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P4 3.2GHz Reviews
Nathan writes "The Intel 3.2GHz Pentium4 has passed its NDA with reviews coming out over the net, including this one at MBReview, This one at HardAvenue, This one at TweakTown and this review at HotHW." Yay. Benchmarks. Wowee-zowee.
Hell, I'm not going to pay the extra money, but someone will. Let the CAD shops and rich kids pay for the R&D costs on this chip, and maybe I'll buy it when it's down to it's actual price.
You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
(Yes, fellow pedants, I am aware that "Pentium" was used for the chip following the 486, as Intel couldn't copyright a number and stop their competitors using the term "586".)
Seriously though, how long have successive generations of Pentium technology lasted? Is it just me, or was the PIII the primary product line for longer than the PII, and when will the P4 break the PIII's record?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
And the other 95% of computer users will pick the cheaper 32-bit Intel chip running Windows. What's your point? You're willing to pay an enormous premium for very little gain? The average consumer isn't going to see a difference between a 32-bit CPU and a 64-bit CPU other than one is going to be more expensive and perhaps run a bit faster. In 6 months the 32-bit CPU will trounce it yet again.
We've been going over this for over 10 years now. If 64-bit CPUs were some kind of panacea then the DEC Alpha would have become the dominate desktop chipset. Now it's just pleasant history. Mac users will continue to buy Macs no matter what CPU is in them if history repeats itself. They're even willing to lose almost all binary compatibility in the switch if necessary. Heck, if I remember correctly they've done it twice so far going from Motorola 68k chips to PowerPC and then from OS 9 to OS X. Most people aren't willing to make such a sacrifice in the name of platform advocacy which is why Windows still runs old DOS programs.
Mac with PowerPC 2 GHz is coming out today.
That's what I'm waiting for. I weant to see head to head comparisons versus this P4.
It's right here: Pentium 4 starts to die, all hail the Pentium 5.
"INTEL HAS RELEASED a 3.20GHz Pentium 4 microprocessor which will likely be the last of its kind until it introduces its "Prescott Pentium 5" design later on this year."
I can't entirely agree on the suggestion that 64bit vs. 32bit isn't relevant.
Whilst Intel has screwed 64bit on x86 up for the moment by keeping the Itanium high-end and very much server only, Apple is about to usher in something that is available to the general public, albeit at something of an Apple price premium.
x86ers would like it very much if 64bit wasn't relevant for the consumer, because they're not going to get it for a little while yet, but in truth, it really is huge. The potential for huge performance increases in games (I'm thinking Doom III of course) is massive.
This brings about a very interesting situation. Apple will now effectively have the lead and the tables are thus turned. Intel zealots will now be the ones arguing that increased performance is not needed and just wasted (as Apple users have said for years, because of the crappy Motorola G4s). Suddenly Apple users have the upper hand - and so PC users will now have to go back on everything they have said and try desperately to claim that a faster chip doesn't actually matter.
To echo the sentiments of so many x86 lovers, speed does matter, and at last, Apple is about to be on top again.
iqu
I find it irrelevant whether the speed of an existing type of processor has increased by less than ten percent, although looking at the price compared to the 200MHz lower clocked variant, maybe this would fit under "It's funny, laugh".
;)
However, this processor does seems very suitable for overclocking (4GHz, yikes!). Did anyone manage to come close to that with the 3GHz model, or has Intel increased the therapeutical window of their processors slightly?
Now this is really pure FUD, I'm afraid, but it does make me laugh.
Yeah, it's true that the masses will probably stick to what is cheaper. It's what they're always gonna do, and that's fine, because most people just want Office and maybe the occasional game. Apple will never really penetrate that market.
But this is Slashdot. We demand more from our machines here. We want high speed UNIX boxen and game stations that we can frag at 150 fps on, and if we're lucky, both at the same time.
The bit about binary compatibility shows that you know nothing about Macs. The PPC 970 _is_ backwards compatible with all the old software - everything will run! And the best thing is, as has always been the case with Macs, backwards compatibility is unrivalled. Macs of today still feature Motorola 68k emulation so that they can run software written for those chips, for OS 9 and for OS X.
Windows XP (the equivalent of OS X in terms of consumer accessibility and reliability), on the other hand, has terrible backwards compatibility, and I find that many, many, many old DOS or even Windows programs will not run...
I rest my case.
iqu
Something is missing, oh yea, the Intel vs AMD benchmarks, WTF, how can you compare your own CPU's to each other, I wanna see how they hold up to AMD
If there is nothing left worth living, what are you willing to die for?
Doom III isn't actually out yet, so let's give it time shall we? When its in the shops and there is no 64bit version available, then you can make the above claim.
As regards the 32bit vs 64bit issue, I think you only need to look at some of the performance figures to see that the PPC chips give some serious competition to Intel. 64bit chips process twice as much information as 32bit chips - this is more than just a memory-addressing thing.
As you will see, clock-for-clock, they can blow x86 out of the water.
iqu
If you need that kind of toast-making performance, you're luch more likely to either build a toaster-farm with dozens (or maybe even hundreds) of inexpensive run-of-the mill toasters, or splurge for a big, heavy-duty continuous-feed made-to-order beltway toaster.
Sort of like getting either a cluster of cheap middle-performing x86 boxes, or a big-iron type machine from Sun or IBM, come to think about it.
I mean, how many apps really critically need that 2% parformance increase, but do not benefit from a dual or quad-cpu machine, a cluster, or a big non-x86 Unix machine?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
You're willing to pay an enormous premium for very little gain?
You obviously haven't seen the specs on the 970 yet.
Heck, if I remember correctly they've done it twice so far going from Motorola 68k chips to PowerPC and then from OS 9 to OS X.
No. you don't remember correctly. The move from 68k to powerpc was pretty smooth, and very few were left in the dust. And the move from OS 9 to X hasn't been perfect, but apple has retained great compatibility, and the carbon api made it possible for developers to change just a few lines of code to get their software to run natively in X.
As the kind of Mac user that will break a bottle on the edge of the bar and come after you for badmouthing my OS, nobody is more excited about the rumored release of the 970s than I am... But, I can't help taking a "wait and see" approach today. There are a number of reasons that the "leak" from last week looked sort of fishy. So, I think it may be a few hours premature to use the word "revolution". Believe me, I hope you are right. In any event, Intel should really come up with something more than faster clock speeds and bigger fans. My housemates are both Windows guys and their systems don't seem much faster... Just louder and hotter. So, hopefully, this afternoon will be big big news for us Mac geeks. Fingers crossed......
Someday a real rain is gonna come...
when money is available, you buy the top-of-the-line computer. You may be using it for the next ten years.
This is the rationale I hear for buying expensive hardware from Sun or SGI (and I agree, for the most part). I've never heard it used to justify buying Intel's latest offering - PCs are retired quicker than any other platform. If you really need to make a crappy PC workstation last for ten years, you're better off buying a cheaper box, like a 2.4Ghz P4 (which isn't slow by any means), and use all the money you save to purchase spare boxes or parts. You'll definitely need them if you want to keep the system going for ten years.
I know from experience that there are few things more annoying than trying to squeeze the last bit of life out of PCs that have been obsolete and off warranty for two years. . . sometimes, when the moon is out, I can still hear those IBM Pentium 90s calling my name.
Sorry man, next price cuts aren't scheduled until October or therabouts. 3.0 will be staying at or very, very close to what it is now. That's why I went ahead and ordered mine friday ;)
- Xenius
You'll care when Joe Blow down the street has Quake 5 and he's running around fragging everyone and their momma with his 512MB video card and 6.7Ghz processor.
/shrug
It works like this.
#1. Uber game comes out.
#2. Your hardware sucks, you buy a new comp.
#3. Next Uber game comes out.
#4. Your hardware sucks, you buy a new comp.
etc....
Unfortunately, Computer game technology hasn't been pushing the limits of hardware lately.
(Maybe it's because the Gaming companies got smart and realized that the more platforms that can play your game, the better)
What about the AMD Athlon64/Opteron? Soon Windows will have a 64-bit consumer version, and Linux already does have.
:-)
And you get x86 compatability too. I'll leave it upto the reader if that is a good/bad thing!
I have. Read the line about integer performance and you'll see why Apple will still be playing catchup with Intel and AMD. Most people are going to be doing integer and not floating point calculations when they are running their systems. Those that do benefit from floating point are likely not "Switch" candidates anyway. Either way, it's difficult at best to just drop one system and replace it for another when it comes to FP calculations as you not only need to purchase new hardware, you have to purchase new software and even with Adobe allowing crossgrade licensing, it's going to be a big hit to the wallet.
Modern chess engines represent the board as several 64bit bitboards, one for the white queen, one for the black queen, one for the white pawns etc.
This as opposed to the good old days with a 64 byte array containing 1 for the white queen, 2 for the white pawns etc.
Bitboards really benefit from 64bit registers and 64bit (integer) arithmetic.
"There is no substitute for thinking" - Bjarne Stroustrup
Other than high-resolution timestamps, nobody uses 64-bit integers for anything. In the real world, 64-bit quantities are used for floating point numbers and address pointers. The X86 architecture has had 80-bit floating point for 20 years now. In fact, it has had 128-bit wide multimedia processing logic for the last 7 years.
64 bits is just a memory addressing thing. However, unless the working dataset of your apps is both non-streamable and larger then 3 gigabytes, you have absolutely no need for 64-bit pointers.
In fact, if you keep all other parameters constant, changing a CPU to 64 bits slows it down. This is because you are now filling precious cache memory space with useless zeros in the upper 32 bits of the vast majority of your pointers.
Well, I seem to remember Microsoft pushing something I think was called "QuickBIOS" that pursued this idea. One good thing about Windows XP is that it certainly does boot up faster than most operating systems I've seen, so Microsoft wanted to get that long BIOS delay out of the picture. I'm not sure whatever happened to that, or if it only allowed you to boot Windows. But at any rate, Microsoft, of all people, is thinking of you ;-)
>Well seeing as I couldn't actually buy a CPU slower than a gigahertz when I last looked around
How 'bout it.
I was helping my sister out this weekend. She had a machine I had built for her a while ago using a PII-450 that she was using as a print server (she's a Mac user, but has a designjet and she wanted a server on her home network to run some remote proofing software).
Anyway, she had me come over because she "needed up upgrade" the machine. She was trying to install some new printing software that refused to install unless there was 512 Mb. Well the mb was maxed out at 394 Mb, so it was time to install a new board that would take more memory.
She needed it for work this week, otherwise I would have shopped around online for a replacement -- as it was, we drove over to the local computer store to shop for parts.
No shit -- the bottom-range processor they sold was a P4 2A. There was no way she needed a 2Ghz processor for this machine, but the only way to get her the 512Mb she needed right then and there was to plop down a few hundred for the board, memory and processor.
I'm really behind the times, it seems. My machines at home are all sub-1Gz processors -- I haven't upgraded anything since the last PIII-933 I put together to be able to play RTCW.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
While those reviews are more than adequate, I am surprised that Tom's Hardware review is not mentioned. While I would not mention it blindly just because THG was one of the first sites to offer in-depth reviews, after reading it I gained more insight than from the other "here are the benchmarks, mam" sites. Here's the synopsis:
"Intel launches the last P4, with 3.2 GHz for FSB800 and Dual DDR400. Its rival AMD fights back with the Athlon XP 3200+ and Dual DDR400. With the Pentium 5 and Athlon 64 waiting in the wings, it's a historic duel." [tomshardware.com]
Must-not-watch TV!
If you're claiming that Mac's have superior GPU's on their graphics cards, then why are they using ATI Radeon 9700's...a company, I might add, that Apple dropped, only to get bit in the ass and return to, once they popped out a fantastic series of cards for PC's?
Look, there's a simple underlying reason that we need/want higher clock rates, fsb's, etc. Games, 3D animation, multi-track audio, and any number of other things *require* some serious processing power. It's that bloody simple. If you want to test that, load up 11 or 12 plugins on a 2 minute sample in Cubase on a 1.5GHz system, then compare that same test on a 2.3GHz system. You *will* notice a difference.
And don't even get started on marketing. ALL of these companies, from Apple to Intel to AMD, push crap at their customers left and right. Regardless of your platform choice, you're eating it up just the same..otherwise, you wouldn't be bringing up specs for the PPC 970 (ps: the current crop of Pentium 4's can be pushed to 1.2GHz FSB..the difference is, they're actually out on the market.) and you wouldn't be arguing the Macs vs. PC thing.
Give up on the "mhz myth" marketing scheme Apple has going and look at the bigger picture. You may not notice a difference while browsing the web, but content creation professionals *definitely* will.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I agree that this article wasn't that interesting, but I did find the following passing interesting
Next up, weâ(TM)ll be taking a look at FutureMark's 3DMark2001SE. With the recent debacle surrounding NVIDIA and FutureMark, I have chosen to exclude 3DMark2003 from our benchmarking suite for those of you wondering why you arenâ(TM)t seeing any results for it. (from here)
We've all read how NVIDIA fiddled with the results and how FutureMark became complacent with it. Now here's the result.
-no broken link
*shrug* Probably for the same reasons ?
Someone somewhere else on this thread sarcastically suggested that I was simply assuming 64bit to be twice the speed of 32bit.
Well, at one point you said "64 bit processors can process twice as much data as 32 bit processors", or words to that affect. Which is a pretty meaningless statement without a time reference.
However, 64bit quite clearly is the future, and whether x86 or PPC is your architecture, it's where we're going.
Sure. Eventually. In much the same way that ipv6 is the future.
surely the ability to fetch 64bits of data at a time rather than just 32bits is going to speed things up?
I'm pretty sure that the rate CPUs read from memory is actually limited by things like memory bandwidth and speed. I think most CPUs already fetch memory speculatively in chunks of 128bits or more, so I doubt that'd make much difference.
You also have to remember that the size of the pointer type doubles. That can actually decrease efficiency - as pointed out in the article linked to in a sibling post, a lot of computation involves linked list traversal. The increased pointer size would cause greater amounts of data to need to be processed.
It is quite clear from your posting history that you do not like Macs
Well this is the interesting thing. I don't have much against Macs themselves, other than a general dislike of proprietary platforms (but the same is true of Windows or Solaris for instance). It's more the attitude of some (unfortunately the most vocal) Mac users that annoys me. A lot of, well, to be frank inaccurate things are said about Apple and their products, and it's a big turnoff.
It's especially annoying when people work themselves into a frenzy then treat a corporation and its product almost like a religion. So that's where a lot of my "anti-Mac" viewpoint comes from, not in fact the technology or even the company themselves (though apple have done their fair share of shady things) - just the blind loyalty of its users.
> Uhh, what? First, optimized code will run more
> "efficiently" on a P4.
Not with the crypto code I am talking about. Even when compiling with Intel's own compiler, icc, with Pentium IV optimizations, the Athlon processor is twice as effcient.
> Second, "efficiency" is meaningless.
It can be defined as the number of CPU cycles per byte required to complete a given job. This easy to measure unambiguously, and not at all meaningless.
> Efficiency is a pointless measure in computing
> because there are always multiple ways to get
> better performance.
There are other factors. For instance, my 1 GHz Athlon is much cheaper than the 2.4 GHz Pentium IV, with a very similar specification in the way of memory, disk, etc..
The point is, for the crypto code I am dealing with, the Athlon processor is a far better choice.