporting the new FSB by a 'B' tagged to the end of it. And it appears as if the new chipset gives the P4 a performance boost in most apps over the previous 400MHz FSB chips and the Athlon XP." Meanwhile, back at the other processor ranch, firemoth writes: "Today OCAU has something special - They've gotten their hands on 3 AthlonXP CPU's based on AMD's new "Thoroughbred" core. This is the .13 micron process, of course, with lower voltage. This article compares them to the older Palomino core in both speed and temperature.. and they throw one into a Vapochill supercooling case and see just how fast it can go."

Comments

i850E doesn't officially support PC1066 RDRAM

[questionlp]

According to Anand's article on the new 533Mhz FSB P4's and the i850E chipset (which provides official support for the 533Mhz, aka quad-pumped 133Mhz, FSB), that Intel isn't officially supporting the use of PC1066 RDRAM modules which would allow the memory bus and the processor FSB to run in tandem.

Although quite a few Samsung PC800 modules will run at PC1066 speeds without any problems, but if any installed modules are not capable of running at the higher speed, the memory bus will get capped at the current max of 400Mhz (or 3.2GB/s).

I guess for now, the new processors don't really, really need the higher memory bandwidth, but as the processor speeds start to hit 3+ Ghz, the extra amount of bandwidth will become more important.

Re:i850E doesn't officially support PC1066 RDRAM

[questionlp]

I forgot to make a comment about the AMD T-bred processors. Why doesn't AMD start putting some type of protection on the naked cores? I would really like to see AMD to put on the integrated heat spreaders on the processors to help reduce the chance of cracked and broken cores, as well as help dissipate the heat from the now smaller cores.

Sure, the T-bred processors won't be producing as much heat (due to the die shrink), but once speeds start hitting well over 2Ghz, I expect the cores to get very, very hot again.

Just my $0.015 post-taxes.

Re:i850E doesn't officially support PC1066 RDRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about future Athlons but Opterons (Claw- and SledgeHammer) will have integrated heat spreaders.

As for bandwidth, PC1066 looks impressive. Any know-it-all's out there know if dual channel DDR can compete?

Re:i850E doesn't officially support PC1066 RDRAM

[questionlp]

Dual channel DDR memory controllers (the nVidia nForce chipset was kind of there, but one channel was used for the integrated video chipset on some of the models) would provide a nice amount of bandwidth. One example of a dual-channel DDR memory controller would be the Intel E7500 chipset for the P4/Xeon processors (though the officially supported memory speed is PC1600, not PC2100 and requires Registered DIMMs).

One thing that kind of holds back multi-channel DDR chipsets for commodity computers is the cost of implementing and validating the chipsets and motherboards. DDR (which is available in 64-bit or 128-bit, or even higher) requires a lot more traces than RDRAM (since it is parallel vs. serial), which causes increased complexity in routing traces as well as regulating noise and inteference in longer traces.

I think we will see more and more dual channel DDR in the future, but it will be expensive and not as pretty as it could be.

Re:i850E doesn't officially support PC1066 RDRAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like we'll have to wait until DDR2 which has a bit of eDram in it appears.

Re:i850E doesn't officially support PC1066 RDRAM

[nmos]

Adding a heat spreader between the core and heatsink would reduce the heat transfer efficency and increase the production costs. As for protecting the delicate core from careless home builders, I'd much rather them push motherboard and heatsink vendors to provide a better retention system. They actually seem to be backing away from the 4 hole/screw mounting system (as used with the Swiftech 462 and some Alpha heatsinks) which I think is a mistake. Also, you need to remember that 99% of AMD's (and Intel's for that matter) customers are OEMs who presumably know how to attach a heatsink.

Wow

[unfm00]

Good God thats fast......

Thank god for Intel!

[CptSkydrop]

At last, I was looking at purchasing a P4 in the near future but was worried that what I was purchasing would be a lesser version of what is now available from today. I wonder if this changes the RD-RAMs stability issues with overclocking. can't wait to see the tomshardware review on what they get out of it, some of the watercooling stuff they do is l33t!

5x133 = 533?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's brilliant Intel! That must have been calculated on the original Pentium

Re:5x133 = 533?

[Anonymous Coward]

wow you're right! except that this is a quad-pumped FSB, and 4x133~533, so actually you're not.

Re:5x133 = 533?

[MisterBlister]

This might have been funny if the writeup above (not to mention the article and common sense in general) didn't say that its 133x4. So I have to ask, are you a moron?

Re:5x133 = 533?

[swankypimp]

Personally, I'm waiting for the 933 Mhz bus. Script kiddies everywhere would be dying to get their hands on a new "133x7" pentium.

2.4GHz clock speed

[dattaway]

I remember the old ZX81 I built from a kit clocked its Z80 at 3.58MHz, so it could generate the synced television picture directly from the processor.

With 2.4GHz, I'm sure there will be wireless experiments by attempting to use the CPU as a DSP.

Re:2.4GHz clock speed

[BeBoxer]

The real fun won't hit until 2.4GHz memory busses come along. Only having the CPU core run at 2.4GHz is like having a radio with no antenna. But get a couple inch long PCB trace with a 2.4GHz signal on it, and things get more interesting.

On the same note, the VGA output nowadays is fast enough to generate AM broadcasts. Or so I'm told. I've never tried it personally.

Re:2.4GHz clock speed

[questionlp]

Or you can integrate the 802.11b or 802.11g controller into the processor and integrate a special type of heat spreader that allows someone to bolt-on a heatsink (a la Alpha) and use the heatsink as a mini-antenna ;-)

Or the other option is to have the controller on the processor and have a couple of pins from the packaging go directly to some type of MII/PHY chip, which in turns does the RX/TX with an external antenna.

Just some thoughts... dunno how feasible either of them are.

Re:2.4GHz clock speed

[AntiNorm]

But get a couple inch long PCB trace with a 2.4GHz signal on it, and things get more interesting

Get too many of those and you won't be able to meet gigahertz timings, much less multigigahertz timings. Also, at frequencies like that, you start running into transmission line issues with the longer PCB traces. If the PCB trace isn't an integral fraction of a wavelength (1/4 of a wavelength, 1/2 of a wavelength, it's really too complicated to explain here), the traces start to introduce complex impedances. This is more of a design issue for the engineers than anything, but it's another reason why you probably won't see much, if any PCB traces running at the full 2.4 GHz.

Re:2.4GHz clock speed

[BeBoxer]

Yeah, I don't know either. I work with 802.11b stuff a fair amount, but I'm no R/F engineer. Still, I can't help but imagine this becoming an all to common occurence:

D: Greetings, Dell tech support.

A: Hi, this new desktop you sold me is junk.

D: What model is it?

A: The new 2.4GHz P4, with the integrated wireless ethernet and wireless bluetooth keyboard.

D: And what seems to be the problem?

A: Every time I try to make a call on my 2.4GHz cordless phone, the computer crashes! And when I surf the web, my phone rings! And everything I type is ending up in my Palm's ToDo list! Then while I was upstairs heating my coffee in the microwave, it caught on fire!

I mean really, how much stuff can we possibly cram into the 2.4GHz band anyway? Interesting times anyway.

Re:2.4GHz clock speed

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I try to make a call on my 2.4GHz cordless phone, the computer crashes!

I don't know about you, but my computer's amplified speakers get a nice buzzing when my cell phone rings.

Re:2.4GHz clock speed

[Anonymous Coward]

Do yourself a favor and calculate how long that PCB trace would have to be to make an effective antenna. Then post an apology.

We went through all this two years ago when the 900mhz pc's came out... with your userid I'd expect you to have seen it. sigh

Re:2.4GHz clock speed

[psavo]

I mean really, how much stuff can we possibly cram into the 2.4GHz band anyway? Interesting times anyway.

Hmm.. I've never ever heard of 900Mhz computer crashing when someone made a GSM (nor NMT900) call...

Re:2.4GHz clock speed

[Christopher Thomas]

Do yourself a favor and calculate how long that PCB trace would have to be to make an effective antenna. Then post an apology.

Or just look at the length of any cell phone's antenna (they do unscrew, you know) (hint: it's been smaller than your phone for a couple of generations now)

Or calculate how long a quarter or half a wavelength at 2.4 GHz is (hint: a *full* wavelength at *1* GHz is only a foot).

Re:2.4GHz clock speed

[darc]

I can see it now, 4 years from now.

Athlon 46XP 600 terahertz: $150

Visible Light: 430 THz to 750 THz

Removing a heatsink from an athlon to produce a useable "gas" flame: priceless.

Where are the i845E based motherboards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't believe that Intel isn't supporting the ICH4 with the i850 (ICH4 adds USB 2.0 support among other things.) This is reported at Tom's Hardware I believe. Intel's ass backwords manner of support for PC1066 RDRAM stinks too.

So when are i845E boards coming out? Why didn't Intel announce that and the i845G today? Probably some stupid contractual thing with Rambus I suppose.

Sure do hate it when marketing and politics overrule good engineering. Intel should be building ATA-133 and Firewire/IEEE1394 support into their chipsets as well. And the i845E should have support for DDR300.

What a bunch of losers.

Re:Where are the i845E based motherboards?

[Wesley Felter]

Intel should be building ATA-133 and Firewire/IEEE1394 support into their chipsets as well. And the i845E should have support for DDR300.

So buy an SIS chipset instead.

Re:Where are the i845E based motherboards?

[Anonymous Coward]

SiS chipset mobos have sucky PCI bus performance.

533 Mhz?!

[adam613]

So Intel put the P4 on a quad-pumped bus to get the clock speed to look better. When AMD put the Athlon on a double-pumped 133 MHz bus and said it had a 266 MHz bus speed, nobody believed it. Now even Socket A motherboards admit that they run at 133 MHz now. What gives with Intel doing this? Am I missing something that's supposed to impress me?

(if I am, please tell me, because otherwise I will be buying an AMD processor for my new computer)

Re:533 Mhz?!

[nmos]

Intel was already using 4x100. Now they are using 4x133. I don't know that I'd call it impressive but using a 4xX bus instead of a 1xX bus DOES give better performance. As it stands right now AMD systems still have a price/performance advantage but the difference is small until you get up near the cutting edge. Up untill a few months ago I was building AMD systems almost exclusivly but now I'm building some P4 systems for those rare customers who actually run apps. that can take good advantage of Intels' SSE2 instructions.

Re:533 Mhz?!

[jtshaw]

Ya, it is a little miss leading, but effectively it is kinda true. Since it pushes 4 things at once at 133Mhz. it is the same as doing one thing at 533Mhz. Same as AMD pushing two things at once doing 133Mhz is the same as doing 1 thing at 266Mhz.

In a way I understand too, it is just easier to explain to the non-technical you are running at 266 instead of 133 or 533 instead of 400 or whatever the case may be then it is to explain that you are using both edges of the clock or using such and such method to get 4 times as much through the bus at one time thus creating this thing, that while it runs no faster in Mhz. then before, preforms x times faster.

I mean, Mac tried to tell people there PPC's were faster then Pentiums for years any many wouldn't buy it because it was slower in Mhz. So you can see why they do what they do.

Afterall, it isn't about the Mhz. that should matter to us that really know what is going on, what matters is the increase in memory bandwidth. And that is a very real increase. As it was when AMD went to DDR.

Re:533 Mhz?!

[Sycraft-fu]

Ok, the buss runs at 100mhz (133mhz now), but transfers 4 times per clock, giving it an effective rate equal to a 400 (now 533) mhz bus. This DOES make a difference on the P4. It's a high memory-bandwidth chip.

Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Anonymous Coward]

So is AMD going to start saying 'Gee, our chips are equivalent to this even though they only run at 66% clock speed?'

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, no they say their fastest chips are equivalent to, er, 2100 MHz P4s or so. Which is actually underestimating in most circumstances.

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[colmore]

clock speed != performance

write that 1000 times

if AMD has to fudge numbers to sell an equivalent product, that's the fault of the largely ignorant market, not AMD.

read any of their literature, they're very honest and upfront about what they're doing.

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Anonymous Coward]

Officially the PR ratings are compared to older *Athlon* chips.

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Nicodemus]

Measuring the performance of a CPU using megahertz is like comparing the speed of 2 vehicles based on horsepower alone. For instance, would you say that a 5500 pound muscle car with 300 horsepower is just immediately faster than a 300 pound motorcycle with only 100 horsepower? When you look at the 1/4 mile numbers, you'll find a nasty surprise. The motorcycle will beat the crap out of the car any day. When comparing CPUs, you need to look at the end results, which in this case are benchmarks. Whether they be synthetic, or my preferred method: FPS. I find it interesting that an Athlon XP 2100+ running at 1.73 gHz can run Wolfenstein .1 frames faster than the p4 at 2.53 gHz. That alone should tell you that you're looking at the wrong number. If you're going to blame anyone, blame intel for creating the p4 the way they did, which resulted in them being able to clock it faster, but without actually making it faster. They're the ones with the nasty PR, if you ask me. AMD is just trying to compensate for the general uninformed masses.

Nicodemus

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's even worse than that. Comparing computers by MHz (or GHz) is like comparing cars by engine RPM. An engine spinning at higher RPM *is* "faster" in a certain sense, but that doesn't mean it'll be winning the race.

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Anonymous Coward]

performance != instructions per clock cycle.

write that 1000 times.

Neither Mhz or Instructions per clock is a good way to market the processors.

While AMD's chips execute more instructions per clock, some Intel chips have to execute less instructions to get the job done. So each architecture screws up the others rating scheme. But what can you do.

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Anonymous Coward]

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Strict;

for (my $i = 0; $i < 1000; $i++ ) {
print "clock speed != performance\n";
}

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Courageous]

Measuring the performance of a CPU using megahertz is like comparing the speed of 2 vehicles based on horsepower alone.

I think RPM is a better analogy. :)

C//

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Sycle]

But benchmarks and user experience also tend back up AMD's claims.

Yeah, "benchmarks != real world performance" or whatever, but it's more honest for AMD to try and provide the consumer numbers that reflect what they're meant to be equivalent to than simply list their MHz.

What do you expect them to do, sit there and take a PR hit for no good reason just because they don't have the clockspeed? MHz is a silly performance indicator, and AMD's XP naming series is a hack, but it's not like there's any other catchy bite size indicators waiting in the wings anyway.

Re:Athlon XP, PR rating schemes (= bad)

[Anonymous Coward]

If AMD has to fudge numbers that means the market values clockspeed, not education.

that's great

[Jacer]

do they have any memory bandwidth issues? i mean, i'd be a shame if intel's new found speed was useless

Re:that's great

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? do THEY have any memory bandwidth issues? Do you mean do all computers on the face of the earth have bottle necks when accessing data across an extrenal bus? Unless the FSB runs as fast as the CPU core, or the CPU's first level cache is big enough to fit everything ever needed by the CPU, then yes, THEY have memory bandwidth issues.

this is no biggy

[the_2nd_coming]

who cares what the FSB is at this stage. untill we have SDRAM that supports this "bandwidth" it will not help out total system performence.

Re:this is no biggy

[Wesley Felter]

PC3200 RAM, which can match the speed of the 400MHz FSB, is already available (although it's non-standard). If you want more bandwidth than that, use two channels.

Re:this is no biggy

[Anonymous Coward]

How insightful is this? RDRAM can feed the P4 at 4x100 or 4x133. While it's true there's no "official" PC1066, most recent Samsung RIMMs will hit PC1066 speeds...

Re:this is no biggy

[smithmc]

Who cares what the FSB is at this stage. Until we have SDRAM that supports this "bandwidth" it will not help out total system performance.

Um, I believe this was the whole idea behind RDRAM - that it does have the necessary bandwidth. (Latency, of course, is another issue.)

Re:this is no biggy

[Anonymous Coward]

uhhhh....I said sdram.....rimms blow and are to damn expensive

Any reviews using DDR

[Anonymous Coward]

Are there any reviews or benchmarks available for the new CPUs using 266MHz DDR memory? It looks like RDRAM is not the most popular memory, but Intel is only allowing reviews that use RDRAM and not DDR. Onquiring minds want to know how a normal P4 config compares to a normal Athlon config.

Warning

[geekoid]

I have an AMD 1.4 GHz and its too damn hot. I had to create a wind tunnel in my case to keep it cool.
IS the noise really worth it?

Re:Warning

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a friend who put a Duron 1 GHz in a desktop case with no room for a case fan. He had to underclock it to 920 MHz to get the temp below 150 degrees.

Re:Warning

[cypr355]

I have an athlon XP 1.4ghz (1600+) overclocked to 1.57ghz (1900+ I think), and yes, heat is a definite problem. But with AMD coming out with a .13 micron part this summer (Thoroughbred), it will hopefully soon be solved.

Re:Warning

[Some Dumbass...]

I have a 1.3GHz Athlon, and it's fairly cool. With a Volcano 7, I haven't managed to get it above 50C (and that's in a room that was at about 30C). No wind tunnel needed. In fact, since it rarely got about 45C, I swapped out the fan with a quieter but less powerful one (40CFM, not sure how many dB), and it still rarely goes about 45C. My brother's Celeron (a 566, not overclocked) runs at about the same temp with the stock heatsink.

My point is that, while Athlons do run pretty dang hot, all you really need is a decent heatsink and good normal case cooling (I have those same 40CFM fans as the front and rear case fans).

Geez

[KanSer]

I liked it when the processor and RAM cycle didn't resemble the videocard race. I wish they could build around all the RAM I just bought instead of a processor upgrade requiring new MOBO's, RAM, and more patience then ever. Then again it's sooo fast. Me want... doom 3 ain't gonna run on this old p3-450. Damnit, I'm gonna cry now.

Re:Geez

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen plenty of DDR266 boards that also supported normal pc133 and pc100 in different set of dimm slots.
eg the ecs k7s5a , an inexpensive good performance sis735 based board. This came out only after DD200 and yet it supports SDRAM from 1998.
That kind of backwards compatibility is not bad at all if that's important to you.

Wake me when something happens

[colmore]

*yawn*

I'm running a 900 mhz Duron right now, and have been for a year and a half.

I do some pretty heavy photoshopping, media work, and compiling. I've never felt that I was being slowed down significantly by my processor.

I upgraded to 1GB RAM, and that improved things, but I just don't feel the need to go out and get the latest processor any more, the need is simply not in the applications.

Maybe if I were playing games or ripping DivX, but really it seems that for the vast majority of the home market, the technology has vastly outpaced the need, even the latest-greatest MS OS can't justify the need for this kind of iron.

Though I guess this means that the next computer I buy will be that much cheaper, since "low end" systems (with slight boosts to hard drive and memory) are now all that I need.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[Namarrgon]

Suit yourself. Me, I want an 8-way Opteron :-)

I do software for film visual effects, and when you're dealing with dozens of layers of footage that's 250 MB PER FRAME, you need all the CPU power you can get, trust me. I have customers with 100-CPU render farms, and those farms do not sit idle. There is still an ever-growing need for high-powered machines, even if it's not in your house.

Every time I hear a comment like this, I think of an article I read in 1980, from a columnist who grumbled that the new-fangled 16 bit CPUs were just too fast - his 8-bit CPU was quite enough to run WordStar and 1-2-3, thank you very much. I wonder if he still thinks the same.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't know how slow your system is till you try something faster.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[Decimal]

even the latest-greatest MS OS can't justify the need for this kind of iron.

I think you're vastly underestimating Microsoft's talent for bloat.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[the_2nd_coming]

umm well I am sure you are not representative of the whole population of computer users.

we have reached a point in computing where there is very little that can leach performence from a PC in the software realm.

the next big boost that software will give hardware is in the next big interface change, other than that, the standard Metaphore and all the tools you can use just are not pushing the limmits any more.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[ergo98]

Speak for yourself, and it should be noted that this exact same argument has played out since the days of the 386. I virtually guarantee you that if you search the forums, you can find dozens of people proclaiming that the new 486 is well and good, but their 386 does more than they ever need, etc. It's a dated, predictable argument.

I recently upgraded from a P3 850/512MB PC133 to an Athlon XP 1800+ with 512MB of DDR333, and the difference in simple day to day applications is stunning (one of those "You don't know better until you've tried better" type deals), and for applications like Java or Visual Studio.NET it's a requirement.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[nmos]

More likely something else was slowing you down on your old system. Maybe you had a configuration problem or a slower disk.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[ratboy666]

Hey, if you are actually into Java or Visual
Studio.NET, great.

Me, I'm into writing documents, um... that's
words, with (maybe) a bit of formatting, um...

Actually, CPM/80 with WordStar is about all
I really need, and BOY is it fast on my
current 'puter. Only thing is, everyone
else seems to like *ffice style products.

Me, I'm content with WordStart, vi on unix,
I use troff (runoff under CP/M). Works good.
Fast, _and_ Cheap.

Upgrades? Maybe not in this lifetime (I could
care less). Standards? Sure, every is ASCII
or close to it. WSWG? Nope, but if I go so
far as to ASK for (say) Centuury Schoolbook, 11pt
on 12pt lead, I EXPECT that it will be delivered.

Ratboy.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[colmore]

No... I've been using computers for near 15 years, and for the whole time I've felt like there was more software out there than I could run. (i've never really had an up-to-the-minute system)

Only recently have I found budget systems to be completely adequate for everything I see myself doing .

I'm not saying running all of my apps faster wouldn't be *nice,* but it's not the same as saying there are new apps that will only be functional on these faster processors.

what I'm saying is, like always, I can't afford an upgrade, but unlike say, when my pentium was two years old, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[Hadlock]

i agree with you on that. i had a p400 for 3 years before fiddling with the motherboard/cmos battery finally died on me. probably not a smart thing to do in the first place.... anyways, i ended up with an apple tibook, which does everything i need, and then some. wish it had an audio-in port :-/

inherited my dad's p200 when he died and i use that mostly for kazaa and video capture. it's too slow to play divx movies, and i didn't want to invest in a video card to play counterstrike on it. still plays mpeg2, flash, and quicktime movies just fine, along with winamp and aim, ie and netscape - 99% of what i do anyways. needed a laptop for college next year, though.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[Kanasta]

I was using a Celeron at 450 up until last month.
I u/g to an AthXP 1700, and I wouldn't say I feel it's even twice as fast generally. Only compiling is noticibly faster.

Then came an ATA100 HD to replace my old HD as the backup disk. A little faster for things that need lots of HD access, but really, how many apps do that?

Anyway, my primary SCSI disk from 98 still beats it.

Then I tried a few games. Maybe I don't have very intensive games, but again, OK it loads a ~little~ faster, 6s instead of 9s. Gameplay unaffected.

Really different from the old days when I remember the huge difference adding 16MB ram to my P133, or the jump from that to the 450.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest noticable jump in speed was when I upgraded from my 8Mhz 8088 to a 80286/20. Those were the days.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[the_2nd_coming]

that TiBook will erver you well.

get a copy of Virual PC if you need to compile anything for X86, you can get a codewarior IDE for students for $99 that compiles both for Mac and Windows.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[ergo98]

I can totally appreciate the idea of buying bargain PCs, and the Athlon XP 1800+ system that I bought I bought only once it got to the high value point (the chip can be bought for $189 CDN here, which is quite a sweet point). I recently bought a GeForce 3 Ti200 because it was unbelievably cost effective.

However, that doesn't man that one should yawn at new PC components coming out: I love every new graphics card, processor, and memory technology -> Maybe I'm not going to buy it today, but in 3 months it'll be bargain basement and I'll be very grateful.

Re:Wake me when something happens

[Hadlock]

i have VPC 5.0 on there right now. running win 98 on there...slow as a dog. kazaa wouldn't install properly. codewarrior works like a charm, however. also, the 200 is in a case FAR away from where i sit, keeping my desk area much more quiet. VPC 5.0 seems to make the fan come on at high speed continiously. plus, it's easier to monitor my downloads on a 17" screen, though :)

You know you need a new computer...

[Anonymous Coward]

when the clock speed of the latest chipsets is faster than the clock speed of your processor, motherboard, and memory. Combined.

Re:You know you need a new computer...

[dirtyhippie]

As other have said in other posts, that depends entirely on what you're using it for. I have an old P2-266MHz with 128MB of EDO ram, and an really crappy video card (does 640x480, 8 bit color ONLY) - I'd imagine my cumulative clock speed, counting everything, is under 400 MHz. That's like 5 times less than the current P4 offerings. But it's running as an OpenBSD firewall and filesharing device (SMB and NFS), and I'd be a fool to waste my money on CPU upgrades. Except for the occasional make build to upgrade to the next obsd version (which takes under a day anyway), i'd be wasting my money investing in a faster anything, since its all IO bound anyway.

Re:You know you need a new computer...

[jo42]

Yeah, no forkin' kidding. My many year olde dual 500MHz Pentium III is really starting to feel left out. Muther McRae and her sister too.

My, oh, my...

It gets worse...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does Intel boost the FSB speed and then turn around and bork it with old crap on the southbridge?

Specifically:
ICH2 South Bridge connected to the MCH via Hub Link 1.0 with 266MB/sec bandwidth;
AND
ATA/100, USB 1.1 and AC'97 sound support.

ATA/133 and USB 2.0 are pretty much the standard now on Socket A motherboards.

Intel killed this motherboard line before it was even made...

Re:It gets worse...

[questionlp]

I agree... Intel should have updated the southbridge to include at least USB 2.0 and maybe improved AC97 sound support. The difference between ATA/100 and ATA/133 isn't really enough to make an upgrade, but the support for > 130GB hard drives is a must.

I would like to see Serial ATA to be out in the wild as that would help reduce the wiring mess, mostly for those with more than 4 devices on multiple controllers :)

Re:It gets worse...

[jrwyant]

The ICH4 southbridge will be out over the summer or the fall this year. It'll have USB2.0 (_much_ faster than NEC's offering), better AC'97, etc.

Re:It gets worse...

[questionlp]

It looks like Intel has an i850-E based motherboard that has USB 2.0 built-in (I'm guessing that they planted a separate USB 2.0 controller on the motherboard). The model is the D850EMV2L and one can be purchased here .

Re:It gets worse...

[(outer-limits)]

Although I am pleased to see that you can now buy nice, neat parallel cables that coiled up into a neat, round, (if somewhat thick) package. When I have some spare cash, I'll be buying some.

SMP support?

[brer_rabbit]

I didn't see any mention of SMP support in either article for the new chipset. Does the P4 even support SMP? What are the current MB offerings for SMP?

Re:SMP support?

[bofkentucky]

And the Lord sayeth onto Moses, 'Thou shalt not SMP with Intel Desktop processors.' You must buy their Xeon's to get supported MP. I'm pretty sure no one has released a desktop SMP P4 board, but I wouldn't put it past SiS, who is finaally starting to make decent parts, after years of being the OEM boardmaker everyone hates.

Re:SMP support?

[questionlp]

Currently, Intel only officially supports dual processor configurations with their P4/Xeon processors (as well as their P3-S processors, but those are not based on the P4 core). Via is planning on releasing a chipset to enable dual processor support for the Northwood (both original and B-series) and possibly the Willamette processors, and using PC2400/PC2700 DDR memory. I'm not sure what the status is on that processor, but it would finally bring back relatively-affordable Intel dual processor machines.

Right now, I'm just eyeing out a dual T-bred setup for myself :)

Re:SMP support?

[fobbman]

No SMP on the P4. The Xeon line is the only line that Intel currently produces that has SMP capabilities.

Re:SMP support?

[addaon]

And the Itanium line, of course...

Re:SMP support?

[Xanthos28]

And the P4/Xeon line is pretty decent. I'm currently testing:

Dual P4/Xeon 2.2Ghz
1GB Ram (not sure what type of mem, didn't look it up)
72GB HD.

I'm testing multiprocessor programming tools (OpenMP compilers and analyzers) using KCC, Intel's OpenMP Compiler, and the Assure/Guideview thread analyzer. So far, this machine rocks out!

Postdoctorate in the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Wohoo! Next week I'm flying over to the USA, Boston, for my postdoctorate.

A few years ago I have been notified by the MPAA lawyers that I was breaking the law by mirroring DeCSS.

Will I be arrested upon arrival? Exciting!

Heres the correct link to the story at OC-AU

[cOdEgUru]

AMD Thoroughbred reviewed here

Also for now this should only concern the Overclocking community because of the ability of this chip to run at higher clock speeds due to the .13 process

RTFA

[Strog]

If you look at the benchmarks a little more closely you will notice some things. The Athlon XP 2100 is right behind the 2.4Ghz/533Mhz models and ahead of the 400Mhz bus ones. All this on a chip running 1.733Ghz.

When the Thoroughbred core CPUs starting cranking up the clock speeds then even the fastest P4 will have to look up. The P4s were benchmarked with RDRAM motherboards which aren't available yet but will be here soon. If you want a fast system that is here now then get the Athlon or spend some more money and get a P4 that is going to be close to the same performance.

Re:RTFA

[johnburton]

AMD already seem to be falling behind in the clock speed race quite badly. I think it more likely that Intel will continue to pull away from AMD in clock speed.

And AMD have clearly shown that there is plenty of room for Intel to tweak their chips to run faster at the same clock rate.

I'd be very worried now if I was AMD

Re:RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

Do watch your subject-verb agreement (unless you speak British English). AMD is singular, and in that case, 'seems' is the appropiate conjugation.

Also, 'badly' is generally regarded as informal. Here, there's not a problem, but in formal writing, it's best to avoid it. One might say something like "AMD is falling quickly behind in the CPU speed race."

Re:RTFA

[tshak]

AMD already seem to be falling behind in the clock speed race quite badly.

Have you been living in a cave? AMD's chips (for the dollar) have been beating Intel for the last few years. Clock speed has nothing to do with it. See this post (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=30456&cid=327 3879) for more insight.

Re:RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

You've forgotten about thoughbreads, which come out this summer. It'll use .13 micron process, and that should enable ramping up clock speed.

Or they could always pull a intel and make a deeper pipe (problem Intel faced with Pentium 3)

+1 Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

And me without any mod points.

Has to be done

[A nonymous Coward]

One or the other has to come out first, may as well be this. Sure it's chicken and egg, but necessary. Saying this won't help total system performance is like saying Watt's improvements on Newcomen's steam engine were no biggy until iron rails came into play. Improvements come in steps, lots of tiny steps, always has, always will.

Time to trade UP?

[tmcmsail]

I guess my 8088 laptop running at a blazing 3.77 MHz is out of date now :-)

Offtopic?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lame! Lame moderators! I'm off to metamoderate.

Lightning fast crashes

[Anti-Microsoft Troll]

This should increase the speed at which Windows XP crashes dramatically. I can probably fit 1.5 times as many crashes in during the same period of time as on my old motherboards.

Re:Lightning fast crashes

[Anonymous Coward]

sucks to be you..... ive only had 1 XP crash in 4 months....

Another review...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Tech Report also has a review if the above isn't enough....

Re:Editing decisions

[SnapShot]

I thought that was funny... Or, at least, not worth modding down.

P4 Northwood + ASUS mobo

[Anonymous Coward]

I've built 5 new P4 Northwood machines in the past 8 weeks and I can tell you that these boxes ROCK!. We call them the "ANUS" machines :-) (for Asus Northwood Ultrafast System)

You don't even really need the official 133FSB support either, because the ASUS P4B266 (DDR) and P4T-E (rambus) mobos will clock a cheap 1.6a P4 to 133MHz FSB speeds for a total of 2.13GHz processor speed right now. And they run very cool (100-105 deg F) with stock heatsink/fan at the stock 1.50 volts setting. It runs rock solid stable 24x7 at this speed too, without even a hint of instability.

These 1.6a Northwoods are truly the next incarnation of the old Celeron 300A for overclocking.

PCI bandwidth bug still there too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the reason for not including ATA/133 is because there's still a bug that limits DMA memory writes to the PCI bus to about 90MB/s, throttling the effective bandwidth down. A PCI bus is supposed to be able to support 133MB/s so until they fix the MHC/ICH bugs, there's no point in supporting ATA/133

Re:PCI bandwidth bug still there too?

[jrwyant]

The ICH doesn't put ATA transactions on the PCI bus. There's a separate bus between the MCH and ICH, over which the USB, AC'97, IDE, etc. transactions go. So the PCI throughput is independent of the IDE throughput (to a certain extent--the PCI traffic headed to memory/CPU does go over this MCH-ICH link though.) But the maximum throughput over this link is greater than the maximum throughput over PCI alone.

Re:PCI bandwidth bug still there too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even so, the bug is still in the chipset and it affects performance when you stick high-bandwidth PCI cards in the machine, like ultraSCSI cards, multitrack audio (DAW) interfaces, etc.

4x133 = 533?

[Dr. Spork]

That's funny--I thought 4x133=532. A good clue the math is wrong is that multiplying with an even number should not generate an odd number.

Could anyone explain...

[MarkedMan]

... what is meant by 133 x 4? Does the bus run at 533 MHz or is it four channels running at 133 MHz?

Re:Could anyone explain...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing it probably works like 4x AGP. In one clock cycle, four packets of data are sent, along with some kind of strobe that will correspond with each packet. The data will be latched off of the bus on the falling edge of each strobe. That way it keeps everything in sync, and since the strobes and data are sent by the chipset simultenously, they arrive at the same time. So for each 1 cycle, you get 4 times as much information. So you are either getting 4x data on a 133 Mhz bus, or 1x data on a 533 Mhz bus. Either way you get the same bandwidth, but the actual clock on the bus is 133 Mhz, and the CPU speed bus fractions are still based on that 133 Mhz number. If anyone knows if the quad pumping is done differently, let me know. :)

Re:4x133 = 533? - Idiot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try this:

133.3333333333333 * 4 = 533.33333333332

What kind of RAM?

[Lord Ender]

Buying RAM is a bit confusing now. Athlons have 200MHz FSB and 266MHz FSB. What kind of DDR should I use with each? There is DDR1600, DDR2100, DDR333, and some other stuff. Now there is this intel chip with 533MHz FSB. Is there an easy rule to remember what number after the 'DDR' coresponds with the number before the 'FSB'?

It gets so confusing, building your own systems is becoming less appealing.

Re:What kind of RAM?

[Penguinoflight]

Athlons? first, ddr333 will work with any of the athlon offerings. but it costs a heap. ddr 2100 should be used if you have 266mhz bus, but if you only have 200mhz bus, you should just go with the old sdram, because ddr1600 doesn't help much (at all).

Re:What kind of RAM?

[Keeper]

There are several kinds of FSB's out there...most of them operate at 100 or 133mhz. What's all this business about 200 and 533mhz busses you say? It has to do with "when" the data is being sent.

Let's look at a clock signal for a second in primative ascii form:
___ ___ ___
.../ \.../ \.../ etc

An SDR bus sends data once every mhz. The components send a bit of data around each time the signal rises.

A DDR bus sends data when the clock signal changes. So a bit gets sent when the clock rises, and again when it falls. While the clock may only be 100mhz, you're sending 2x as much data around so the equivilant clock rate is actually 200mhz.

A QDR bus sends data at the different edges of the clock signal. Notice that the clock signal doesn't instantly flip on and off -- there is a transitional period. So it sends a bit when the signal starts to rise, sends another when it reaches the top, sends a 3rd one when it starts to fall, and sends a 4th one when it reaches the bottom. While the clock may only be 100mhz, it's effective clock rate is really 400mhz.

So, Intel really just moved from a 100mhz system bus to a 133mhz system bus.

DDR1600 ~= CAS 2.5 ram running at 200mhz (100mhz * 2)
DDR2100 ~= CAS 2.5 ram running at 266mhz (133mhz * 2)
DDR2400 ~= CAS 2 ram running at 266mhz (133mhz * 2)
DDR2700 ~= CAS 2.5 ram running at 333mhz (166mhz * 2)
DDR3000 ~= CAS 2 ram running at 333mhz (166mhz * 2)

CAS latency kind of represents the "ping" time of the ram. The lower the latency the better. The numbers after the "DDR" represent the theoretical bandwidth that can be obtained by the chip.

I'm not up to date on markings on RDRAM memory modules or what they mean, so I can't really offer any insight into it.

There isn't a rule for remembering which number goes with what FSB frequency. Most places that sell the stuff will list both bits of information though, so it isn't too big of a deal. I'm sure a mathematical formula could be made, but it's easier just to memorize which is which than a forumula which requires the use of a calculator.

Re:What kind of RAM?

[Keeper]

Correction:

DDR1600, DDR2100, DDR2400, DDR2700, and DDR3000 should have actually been written as PC1600, PC2100, PC2400, PC2700, and PC3000.

Additionally, I left out a bit of info I had intended to include (ah, the joys of posting while distracted by work ;)). "DDRxxx" generally refers to the speed the ram is running at. So DDR333 would be running at 333mhz (166mhz * 2), referring to PC2700 or PC3000.

what a pain

[Anonymous Coward]

man I went to the site and got the "Would you like to accept a cookie?" box 32 times!

32!

WTF?

That's nothing!

[Penguinoflight]

AMD has processors that run at 1.8ghz, so 533mhz is nothing! Oh wait, it said fsb. :-)

put the damn RAM on the CPU

[Easy2RememberNick]

When, do you think, will we see processors with the main memory built in? I mean you may as well stuff it when you get it, it'll make it cheaper because we'll all get the same thing. Or is that just too far fetched an idea? ie. The new 2.5GHz with 4GB RAM right on the CPU. Hunh? Maybe it'll get rid of all this crap surrounding buying or trying to match RAM to...whatever!!!!

Re:put the damn RAM on the CPU

[Hydro-X]

Well, first of all, what happens if you burn out a stick (or chip for that matter) of RAM? You're stuck replacing the whole assembly. Secondly, I'm building a PC now and am only buying enough RAM to get me off the ground. I'll add the full GB when I have the cash to do so. Third, these things would probably run extremely hot. That means we'd need to see a whole new generation of cooling devices, probably a (consumer viable) liquid cooling system.

Re:put the damn RAM on the CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the whole point of having a PC is because its modular. If I want to buy a system that is going to be used for a purpose that doesn't require much CPU power or doesn't need much memory, I can do so instead of wasting money on things that I don't need. With what you're suggesting, if you have a problem with your CPU, too bad, you have to buy new memory. Problem with your memory? Too bad, you have to buy a new CPU.

That would really suck.

Re:put the damn RAM on the CPU

[Easy2RememberNick]

I mean if you make it so cheap that it's like if your CD-ROM drive bites it, do you repair it? No, you buy a new one because it isn't worth the time and expense to repair it. That would be modular. But I guess if it does go you're stuck without a system. Maybe you could buy a six pack of processors. :-P Or one big RAM chip with everything as software, Transmeta Crusoe 2015?
Maybe someday we'll see it. Maybe one unit for the mobo/cpu/memory/OS...

Re:put the damn RAM on the CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmm... Yeah... That is more than a bit far fetched. First of all, the more cache (& transistors) you put on the core, the bigger it gets, the more expensive it gets, and increases the chances of getting a faulty die. I wouldn't say it is impossible ever... But put it this way, right now the space between the gates is something like 3 atoms thick. Right now the biggest die, and cache, is the 6 Meg on the Madison IA-64 processor. So lets see... You want to put 4 GB on, but only have 2 more atoms to take away to make the chip smaller. I think if you did that the die would be as big as the motherboard.

Re:put the damn RAM on the CPU

[megalomang]

It's not just the expandability. There are several reasons.

RAM generates more heat from the same package
People will always want more RAM, so you can't reduce the pin count.
Increasing die size will decrease yield and drive up costs.
Chipset functionality would need to be moved into CPU as well, further adding size.
RAM is a high-volume, very low margin commodity. CPU developers don't want to dilute their margins across mere RAM. (i.e. $400 for a P4 + $100 for 256MB RAM = a mere $500 for twice as much silicon)

But, there is hope. Intel and AMD are adding dramatically larger L2 and L3 caches to their CPUs, so you are getting more memory for your money, although it actually provides better memory performance, and not truly a larger physical memory space.

best regards,
mega

Re:put the damn RAM on the CPU

[Squalish]

Done. Gamecubes use a unified base of SRAM(what modern proc's use as cache) for the proc AND the vid card. Dimms will not be on the proc chip in the forseeable future purely because of size.

Insightful? Give me a break

[Anonymous Coward]

This post was totally pointless. Wow, you have an old computer and you like it. What will be do now? Thanks for the insight. BFD.

Question about 7.2 support

[guacamole]

My understanding is that redhat's current support statement looks like this "We will support all minor releases of the current major RedHat Linux release and the latest version of the previous major release." That means that right now 6.2, 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 are supported but once 8.0 is released, only 8.0 and 7.3 will be supported. If this is true I will be scrwed big time because I just finished upgrading some 50 6.2 boxen to 7.2 and I was thinking that since 7.2 is the latest (and the last) minor release of 7.x series, I can keep on running those machines for a couple of years without upgrading. Now, if RH stops providing updates for 7.2 after 8.0, we'll be screwed big time. Can someone confirm or deny my fears?

It's not a digital world

[AHumbleOpinion]

That's funny--I thought 4x133=532

It's not a digital world and we can't forget analog electronics and real numbers. The frequency is 133.33...

I'm embarrassed for apple

[kwerle]

Bus speeds are catching up with Apple's CPU speed. I guess that CPU cache will become less important :-/

Re:I'm embarrassed for apple

[megalomang]

CPU cache will only become more important as CPU speeds increase. A hierarchical memory organization is intended to address the disparity between lower levels of memory and the CPU speed. Higher levels of cache run at faster speeds, until you get to the highest which generally runs at or near core speed. The goal is to access memory from cache as much as possible, and there is a lot of memory controller hardware designed to support that goal. CPU speeds still are still increasing at a much faster rate than memory speeds, and as this disparity increases, cache only becomes more important.

best regards,
mega

Re:I'm embarrassed for apple

[kwerle]

HELLO!!! Apple CPU speeds are NOT increasing. Not much, anyway. Thus, it won't matter if the memory is in the core, at CPU clock speed, or off core across the bus - which is rapidly approaching Apple's CPU core speed.

I keep praying that they will just ditch moto and go with IBM. I know that IBM could up the Mhz.

Re:I'm embarrassed for apple

[megalomang]

I sympathize with you that Moto is not increasing the speeds of the PPC. They did the same with the dragonball that prompted Palm to consider the switch to an ARM architecture.

However, you are significantly underestimating the importance of cache. Cache lowers cost by allowing the significantly larger storage memory to reside off chip. It provides a low latency access to memory to keep up with processor speeds in addition to reducing external accesses which save a very significant amount of power and reduce board noise.

The key here is low latency. A core relies on the highest level of memory to have a latency of typically one core clock cycle. Main memory doesn't even come close to that. A memory transfer rate of 533MHz does NOT mean the access latency of the main memory is 1.88ns (1/533x10^6Hz). In fact, the access latency is actually several bus clock cycles. Since the memory bus clock is 133MHz, we are talking about a latency on the order of perhaps 25ns. When the core clock is close to 1 ns, there is a huge disparity between the core demands and the main memory capabilities. Without cache, the core would need to wait many tens of cycles per memory access. For applications that require heavy memory usage, this would have a devastating effect on your performance.

This doesn't even begin to comment on how expensive the 533MHz QDR DRAM really is. By providing more cache, Moto is reducing the cost of the system, which inevitably impacts the end cost you must pay.

Don't be so quick to second-guess the designers who bring you one of the better-architected PC CPUs and systems out there. We know what we're doing.

Nice links...

[Man of E]

it appears as if the new chipset gives the P4 a performance boost in most apps over the previous 400MHz FSB chips

Been spending too much time by the memepool, have we?

Hz is a rate (1/s), not necessarily a clock speed.

[megalomang]

533MHz is not an attempt by anyone to deceive you. It is a genuine number indicative of the throughput the bus provides. Nobody (educated, at least) is claiming the bus clock runs at 533MHz, only that 533 MHz is simply the rate of transfer. The clock rate is effectively multiplied by 4 at each end of the transfer and used to synchronize the transfers. This is analogous to your system clock running at 100MHz, yet your core claims to run at 1GHz.

How can this be? The core has an internal multiplier (called a PLL) that allows the core to run at a higher speed. This allows the board to run at a lower speed which results in less board noise, less switching (so lower power), and also represents a common denominator reference so all devices don't need to run at the same high frequency. For example, the CPU might scale the reference clock by 10, but the chipset might not scale the clock at all.

Hertz (Hz) is merely a rate, and represents an inverse second (1/s) and is commonly used to indicate the rate of periodicity of a clock. However, Hz is used to indicate bandwidth of a modem, for example. A 48K modem transfers 48 kilobits of data, and can be said to transfer bits at a rate of 48KHz. In actuality, there are not 48000 individual bits transferred every second. Instead, there are 8000 individual symbols transferred each second, and each symbol provides 6 bits.

Best regards,
mega

Looking forward when they can go @ speed of light

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember my FSB that i'm using is 66 mHz like 5 ten years ago.. with the pace of how the FSB works, it'll be faster than the speed of light in no time.. Since that is still untouchable speed rite now.. i hope i can see that before i die..

btw, what we need the CPU to be this fast anyway??

Feels like they're stalling on purpose

[slaida1]

Doesn't it make anybody wonder why clockspeeds rise with so small steps at a time? Why FSB and other buses always get only this kind of 100 -> 133 improvements? Why memory channels were only doubled and not quadrupled at once? Why consumer-level SMP mobos are mostly 2 fixed sockets and not 8 slots for processor cards and possibility to use riser cards after riser cards for extra processor slots infinitely :)

Hammer is the next big thing for AMD

[nusuth]

P4 vs. Athlon XP race is irrelevant. AMD need not take the speed crown again, they just need to keep their existing market share until Hammers hit stores. BTW, Athlon XP is still very fast, moreover it is avaliable now unlike benchmarked P4s. If you can't help lusting for even more speed, a dual athlon xp box is quite affordable unlike a dual P4 Xeon box.

Re:Looking forward when they can go @ speed of lig

[Anonymous Coward]

what we need the CPU to be this fast anyway?? Seti-, Folding-, etc- @home programs that are 100% CPU speed.

Are we working ourselves backwards?

[Anonymous Coward]

All these new processors and stuff seems as if time dilation will start taking effect by the time we reach 5GHz or so. :) I can see it now...the information starts moving so fast that the information appears slower.