Intel Releases "Fastest Chip Ever"

mao che minh writes "From News Factor Network: Intel has released the world's fastest chip ever. The new P4 runs at 3.06GHz, at 3 billion cycles per second. Man, and I'm still squeezing the last bit of life out of my Pentium 233!" Tom's Hardware already has a review up about it, and it looks to live up to most of the hype.

Comments

Overclock it

[anonymous coword]

Then you will have THE CHIP FASTER THAN THE FASTEST chip

Is it fast enough to get fp?

Re:Overclock it

[MrScience]

Don't you get it? They've already overclocked it. That's the only way they could get these out... and the only reason why they are so hard to find (it's so overclocked only a very tiny percent of the chips can even handle it).

Re:Overclock it

[dildatron]

while you are of course correct, one may be ble to overclock the overclocked by using super duper cooling. the limit of overclocking is limited often by heat, so if you can get rid of more heat, you might be able to squeeze a bit more out of a given chip.

for practical purpouses you are right, though. there is absolutely no reason you would buy this chip if you wanted to overclock it.

Re:Overclock it

[spruce]

So in summary, if you overclock this chip, it will either be slower, or faster, or right in line with what you would expect.

Thanks!:)

Re:Overclock it

[AaronPSU79]

Actually this chip overclocks pretty well, [H]ardOCP got it up to 3.68 GHz air cooled and 3.82 GHz water cooled. Not bad at all. http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=Mzg4

Re:Overclock it

[uberdave]

I've never heard of overhyped threads, would you care to expound upon that a bit further?

Threads like "MPAA/RIAA, Content Protection and linking to DeCSS", "Microsoft is taking over the World", and this one.

Re:Overclock it

[jpmorgan]

Are you talking about the P4, or the AthlonXP? It's not clear.

If you're talking about the Athlon, the problem is much more fundamental than heat, it's a signal distribution problem. Basically, the chip is running so fast that the time it takes for a signal to get from one component to another is more than a clock cycle. This is why with the latest release of the AthlonXP, AMD had to add more layers and do more wiring optimisation to shrink the effective distances between components (closer = faster signal propagation, obviously).

The P4 is capable of handling much higher clock rates than the AthlonXP, since the NetBurst architecture isn't designed with the assumption that all signals will propagate within a single clock cycle. My rough calculations show that the P4 could probably be clocked up to about 30ghz before you hit the same signal propagation issues the Athlon is having now. Of course, there are more traditional overclocking concerns between 3ghz and 30ghz. :P

fast chip?

[AmigaAvenger]

Maybe I'm missing the point, but isn't every new chip the manufcatures release the 'fastest chip ever'

I remember when the Pentium 200 was the fastest chip ever!

Re:fast chip?

[moertle]

Ah, but when the Pentium 200 was out DEC had a 500 MHz Alpha.

Re:fast chip?

[aridhol]

Yeah, maybe they should rename it to "The Fastest Chip Ever or Until Someone Else Makes Something Faster", but it just doesn't roll of the tongue the same way.

Re:fast chip?

[Mr. Sketch]

You must be new... I can recall the PCWorld issue that reviewed the brand new 286/12 processor (yes that's a screaming 12Mhz, with turbo turned on of course) and the reviewer sayed "It ran so fast it left skid marks on my desktop!". How's that for fast?

Re:fast chip?

[Sloppy]

Maybe I'm missing the point, but isn't every new chip the manufcatures release the 'fastest chip ever'

Yeah, but this one is even faster!

Re:fast chip?

[JonWan]

"It ran so fast it left skid marks on my desktop!". How's that for fast?

Well I guess this one leaves skid marks in your pants.

Also on AnandTech

[johnkp]

Intel's Pentium 4 3.06GHz: Hyper-Threading on Desktops

Personal PC's

[Uhh_Duh]

I don't understand the need to always be on the bleeding edge of technology. Intel loves to push these newer faster chips down the throats of consumers, but I've got 600MHz Intel chip and a 2ghz intel chip, both running Windows 2000, and I swear I can't tell any difference between 600MHz and 2ghz for normal usage -- and I consider myself a power user.(Granted, I don't do 3D rendering or massive number crunching on a daily basis, but how many of your average consumers do?)

I won't be running out to buy this any time soon -- especially when I can the $200 Walmart computer is less than the cost of this CPU.

Call me old fashioned, but geeze.. Intel already gets plenty of money from my pocketbook for little performance gain. Something needs to be done about the rest of PC hardware before the speed of the CPU is going to make a massive difference.

Re:Personal PC's

[kin_korn_karn]

The need is driven by games. I'm a gamer, so I have to have all of this bleeding edge hardware.

However, I regularly tell non-gamers that they shouldn't upgrade unless their PC doesn't do what they want it to do. The push for faster-better-stronger hardware is out of hand, the average consumer doesn't need any more than a 600mhz.. but they do need lots of RAM and a big hard drive.

Re:Personal PC's

[cardshark2001]

I don't understand the need to always be on the bleeding edge of technology

You obviously have not played the leaked doom demo.

Re:Personal PC's

[_ph1ux_]

Exactly. The thing is that the testing that is done on Intels latest chips is done in a subjective manner for marketing purposes. They test the chips on machines that are not Identicle - with software that is optimized for that chips instruction set - then push it out to people saying "Look at Intel's latest chip! The new $Pentium-X will runs your applications so much faster!"

but there is a threshold we will hit - on the consumer level - and that day (although still a bit away) is coming faster and faster with every release. It is the subjective speed threshold, where the Human is the bottleneck. Where the computer can do anything the user can so fast - that the computer is then waiting on input from the user.

All input from a human comes in little spurts - and therefore will be processed by the CPU before the next batch comes in.

The point is that there is a somewhat finite desktop market incentive for faster processors, in that, for the average user - there will be a time, sooner than later, where they find that the machine they have is fast enough, featureful enough and big enough (storgage) to meet their (rather long term) needs.

Re:Personal PC's

[ActiveSX]

I just installed win98 on a computer for a friend (i am a mac user now)

I would be too after an experience like that.

Re:Personal PC's

[scot4875]

I'm a gamer, too, but I'm not a mark. I play plenty of games released this year (UT2003, WC3, for example) on a 1 Ghz P3 w/ Radeon 8500 with absolutely *no* problems.

By not staying on the bleeding edge of hardware, I have extra money to buy more games. I don't buy hardware that will be able to play a game that may/may not come out sometime in the next year, I buy based on what's available *now*. There's no f'in reason to have a 3 Ghz CPU for any game currently on the market.

I'd say that my current PC (minus the monitor, which cost $300, because I wanted a nice monitor) cost a total of maybe $500 to build. That's LESS than the price of this CPU.

Go ahead and buy it if you want, but it really won't make your dick any bigger.

--Jeremy

Re:Personal PC's

[be-fan]

..sigh... Every time one of these articles come out. First, if you can't tell the difference between 2GHz and 600MHz, you're dead. My 2GHz machine is nowhere near fast enough, even just running Konqueror and KMail. Second, more people need the power than you'd think. I write C++ code with some very heavily templated libraries. G++ eats my processor for lunch (I've got enough RAM that it's not HD-bound). Add to that 3D rendering (messing around with Blender for some 3D work) and numerical computation (simulations, Octave, Mathematica) and I probably won't ever have enough CPU. And I don't even do gaming!

Re:Personal PC's

[grammar fascist]

Woo hoo! I might just get some "Informative" karma over this one... :)

Here's the deal: the DOOM III demo was a debug build. If you've got it, do a "strings" on it. You'll see a bunch of debug symbols.

That means no optimizations, and tons (I mean tons) of code to make tracking down problems like memory leaks easier. That kind of build will naturally munch processor cycles like crazy.

Corroborating evidence: the alpha is very CPU-bound, which should be surprising given how the algorithms it uses for rendering eat GPUs for lunch.

All the same, with features like per-poly collision detection, I expect the final version to do much better on a 3.06GHz chip than a 1.2GHz chip.

</off-topic>

Re:The real question is...

[jonnythan]

With 82 watts of heat produced, I don't think you need to overclock it at all for that to happen.

Wow!

[darkov]

And if they had a 40-stage pipeline they could go to 6GHz! Then I'd be really impressed.

Not just the Mhz ramp: hyperthreading/SMT

[mccalli]

This chip is more interesting than just the normal megahertz hike. It's the first of the desktop hyperhreaded chips - previously only available in the Xeon range (well, from Intel anyway. Other manufacturers had them).

This is something I'm interested in. I currently run a dual-CPU box of two 533Mhz Celerons on a BP6 board. I've wanted my next machine to be a dual-CPU has well, but now I'm not certain. Perhaps the hyperthreading will take care of that for me? Who knows, it's too early to say as yet. But I'll be keeping an eye out on the benchmarks for this chip, whereas I've more or less ignored the Mhz races for the last couple of years.

Cheers,
Ian

100 watts....

[Steveftoth]

if you read the article they say that it can use up to 100 watts of power when you are using the chip to the utmost. That's a lot of power. Much more then the AMDs. Anyone else think that's a little extreme? I mean I'm all for more speed, but cost aside, this seems to be a huge factor in actually getting one of these systems. You also have to get a new motherboard.

For server applications it's not as useful because you can't build dense systems. Since server applications are by their very nature more multithreaded then workstation, I would imageine that they would get much hotter. You'd need a lot more cooling. Also, don't the chips SLOW DOWN automatically when they get too hot, thus negating any increase in speed you might get from them.

Notice that the new heat sink is larger as well.

Not trying to bash it, but it seems like the older chips are still going to be better until they get this whole heat issue under control. I run my system almost 24x7 like I'm sure many people on /. do so I think that running a system all the time (with SETI or whatnot) would be expensive.

Re:100 watts....

[ektor]

Every one of the recent processors from both Intel and AMD are very much power hungry. While the P4 3.06 pushes 80 watts the top-of-the-line AMD is not far behind.

See this article from Tom's Hardware.

Sadly this trend won't go away anytime soon. When you pack that many transistors running at ultrahigh frenquencies in a tiny package you have to pay somehow.

Too bad

[tcd004]

It runs so hot that it has to be cooled by the blood of a virgin every hour.

tcd004

Re:Too bad

[fobbman]

They're catering to the geek market. That's a large supply of virgins right there.

Congratulations, it's a CPU, and an oven

[ka9dgx]

So, we have a CPU with an internal clock faster than the 2.5 Ghz in my Microwave oven. Does it come with a carousel to keep the heating even?

--Mike--

What happened??

[Ec|ipse]

So with a 3gig cpu running with 1gig memory and a 100gig of harddrive space. Is this something we can expect?

User 1 "Did my computer just crash?"
User 2 "Couldn't tell, happened to fast."

microwaves

[kippy]

I remember when processors started breaking the GhZ benchmark, people were making jokes about how we're starting to get to the point where the things will be emiting microwaves since they are in the GhZ's.

anyone know how close we are now? will this new chip boil water from a distance?

even if we're a couple years off from that, are we going to need sheilding in our cases soon so that we don't cook our lower legs? if so, does anyone else thing that this would cause a lot of problems since compUSA won't take that into account when they do an upgrade?

Just some thoughts...

Why? Are you afraid of a fiery inferno?

[burgburgburg]

Crybaby.

No Pain, No Gain!

Feel the burn!

Be the burn!

GHz vs. Billion Cycles Per Second

[Zordak]

The new P4 runs at 3.06GHz, at 3 billion cycles per second.

That's nothing. I hear AMD is going to come out with a 3.06GHz chip that runs at 4 billion cycles per second!

Re:Intel

[Twirlip of the Mists]

X86 is a joke and anyone who is buying a processor these days should just wait and watch, that's what I've been doing since 1998.

How's that working out for you? ;-)

Re:82 watts!

[Anonymous Coward]

Intel should run an ad where a family sits around the (Apple) computer in coats and earmuffs, shaking from the cold.. everything blue, with icicles (sp).

Then switch to a shot of a family in a cozy room, all basking around the glow of a warm intel machine..

Intel .. Keeps You Warm! (tm)

Hey, those marketers can sell anything, right?

What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean really..what is the point? You have a superfast chip and you're STILL doing everything else wrong. Why are we just speeding up the CPU? Why are we not designing a better computer that doesn't NEED to ram everything through the CPU?

We're only getting a shadow of an idea with our GPU's...I believe Apple is the "first" to start making use of the video card's GPU for day-to-day stuff. And this is a GOOD thing.

Former Amiga users know what I'm talking about. There's a damn good reason why a computer with a "mere" 68000 was able to run circles around the PC's of it's day, and easily keep pace with more advanced intel chips.

Re:What's the point?

[Benley]

I believe Apple is the "first" to start making use of the video card's GPU for day-to-day stuff.

*ahem* SGI's IRIX has been doing this for more than a decade. Their systems have always amazed me - just today, in fact, I managed to get an old Onyx system working. It's got a pair of 75mhz r8k cpus and a RealityEngine2. That's not a typo - 2x75mhz. Even with such slow CPUs, the user interface is lightning quick because of how well the OS makes use of the video hardware. Granted, the r8000 was a very unusual CPU in how effecient it was per clock, but still...

Re:doesn't this happen like every month?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

We break a new GHz barrier every month?

What GHz "barrier?" It's not like 3 GHz was theoretically impossible or anything. This is just a matter of making something go slightly faster than it did yesterday.

Or is it the big round number that impresses you?

Re:Processor is not the bottle neck

[error0x100]

I have to wonder though, WHY? Todays software seems to need insane amounts of RAM compared to five or ten or fifteen years ago, and yet we don't seem to be all that much better off. Programmers just seem to squander the RAM faster than the RAM manufacturers can make it. Software expands to fill all available RAM. Its not even a joke. Why should "calc.exe" need 1-3MB RAM? The process running the task bar on my Win2K machine needs about 3MB of RAM, which is ridiculously high since all it has is a few buttons and icons and shows the time and has a menu, and yet the same thing in Windows XP typically needs close to 10 MB RAM. Windows Explorer in XP is MUCH slower than in earlier versions of Windows. Something is wrong with this picture.

I wish programmers would make some effort to optimize the stuff. Perhaps better tools would be useful. As a C++ developer, I would like a tool that shows me a breakdown of how much RAM is being used by which parts of my program. If such tools were commonplace, programmers would be able to quickly isolate the parts of the their programs that are hogging the most memory.

HT on Linux or FreeBSD...

[cowmix]

Does anyone know if Linux of FreeBSD sees any benefit from the 'hyperthreading' technology? All the things I am reading say that you OS needs to support threads, but how does the processor know what is a thread, and what is a process?

Re:HT on Linux or FreeBSD...

[BlueLines]

i've had a developer maryville board on my desk at work for the past 2 months (p4 2.8ghz). my experience with it so far hasn't been particularly impressive. i mean, it presents itself as 2 cpus to the underlying os (works w/ xp, .net rc1, and linux), but when you do something that actually taxes both cpus (make -j8 bzImage or what have you) there's a lot of thrashing and no true performance gain. i like the idea that no one program can totally lock up your cpu (netscape / q3 / X / etc), but i haven't seen any gains in day to day use.

i'm curious how oracle / msft will deal with the licensing issues that will come about from presenting virtual cpus.

-BlueLines

Re:HT on Linux or FreeBSD...

[Elladan]

Linux supports HT. No OS as far as I know sees much benefit from it.

The difference between a "process" and a "thread" is pretty small. A thread is just a process with shared page tables, for the most part. This means that there's less overhead switching between two threads, since you don't have to flush the TLB and caches. The processor per se knows absolutely nothing about any of this - it just knows when the OS commands it to flush the TLB and the caches, and change the page table addresses.

The basic point of HT is that it's sort-of another CPU, but it's just leeching unused resources from the main CPU. So, the scheduling logic in the OS needs to understand that it's not a real CPU, and thus should be grouped with the real CPU it's associated with. Linux 2.5/2.6 will support these tweaks, with 2.4 you'll need some sort of patch currently. Without the tweaks, you still get HT, it just doesn't help much.

But really, it never helps that much. Don't expect a 2x speedup or anything, even if your system is running heavily threaded applications.

I call bullshit...

[Cervantes]

...with 50 percent saying they play video games while also burning CDs

I'm sorry, but there are only two explanations. One is that half of users out there are running maxxxed out machines that can handle that load (yes, with winblows). In which case, why the push for new chips?

The other explanation is that users really are burning cd's while playing games, in which case, the RIAA can pack up and go home, because those hundreds of thousands of CD's are obviously ending up as coasters, not as pirate booty.

I know, I know... I show my age when I remember the days where you clicked "burn" and ran like hell. I still remember the setup I had that would coaster the disk if I moved the mouse during the TOC writing. Admittedly, it was a brand new 1x burner, but still....

And considering my ole Celeron 300a runs Win2k just fine, why in the blue blazes would I need a 3G? Seems computers have hit the plateau... the average user gets along just fine with what they have, it's only professionals and gamers who really snap up the new hardware.

I'm gonna start a bet... how long can my 300 run before it's finally too slow?

(and to stop your flames, RedHat goes on my 1Ghz. So there)

Quite true, actually

[phorm]

So you've got a smoking video card, a super fast processor, and some other fancy peripherals. You've stocked your machine up... except you haven't taken the time to upgrade your RAM about the 256MB of PC2100 DDR...
ooops, mistake!
RAM does definately make a difference. It used to be that after a certain amount of RAM, the speed difference was negligable, but since then OS's and apps have been chewing up more and more memory.

Once your monster-fragging memory-chewing game starts getting near memory limits, you are going to see performance loss, even on a high-end processor. You'll start hearing that annoying clickety-clickety-clack sound, which often indicates your hard-drive is whirring away storing up swap space.
Even if you've got a nice new 7200RPM (or higher in SCSI) hard drive, it's not going to get near the transfer speed as your RAM, as you're limited by the mechanical medium. Suddenly, your game will start stuttering, and some bigass monster or perhaps a dude with a show gun is going to tag advantage of this to remove your head.

I have 2 machines, an Athlon XP and an old Duron. The Athlon is by far superior, faster processor, faster bus, faster RAM, etc, etc. The Duron, however, has half a gig of RAM (and probably more soon, PC133 is cheap and abundant). While the Athlon takes the lead easily at first, it can decrease noticably in performance as I start running into heavy swap usage.
Windows XP is a big fat whale of an OS, and it sucks a lot of my RAM to begin with. Throwing a big game on top of that (and whatever helper apps multitask in the background) can put it in the red zone fairly quickly. In contrast, with 512MB of RAM, the OS tends to put its bloated self into memory, and still leave enough space for my gaming needs.

The moral of this is, that - as always - a PC is only as fast as its slowest component. In many cases, you can bottleneck at the RAM, or - when you run low on memory - a the hard disk in swap.
It's like having a car with a huge engine, and only 6" tires or a really narrow gasline. You have to have balance... and a superfast processor really isn't going to cut a big difference nowadays until everything else catches up.

Re:Should I buy it?

[BTWR]

As Homer Simpsons once said...

"Ooh... they have the internet on computers now!"

I Smell a Poll...

[flogger]

What's yer CPU speed?
[]2.8 GHZ+
[]2.5GHZ+
[]1.5 GHZ+
[]1ghz+
[]500Mhz+
[]233 Mhz+
[]Cowboyneal runs the cage the powers my CPU.

Re:Smokin!

[spike hay]

I have two dual processor machines and they run at 3.2G's but I don't think they would fare all that well against a single processor machine running at 3.06G since not everything can use both and it doesn't seem like all that much uses both effectively.

Actually, the hyperthreading only helps in apps that support hyperthreading. Your dual processors are hyperthreaded. So any hyperthreading app that takes advantage of the P4 will also take advantage of your dual processor setup.

I imagine two different processors would be much better than 1 hyperthreaded processor.

Also, they only mention a 25% performance increase. Dual processors running hyperthreaded apps have at least a 60% performance increase. However, I bet this P4 would beat your machine in non-hyperthreaded apps.

Newsflash!

[limekiller4]

...and in other news, today is the "Latest Day, Ever."

everyday math stuff

[sstory]

There are computer labs at NCSU with old Sparcs (running SunOS 5.7, for all you geeks in the audience) which seem to be practically equivalent, in ordinary usage terms, to P 200's. There's a huge difference, HUGE, between Maple or Mathematica on these systems, and on the PIII 500 in my office. But there's very little difference, it's almost unnoticeable, between those programs on my office computer, and the same thing on my home computer, an Athlon 1200 mhz. And I've used mathematica on a 1.7 ghz Dell in our office, and again, there's no practical difference. Maybe computing a bunch of Fourier coefficients takes 8 mins on the 500, and 4 mins on the 1.7.

Compared to the average person I do intensive computation, and I feel no pressure to upgrade. For the average user the need to upgrade must be entirely generated by marketing--right now performance improvements in hardware is irrelevant. I wonder what's going to change--assuming anything does--to make us all hunger for faster systems as we used to. I can't think of anything compelling, but i'm unsure because intel etc are spending piles of cash figuring out how to reestablish the need for improvement.

Re:HT on Linux or FreeBSD... (fixed)

[daeley]

Looks like you're hyperthreading already! ;)

Re:What about Linux?

[Jim Norton]

Yes, kernel 2.4.something apparently supports it. The only Microsoft OS which supports hyperthreading properly is Windows XP. Windows 2000 and below doesn't utilize it.

So it's either Linux or XP, as far as I know.

Yawn - Hype for the sheep.

[dnoyeb]

Marketing hype. This is really nothing and I can't understand why THG is hyping this.

All this does it let the CPU have 2 apps it can switch between at. Normally the CPU has to wait on the OS to give it something to do. Now the OS can give it sort of a spare job to keep doing.

Still only 1 can run at at time though. Its NOT a multiprocessing system. Simply where the OS normally chooses which app gets to run, now the CPU can always hold 1 app in the hole, ready to run it when any down time comes along.

For those who ALWAYS run something in the background like Folding@home or SETI, they will certainly see an improvement. if the OS and CPU agree to keep that app on the CPU, it will improve performance. But it will NOT increase your fps because you will only have 1 app going then.

AND if you turn on dual cpu support in quake, you should see a performance hit if anything.

The results from THG bore this fact out. I wouldnt waste time on this if I were AMD. The everyday user still has no benefit from dual processing systems, and the servers will need TRUE dual processing systems.

Re:Smokin!

[dnoyeb]

You contradict yourself. You say you wish AMD could keep up with intel, then you mention that not many apps use both CPUs (and thus hyperthreading) effectively.

I think AMD realizes that multiprocessing is not something the average user will ever benefit from. But they are falling behind in the marketing department on this one.

consider the via eden platform

[honold]

mini-itx form factor, integrated video/ethernet/fanless cpu - just add memory and storage. link

if you wanted to go all-out on skipping the moving parts, you could run the os on compact flash using an ide to cf adapter from pcengines.com and use a cupid case with a dc power supply. just make sure to disable writing, or you'll wear it out! use mfs or a (non-essential) extra standard hard disk for data.

Re:Wow! -- Optimal Pipeline Depth

[Erich]

There are actually some interesting papers out about optimal pipeline depth. At first they appear to have different conclusions, as they cover different architectures, but the conclusion is really sort of the same: optimum pipeline depth is about six fanout-of-four inverters per stage of work for integer paths and four for floating-point paths. Plus two (each) for overhead. That leads to crazy-long pipelines, I think the rough calculation for redoing the P4 pipeline came out to 50 stages or something.

If you do a google search on optimal pipeline depth you'll find some good results.

skid marks

[drinkypoo]

"It ran so fast it left skid marks on my desktop!". How's that for fast?

Well I guess this one leaves skid marks in your pants.

No, that's a different kind of chip, mostly the kind made with olestra.

This is a chip from intel, so it leaves skid marks in your wallet.

Re:No FUD, just Facts

[Proudrooster]

Accuse me of FUD all you want, but examine the evidence for yourself.

Exhibit A
Win NT beats Windows 2000 in SQL Server 7 Benchmarks
What? The new O/S is slower? Must be FUD, doesn't have anything to do with bloated code and forcing users into hardware upgrades.

Exhibit B
Red Hat/Samba far outscales Windows 2000 on identical hardware
Yes your honor, it's true, at a load level of 16 clients Windows 2000 filesystem throughput flat lines vs. Red Hat Linux with Samba which is still scaling up nicely with 28 clients.

Does Windows 2000 mask the true power of the Intel hardware? Examine the report and look at the benchmark graphs. Decide for yourself if it's FUD or FACT. Note: the source is PC Magazine which if you will refer to this months copy contains many advertisements for Microsoft .NET .. Looks like PC Mag has some integrity.

Shall I continue?
Want to see why TUX stomps IIS and Apache for serving static content?
I challenge you to find the FUD in any of this. In fact, many of you might wish to save these links for future TCO discussions within your local IT departments.

PROVE ME WRONG!!!! Show me how Microsoft is doing it faster and better compared to either a) A Previous Microsoft Server Product, or b) Linux. Wave your hands and shout FUD all you want, but be prepared to back it up.

I wish someone would back me up! :)

As for my 486, I wrote a user mode driver which allows me to access the data pins on the parallel port to activate a relay and ultimately switch A/C power. (Web page coming soon.) This device can be used to remotely reboot Windows servers that BSOD, or turn on Christmas Lights add/or Coffee Pots via cron or telnet. Did I mention it all fits on a floppy, runs on a 486, and is network accessible? I am trying to shoe-horn a webserver onto the floppy now.

In reguards to Hyper-Threading.

[nycbrujah]

Intel has a nice tutorial on the subject.
I know that of the Microsoft OS's, only the XP family supports the Hyper-Threading. I couldn't tell you if any other OS's support it.
Distilled down, the processor creates a virtual or logical second processor which assists it in using underutilized resources.
A lot of multimedia vendors would be interested in this, a lot of gaming vendors will jump at this.

Price Performance Ratio

[SailorBob]

Basically, it comes out that the XP 2800+ and the P4 3.06 Ghz are neck in neck for most real world applications, with less than 10% differance between them on anything most home or business users are going to run. So it really comes down to which is the better deal, especially in a depressed economy with tight IT budgets. At the moment, only the XP 2700+ and the P4 2.8 are shown up on pricewatch.com, with prices of $354 amd $389 respectively. Meaning that AMD still has the crown in the Price/performance arena. However, the gap is narrowing.