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New Intel Chipset and Extreme Edition CPU Tested
Steve writes "Today sees the launch of both a new CPU and chipset from Intel. The CPU takes the form of a 3.46Ghz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, running at 1066FSB, and the chipset is the i925XE, the first Intel chipset to support this new FSB. HEXUS.net have a review of both. It looks like AMD still have the lead when it comes to performance, despite Intel's attempts to counter the Athlon 64 FX-55." Hack Jandy links to more reviews at AnandTech, HardOCP, and ExtremeTech.
Intel is slowing catching up. But the fact is that my DP 2.5GHz G5 is at 1.25GHz Frontside bus - per processor.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Athlons have always been fairly LOW latency chips, and the memory used (fast DDR memory) is low latency too.
The P4's on the other hand have used Rambus memory for awhile, although that's not really the case anymore. But when they did, they always excelled at memory THROUGHPUT because Rambus runs at high frequencies. Rambus memory however is fairly latent - it's the trade-off.
DDR2 RAM won't be "fast" until we see it in much higher speeds - DDR2-800 most likely. Of course, it will always have more latency then DDR because it uses four banks of DRAM instead of two.. I'm sure you can research all this via google if you're interested in learning more.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
The bottleneck is not the bus. If you RTFA (Oh you didn't? How unsurprising!), there is almost ZERO improvement in performance.
If only it were that simple! Cache sizes, prediction facilities, execution units, register count, etc. all play a significant part in CPU performance and to reduce this to an argument about who's pipeline is bigger ignores many of the important issues.
Pipeline length has some impact on performance and until recently Intel has been able to perform well by jacking up the clock speed. Sure it ate tons of power, and heated your room but it didn't really matter provided Intel's chips could perform as well as the AMD, IBM, Motorola, etc. competition. Think of a trip to the drag strip: if my 5.7L corvette runs the quarter mile in 12.5 seconds and your 1.6L civic does it in 13 seconds I still win the race. In a race to be the fastest you can't lean out the window and yell "You won, but I was almost as quick and I did it with 75% less motor!": you'll look like a fool. The performance crown is about being the fastest. period.
For the last 9 months or so Intels small-block Corvettes have not only been losing the races, they're getting beaten by Subarus that produce more power, get twice the gas mileage, and cost less.
You might want to read some of the ARS Technica articles that cover CPU design and illustrate some of the differences between the various architectures:
Are you sure? Remember, this is a P4 FSB we're talking about here. It's "quad-pumped". The 1066 mhz rating is the effective speed. The actual frequency at which the FSB operates is 1/4 that, or 266 mhz. However, if you're using a Pentium or one of the early Klamath Pentium 2s, your CPU still might be clocked lower than the FSB of the 925XE platform.
Well, on the flipside, I have an AMD 3000 and an MSI nForce 2 Ultra board and I haven't had a single problem that you mentioned. It works wonderfully in Windows and Linux (Linux finally got support for the on-board ethernet a little while ago with the forcedeth driver).
I've only tested it on a few linux distros though (RH9, FC1, FC2, Suse 8.2, 9.1, Ubuntu 4.10). The ethernet didn't work with 8.2 or RH9.
I have never experienced the sound problems you refer to. In fact, I think it sounds better than my roommate's expensive soundblaster card.
Don't count your messages before they ACK.
Someone needs a gentle tap with a cluestick.
1) Being 64-bit does not necessarily improve performance and, in fact, can degrade performance when used on the VAST majority of applications that primarily use integer numbers of less than 4.3 billion (2^32 unsigned). Take a look at Solaris/SPARC64 for an example.
2) Even in applications that can make use of 64-bit integers, the AMD64 specification defines an "integer" as 32-bits. Software has to expressly use a "long" (or similar) to make use of the other half of the register size, and because on 95% of computers out there (read: vanilla x86 systems) a "long" is the same thing as an "int", this is done rarely at best.
3) Even if all software in the universe could get a staggering performance boost from 64-bit registers AND were instantly tuned to use them, it wouldn't matter because all of the software used to compare the Athlon64 to the Pentium IV is 32-bit software running on a 32-bit operating system, except in the occasional tests that are designed specifically to test the benefit of the Athlon64's 64-bit mode.
4) Even if every one of the professional review sites were manned by biased or clueless authors (generally true of Tom's Hardware and GamePC (and any review website run by your average l33t w4r3z d00d or non-technical game enthusiast), though the former appears to be improving), the 10% average gain when compiling software to use the 64-bit extentions of the Athlon64 is nowhere near the actual performance gain, in 32-bit software, that the Athlon64 has over the Pentium IV in most games and a number of other applications.
5) Even if the performance gain of 64-bit mode was greater by far than it is now, the bulk of the performance improvement in most software is from a: the integrated memory controller (which is also used in 32-bit mode), and b: the fact that the number of general-purpose registers has doubled from 8 to 16, greatly reducing the amount of register variable swapping needed. Again, most apps simply do not care if they can fit huge numbers in a register, because they do not need them.
So as you can see, your assertion is flawed.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
When used properly, the above can give quite a hell of a performance boost over a 32-bit x86 solution.
Many people and companies buy Intel because its Intel. Friends who are building computers for themselves asked me to browse motherboard combos, but it should be Intel. Asked why, they couldnt really answer beside "theyre well known".
I remember when the K5, K6 and the K6-2 had issues with certain motherboards, and running Windows95 was a pain, to an extent that you had to swap the CPU with an Intel or Cyrix. That reputation had a lasting legacy on AMD. Later the Athlon came which was awesome for the price/performance ratio but too many people used cheap fans on the 80W+ CPUs which overheated frequently. AMD makes great CPUs and I'd definitely buy AthlonXPs or 64s or Semprons over Intels unless I had a reason to do so. But its hard to argue when non-objective reasons are at play during the decisionmaking.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Well, they each have their strengths and weaknesses. AMD chips on the other hand are on average cooler, which big datacenters like. And with their new packaging, they're a little more durable now too.
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Bullshit.
From anecdotal history, my dad's intel computer died within 2 weeks of him buying it, but me and all my friends' amds are still running.
You're just repeating the same bullshit everyone else is.
blah de fucking blah hah
Also, the Anandtech article notes that Pentium 4 Extreme Edition doesn't use its FSB as much as the non-Extreme because the P4EE has a large 2MB on-die 8-way associative L3 cache. I think the Prescott-based 3.6GHz P4 (with its smaller cache and longer pipeline) would see some improvement if its FSB increased to 1066MHz.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Really?
I'll have to read up on it. I haven't observed any more issues with AMD64 users over anyone else - it's seemed like a fairly smooth transition so far.
People will always have trouble using their computers, but they might be talking a little louder since they're running AMD64, and thus everything wrong with their machines MUST be caused by that.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -