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Intel's 64-Bit Pentium 4s Hit The Streets
ThinSkin writes "Nearly 18 months after rival AMD released its 64-bit processors, Intel quietly added its first 64-bit Pentium 4 microprocessors to the market on Sunday. Four versions of the Intel Pentium 4 6XX series were announced at speeds up to 3.6-GHz, a frequency grade lower than the existing 5XX series. Prices will range from $224 to $605. Intel also added the 3.73-GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition to its lineup, a $999 chip that is fabricated on a finer 90-nm process than its older 130-nm P4EE components. As Slashdot previously reported, the 64-bit series will likely be the major enhancement to the Pentium 4 line before the introduction of the Pentium D "Smithfield," Intel's first dual-core part, which is slated for next quarter."
He's a good man, I've worked with him for over a decade. He's no Bill Brasky, though/
Now the A46 prices should come down a bit.
Was it just me or did anyone read that as the Pentium D "Seinfeld"?
Not that there's anything wrong with it...
Anyone know how much heat these put out?
Now Intel can cook my toast using more than 4 GB of memory!
I love you suckers out there who are buying these top of the line, bleeding edge chips. It brings the price of "outdated" hardware back to reasonable levels.
Now if you excuse me, I have a 486 DX4 100MHz that I've been keeping an eye on for a while.
Does that come with... uh... Intel Extreme Graphics? Sweet!
It would be interesting to see how much business Intel theoretically lost to AMD as a result of their failed first 64-bit attempt and subsequent delay.
The Inquirer is reporting that Intel will counter the AMD Turion 64 Mobile Processor with a Pentium M Extreme Edition. It is an alphabet soup of potential Intel Pentium M releases and you'll probably have to read it through twice or thrice to understand it all, but an interesting and inciteful read nonetheless.
There's another interesting article about the future of 64-bit as it relates to Intel here.
And of course, we can't forget our beloved Celeron.
Are they really AMD-compatible?
I believe it was because they found they couldn't claim IP rights to numbers such as '486' in order to prevent other manufacturers releasing products with the same name.
Ever notice how Apple was doing really poorly when they were providing dozens of different system configurations on a fairly large handful of Mac platforms, and were suffering because of it?
The problem was that the consumers simply didn't understand which computer most favorably matched their criteria.
I see the same thing here with Intel's lineup. What is what? Why is this M? Why is that Centrino? WTF does "Extreme" mean in relation to a CPU?
It wasn't until Steve Jobs was able to cut through the bullshit and bring the Mac lineup back to 2 basic consumer platforms that Apple was able to enjoy the benefits of the Apple brand. Until Steve came back, it was just another PC outfit. Now, with Jobs at the helm, and through his seemingly infinite ability to grasp consumer wants and needs, Apple is enjoying a resurgence in popularity and relevance.
Without someone with a grand vision like Steve Jobs, Intel is going to continue suffering through doldrums trying to guide the market with its "alphabet soup" (which you so very astutely coined) without actually listening to the consumers.
Sure, there is loads of programs that make use of the full 64 bits. Several vendors offer 64bit flavours of their distributions, such as Fedora, Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Suse.
The performance gain is found in how the chip itself works. 64-bits breaks the 4GB memory process limits of 32-bits. In 32-bits, a single process can access 2^(32) bytes -> 4 GB of linear memory. In 64 bits, you can therocally access 2^(64) bytes. Pratically, in Windows x64, a process is limited to 16 TB of memory. Plus, there's extra registers that a program can use.
I talked to some of the few people who were testing these. Apparently it couldn't keep linux running for more than 4 minutes. Lets hope Intel was able to fix that "issue"
Now it's time for game makers to get with the game [dum dum TISHHHH]. I'm tired of seeing 32 bits of my AMD 64 wasted every time I game, and now that every major player has 64 bit processors succeeding 32 bit, they need to get with the program and stop wasting bits.
The Peanut Gallery, Ubergeek, Biblically Sober
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Will this be backwards compatible or support 32bit software.
Its nice to be important but its more important to be nice
I was about to make the same comment; I just picked up a 630 based system last week. I'm running 32-bit XP on it at the moment, and it is very, very fast. Of course, that doesn't say a thing about the 64-bit features. Then again, this desktop is an upgrade from a 1.4 GHz P4 mobile, so maybe I'm easily wowed.
I've run SLES9 64- and 32-bit on identical hardware with EM64T equipped Xeons for file servers, and I can definitely "feel" the difference. I don't have any hard benchmarks, but the system with the 64-bit OS definitely seems more responsive under heavy load than the 32-bit configuration.
The true test will come when we get some serious analytical apps running. Beyond the ability to allocate more memory under a 64-bit OS, I expect to see moderate performance increases, though nothing earth shattering. Time will tell.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
Wow, and only 10 years after Sun's UltraSPARC, 13 years after the DEC Alpha, and 14 years after the MIPS R4000
Yes, I have or something simulations to run!
(is it ok to use * and HTML emphasis?)
What's the plural of emphasis?
Shut up. OK.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Question... do any of these processors come in the socket 478 form factor, or is intel forcing us to upgrade our motherboards yet again? If I have to buy a new mother board, I might as well go AMD this time around!!
Bryan
If you can get all the manufacturers to agree, comparing systems based on FLOPS would be effective, because it would remove the irrelevant clock speed argument, and thus allow you to compare how much work can be done in a time frame by the processor.
Unfortunately, I doubt you'd get the manufacturers to agree to it, since it would make too much sense and allow an easy and unbiased comparison between their products.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
> I'm thinking we need some sort of ISO standard for clock speed
I know!
We could call it "Hertz" (abbreviated as Hz), as a measurement of frequency where one Hertz means one cycle per second.
When used in relation to CPUs it could be prefixed with the SI multipliers G or M for Giga and Mega, and be used to refer to the speed of the internal clock by which the CPU synchronises its instructions. It however will say nothing about how many instructions happen in a cycle, or what those instructions actually do.
So I'm guessing you don't want a standard for clock speed, you want a standard for performance.
But regardless, if you make your entire purchasing decision off the numbers on the box (no matter what they mean) then you deserve whatever you get.
Advanced users are users too!
I'd mod ya down if I werent replying, but not because you're pro intel, just because your logic is flawed.
Its called marketing, you do whatever you can thats legal to get people to buy your product.
If a dumbass consumer things 4000+ is 4000MHz, especially when there is a asterik saying that the processor actually runs at 2.4GHz, then they're probably the ones who dont understand the 9/10ths of a cent at the end of all gas prices. Intel made processors all about MHZ and thats what AMD has to compete on. The processor ratings are somewhat accurate (varies depending on benchmark).
And FWIW, a 4000+ does outperform a P4-2.8GHz.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
I think your right. I have seen benchmarks on the AMDzone forums which show that while AMD gets a speed boost (on average) from 64-bit mode, Intel takes a performance hit (again, on average) when in 64-bit mode.
Intel is just trying to be compatible with AMD64. They won't have a serious product for another quarter or two (or three).
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Just a question...
So many versions of the Pentium4.
So many cores. So many variations. So many significant architectural differences.
Seriously... when it it enough to be the Pentium5? I seriously doubt there is as much difference between the Pentium-3 and the IV (original P4) as there is between ANY other P4 cpu and this one.
Seriously... what's the deal?
Other than the 5-for-$5 jokes (Pentium 5 being a rather redundant name, after all...)
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
ASK before you donate. My district won't support anything older than P-III, and we aren't too keen on donated hardware as it requires custom imaging.
Make sure that your hardware is in good condition, and that the district actually needs systems.
My district, for example, already has over 500 decomissioned Pentium-II (450MHz) systems. There are only so many places that we can put computers (and so many ports on the network), so old hardware builds up as it is replaced with newer hardware. We try to reuse hardware wherever possible (computer lab systems might become lookup terminals, for instance), but eventually we have to pay to get the old systems recycled.
Note, however, that this varies dramatically by district. My district donates over 250 systems to our neighboring district every year because they don't have the budget for much new hardware. They are happy to get good-condition P-IIs, and we're happy that they aren't ending up in landfills.
The key is to know what is needed and where.
Also, don't purchase a computer to donate without first consulting the district. My district, for example, purchases only one model each year (last year it was the HP D530 small-form-factor). This simplifies management and deployment. By purchasing the same model, you can save the district a lot of time for years to come.
It's sort of like throwing a few billion dollars in the fireplace.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
All of this is for Joe Sixpack. Not gamers and enthusiasts.
If you want to go 64-bit, pick up an Athlon64 2800 for about $100, or Athlon64 3000 for abt $130. AMD motherboards also work out cheaper, since they have been around for a year and a half.
The 64-bit market is just opening up, expect the pentium prices to come down significantly soon. By 2006, most processors will ship with 64-bit capability. There are not many 64-bit native applications available now. Games are still 32 bit. Windows XP 64 bit is just coming out next month. And Linux still does not support Joe.
If you are price concious, NEVER buy anything quite recent. Save the money, and buy dual-core 64-bit processors a couple of years from now.
Life is just a conviction.
The problem with comparisons in MIPS (millions instructions per second) is that for different architectures, it takes a different number of instructions to accomplish the same amount of work. This doesn't matter for AMD/Intel (Athlon/64/Pentium/Xeon) as they all use the same (mostly) Instruction set. It would matter if, as the gp said, you wanted to compare Sun, Apple, Intel Itanium, or Intel Pentium, since they use differnt ISAs.
Flops are a little cleaner, but still only test the Floating Point units. What if a chip has good floating point, but really shitty integer (it could happen). It would still suck to use for a lot of things. The only decent way of testing something (AFAIK) is to run it with the programs you intend to use it for and compare.
At my previous job, a K-12 District, we *hated* computer donations. They don't conform to a standard hard drive image, so they require special attention. They have no warranty, and the techs to work on them as they die end up costing more than a new machine would have.
Management of dissimilar hardware costs a lot.
Now, if your District isn't to that level of management, they'll probably be pleased with anything they can get. When I started there, we were ecstatic to get extra hardware. But as time wore on, we spent the majority of our time on these donations. When I left, the District had switched over to a completely Leased solution. It ends up much easier to manage from a budget perspective if there is a fixed amount spent on hardware every year in the lease.
I agree with the poster above:
Ask your District if they want them. If you go over to drop them off, they may just refuse them, and now you've packed up all those old machines for nothing.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
immediately they're overtaken by AMD64s and G5s once they get on the freeway. They're really easy to spot with an infrared camera, too. Kinda like overheated, broken down cars.
In theory of course.
In practice, you can get up to 1GFLOPS on a pretty simple machine, just put all your resources on doing flops asap. Ignore branches in your design, just make it run as many floating point instructions in a row as quickly as possible.
In real situations however, both FLOPS and MIPS say very little. There's a damn good reason it's commonly transscribed as "Meaningless Indication of Processor Speed"