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Intel Releasing 700Mhz P3s

NoWhere Man writes "Intel plans to release Coppermine, its 700Mhz+ series of Pentium III chips, on Monday. The new chip will, not only be available for desktop machines, but notebooks aswell; thanks to a new design which makes them cooler. This release will allow Intel to say, once again, that it offers the fastest chip on the market. "

229 comments

  1. Re:after 1 Ghz ... by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

    How many programs will require more then 1Ghz?

    I am sure gamers will want these. Ditto anyone using software like Mathematica.

    Which are two of my favorites.

  2. %s%a%r%c%a%s%m% by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yeah and i heard somewhere that the alpha was faster, too. (%s%a%r%c%a%s%m%) hehehe.

  3. Re:Nice by SnuggleBunny · · Score: 1

    Regardless of how much scorn you heap on the G3s Bytemark performance the fact is that in general application performance (that is, realworld programs as opposed to arbitrary benchmarking programs) the G3 is noticeably faster than a pentium of the same clock speed. How relevant to the software you use everyday is SpecInt/FP?

  4. Re:The fastest processort? by TheInternet · · Score: 1

    If we're going to go that route, I believe SGI's chips are faster (MIPS?). What about IBM's Power3?

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson

    --
    Scott Stevenson
    Tree House Ideas
  5. Re:Chip Comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Of course, that 600MHz P3 isn't a coppermine processor. It still suffers from the 1/2 clock L2.

  6. Re:The fastest processort? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you've actually looked at the SPEC scores for these processors, you'd know that you're wrong. The 21264 is faster than any of SGI's processors. In fact, you need twice as many processors to meet a 21264 setup in SPECfp.

  7. Re:not the fastest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Good call. Ignorance is more dangerous than stupidity.

    I think the moderation system is very flawed as well. I really think cmdr taco et al should use some kind of collaborative filtering method to filter comments. Check out www.moviecritic.com for a great example of the power of collaborative filtering. This isn't meant to be a plug for moviecritic, but it hasn't been wrong about movies it's predicted for me yet!

  8. Re:The x86... by TheInternet · · Score: 1

    Think about it, look back five years ago and ask yourself what companies were running their mission critical systems on. It wasnt 486es or Pentiums (not until Pentium Pro was released), comapnies ran Sun, SGI, Alpha, but not many Pentiums. Now look anywhere, your favorite flavour Pentium is probably on some server in your office (but then again maybe it isn't).

    I'm not really sure if it's Intel that deserves the credit for this shift. The fact that Intel-based machines weren't common as server had far less to do with the CPU than it did with the OS. About five years ago, you could run DOS or DOS. Now there is Linux, Solaris, BSD, NT, etc.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson

    --
    Scott Stevenson
    Tree House Ideas
  9. Thoughts on P3 700mhz vs G4/450 by TheInternet · · Score: 2


    This topic deserves some intelligent conversation. I can't find any benchmarks on spec.org for PowerMacs (which is silly), but I'm going to make some educated guesses. I think these are fairly reasonable assessments, quite unlike all the "MAC SUX" stuff so far.

    o A regular integer-centric application (Word, Excel, etc.) is likely to be faster on a Pentium 700 than it is on a PowerPC 450. It's generally accepted that a 450mhz G4 is comparable to a 550mhz, possibly 600mhz Pentium.

    o An application optimized for the G4's Velocity Engine (AltiVec) is likely noticeably faster than an application optimized for a 700mhz Pentium. These would include Photoshop, Media 100, Media Cleaner Pro, and possibly SETI@Home.

    o An unoptimized (on either side) floating point-centric application may be closer to a toss up.

    o A pentium 700mhz likely runs significantly hotter and sucks down more enegry than a G4. While G4s consume a bit too much more at this point to be great for laptops, there's much better chance at them going mobile that the high-end pentiums anytime soon.

    o Quake 3 will probably be quite a bit faster on a P3 700 than a G4/450 (based on Carmack's recent observations on the topic).

    o Somebody who stares at xterms or MS Office all day probably isn't going to notice much difference one way or the other.


    I don't know enough about Athlon, so I'll stay out of that.

    - Scott


    ------
    Scott Stevenson

    --
    Scott Stevenson
    Tree House Ideas
    1. Re:Thoughts on P3 700mhz vs G4/450 by pen · · Score: 1
      You said:



      A pentium 700mhz likely runs significantly hotter and sucks down more enegry than a G4. While G4s consume a bit too much more at this point to be great for laptops, there's much better chance at them going mobile that the high-end pentiums anytime soon.



      The Slashdot summary said:



      The new chip will, not only be available for desktop machines, but notebooks as[ ]well; thanks to a new design which makes them cooler.

      Any questions? :)



      However... can you imagine how much the P-700s will cost?!

      --

    2. Re:Thoughts on P3 700mhz vs G4/450 by pen · · Score: 1
      Sorry... messed up my formatting there...

      --

    3. Re:Thoughts on P3 700mhz vs G4/450 by TheInternet · · Score: 1


      The new chip will, not only be available for desktop machines, but notebooks as[ ]well; thanks to a new design which makes them cooler.

      You're right, but I guess I'm still sorta in the "I'll believe it when I see it" camp. :) Also, no one said that 700mhz chips would be in laptops, just that they would be Pentium IIIs.

      I'm willing to be proven wrong.

      - Scott
      ------
      Scott Stevenson

      --
      Scott Stevenson
      Tree House Ideas
    4. Re:Thoughts on P3 700mhz vs G4/450 by pen · · Score: 1
      Hmm... you do have a point.

      I guess I'm still a bit optimistic, even when it comes to Intel.

      Oh well... either way, my next box will be powered by an AMD chip. I don't need this built-in ID crap. Oh no! I won't be able to use WebOutfitter!

      --

  10. So it's faster. Speed is not everything. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This release will allow Intel to say, once again, that it offers the fastest chip on the market.

    So intel will have the 'fastest' cpu's on the market. Big deal. When calculating price vs. performance, you need to remember that processor speed is only one part of performance. Product support is also a major part of the performance you get from a processor.

    I think it's appropriate right now to relate two little stories from my personal experience on why I don't care what speed Intel has clocked it's chips to.

    A few months ago, my company purchased over 200 of Intel's 440BX Pentium-2 motherboards. When the computers were all set up, we discovered a little problem. If you unplugged the boards from the wall or suffered a power outage while the boards were running, they would not restart when power was applied. We called Intel on the problem. They told us we need to assemble the machines in a static proof environment (Duh!). We described to them our paranoid static prevention setup at our assembly facility. Then they told us we had defective power supplies. We changed out the supplies but still had the same problem. Then they told us we weren't running the most current bios. We were, and they should have been able to tell that from the serial numbers of the boards we had bought. Finally, after two weeks of 'working' with Intel on their boards not restarting, they eventually admitted their boards were buggy. Then it took two more weeks to get the replacement boards. We suffered a whole month of downtime because Intel was not willing to admit they could possibly have made an error in their board fab, even for a large and loyal customer like my company.

    In contrast, a few days ago I bought my new 650 MHz K7 for my own personal computer. When I installed it into the MSI 6167 motherboard, it wouldn't start. No bios beeps or anything. I called AMD on this and within 15 minutes was describing the problem with one of their engineers. The engineer (I don't know if I should give his name here) said he would attempt to reproduce the symptoms I'm getting and would call me back. And, after a few hours that same day, he did call me back. He had no idea what was causing my problem, but offered to help me figure them out if I would ship the processor and motherboard to him. Well, my lab is only a few blocks from AMD headquarters where the engineer had his lab, so I just drove the chip over, we tested it out, found the problem in the MSI board, and now I have a working K7 (and one that beats the snot out of the wimpy P3's the other engineers have at my lab).

    I don't think you could get two more similar problems between such differing hardwares, or two more different customer support experiences. On the one hand, Mighty Intel was unwilling to do anything for my company's problem with their motherboards, despite the size of the order and the fact that we have allways stuck with Intel in the past. Underdog AMD, on the other hand, really went out of their way to make sure everything was perfect with my single K7, and now I have a real monster of a machine.

    Raw processor speed is nice, but remember you buy more than just the hardware when you purchase a new CPU. You are also buying into the support plan (or lack thereof) of the manufacturer of your hardware. Make sure the company you buy from is willing to stand behind their products, and not just willing to buy advertising about standing behind their products.

    Despite my best efforts, I may never be able to convince my company to leave Intel. But for my own workstation, where my budget is paying for it, my experience has me buying AMD every time. And I haven't been burned yet.

  11. Re:Don't jump to buy yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you wait for 0.18 Athlon you will be waiting til next summer... Dresden will not be validated for production til then. Can you stand to wait til next fall for a new chip (assuming you wait for price cuts)?

  12. Re:Intel has the fastest AND... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are Celerons really better for price/performance than K6-2's or K6-3's?

  13. Re:Overclocking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Arn't coppermine's designed to work with the new 133MHz bus? 150 wouldn't be too large an increase if the RAM manufaturers ensure the RAM at 133.

  14. Re:Reality check !! #2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is this nitpicking or what?

    The original poster said that Alpha was faster and you replied saying no it was not.

    Then you followed this up by saying that alpha's were not much faster in integer but way faster in FP.

    Now correct me if I am wrong, but are you saying
    that alpha is slower or faster?

    The market for PC's and Workstations has grown
    considerably in recent times and this has for the most part turned them into commodity markets.
    Alpha as a non commondity CPU cannot play in this market, like PA,SPARC,POWER,MIPS so they have left it.

    AlphaServer DS10 = $3000 (complete system)
    PIII Xeon 550 2MB = $4000 (single chip)

    Now which one is more expensive?
    You may say that the xeon is not what you had
    in mind, (celeron).
    but ask your self have you run any numerical intensive work on a celeron an measured the true performance.

    When your working set does not fit into 128k,256k or even 512k on those PII(I) and you have to get
    it from main memory its sure good to know that
    you have a 512bit bus to memory as in the DS20
    or 256bit in the case of the XP1000.

    If you are really interested in perfomance and not
    acceptance, which would you pick?

    A)
    DELL 610 Workstation
    DUAL 550Mhz PIII Xeon (1MB, not 2MB)
    256MB
    9GB HD

    $8000

    B)
    ATIPA UP2000 Based Workstation
    DUAL 667Mhz 21264 (2MB)
    256MB
    9GB HD

    $9300

    Running 64-bit Linux if you wish.





  15. Re:Nice by jtriangle · · Score: 1

    Our company runs mission critical sofware on G3's and a new 450MHz G4. Floating point performance is all important.

    I ran a benchmark utility that our Mac advocates promulgate here on my Athlon 600Mhz (256Meg Ram). The Athlon came out 44% faster than our fastest G3 and the same as our new G4 in floating point. It blew them both away with the other metrics (2D, 3D etc.).

    What the Mac guys could say is that the G4 only consumes 5W. Yes the Athlon's hotter... it also cost me $1400 compared to $3500 for the G4 with little to no performance advantage as far as our company is concerned.

    Commpared with the extra expense, the headaches our MIS department has to go through with compatibility issues, the isolation certain of our engineers suffer 'cause they have to use Mac's to get their job done does anyone think upper managment cares about the 5W vs. 17W issue?

    Going with a Mac was the right decision 5 years ago. Justification is much, much harder today.

  16. Re:AMD is cheaper and faster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where do you get an Athlon 700 for $200? Everywhere I've looked has them for $250.

  17. Coppermine is a Misnomer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Coppermine chips are not to my knowledge made with copper.. same old aluminium, just a name to make people think intel are still with it on the copper wire in chips biz

  18. Re:Gee...screens AND processors... by myconid · · Score: 1

    Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2128]
    (C) Copyright 1985-1999 Microsoft Corp.

    C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator>cd \

    C:\>copy con test
    ^Z
    1 file(s) copied.

    C:\>rename test .sig

    C:\>type .sig

    C:\>
    Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff

    --

    SB.
  19. Re:first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He missed Vermont, too.

  20. I smell a troll.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who is struggling to maintain a D- in his 5th grade English class. Sad, isn't it?

  21. Re:not the fastest by Millennium · · Score: 1

    Actually, this data comes off of Intel's own benchmarks, which rate the G4 at not double, but triple the speed of a P3 at equal clockrate. Though I notice Intel's removed the benchmarks from their Website; guess they decided they couldn't take the heat.

  22. Re:Important, but subtle, point by Surt · · Score: 1

    "
    Slightly off-topic, the new PIII Xeon are codenamed "Cascades." Is this pronounced kass-kades or kass-kad-ees or something entirely different?
    "

    Since intel code names are based on geographic features, i'd assume kass-kades, as that's how you pronounce the matching river if you're from the area.

    --
    "Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
  23. Look, kid, go see a movie or something... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're way too worked up about this. Get a grip. And stop that binge drinking; you're looking silly. And You will continue to get moderated down as long as that is true. (Not by me, though; I find this amusing. Besides, I'm not a moderator....)

  24. Article forgoes the rest of the updates to the p3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are other updates in these cpus. Not only do the new P3's run cooler due to being manufactured on a .18 micron process, they also contain 256K of full speed L2 cache, and have the ability to run on a 133 mhz system bus (with ram at that speed). Current Athlons (and those in the forseeable future)on the other hand have cache running at 1/2 or 1/3 core speed, they run on a 200 mhz cpu bus, but there are currently no glue logic sets that officially support running the memory bus at 133mhz. as far as chipsets go both intels and vias upcoming solutions support agp4x, and 133 mhz sdram, intels also supports rambus, which at this point doesnt offer any advantage over sdram, it will in the future. rambus will scale into the gigahz range, while sdram will never reach above 466 mhz (even that is pushing it). Im not knocking athlon here i am however knocking all of you who blindly follow gaming benchmarks and hype. At this point AMD has done nothing but sparc a flame under intels butt. Intel is readying an onslaught of lower prices and faster technology, prices much lower than amd can compete with - having only 2 fabs will hurt them. Rumour has it Intel will release their next generation ia32 cpu in february of 2000, this product will easily eclipse both performance and production timetables amd has under its sleve

  25. is this a new architecture? or just more MHZ? by jackmott · · Score: 1

    is a coppermine at 700Mhz > AMD at 700Mhz?

    cuz if its the same ole P3, an AMD 650 is still gonna win methinks.

    --
    -I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
    1. Re:is this a new architecture? or just more MHZ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No Athlon 700MHz kicks coppermine P3 700MHz's sorry butt.

      The athlon has much, much better floating point performance, and significantly better integer performance than the equivalent P3. This new intel chip has a full-speed cache, but it's puny sized, so unless you're running a really (ie. the one intel will use) crappy benchmark (rather than working on real datasets), then the Athlon is faster. I do lots of finite element analysis computer work ( which parrallelises very well), and we're considering getting a Beowulf cluster of Athlons, rather than shelling out for risc boxes.
      Beowulf clustering for parrallelised F.E. makes the floating-point price performance ratio of the Athlon very, very tempting.

  26. Re:Important, but subtle, point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That still won't make them the fastest. You can buy 900 MHz Athlons from Kryotech. And unless Intel really pulls something out of the bag (say faster than 750MHz) the 700 MHz Athlon will still be faster in everything bar clock speed.

  27. Re:Nice by jafac · · Score: 1

    Okay, and in the G4 vs. P III claim, Apple says that the G4 is twice as fast according to Spec (or was it three times? I wasn't paying attention - but I know they're citing Spec now).

    So after that, everybody said "well all benchmarks are bullshit, that doesn't mean anything, G4 isn't faster in real-world applications",
    (never mind all the photoshop benchmarks and stuff).

    So what's the deal Spec IS credible now?

    I wish I had a nickel for every time someone said "Information wants to be free".

    --

    These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  28. Re:The fastest processort? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually it's Apple, Motorala and IBM.

  29. Re:not the fastest by firecontrol · · Score: 1

    all i can say is wow

    --
    great minds often encounter violent opposition from medocre minds. -albert einstein
  30. The fastest processort? by Asheron · · Score: 1

    Anyone heard of Apple's G4's?

    Asheron

    1. Re:The fastest processort? by abelsson · · Score: 2

      Acctually...
      The Alpha processor is probably the worlds fastest . Those 21[123]64 chips are pretty amazing. :)
      They're still king of the hill..

      (-1,offtopic)

    2. Re:The fastest processort? by TummyX · · Score: 1

      It's motorola, not Apple.


      Ever heard of Microsoft's Athlon?

    3. Re:The fastest processort? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Anyone heard of Apple's G4's?

      Yes, Mhz for Mhz, the G4 are about as fast as Athlons (and 10-20% faster than PIII). So when G4 will be available at 800 Mhz, they would be faster than the current available Athlon. Too bad Athlon/PIII would be at 1 Ghz speed before the G4 are able to double their frequency.

  31. Re:Fastest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    As you know, the P3 Xeon processors can have up to 2MB of full speed cache on-chip. The Athlon can still smoke an equally clocked P3 Xeon.

    The "new" use of full speed cache in the latest revision P3's is not going to really boost speed significantly (read: Pentium VS Pentium MMX).

  32. Re:Go to hell MAC luser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This parent post just goes to show you the majority mentality of Intel chip users :P.

  33. Re:not the fastest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey now. He's a _Goblin_, not a Troll.

  34. Nice by Score+Whore · · Score: 1

    Even though they have a shit corporate rep in some cirlces, it's always nice for more speed to be available in a single chip.

    -sw

    1. Re:Nice by Ranger+Nik · · Score: 1

      this sounds like a "i hate these macs, they are not windows-compatible"-rant. you would not have "compatibility issues" if you used all macs, either, so that argument is just crap.
      as for speed, i believe any time that the Athlon beats the crap out of you macs, but... what i would REALLY like to know is how linux performance compares on Athlon vs. G4. after reading a lot of insightful comments by john carmack, i am convinced that the slooow Mac-OS has a huge impact.

      i love the Mac for its usability and style, but the technology is really 80s, and it shows. points in case:
      1) the Mac virtual memory management SUCKS/is non-existent. it is a joke. super-slow. slows down all applications significantly. swaps even when there is enough physical RAM. in short: forget it.
      2) Mac File I/O is outdated and a lot slower than windows/linux File I/O. On top of that, there is NO write-back cache for the harddisk. it is all write-through! try running windows with write-through. horrible.
      3) Mac graphics "accelleration" is synchronous! this means the CPU has to wait for the graphics card on every paint to the screen! can you imagine what kind of processing power is idle in the G4 "supercomputer" while it is waiting for the gfx card. for example: on windows the CPU tells the graphics card "draw that box", then immediately continues. on the mac, the CPU says "draw that box" and then twiddles its thumbs while the gfx card dutifully paints the box...

      on more thing: in our office, the G3 is actually more than twice as fast as the PIII running SETI @ home program. try that on your athlon :-)

    2. Re:Nice by dyslexia · · Score: 1

      Has anyone done any major benchmarking on the g4's? All i've ever seen are the pretty words in newsweek, never anything that i'd trust.

      --
      --Have a Johsonville brat.
    3. Re:Nice by jtriangle · · Score: 1

      It may sound like a "i hate these macs, they are not windows-compatible" rant but it's not. I'm not in MIS and not affected by their presence.

      Using only macs here is not a viable option for us so the compatibility issue is a very real argument.

      There are always cavets and I'm not any happier with Windows than you appear to be with the Mac-OS. And SETI does run much slower on the Athlon than I had expected. However, we don't make money here by running SETI, we make it by running our own sofware which runs very, very well on an Athlon compared to the G3 & G4.

      I too would like to have our software ported to Linux and run side by side. Regrettably I don't think our Mac people will do that.

    4. Re:Nice by Score+Whore · · Score: 1
      ...the G3 is noticeably faster than a pentium of the same clock speed.


      No arguments from me. Anytime you can get more orthogonal registers you get a faster CPU per cycle. Now look at the max clock rates for the two chips. G3 = 450 Mhz, G4 = 450 Mhz, P3 = 733 Mhz. Given that the speed difference at the same clock rate is not more than 50% for general purpose computing, it should be obvious that the P3 733 is going to be beating out the G3/G4 processors in their *max* configurations. That's the point I make.

      -sw
    5. Re:Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's funny, but the ol' 604e at 332MHz (running a text-based setiathome client) smoked a 500MHz P-III running the test-based client on NT- by approximately 50%.

      Given the clock differential (and the OS differential- AIX vs. NT) somehow I doubt that the 700MHz P-III would compete well against the G4 chips.

      Of course, I'm not trying to claim that the PPC architecture would compete as well in FP processing where the P-III is using the FP SIMD instructions, but, hey, there's little motivation to actually USE these instructions in code for mass distribution (anybody remember that those extra instruction in the Z80 were seldom used by anybody?).

      Of course, PPC vs P-III using Linux on both would provide better metrics.

      Additionally, setiathome may not be that good a benchmark, but at least the compilers weren't hand-tuned for these kinds of programs.

      -soup

    6. Re:Nice by Score+Whore · · Score: 1
      It's funny, but the ol' 604e at 332MHz (running a text-based setiathome client) smoked a 500MHz P-III running the test-based client on NT- by approximately 50%.


      Sounds like you're a big believer in Bytemarks too. Do you tell all your friends how your candy colored iMac is twice as fast as their ugly, grey Pentium II 500?

      Unless you enjoy people laughing at you, if you are going to play the benchmark game you've got to do it right. Picking and choosing your favorite OS/CPU/benchmark combination and matching it against whatever low scoring arrangement you can find doesn't quite fall into the area of scientific benchmarking.

      Look at an actual benchmark, say SpecInt or SpecFP. Everybody uses the same code, the same data set. Everybody puts maximum effort into tuning their systems. And shockingly enough we find that the PPC G3/G4s aren't 12 times faster than the equivilant Intel parts.

      Or look through John Carmacks .plan updates. Maybe you'll consider him impartial, but maybe you won't.

      -sw
    7. Re:Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      G4 thank you very much, Intel still hasn't got the touch, and if this 700Mhz is anywhere close to a G4, then Motorola will release a G5 you can't beat PPC, never could.

    8. Re:Nice by Score+Whore · · Score: 1
      ...and if this 700Mhz is anywhere close to a G4...


      Unless Motorola has pulled off some real voodoo with the G4 (like making it twice the speed of the G3 at the same clock) the 250 Mhz clock differential between a PIII 700 and a G4 450 is going to be too much to handle.

      Motorola doesn't seem to be able to produce a 500+ Mhz part in volume. Given that both architectures are down in the 1-2 cycle instruction issue area (and in certain situations much better than that) they need to be something like 30% more efficient in their instruction set just to break even.

      -sw
  35. Re:Go to hell MAC luser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, and I would like to point out that Apple computers went from a 5% share to a 12% share in a little over a year.

  36. Overclocking by ben.b · · Score: 1

    I'm curious about how their "cooler design" will affect overclocking - might have to try it on a 150MHz bus and see what happens... :)

    1. Re:Overclocking by taniwha · · Score: 1

      don't hold your breath - the memory runs at the same speed - you're going to need DRAMS that reliably go that fast too

  37. Coppermine not Copper chip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does anyone else find it interesting that Intel's new chip is called the Coppermine but does not use copper? With AMD using copper for its K7 and Motorola/IBM using copper for the G3/G4, I find it a very interesting marketing ploy. just MHO.

  38. Are the mobile versions really 700mhz? by TheInternet · · Score: 1


    The way the wording is arranged, it makes it sound like the 700mhz chips will be laptop-ready, but I would be surprised if that was relaly the case. Never is this explicitly stated. The Wired article, in fact, never says that.

    The Register suggests that the mobile PIIIs will be 450mhz and 500mhz, in an article that is ten days old.

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson

    --
    Scott Stevenson
    Tree House Ideas
  39. I'm holding out for 1Ghz by Rob+the+Roadie · · Score: 1

    I'm holding out for 1Ghz - until then I will resist the BBF (Bigger Better Faster) factor.

    1. Re:I'm holding out for 1Ghz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Technically, that should be the "smaller, better faster" factor.

      :)

    2. Re:I'm holding out for 1Ghz by hugui · · Score: 1

      and acording to NASA's Goldin, it's "faster, better, cheaper", although I doubt that a Pentium III will go to space in the near future ;-)

    3. Re:I'm holding out for 1Ghz by jeremy+f · · Score: 2
      *News Flash* INTEL FUNDS THE SPACE PROGRAM

      Washington(AP): In a move that suprised people everywhere, Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) has made an agreement with the National Air and Space Administration to fund the next 5 years of space programs. The agreement, valued somewhere between $500,000,000 and $750,000,000 calls for renovations to the space shuttles and the space program itself. Each of the Space Shuttle's control computers will be refitted with Intel Pentium III Xeon processors. In order to pay for this, NASA has let Intel paint "Intel Inside: Pentium III Xeon" in large letters on the Space Shuttles. Additionally, a new design of a sattelite, being co-designed by Intel and Nasa at Kennedy Space Center, will help to illuminate the night sky during new moons. Instead of a moon, there will be a square banner that reads "Planet Earth: Intel Inside".

      At the time of press, neither NASA nor Intel could be reached for comment.

  40. FM radio by ShadowDragon · · Score: 1

    So.. now that AMD and Intel are both on the FM dial with these chips, how long till the Vaneck phreaking devices that can understand and translate the signal.

    would probably need some sort ot amplification device... I see lead cases in our future.. of course, would have to figure out a way to get the cooling fans to work without openening holes ;)

    BTW, this is sarcasm, but I just wonder what my pc will sound like on the radio.. will have to try that

    --

    ---The proceeding comments were not paid for by the following advertisers.

  41. Re:New Intel 700MHz. by Starselbrg · · Score: 1
    You'd be correct if had a new 700 MHz processor. Notice, however, that they're only announcing processors starting at that speed, and maybe going above 700 MHz.

    I see 700MHz Athlons Now. I only hear about how the next generation will be. Besides, if Intel is only announcing chips that might go above the speed of the competition but still be slower, then they got problems.

    You don't really think that the Athlon is going to stay at 700MHz do you?

    --
    Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
  42. Cooler . . . by pete-classic · · Score: 1

    Hmm, if it is cooler, it can take more voltage and still run reasonably cool.

    If it can take more voltage it can almost certainly be heavly over-clocked.

    1GHz anyone?

    1. Re:Cooler . . . by pete-classic · · Score: 1

      That is a very nice explanation, and I am clearly not as familiar with electrical engineering as you are. I am sure that many are grateful that you corrected me, but my post was about over-clocking, not the nuances of what happens when "upping the regulated voltage to the chip" from an engineering point of view.

      My point, however, is that when "upping the regulated voltage to the chip" it runs hotter, whether you consider it from a chemistry, physics (Classical or modern) EE, or jackass-in-the-garage-with-a-soldering-iron point of view.

      So a chip that is cooler at its rated speed and voltage has more "headroom" for over-clocking.

      -P

      PS. I would consider my point of view (both in general and in my original post on this topic) to be the jackass-in-the-garage-with-a-soldering-iron point of view ;-)

    2. Re:Cooler . . . by slashdot-me · · Score: 2

      Um, no. First of all, a the voltage regulator will maintain a constant voltage to the chip regardless of current consumption ( within some bounds). Hence the name "voltage regulator." The max clock speed for a chip is derived from the time it takes to swich the state of one of its transistors. This switching time arises from the charging and discharging of the inherently capacitive traces and mosfet gates. Slapping more voltage across the chip charges these caps faster, reducing the switching time. I refer you to _Principles_of_CMOS_VLSI_Design_ by Neil H. E. Weste and Kamran Eshraghian for further details.

    3. Re:Cooler . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you are confused.
      "Take more voltage?"

      I believe what you are referring to is upping the regulated voltage to the chip, which is a bit misleading.

      What happens is, as the clock rate increases, and the duty cycle of the chip increases, it draws more current (amps). If the load goes too high, the regulator voltage starts to drop as it tries to provide more current. The solution? Up the regulated voltage a tenth of a volt or so. The end result is the regulator still spits out about the same voltage, but can provide more current.



  43. There goes moores law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If we get to 1 GHz before years end we will beat moores lay with say ~ 6 months, cool..

  44. Re:New Intel 700MHz. by moonboy · · Score: 1

    Not doubting the validity of your post, just interested in whether you bought or built your machine. If built, how did you get a motherboard? If bought, which brand and do you like? Thanks.

    ----------------

    "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein

    --

    Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
  45. There goes moores law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If we get to 1 GHz before years end we will beat moores law with say ~ 6 months, cool..

  46. Re:Faster? by Rhys+Dyfrgi · · Score: 1

    But for gamers, the largest home market for fast processors, a real OS won't do, since it isn't Win9x.

    I don't know what the ratio is from business to home, but I'm guessing that it's tilted far in the favor of business.
    ---

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    END OF LINE
  47. Fastest? by javilon · · Score: 1

    It could be the highest rated in Mz, but what about "real" speed?, as far as I know Athlons run in 200 Mz buses, and they are better in some areas too.

    --


    When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
    1. Re:Fastest? by Ferzerp · · Score: 3

      Everyone posting messages along these lines is forgetting something. The Athlon is faster than the regular P3, and a coppermine P3 is modified. No, it's not just cooler, the cache speed has been raised to full core speed (like a celeron). Unfortunately, the cache size has been halved (512K to 256K). The faster speed of the cache should more than compensate for the shrinkage though. Why do I think this? Well, celerons perform within 1-2% of P2's in pretty much any real world situation, and they have 1/4 of the cache running at full speed. So to compare the coppermine p3s to the athlons assuming they are the same as the regular p3s is just wrong. I'm not saying which would be faster (I can't say that for sure *yet*, and neither can you). One thing I have seen though are the benchmarks circulating on the web of these chips. They generally show a screenshot of a CPUID program and the chips being tested always report *no* cache at all. I don't think that these chips being benchmarked have the cache enables, and if they don't, well, you can't compare with those either.

    2. Re:Fastest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know for a fact that the athalon will bnot be out preformed by the PIII 700. I might add amd will also be realeasing its 700mhz chip soon aslo, but noone has yet to submit that article. For up-to-date info on athalons check amd's site.

    3. Re:Fastest? by Axe · · Score: 1

      Celerons within 1-2% of P2?? No freaking way.. I do run a lot of various numerical code, some of it stresses CPU, some Memory or IO.. Celeron is nowhere close in most cases. And Athlon does smoke PIII - talking about cache - compare Athlon's L1 to PIII: it does not need on-core L2 that much.
      I will bet when I have a chance to run all my stuff on new pentiums (soon) it will not beat my last Athlon score....

      --
      <^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
    4. Re:Fastest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly, The PIII still only handles 3 interger instructions and 1 floating point, compared to Anthlons 5 interger and 3 floating point. Faster cache or not, it don't believe it's an "Anthlon killer" for one second. (not to mention the Anthlons 200mhz bus, to the PIII's new 133, and the fact the Anthlon can have up to an 8meg L2 cache) Ontill Intel redesigns the core, it will never beat the Anthlon.

    5. Re:Fastest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Intel will have a complete new microarchitecture with Willamette. I think it would be a safe bet that it should blow away Athlon Mhz per Mhz. This is just speculation from Intel's proven track record at phenomenal performance increases between (8088,286,386,486,P5,P6. Athlon really still seems the level of P6 just with extra junk added on. More integer & floating point units than P6, more cache. We need to see what Intel's complete redesign does.

      P6 (PIII) is already four or five years old and people are comparing it with AMD's latest processor. Doesn't this tell you something? We still have to see but don't get your hopes up of AMD putting Intel in it's place (at least not for a few more years or yet another cpu generation).

    6. Re:Fastest? by Ferzerp · · Score: 1

      I stand by my earlier statements. Clock for clock, a celeron and a P2 are undecernable under all but the most intense scrutiny.

    7. Re:Fastest? by Upsilon · · Score: 1

      Now wait a second there! Believe me, if the L2 cache wasn't enabled you would notice! A PIII (or any modern processor for that matter) will perform like shit without L2. CPUID never gets new processors identified correctly. It just compares the processor to known processor types and matches it to the closest one. If a processor is not in its database (in the case of a new design), it simply won't get it right. But that does not mean that the processor isn't working correctly! It just means that CPUID doesn't know what it is.

      The coppermine (Which has absolutely nothing to do with copper. Does that bug anyone else?) does have some improvements over the PIII, but it's still just another revision of an aging core design. There is only so much better caching can do. It will probably be able to match the Athlon in business apps, for which cache is very important, but does anyone really need faster performance in business apps? Just wondering. In floating point intensive programs the coppermine will not even come close to Athlon performance. And better floating point is going to matter more than integer performance.

      --
      I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.

      "That's right, I'm quoting myself."

      -Upsilon

    8. Re:Fastest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are the differences between a Celeron and a P2? Nothing except for the cache. So how do you explain all the supposed differences in CPU performance (they have the identical CPU cores), memory performance (no difference except for L2 cache), and IO performance (no difference at all).

    9. Re:Fastest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As usual, at work I'm forced to log in to some nice Unix machines via a 233MHz PIII machine, Geta- aeh Gateway. At home I've a 200MHz PII, SNI. SCSI only yada yada bla bla -- all in all much better hardware and it beats that "faster" machine hands down. Same goes for the faster bus speed. If the hardware cannot deliver, SCSI comes with some "intelligence" built in, then so what ? I'd not hurry, let things ripe and wait until after Christmas -- might be though at 1GHz M$ could add some animations to its BS.

    10. Re:Fastest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It really depends on what you need to do with it. The only software I run which needs more than an obsolete, bottom-of-the-line system are gcc and a statistical analysis program which is limited primarily by the rate of a hash table lookup. The hash table is large enough that memory accesses are essentially random, eliminating the speed benefit of using PC100 and similar "fast" RAMs, giving me essentially a 16MHz memory bus. Until first-access latencies drop below 60ns on commodity DRAMs, I can't get my software to run faster by increasing the speed of the CPU or the speed of the main memory bus -- a 233MHz PII with a 100MHz FSB would be no faster for me than a 1GHz K7 with a 200MHz FSB. If memory prices weren't haywire I'd be considering upgrading to 1GB now; I have to manually trim my data set before processing to avoid hitting swap (which *really* kills performance when it happens -- LRU page replacement format doesn't cope well with random access patterns).
      Rant rant rant.
      -- Guges --

    11. Re:Fastest? by Axe · · Score: 1

      Bus (until now) and cache. 128 vs 512 has a HUGE impact for heavy duty code. Especially when you run several jobs simultaneously.

      I observe 10 to 15% difference in execution times.. I never claimed it is for general use applications..

      --
      <^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
  48. What planet are you on? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The K7/Athlon is still faster. All Intel has done is _match_ the clock speed of AMD's flagship. The K7 is more efficient than the pentium III meaning that Intel will have to sell a P3 at a higher clock rate just to keep up with a K7-700. Not to mention the fact that AMD currently has engineering samples of 1.1 GHZ K7's that are air cooled. Expect the release of a K7 800 VERY shortly.

  49. Re:first by martini · · Score: 0

    sucker... :)

  50. beware! by jackmott · · Score: 3

    this is like when you write a recursive function and forget to check for an end state and return;

    To buy a chip:

    wait for the faster one
    then a buy a chip

    and of course, to buy a chip, you recur
    wait for the faster one,
    then buy a chip

    and so on.

    eventually you run out of stack space and are forced to go back to drooling in a padded corner with an etch-a-sketch

    --
    -I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
    1. Re:beware! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I guess I should have explained better. You guys missed my point.

      What I meant to say is that you should time your purchases to coincide with the point in the product life cycle where you get the best performance (as compared to the current state of the art) for the money. CPU performance growth mostly happens in spurts that are driven by new architectures or new manufacturing processes. Prices at the highest performance level fluctuate on a cycle defined by those spurts. The best time to buy is usually between 3 months after release and the middle of the cycle. If you buy earlier, you could end up paying 50%-100% more. If you wait until the end of the cycle, you'll be further behind in the performance race without saving much money.

  51. Faster? by Rhys+Dyfrgi · · Score: 1

    While the clock speed might be faster, the chip itself is not. Hell, the K6-III even beats the P3 at the same clockspeeds, and the K7 beats the P3 even when clocked lower. Just because it's doing more cycles every second doesn't mean it's going to perform better.

    I can carry one grain of sand at a time thousands of times per second (or minute, or whatever) than someone carrying a bucket at a time, and I will lose, unless I am many orders of magnitude faster.
    ---

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    END OF LINE
    1. Re:Faster? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am the desert queen I'm running a P3, it SEEMS ok:-)Although I've only ever really run a Pentium. IPLAYGAMES

    2. Re:Faster? by Manaz · · Score: 1

      The K6-3 never kept up with the P2/3 when it came to FP calculations, not even close, and I'd question that it beat the P2/3 in regular integer calculations Mhz for Mhz. It certainly wasn't as stable/overclockable as the P2/3 either.....

    3. Re:Faster? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the K6-3 only beats the P3, at the same clockspeeds, in a mixture of 16 and 32 code. The performance between them in a real OS, ala any of the x86 unices, or even NT, is in favor of the P3.

  52. Re:Fast?!?!?! by jackmott · · Score: 1

    yeah!
    maybe if they port Quake3 to an alpha :)

    I mean, do I really care if my computional analysis experiments, or neural nets finish 20% faster? nah, not really.

    but if I get a another few FPS or some more polys in Quake3, its like YEEEEHA! yeah! kickASS!

    you know?

    hehehe

    what if we computed FPS/dollar for AMD/Intel and Alpha? hmm? hehe

    --
    -I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
  53. Re:not the fastest by jackmott · · Score: 1

    the g4 is SO NOT FASTER

    god when the hell are the apple people gonna get a grip on reality?

    aarrrggg

    --
    -I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
  54. Re:not the fastest by jackmott · · Score: 1

    NO IT DOESNT

    maybe in a loop of adding integers, which is REAL uninteresting.

    lets try, oh, floating point math or something thats actually HARD.

    and its not 3 times as fast either. my guess is you misinterpreted something.

    Even in photoshop, the apple speed messiahs most favorite program to quote, a hellah high MHZ pentium STILL RUNS IT FASTER.

    --
    -I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
  55. Speculation != fact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AMD currently provides the highest performance product in the PC space. Big deal. Perhaps the two companies will each that position periodically. It doesn't really matter.

    If the market demands Rambus, AMD will support Rambus. If the market demands something else, both companies will go there. This is not a question. The question is, "how fast is a 700+Mhz P3 compared to a 700+Mhz Athlon?" I infer that you speculate the P3 will be faster. I, for one, will believe it when I see it. Not before.

    Well, off to an evening of proving I'm not a social leper on account of my geekitude....

  56. Snooze... wake me @ 1GHz, or better 50GHz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Running a Celeron OC'd to 450MHz that cost $100 I simply have no reason to get excited about a 700MHz chip costing much, much more.

    And, hey Intel/AMD, copper was interesting two years ago - now how about doing something with germanium doping. Plain old Si+Cu poops out at about 5GHz, but Si doped with Ge runs clear up to 50GHz. At 50GHz I will definitely buy a new chip.




  57. Re:PA-RISC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is not strange, HP is in the same leage as Alpha, PA-RISC is one-to-one with Alpha then it comes to real performance (floating point calculations). You can see them both fight about the top-level position at the SPEC site http://www.spec.org or HTTP//www.specbench.org, click on the CPU95 link to see the lates submitted benchmark numbers.

  58. Re:Important, but subtle, point by bortbox · · Score: 1

    Wow, someone finally recognizes the whole MHZ game. MHZ has very little to do with speed. Lets not forget the BUS which is VERY important seeing how your information has to get to peripherals such as your HDD and video card, and other devices such as memory (but who needs memory anyway?).

    BUS not a big deal? Well maybe FPU speeds could help out, especially when doing multi-user intensive applications or running a database, like they do on that internet thing, but who uses that?

    Okay, have I covered chipset? Fine, your chipset might be faster, but mine WORKS. Does one count reboot time when using benchmarks?

    Now lets go a little deeper, remeber the G4s maxing out at 500mhz (at the press release) and hitting a gigaflop sustained? And somehow these 500mhz devils are faster than pentium III 600s? No way! Isn't possible! There is a gap of 100 mhz there, oh wait that whole core architecture/layout thing enters the game doesn't it.

    Remeber the DX4-100, now someone is saying that a (re)Pentium 100 is the same speed? There is so much to be concidered when speed is concerened, not to mention what application you are using the computer for (some of those "fastest computers in the world" couldn't run solitare if they tried, but that is vector isn't it). Last I heard, AMD has the fastest BUS, Intel has the winner on the FPU side, AMD at this point has the MHZ, and Intel has the stability on the BUS side (put aside that silly RAMBUS fiasco (heh)).

    BortBox

    That was my two cents, and it was an advance on my credit card.

  59. Umm.... by Iggy · · Score: 2

    I'm gonna lay my thoughts on the line and let people who *really* know about cpu architecture let me know the truth :)


    As far as a know/can tell the CuMine is simply a bog standard p3 core (maybe with a few tweaks, but nothing major) with a 256K L2 Cache running at core speed, all running on a 133 frontside bus.


    From the benchmarks i've seen so far, (Anandtech being one of them) the new CuMine gets close to/beats Athlon at the same/simlilar clock speed for some tests. So it kinda puts Intel back into the game, although they won't be able to stop fighting yet.


    Now from what i've read Athlons can support upto 8M of L2 cache running at core speed. And they are planning on upping the EV6 bus to 266(133) in the Ultra chips i believe.

    If AMD wanna do an Intel on Intel then all they need to do is jack up the speed of the L2 cache to, or close to, core speed. I'm sure that because of the better architectire of the Athlon the core will be able to make better use of that high speed L2 cache than a p3 core can. The p3 core is really the bottleneck in intels current designs. Adding high speed cache will help, but when it comes down to it, i have a feeling that an Athlon would get more out of it due to it's better design.


    Now that all relies on AMD being able to produce memory able to run at that speed, and produce it in large quatities. This could be AMD one failing.
    Fab30 *may* change that though, we will have to wait and see.


    As for me, i'm gonna wait until the 0.18 Athlons are out and have settled down, by which time *hopefully* someone will have produced a quality SMP capable board. :))


    If anyone who knows there stuff would like to correct me on anything, please go ahead. Knowledge is power after all ;))


    1. Re:Umm.... by orz · · Score: 1

      I don't believe that AMD produces their own cache chips. The limiting factor on AMDs external cache speed is price, I think. Intel produces some, but not all of their own cache chips.

  60. Re:Go to hell MAC luser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    I'd be the first one to tell you that yes, my G3 is slower than an equivalent Dell machine I also have, when using similar applications. But which do I prefer using? Macs!

    The only way you could put an x86 computer to good use is to put Unix on it, otherwise all the raw speed advantages are quickly sapped by reboots after a BSOD, fat applications, lame peripherals and drivers, incompatiblities, etc. BAt that point I could care less which benchmarks the x86 chips can win over the G3. I have better things to do with my time than running benchmarks on my machines. Nor do I care how much more marketshare Intel/AMD based computers have over Macs. Historically, the more intelligent elites have always been the minority when compared to the clueless masses. The sad fact that the Apple marketing machine is using numbers to promote their product is so that it can market it to these clueless masses.

    Oh, and if your Mac crashes that often, you have no place in the computer industry. Find another career, and leave computing to the people who know what they're doing.

  61. Re: Mac Sucks [offtopic] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Oh yeah? Do they shove crackers in your mouth when you demonstrate your prowess on Macs?

    What's your point?

  62. WHAT?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    February! That's way before summer.
    FAB30 can do 0.18 now.

  63. Never mind the river, it's the hops :) by hawk · · Score: 1

    Cascade hops from that region are a wonderful thing. They're the best finishing hop I've found, and give Sierra Nevada Pale Ale that wonderful smell.

    (ok, for the purists, those aren't finishing hops, but come from the hop-back).

  64. Re:Fast?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Loki is doing their games for Linux/Alpha too, Doom and Quake currently run on it too, I expect Q3 will appear sooner rather than later. The only downside is that hardly any Alphas have an AGP slot. I've been trying to get a decent PCI video card to take advantage of my 600Mhz 164LX and its been almost impossible, ended up getting a FireGL 1000 pro. Anyway, clock for clock I find Alpha 164 processors to be around 1.5-2x quicker for integer work than x86 designs, FP is even quicker and the new 264 generation processors are 2.5 times quicker again clock for clock and available at speeds of 667Mhz and above. You would need a 2+Ghz x86 to even get in the same ball park as one of those and Compaq does the 8 processor Wildfire systems using the 264. Now tell me again how Intel can claim to have the fastest processor now? *chuckle* Shane Sturrock - http://nova.bru.ed.ac.uk/~sss Linux, a better WinNT than WinNT

  65. I wonder if anyone will read this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Intel's next chip will start at 700 MHz. The coppermine speed will probably peak at 900 MHz. 800 will be out soon

  66. Re:Oxford explains it by Gorth · · Score: 1

    I'm curious where you got the info about AMD's "buggy" chipset. I'm running an Athlon 500 using the one and only AMD 750 chipset. I had had NO s/w compatibility probs. I've found this chip/chipset to be VERY stable... more so than a PII-300 on the i440EX chipset. And as far as I've seen/heard it's pretty easy to get a hold of the CPU (yes, yes, ok the mobos are rare, but I didn't have probs finding a FIC SD11)

  67. Re:Important, but subtle, point by MattJ · · Score: 1

    It is kass-kades, after the mountain range that separates western Washington and Oregon (the lush green parts) from eastern Washington and Oregon (the dry, wheat and apple-growing parts). The mountains trap the moisture coming in from the Pacific, which is why the Pacific Northwest can grow trees hundreds of feet tall.

    The mountains can be pretty rugged, and it's likely they were named the Cascades because streams cascade down them. (That's a guess, though.)

    In Washington, the Cascades used to be isolated until recently (check out North Cascades National Park). But with rapid growth in the Seattle metro area, particularly the many new housing developments in the vicinity of Redmond and beyond, people are building homes closer and closer to the foothills of the Cascades. Eventually, the Cascades will be... assimilated.

  68. Re:New Intel 700MHz. by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    Well, they just announced a 733 MHz processor today, so I guess I was right =)

  69. Re:Go to hell MAC luser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that's the us consumer market share. world wide is ~5%

  70. Re:Speaking of which... by orz · · Score: 1

    'cause marketing hasn't figured out a real name yet. No conspiracy there. Except on AMD's "SledgeHammer".

  71. They seem to max out at 766MHz... by William+Tanksley · · Score: 3

    There have been reports about these before; it seems Intel had released some of the chips without as many NDAs as before, and people had been benchmarking and overclocking them :-).

    The higest speed they released was 766; this doesn't mean that the official release won't have higher speeds, of course. And someone overclocked one a little, nothing really impressive.

    The Athlon 700 matched a P766 on a 820motherboard in most tests. Of course, the 820mobo is really nice, with 4xAGP and such -- but it's _completely_ unavailable. So expecting a P766 to match an A700 on available mobos is unrealistic.

    And, of course, AMD supports 'overclockers' officially, so you can buy K7-900 systems with warrenty intact. I found another place which sells overclocked A750 for the cost of an A600 elsewhere with a lifetime warantee -- and no cooling aside from the ubiquitous fans (they take the cartrige apart and mount a heat sink directly on the chip).

    -Billy

  72. Re:after 1 Ghz ... by Rhys+Dyfrgi · · Score: 1

    What if you're running computation heavy applications? Applications (and I don't mean programs) that today run on dual or quad or oct or whatever computers will be able to run on fewer, faster chips.
    ---

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    END OF LINE
  73. Oxford explains it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4

    Hrm, this story was posted prematurely. There
    are only a few benchmarks that compare a CuMine
    700+ against an Athlon 700, with the Athlon
    coming out 6% faster in some obscure business
    test so far (see http://www.jc-news.com/pc/).

    You will go nuts if you try to follow all the
    lastest developments early in this CuMine vs.
    Athlon game. My advice: don't. Wait for some
    conclusive benchmarks.

    Pro Intel:
    * good compatibility with CPUs
    * availability
    * good o/c ability
    Con Intel:
    * multiplier locked
    * core maxed out earlier @.22u than AMD's
    * price/performance usually only average

    Pro AMD:
    * excellent CPU core, fast FPU
    * EV6 better than GTL+
    * excellent o/c ability, multiplier not locked
    Con AMD:
    * availability
    * bad bad chipset and mobo situation
    * bugs in chipset, slower than need be,
    high current probs w/ TNT2U etc.
    * s/w compatibility problems with chipset
    * did I mention chipsets already?

    Enough to drive everybody but the die-hard
    hardware freak nuts...

    WAIT and RELAX.

  74. Re:Important, but subtle, point by randombit · · Score: 1

    Since intel code names are based on geographic features, i'd assume kass-kades, as that's how you pronounce the matching river if you're from the area.

    I'm from Oregon, and have never heard of the Cascade river... just the Cascade mountains. At least not that I can remember. Am I just having a bad mental day? The only major rivers in oregon are the willamette (despite living in oregon up to age 17, I still have trouble spelling that freakin' river's name!) and the columbia. Unless, of course, that 6 pack of dew I just drank fried my brain, which really isn't that unlikely.

  75. which is fastest? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Despite the hype about MHz, it's really not a huge factor in which chip is actually faster for your applications (as most of you know). If you look at benchmarks at places like sharkyextreme, firingsquad, or dozens of even non-game sites, almost all benchmarks show equivalent MHz Athlons outperforming P3's by hefty margins. Sure, lots of people will buy into the MHz thing, not to mention the "Intel Inside" brainwashing. But as for me, I'll buy the chip that's actually been demonstrated to run the programs I use faster. And Unreal Tournament runs faster on an Athlon.

  76. Re:after 1 Ghz ... by Sith+Lord+Jesus · · Score: 1
    >How many programs will require more then 1Ghz?

    Quake IV. Photoshop 7.x. The next Sim City. Whatever version of Windows comes after Win2K. Faster processors, cheaper ram and bigger hard drives lead to larger and more complex programs, requiring even faster processors, allowing for even more complex programs--empire feeds on itself. Ten years from now as we race towards Terrahertz processors and quantum computing, 1Ghz will seem as pathetic to us as 1 Mhz does now.

    --

  77. Re:Fast?!?!?! by randombit · · Score: 1

    Since when? Maybe very very VERY suspect boards, but I really don't think a decent board would die like that. I've never heard of something like this. Is this for real, or are you just fucking with my head?

    And as for running hot, have you used a P-II lately? :)

  78. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The sentence wasn't that bad, but the punctuation was horrible. Just goes to show that even college graduates don't have a fscking clue how to use commas or semicolons. Pathetic.

  79. Re:New Intel 700MHz. by Starselbrg · · Score: 1
    From everything I have read about the new Coppermine chip, it appears that:
    1. The Athlon 700 is still faster.
    2. The Pentium 733 is not of much use without an i820, which is not available.
    3. 33mhz is not that much anyway, especially when you are talking about several hundreds dollars more in cost.

    On facts, you are right that they are supposedly shipping a processor with a higher clock spead than AMD. But for all considerations of cost, performance, and reality in general, this announcement means should mean little. I have almost no faith in Intel.

    --
    Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
  80. real cache speeds by orz · · Score: 2
    I've noticed that people tend to give cache speeds in Mhrz, which is somewhat missleading, as different caches have different numbers of cycles per issue and cycles of latency. Here's my attempt to educate people on caches.


    Pipelined internal caches have issue times at least 8 time as fast as the sort of external caches present on the K7 and pII/pIII. Internal L1 caches tend to have latencies either 2 (K6)to 3 (K7 & Pii/Piii) core cycles long. Internal L2 caches tend to have latencies from 6 to 12 (core) cycles long. External L2 caches tend to have latencies from 8 to 30 core cyles long (about 20 on both the K7 and Pii/Piii, although it will be slightly worse on the 750 mhrz k7).


    The CuMines cache should be about the same overall speed as the K7s cache. It's FPU will still be a ways behind though. The CuMine is a lot cheaper to manufacture.

  81. not to mention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... the smartypants attitude of Mac lusers, even when they aren't running their precious fscking piece of sh!t OS with an interface that got left behind years ago, unless you want to count GNOME.

    At least you can buy a PC without a bundled OS -- try doing that on a Mac or a Sun...

  82. Re:not the fastest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, but John Warnock is an idiot. Adobe products suck ass if you have the time to find and pirate them, or kick you in the ass when you buy their products in suites priced higher than a real tool like AutoCAD or a SQL database server.

  83. Alpha are no longer so hot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    How about Alpha? A 700MHz 21264 is defiantly faster!

    rbf who is typing this on an Alpha running Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 with Linux 2.2.13.

    This was true, but is now only true for floating point. Just look at the SpecInt results.

    • AlphaServer GS60E Model 6/700, 700 MHz 21264A , L1: 64KB(I)+64KB(D) on chip , L2: 8MB (I+D) off chip, RAM: 8GB (4x2GB), OS: Tru64 UNIX V4.0F , result: SPECint = 39.1, SPECint_base : 34.7
    • Microstar MS-6167 mainboard, AMD Athlon processor 650MHz, L1: 64KBI + 64KBD , L2: 512KB(I+D) @ 1/2 CPU clock speed, RAM: 128 MB PC-100 SDRAM, OS: Windows NT 4.0 Workstation (Service Pack 5), SPECint: 29.4, SPECbase: 29.4

    The gap not very big: 30% at best, in reality maybe 10%, when using gcc in both cases. The difference is that with the Athlon you can run StarOffice, or W95+ software DVD player, and millions of other software with Linux, Windows NT or W98.

  84. 700 MHz Athlon has been out for a month by MatriXOracle · · Score: 1

    Strange how Intel's announcents get hyped, and AMD is practically ignored even when introducing better technology. If you want clock speed, word is a 750 MHz and 800 MHz Athlon will be released next month....

  85. Re:G4 is still fine ('cause it won't burn you) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    SpecInt/Fp of current Athlons surpasses the G4. I haven't seen any non-biased benchmarks other than the basic spec ratings yet.

  86. Re:not the fastest by platypus · · Score: 2

    Very informative post, thank you.
    One impression I always have is that intel chips are
    constantly underrated. Yes, the architecture is old, yes there
    are some chips like alpha and g4 which are faster under some
    circumstances.
    But theres one thing which some friends of mine, who do
    numbercrunching on clusters allways tell me, that is the
    compiler aspect.
    For instance they say the alpha looks in fact very good
    theoretically, but they also say that the compilers job
    in optimizing for the alpha is harder than for ia32.
    The real-world performance of ia32 seems to be nearer
    at the theoretical (benchmark) performance. I have seen
    some tests in magazines which tell me the same.
    And even on the intel plattform theres a huge difference
    depending on what compiler one uses, i.e. ms VC on nt was
    up to 30 % faster than gcc on linux. That was an older
    benchmark, newer ones I saw seem to indicate gcc has
    closed the gap or is even faster than ms compiler.
    IMO this numbers indicate cleary that comparing prozessor
    architecures on the basis of theoretical or artifical (benchmarks)
    aspects is a bit naive, because compiler builders also might
    want to optimize their product to handle benchmarks well, and
    that doesnt describe the real world.

  87. PPC's not designed/promoted for the mainstream by Anonymous+Bullard · · Score: 1

    Stop hating and ask yourself why PowerPC CPUs aren't more popular in workstations, not to mention your average desktop computer.

    Apple runs the show, and just to get access to a medium-priced PPC system (no DIY in any practicality, sorry) you're tied to the latter component of Apple's closed software/hardware platform. Need specs for those on-board chipsets? Sorry.

    You "want to see a laptop with a coopermine processor last 5-6 hours". Who doesn't. What I'd like to see is a choice of (notebooks/desktops) running G4's, a thriving chip/board market and manufacturers opening up the specs so buyers aren't held hostage. (how many bought PCI PowerMacs cause Apple said they were supposed to be compatible with the upcoming-and-still-unreleased modern OS?)

    Your ibook tickles your fancy. Great. Buy Apple if factors such as price, single-closed-source and aesthetics are to your liking. I'm fed up playing their game though, and the "x86" provides enough legs and a more acceptable combination of factors as far as my Open Source taste is concerned.

    I'd love to see IBM and Moto _really_ promoting PowerPC as the heir to the x86 ecosystem. Apple has to do more than merely change its multi-hued spots into translucent ones to regain any level of credibility. Corporations don't need any incentive to keep their wares proprietary; they need some to realize the importance of openness. You made your point with your checkbook and so did I.

    --

    Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?

  88. There is NO reliable benchmark by kill-1 · · Score: 1

    Of course, some a more reliable than others ;)

    1. Re:There is NO reliable benchmark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Of course, some a more reliable than others ;)

      Well SPEC is more reliable than other banchmarks by one or two orders of magnitude. The interesting thing is that the SPEC results for Athlon are using Intel Compiler (same configuration as PII/PIII SPEC machines I guess).

  89. Re:Fast?!?!?! by randombit · · Score: 1

    maybe if they port Quake3 to an alpha :)

    Oh, god, I wish.

    I mean, do I really care if my computional analysis experiments, or neural nets finish 20% faster?

    Yeah, generally pretty true. I do a lot of development work, though, and spending 4-6 minutes for every build is not my idea of a fun way to spend time. Course I'm doing it on a POS P-II 350, so that really shouldn't be a suprise.

    what if we computed FPS/dollar for AMD/Intel and Alpha? hmm? hehe

    Well, yeah, a fast Alpha is mad $$$. But for speed, it's where it's at. [flamebait]And anyway, the intel architechture is crap[end flamebait].

  90. hmm... by rbf · · Score: 1

    How about Alpha? A 700MHz 21264 is defiantly faster!

    rbf who is typing this on an Alpha running Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 with Linux 2.2.13.


    LONG LIVE ALPHA!!!

  91. Re:not the fastest by kijiki · · Score: 1

    As long as we're playing conspiricy games, go look for any info from apple on www.spec.org. Apple/Motorola isn't represented past the 604e. Do you wonder why Apple wouldn't be touting their "supercomputers" on as close to an objective platform as we have for these things? The rule to automatically ignore all marketing claims is especially true with apple. They make nice machines (especially laptops), but their marketing department gets the award for most out of control almost-lies.

  92. Kiss my ass... by NoWhere+Man · · Score: 0

    Is that all you have to say? Couldn't you come up with an original thought about the topic? You probably go around in text books and newspapers looking for little grammatical errors which shakes and horrifies your little world. Get a grip.

    --

    "Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
    1. Re:Kiss my ass... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some of us don't appreciate blatant displays of ignorance.

  93. Re:not the fastest by ToLu+the+Happy+Furby · · Score: 5

    Urg. Sorry, but I'm just gonna repost the comment I made about a week ago when some other wierdo spouted the same ignorant blather.

    Oh wait: it wasn't just any wierdo. Believe it or not, it was you, Millennium. Perhaps you could read what people respond to your comments. After all, saying something incorrect once just makes you look uninformed; saying the same thing after you've been publicly corrected makes you look willfully stupid...

    --begin repost--

    They're already at price/performance parity, more or less. The G4 is roughly triple the speed of a P3, and this is using Intel's own benchmarks, mind you. We're not talking Bytemarks here, boys and girls, we're talking benchmarks no one dares discredit.

    Oh lord. Another one falls for the Apple FUD.

    No, we're not talking Bytemarks here; this one, if you can believe it, is even worse. You see, at least Bytemarks is a benchmark. It's about 10 years old and has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the performance of a modern CPU, but at least when they came up with it, someone was trying to get an idea of how fast a chip would run.

    These 6 tests are not benchmarks, in any normal sense of the word. Benchmarks measure how long it takes for a computer to perform a real-world task. These tests (Apple's got 'em posted here; scroll to the bottom) measure the speed of individual ops.

    That's right: the G4 performs 6 specific operations an average of 3 times faster than a P3. We're talking things with names like "1024 dim. DotProd" and "256 Pt. Complex FFT". The G4 can take a dot product 3.68 times faster than a P3. Oh wait--not even that; a dot product in a specific dimension. Whoopdee. A 128-bit unit can do operations on very large numbers faster than a 32-bit one. Wow. This is like posting the fact that a 64-bit CPU can add two 64-bit numbers faster than a 32-bit one. Who would have thought.

    And yes, these benchmarks were "published on Intel's own website." Of course they were. In the technical specs on the SSE core. Deep in the technical specs on the SSE core. Where information that is completely useless to anyone not planning on optimizing a compiler belongs.

    Essentially, this benchmark is as misleading as quoting MFLOPS (oh yeah: Apple stooped to that one too...). Except that usually when you quote MFLOPS you at least generally need to average over the entire set of floating point ops. Not here folks. They picked out their favorite 6.

    Oh wait--here's another difference: when you quote MFLOPS, you actually need to, uh, benchmark the thing. These numbers are all theoretical--just compare the number of clock cycles it takes to do an operation, and multiply by MHz. Now, it turns out they'd probably be even more in the G4's favor in practice--if I remember correctly, the AltiVec unit has a much better designed pipeline than the P3's SSE unit. But still, these numbers are absolutely, completely, worthless.

    I don't have the URL offhand, but I've seen the Intel page they copied these tests from, and there were literally hundreds for them to choose from.

    The point is, you can always find an operation that is carried out in less clock cycles on one particular archicture as compared to another. Always. Now it turns out that, in this case, the AltiVec apparently really is vastly superior for the sorts of things it does when compared to Intel's SSE or AMD's 3DNow. (Of course, it also takes up half the chip. Any guesses as to why they can't fab any 500's??)

    However, the fact is that except for very specific applications (SETI@home in particular, and some signal processing stuff, IIRC), it doesn't make all too much of a difference. A 700 MHz Athlon will smoke a G4 450 or 500 or whatever on your basic integer stuff, and a 600 MHz P3'll be right up there with it. For the stuff that can be done with AltiVec, the G4'll certainly come out ahead, but for general floating point work, again, they're about equal. It goes without saying that, at this point, nothing crunches graphics like a year-old PC with an NVIDIA GeForce in it (except maybe something from sgi)--which, of course, is about the only thing the average user needs good float performance for anyways.

    In the end, the G4 is just a decent chip with a neat vector processor that's proving hard to fab. Is it damn fast? Yes. Is your new G4 450 going to touch the Coppermine P3 733 that's shipping by the time yours actually ships? Nope. Is it "two or three years ahead of its time" like Stevie says? No way.

    -Dave

    P.S. And yes, you can sell them to China as well. As much as I want to like Apple these days (a simplified vertically integrated product line is a very good idea in many cases; OS X just might be incredible; and geez--did you check out the new iMac subwoofer??), the fact that every single word out of their marketing department/CEO's lips is a baldfaced lie...gives me pause.

  94. They should make a beowulf cluster out of those! by alehmann · · Score: 0

    Wow

  95. Re:Cooler . . . (warning: el. engineering inside) by haggar · · Score: 2

    You are correct about the statement that a higher frequency means higher current onsumption (the eternal problem of handhelds and laptops: how to have better performance but less consumption) but I argue that upping the voltage would really solve the voltage-drop problem. A real solution would be to decrease the internal impendance of the power source. If you studied electrical engineering, you would remember Tevenin's theorem, which would remind you that a power source can be represented as a serial connection (ok, I don't know all this stuff in english language) of an ideal voltage generator, and an impendance (called "internal" impendance of the voltage source). In practical life, a better power source would be equivalent to an ideal voltage generator with a smaller impendance. It's technically very simple to have better power sourcces, you effectively have to inrease the power of the high frequency MOSFETs of the switching-mode power generator and/or the output linear circuitry of the on-board voltage regulator. I believe the guys at kryotech have modified the motherboard accordingly.


    --
    Sigged!
  96. Stop making these things faster! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's about time to focus on some other things. This is probably getting pretty old but when are these companies going to realize that faster CPU's and more features is just not (as) important anymore.

    If they put this much effort into other things maybe I would actually see a signifcant difference between a 300 Mhz machine and 600 Mhz.

  97. AMD is cheaper and faster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Buying a single CPU Intel system vs AMD Athlon is throwing your money away.

    The AMD Athlon 500, priced 200.00, is faster than a PIII, priced 600.00 in many 3D marks and just a little slower in integer. Why is anyone buying Intel?

    Can you say: MONOPOLISTIC control of motherboard suppliers and OEMs.

  98. Re:after 1 Ghz ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1) 3D Window Managers
    2) Effective requirements for W2k
    3) Solving any physical problem more complicated than a simple pendulum. Have you ever heard of Fluid Dynamics, Polymer Science, Rheology
    4) Decoding a DVD, and then interpolating to run at full screen, high res without _any_ blockness. To do this in real time would require a lot, but of course you could just do it with hardware

  99. At least for me.... by Chas · · Score: 1

    I have no real reason to upgrade right now. My P3 450 does everything I ask of it right now.

    Maybe in 12-18 months I'll upgrade again. Be it Intel or AMD. Whichever one gives me the best performance for my money.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

    --


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!
  100. Go to hell MAC luser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    700 MHZ G4 is slower then my 25 MHZ 486! How much MARKET SHARE does the MAC have now, 3%? Get a life and start using what everyone else is using, you wanker! I tried posting this from a MAC, but I couldnt becos it crashed EVERY MINUTE!

    1. Re:Go to hell MAC luser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, and I would like to point out that the market share increase you quote is simply due to a change in DEFINITION. 12% refers to Apples sold to U.S. consumers through retail stores. The 5% reflects sales through all outlets (retail, direct, etc.) to all customers (consumers, businesses, government) worldwide.

    2. Re:Go to hell MAC luser by nowindowz · · Score: 1

      When are people going to stop being stupid and quit assumeing that the MAC is the only computer that uses the Power PC chip. Am I the only person that knows what a RS/6000 is????

      --
      Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
    3. Re:Go to hell MAC luser by TheInternet · · Score: 1

      RS/6000 uses the Power chip architecture, which is a relative of, but not identical to PowerPC.

      - Scott
      ------
      Scott Stevenson

      --
      Scott Stevenson
      Tree House Ideas
  101. Re: AHMEN!!, TELL THEM BROTHER!! ALPHA RULES!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nuf Said

  102. Re:Speaking of which...(Code names) by billw3 · · Score: 1

    Code names serve a number of purposes:
    1) Buildup that team feeling among the developers
    2) Allow the lab to refer to their work without
    having to commit the company to releasing it.
    (In some circles 1/2 of the projects to
    upgrade some product never make it. The
    marketing folks aren't too happy answering
    the questions like "Why did you skip Windows
    99 to go to Windows 2000?".)
    3) To confuse the enemy. Word about what people
    are working on always leaks out. Best to use
    some form of code name that's not too
    descriptive about what it really is.

    Good luck.

    --
    Bill W. --------------------------------------
  103. Re:Fast?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    yeah!

    maybe if they port Quake3 to an alpha :)


    Well, they did port Quake2 (both client and server) to Linux/Alpha. So it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect a Q3A port. The only problem is that the Q2 port didn't have support for 3D hardware accelerators (which Q3A requires). However, I think I remember reading at one point that you needed a PII/300 with a Voodoo2 card to beat the FPS of a 21164/500 with SW rendering. If only we could get the graphics card vendors to work on decent GL drivers for both Linux/x86 and Linux/Alpha. The only thing that keeps me from switching from x86 to Alpha is hardware support.

    It would be hard to take advantage of all of the Alpha's FP processing power though. Even the fastest current graphics cards would be fill rate limited with "merely" a fast 21164.

    Go Alpha!
  104. Re:Wow by linuxbert · · Score: 0

    what do you expect from a 1st year, he hasent graduated yet...

  105. Re:Fast?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Back in 1993 when I was in grad school doing computational electromagnetics stuff, my lab got some of the first Alpha boxes (AlphaStation 300s, 150MHz 21064s) and they rocked. Ever since then I've been a huge fan of the Alpha architecture. While in grad school, Digital did a 6 month beta test of one of their early 21164 machines (Mikasa). Despite being a beta test machine, it was 100% rock solid for 6 months and fast as hell. When I was in the USAF, we upgraded our ancient VAX equipment to Alphas and we got one of the first 21164A based servers (AS 2100A w/ 4 300MHz processors) back when Intel's top of the line was the P166.

    Now, for the first time in 6 years, I find myself Alpha-less. I would jump at the chance to upgrade one of my boxes at home to an Alpha, if only the platform has better hardware support.

  106. It was a joke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The parent post just illustrates the dimwitted mentality of many Apple users. Get a sense of humor! Also, when are you people going to realize that x86 != Intel.

  107. Re:not the fastest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Do all the trolls come out on the weekends or something?
    Apparently so. After all, you're here. :)
  108. Re:Reality check !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Since when is 30% not big? how much faster is an Athlon 650 than a PIII 600? 19%?

    So are you saing that an Athlon 650 is not faster than a PIII 600?

    Tell me the last time you

    Clustered 32way x86 boxes (wildfire).

    Could run a fault tolerant operating system like VMS or True64 Unix on x86 (slowlaris x86 does not come close)

    Had 1.3GB/s of stream bandwidth available to you on an x86 box

    Ran a 64-bit x86 box

    And about floating point

    Atlon 650 specFP = 22.6
    Alpha 21264 700 specFP = 68.1 54.5

    What you are saying is that an alpha is not the
    right computer for a "home" user/ game player.

    Because it is not the right computer for you
    does not make it "slow".

    Go take a look at the following slide and see
    what's coming down the pike in future alpha Chips

    And see if your wonderfull x86 will still be "faster"

  109. Re:not the fastest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I agree. Which is why I think the moderation system is utterly useless for anything other than weeding out the "f1r5t p05t!!!" and similar crackhead comments.

  110. Speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the fuqufuqme is really gunna fly with these new processors.

    1. Re:Speed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Moderate this up. Funniest comment I read today.

  111. Intel being as bad as MS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The best way to help AMD would be to go out and get an athlon. Intel are being heavy-handed, microsofty, and nasty with the companies that planned support for Athlon motherboards - however, those companies are much more likely to tell intel to p*ss off if they see the demand for Athlons there...

  112. Cascades by Zan+Thrax · · Score: 1

    Although I've never heard of a river or mountain range specifically named the Cascades, I have heard the term before. As I understand it, a cascade is basically a rapid in the river. Cascades are therefore "whitewater" areas in the river. I've always heard it pronounced kass-kades.

    Resonance Cascade Failure, anyone?

    --

    Intolerant people should be shot.
    1. Re:Cascades by cdlu · · Score: 1

      I thought those were cataracts?

    2. Re:Cascades by Zan+Thrax · · Score: 1

      They're that too.

      --

      Intolerant people should be shot.
    3. Re:Cascades by Zan+Thrax · · Score: 2

      Looky what I found...

      cascade
      Pronunciation: (")kas-'kAd
      Function: noun
      Etymology: French, from Italian cascata, from cascare to fall, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin casicare, from Latin casus fall

      1 : a steep usually small fall of water; especially : one of a series
      2 a : something arranged or occurring in a series or in a succession of stages so that each stage derives from or acts upon the product of the preceding [blood clotting involves a biochemical cascade]
      2 b : a fall of material (as lace) that hangs in a zigzag line
      3 : something falling or rushing forth in quantity [a cascade of sound] [a cascade of events]

      --

      Intolerant people should be shot.
  113. app compatibility? by jbf · · Score: 0

    If you're buying your CPU for games, I wholeheartedly agree. If the apps you run are all so mass market that they have to work on Intel/AMD/Cyrix, then you're golden going with the fastest stable CPU.

    On the other hand, if you want to do any type of niche work using closed source software, Intel seems to be a better bet. While AMD hasn't had a publicity flop like Intel did over FDIV, I would guess that many developers don't test their code on AMDs, so there's a higher probability of bad bugs.

    Anyways, the real thing I'm happy about with cumine is that now we mobile users can have desktop speeds, and not on a mac.

  114. Re:after 1 Ghz ... by Axe · · Score: 1

    I will happily load half a dozen 2 GHz processors, 24x7. Right now have to use a farm of SPARC's..
    Numerical simulations will eat up everything you throw at them and then more...

    And yeah - games...

    --
    <^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
  115. Laptop 786s? by prodeje · · Score: 1

    While I am interested in Intel catching up in the Mhz field, I'm more interested in the fact that we will soon see 7th Generation x86 processors hit the laptop market.

    I'm curious how soon AMD will release laptop versions of the Athlon, seeing how AMD based laptops have been significantly cheeper in the past.

    ...

    --

    Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.

    1. Re:Laptop 786s? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But, guess what, Coppermine is not a 7th generation CPU, it has the same core than PIII (that's P6)... in fact it'll be PIII E (FSB = 100 Mhz) and PIII EB (FSB=133 Mhz). Intel's 7th generation will be Willamete, and it's not supposed to be available 'till later 2000.

  116. Same architecture by MatriXOracle · · Score: 1

    The chip is now built at 0.18 microns, but that doesn't make it any faster. All that this is is a higher clock speed. The Athlon will be faster than this.

  117. the more mhz the merrier! by browser_war_pow · · Score: 1

    Bring it on! The more mhz the better. Now I need to find an older Mac for BeOS PPC and a P200 for a gateway.....

  118. Speaking of which... by grappler · · Score: 1

    Why do companies use code names for projects? It's not like it's a secret to anybody. Can anyone answer that?

    --
    grappler

    --
    Vidi, Vici, Veni
    1. Re:Speaking of which... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A good question.

      Primarily, companies use code names in order to protect product brands. While a product is being developed, computer developers and computer marchitects alike discuss the virtues of the code-named project. Sometimes shortcomings are exposed and become publicly known, e.g. "the Merced is going to have weak x86 performance." This reflects negatively on the Merced of course, which, from Intel's point of view, is a BAD THING. People like Billy-Joe and Jim-Bob developer discuss the various problems for months before the actual finished product hits the streets:

      Billy-Joe: "Hey, Jim-Bob, did you hear that the Merced sucks ass in x86 performance?"

      Jim-Bob: "Why, yes, Billy-Joe, I did. But I heard that it also blows donkey in integer performance in native mode."

      Billy-Joe: "Well, that is undeniable, my friend, though I heard the Merced is actually inclined to blow porcupine than donkey."

      Jim-Bob: "Oh, yeah, that's right... I had mis-remembered exactly what the Merced blows."

      Thus, the Merced is slandered for months before the product ever sees light of day. Later on, though, two managers Jack and Ass have a conversation:

      Jack: "Hey, Ass, did you hear about the great new product from Intel? I believe it is called Itanium."

      Ass: "Why, Jack, I have heard about the Itanium. Intel says it's the best stuff ever, so I'm going to buy a thousand of them for my IT department."

      Jack: "Wow, that's a great idea. I think I will do the same for my huge dumb corporate software development shop."

      Ass: "Hmm.... Yeah. Hey, have you heard anything from the IT guys lately? I always listen to them, and they warned me some months ago about something called Merced. Thank goodness I listened so I didn't do anything stupid."

      There, you see? That, friends is the value of code names.

    2. Re:Speaking of which... by thopkins · · Score: 1

      Maybe because they haven't decided what the official name will be. Also it just sounds kinda cool. =)

  119. Re:Important, but subtle, point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Huh Cascades, isn't that a brand of Canadian toilet paper?

  120. Byte wrapping blues by heroine · · Score: 1

    Ever notice how your sound programs tend to crash when your tracks go over 1 hour? That's because certain positioning operations are wrapping around all 32 bits. New processors produce gigabytes of video in seconds. In two minutes you can exceed the 2 gig limit and produce enough audio to wrap around a 32 bit word several times over.

    32 bit wrapping is going to get more and more painful until higher clockspeeds lose all meaning. 700Mhz is way beyond the limit for a 32 bit processor for which 2 gig file limits and chronic 32 bit wraparounds started defeating the processor's usefulness at 500Mhz. We're getting to where more clock cycles are being used to check for bytewraps than process data.

  121. I like new chips because the rest get cheaper! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    New and faster chips are great news to me even though I never buy the latest. I always buy (latest tech - 1) which always seems to be the best deal. So as soon as this 700MHz chip hits the market (at the usual $600-$700 price tag for the latest), I expect the 600MHz chips to drop to the ($400-$500 range).

  122. Re:first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Slashdot Odds of Winning:

    Between now and the end of the contest, 100,000 prizes will be handed out in the Slashdot (referred here as /.) contest. Odds of winning are: 1:6 will win a first post, 1:24 will win a moderation point, 1:30 will be marked insightful, 1:44 will start a flame war, 1:200 will be linked from the outside, 1:5000 will get responded to by one of /.'s staff, 1:10000 will be marked with a score of 5. Grand prise: One (1, 1:100000) post will be selected as the subject of a new topic.

    The /. contest is invalid in the following states: AK, AL, AR, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, ME, MI, MO, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI, WV, WY. Contest not valid outside the United States, all rights reserved. No purchase is needed for entry. For complete game rules, including free chance to win, e-mail CmdrTaco at (malda@slashdot.org). All rights reserved.

  123. How far are voltage levels above the noise? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I mean really, how low can they drop the voltages on these chips to make 'em faster, before your signals fall into the noise?

  124. G4 is still fine ('cause it won't burn you) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This release will allow Intel to say, once again, that it offers the fastest chip on the market.

    As well as the hottest...

    Furthermore, it's "overshadowed by the lack of a much-anticipated chipset"

    and it "allows Intel to again say that it has the fastest PC chips", which is NOT the same thing as the fastest chip on the market.

    That is, the new Pentium chip does NOT claim to be faster than a G4 according to the Wired article, only faster than the competing AMD chip.

    Be careful how you generalize, NoWhere_Man.

    1. Re:G4 is still fine ('cause it won't burn you) by Sir+Joltalot · · Score: 1

      As for the Coppermine being faster than the Athlon, I'm keeping my mouth shut until benchmarks arrive.

      Athlon has been shown to scale very well, and as you say Intel has chipset problems *and* heat problems.. AMD doesn't. The Athlon 700 is already out, and 750 will be coming right along...

      --
      "Caffeine is not an option. Caffeine is a way of life."
  125. Fastest? by Axe · · Score: 1

    It is the same MHZ as Athlon (not counting KryoTech 900 Mhz liquid cooled Athlons), and Athlon beats it in all benchmarks...

    --
    <^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
  126. "cooler" by Imperator · · Score: 2
    I'd like to put a generator in my computer, working off the heat of the P3, to alleviate some of the power consumption. Maybe if I attached a whistle, I could hear when my load is high.

    (Note: the above paragraph contains many mechanical and scientific inaccuracies. For example, no computer really needs that much power.)

    --

    Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
  127. Don't jump to buy yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    If you are considering a Coppermine PIII, first wait for AMD to release their .18u Athlons, and then a little longer until the initial round of price cuts is over. I think you'll find the Athlon a much better deal at that point. It's never wise to buy a CPU early in its production run. Usually, clock speeds increase pretty quick and prices fall pretty quick during the first couple months on the market.

    1. Re:Don't jump to buy yet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's always easy to wait longer in the tech field. If I just wait a little longer, AMD will come out with something faster; but if I wait even a little longer, Intel will beat AMD. If I wait even a little longer a new technology will come out which will be faster I should probably just wait forever and then get the best system.

  128. Fast?!?!?! by randombit · · Score: 1

    "This release will allow Intel to say, once again, that it offers the fastest chip on the market."

    Fastest chips, my ass. Alpha, anyone? If you need raw computational power, Intel is not the way to go, IMO. Unless its in a 8-32 node cluster, which is pretty nice. :)

    1. Re:Fast?!?!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah yeah, But you do know that they melt certain motherboards.. Those things run damn hot.

  129. Re:Intel has the fastest AND... by myconid · · Score: 1

    My 486/25 has better preformance than a K6-2 or 3
    Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff

    --

    SB.
  130. Athlon 650... by Ricardo+Casals · · Score: 1

    From what we have seen in the past, Athlon CPUs leave Pentium III CPUs in dust. They give Intel something to cry about. Pair a Pentium III 700 and an Athlon 650, and I think you will find that the Athlon is, if not as fast, faster than the competition.
    Nuff Said.

    --
    yeah ... i'm going to have to go ahead and not put a .sig here, alright?
  131. Re:mhz poor speed comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You have an iBook? Well...6 hours..you know what? My Clio with WinCE runs for 12 hours, weighs a mere 2 pounds, and cost $800. And it does just about as much stuff as your iBook can......

  132. not the fastest by nester · · Score: 1

    "fastest chip on the market"? hardly. some how, i SERIOUSLY doubt it has better fpu preformance than the highest clock rate 264 alpha, and a 450mhz g4 is probably faster as well.

    1. Re:not the fastest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The fact that Millennium's post is (at the moment) +3 (meaning TWO moderators fell for it!) shows the primary problem with slashdot moderation. Since moderators are chosen basically at random from the slashdot user base (ignoring the very basic anti-abuse features Taco implemented), they reflect that userbase. While intelligent compared to the general population, the average slashdot reader is easily swayed by techincal sounding argument, even if it is 100% incorrect (perhaps I'm being unfair, Millennium's post was really only 100% misleading, and 95% inaccurate). I attribute this to very little hardware and software design training and experience. A pretty PHP3 or PERL web hack does not a software engineer make. Being a 3rd year CS student at even a good university means disappointingly little.

    2. Re:not the fastest by kijiki · · Score: 1

      While you are quite correct about performance of a 667Mhz 21264 beating the pants off of this chip, the notion that a 450Mhz G4 will beat a 700Mhz PIII at anything but the most contrived of benchmarks is a testament to the reality distorting power of Apple's marketing department.

    3. Re:not the fastest by TheInternet · · Score: 1

      when you buy their products in suites priced higher than a real tool like AutoCAD or a SQL database server. Yes. AutoCAD is great for 2D graphics manipulation, and Oracle is great for web design. They are "real tools." - Scott
      ------
      Scott Stevenson

      --
      Scott Stevenson
      Tree House Ideas
    4. Re:not the fastest by TheInternet · · Score: 1

      maybe in a loop of adding integers, which is REAL uninteresting. lets try, oh, floating point math or something thats actually HARD.

      Do you know anything about PPC 7400? If so you'd know that floating point operations is what it excels at.


      Even in photoshop, the apple speed messiahs most favorite program to quote, a hellah high MHZ pentium STILL RUNS IT FASTER.

      Tell it to John Warnock (Adobe CEO and Chairman): "Of all the machines we have seen, this is fastest machine that runs our applications." -- http://www.macnn.com/features/seyboldsf99/

      Jackmott: I don't think you really understand how fast a G4-optimized program runs. Do all the trolls come out on the weekends or something?


      - Scott
      ------
      Scott Stevenson

      --
      Scott Stevenson
      Tree House Ideas
    5. Re:not the fastest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I knew someone was gonna mention the PowerPC processors. Didn't expect so many posts about Athlon though. You'd think the knee-jerk reaction would be to the G3 and G4.

      Not saying anything definite here about either processor, just with all those "Power Mac is 2x faster than Pentiums!!" ads out there, you'd expect lots of people to say it.

  133. after 1 Ghz ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... will there really be a need to buy something faster?

    How many programs will require more then 1Ghz?

    1. Re:after 1 Ghz ... by Damion · · Score: 1

      Right, and why would anyone ever need more than 640k of memory?
      The application grows to fit the hardware.

      --
      Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
    2. Re:after 1 Ghz ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anything that rhymes with Winblowz 2-gay.

    3. Re:after 1 Ghz ... by Axe · · Score: 1

      How the fuck was it offtopic, if it was answering the qeustion? Which is related to the topic of the article.
      Asshole moderator.

      --
      <^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
    4. Re:after 1 Ghz ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There will if you want to keep your distributed.net/Seti@Home ranking!

  134. Chip Comparison by tuttle · · Score: 1
    From what I can gather this is the SPECint and SPECfp for the following chips.

    SPECint95
    K7 700 -- 31.7
    PowerPC 7400(G4?) 450 -- 21.4
    PIII 600 -- 24

    SPECfp95
    K7 700 -- 24.0
    PowerPC 7400(G4?) 450 -- 20.4
    PIII 600 -- 15.9

    This info was grabbed from each of the manufacturers pages.

    Motorola 7400
    Pentium III specfp
    PIII specint
    K7 specfp
    K7 specint

    Of course this just gives a rough idea of the performance of each chipset.

  135. Clueless tech jornalists... by delmoi · · Score: 2

    Analysts said the launch of the new processors is important because it allows Intel to again say that it has the fastest PC chips.

    Um... No it does not, It mearly means that intel Chips can at least run as fast as AMDs The program speed will still be less however, since Athlons are still faster clock/clock then p6 cores.

    I'd be willing to bet that these 'analysts' actualy work for intel, Its sad that wired news would print things like that as fact. It really makes you wonder...
    "Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"

    --

    ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
  136. PA-RISC by haggar · · Score: 1

    OK, I went to my company (yeah, on sunday, I can do that) to try the speed of these HP 9000 K-series babes. The box I tried has 2 PA-RISC processors. I tried to run Seti@home, and my jaw dropped to the floor. Now I didn't have the time to wait for a whole work unit to be completed (on a PIII 400 MHz it takes 9 hours 30 min) but it was shocking. Probably 2 hours per work unit, or less. It's amazing expecially because this system is running another app (top shows seti@home gets 70% cpu time). I don't know at which frequency these PA-RISCS are running, butcertainly less than 700 MHz because thatis currently the max for silicon technology. Admitting now my ignorance, I must ask the community if you have any insights. It might be these HP cpu's use GaAs (galium arsenide) technology, which allows higher frequencies.
    If, however, they are silicon processors, I really really have to ask myself what's wrong with the Intel architecture??!!


    --
    Sigged!
  137. The x86... by Graymalkin · · Score: 2

    line of processors is arguably one of the most successful computing architectures ever. Many people bitch (especially here) that its dying and that PPC and IA-64 and blah blah blah will overrun it. Coppermines and Athlons both are an example of how strong the x86 architecture is right now. Think about it, look back five years ago and ask yourself what companies were running their mission critical systems on. It wasnt 486es or Pentiums (not until Pentium Pro was released), comapnies ran Sun, SGI, Alpha, but not many Pentiums. Now look anywhere, your favorite flavour Pentium is probably on some server in your office (but then again maybe it isn't). The x86 line in many ways has allowed smaller companies to have fast servers and workstations and gives them a more competitive edge in the marketplace of the web. Not everyone can afford Big Iron but they can put up some cash for a comparitively cheap Pentium based system which suits their needs. Pentium will eventually die out and I'll be ok with that, I don't worship Intel or anyone else but I think they do deserve some credit on what they've done in the past ten years.

    --
    I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
  138. Actually, I've already seen an 800MHz Athlon add by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (see subject line) but it's actually a water-cooled and overclocked 600.

  139. Re:New Intel 700MHz. by HouseParty · · Score: 3

    Go read the documentation on the L2 caches. The Coppermine's L2 cache will run at 1/1, ie 700 Mhz. The Athalon doesn't scale 1/1 up to those speeds. At 700Mhz the Athalon's L2 cache is only running at 700/2=350 Mhz. (moving on up it will move to 1/3, and 1/4) So real-world peformance the coppermine will start catching up quick.

  140. SPEEEEEEEEEEEED by gad_zuki! · · Score: 1
    Yes it is faster than the athlon, in the same way that a 56k modem really goes 56,000 baud. Go marketing team go!

    The last sentance should be spoken just like 'Go speed racer go!'

  141. AMD's Response? by RainbowSix · · Score: 1

    What is AMD going to do in response to Coppermine? Most likely they have a trick or three up their pipelines..

    --
    --------
    It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
  142. Why does the OS still take 3-5 min to load up? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bloat. Bloat ensures that no matter how fast machines get be it 64 way terahertz processors with a 12 GHz bus, and 1 EB of RAM, that you may rest assured that the machine will still take 5 minutes to boot up, and that the latest games and OS won't run worth shit on the computer from 3 years prior. Laugh now, but think back, hasn't this always been true?

  143. mhz poor speed comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    god i hate when everyone uses "clockspeed" as _the_ comparison model for chips. the athlon is still faster, and the G4 is faster yet, as for it's portability...i want to see a laptop with a coppermine processor last 5-6 hours, surprisingly enough my ibook lasts 6 hours with regular use, about 4.5-5 with hard use, again, intel is promising gold and will deliver......crap. x86 is dying folks. and IA-64 will just be too expensive when it's released NeXT summer (4k per processor)

  144. Re:Speed [offtopic] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just out of curiosity, how would we benchmark FUFME?

    Or, who would be willing to benchmark it?

    Lol... I don't think I want to hear any of the answers, use your collective imaginations =)

  145. YEAH!!!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    YEAH FUK YOU G4!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  146. Dishwasing Soap? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Makes your dishes sparkle"

  147. About the chipsets. by Upsilon · · Score: 1

    All the chipset problems you mentioned there apply to the old super 7 motherboards, but not the Athlon. For super 7, AMD relied on 3rd party chipset makers to supply all the necessary chipsets, and they had a lot of problems. But for the Athlon AMD designed their own chipset. While I don't actually have one (not yet, anyway), everything I've read about them seems to indicate that AMD got it right. Their Athlon chipset doesn't have ANY of the problems that the super 7 chipsets did. So really, the only con you have for AMD is the availability situation (and you can blame intel pressuring mobo makers to not make Athlon mobos for that).

    --
    I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.

    "That's right, I'm quoting myself."

    -Upsilon

  148. One word: Marketing by jeremy+f · · Score: 1

    Usually it's Marketing that decides upon the final, "public" name of any given product. Each project is given an interal name by a department, usually R&D, and Marketing doesn't touch it until it's completed (in ideal cases, in most cases, they're all over it from the beginning). Most of the product names you see out there (Pentium, Itanium, Windows 2000, to name 3 very common ones) are decided from marketing, not from the teams which research, design and manufacture them. Marketing's prime goal is to make a product sell as many copies as possible, this includes a flashy name. In Microsoft's case, Windows NT 5.0 sounded too technical, they wanted to continue the "year" series. This is also why Intel held onto Pentium for so long -- it became highly visible to the mass market, and they were afraid if they changed the name dramaticaly, they'd lose market recognition.

  149. Re: Mac Sucks [offtopic] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh AC, you're entitled to your opinion, but it's tired old drivel. I'm rather indifferent to Macs, in fact, some of my friends are are suprised to see the ease in which I use them. These are the same friends who are still running Windows, and haven't really touched Linux yet.

  150. Re:first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ha! You missed Puerto Rico. Not outside of the U.S., but yet not a state mentioned in the list (well, not a state either)... Woo! Can I get the prize? :-) Felix

  151. New Intel 700MHz. by mauriceh · · Score: 3

    Fastest? Not quite Bubba.
    I am typing this on a commercially released Athlon 700MHz. It has been on the market for a month.
    And, at the same clockspeeds the Athlon has already demonstrated significantly faster integer performance, and massively better floating point speeds.

    Intel will have to hit at least 800MHz to best the Athlon at Integer, and an entirely new design to get back in the floating point game.

    --
    Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
    1. Re:New Intel 700MHz. by Trepidity · · Score: 2

      You'd be correct if Intel had been announcing new 700 MHz processors. Notice, however, that they're announcing processors starting at that speed, and going above 700 MHz.

    2. Re:New Intel 700MHz. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      his estimates might not be correct, but he has an athlon 700 now.

  152. Intel has the fastest AND... by solar · · Score: 1

    most expensive chip available for a PC. AMD will continue to be the defacto price/performance chip manufacturer. As soon as their newer, faster Athlon chips come out they will again be the performance chip as well.

    1. Re:Intel has the fastest AND... by Datafage · · Score: 1
      Ehm, I hate to disappoint you, but a 700MHz PIII will get spanked by a 700MHz Athlon, and the 700MHz Athlon is available now, the PIII isn't. Also, the Celery is the best price/performance deal out there, you seem to have mixed up the roles of the companies, that or you haven't taken a look at the benchmarks in a few months... And do we keep having to point out that KRYOTECH has the fastest and most expensive PC? Step back and take a long ahrd look at Intel and AMD before you rush out to buy a PIII-700, especially since we're due for a 750MHZ Athlon by then. Intel is no longer the clear leader in x86 processing.

      -----------------------

      --

      Nicotine free Amish .sig.

  153. Show me the chipset by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And what chipset are we supposed to use with these Coppermines? The 810e has built-in (non upgradeable) i740 graphics. The 840 is probably pretty expensive (not to mention that waste of money called Rambus). That leaves... no Intel chipsets.

  154. Re:Reality check !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Since when is 30% not big? how much faster is an Athlon 650 than a PIII 600? 19%?

    30% is the difference using tweaked Alpha (Compaq) compiler with the appropriate optimization flags for each SPEC test. The Athlon used Intel compiler with NT4. The difference is 10% with no tweaking, which is what you'd expect to get when using Linux with gcc.

    So are you saing that an Athlon 650 is not faster than a PIII 600?

    Yes, it is not much faster than a PIII-600. 10% better is even less impressive.

    What you are saying is that an alpha is not the right computer for a "home" user/ game player.

    No, not only. I'm saying that the Alpha is becoming less and less interesting as a workstation. With the Athlon you can launch VMWare (or reboot), and read Word/PowerPoint documents for instance. You can upgrade. You can add a bunch of peripherical. It is also becoming less interesting as a medium size server.

    Atlon 650 specFP = 22.6
    Alpha 21264 700 specFP = 68.1 54.5

    Yes this made an appreciable difference, but it is no longer the huge gap it used to be. The 21264 was x10 faster than IA-32 for floating point at its beginnings. I can easily imagine even people doing non-parallelized numerical computation hesitating between buying the expensive Alphas, and buying IA-32 (Celeron, PII-600, Athlon). For the cost of an Alpha, you can afford to change your IA-32 every 3 or 6 months. Or buy many of them. Or both.

    Tell me the last time you

    • Clustered 32way x86 boxes (wildfire).
    • Could run a fault tolerant operating system like VMS or True64 Unix on x86 (slowlaris x86 does not come close)
    • Had 1.3GB/s of stream bandwidth available to you on an x86 box
    • Ran a 64-bit x86 box

    Yes, these are mainframe features, and they are a must when needed. With the advent of Internet servers, datawarehouse (or something), ..., "mainframe" is no longer obscene, and it is really good to have mainframe-like Unix systems. But still the upgrade path from Linux/FreeBSD-x86 to Alpha-super-server, is not seamless because you have to embrace True64 Unix to get all those features :-( : you have to redo all the admisnistration work (configure for security, applications compilation, backup system,...).

  155. Intel suffering from Microsoft Syndrome? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft Syndrome (n): The effects of this disease include misleading advertising, mind washing and production of continually degrading products when compared to the opposition. I just seem to find that Intel is pushing their shitty chips in much the same way Microsoft is pushing their shitty software. I have never owned an Intel machine and never will. Will wait for 1Ghz Athlons next year

  156. Re:Article forgoes the rest of the updates to the by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AMD Dresden plan 0.18 now up. AMD is faster because of its design. Note how the AMD chip is modular, with room to be ramped up.modules replaced. Intel P3 is a wonder, shrunken and cache tricks to hide its age. if/when AMD pulls the same cache trick, the gap will actually increase, as some of its speed is really due to the new bus. Intel is trying to pull a bus trick too - but having problems. AMD now has two concerns - Getting Taiwan to shrink the new motherboard, and brand it with an established name (Japan factor). Now AMD has decent production, lets see if I sneaks in a bit of FAB 15 engineering. Their Fab manager is working miracles. But lets look at the economics - Price war gutted Intels old price model. AMD's Europe location will harm 'premium factor' for intel and knock off lucrative contintal sales. Sure volume is up, but growth down. Intel needs NT2000 to require >500Mhz chip, to get a sales spurt. Cat predicts modest growth, as world shuns W2K for being bloated, and AMD building market share in midrange sector.

  157. K7 vs PIII by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Isn't Intel a little late? I don't need a PIII - will wait for Athlon 1Ghz (to be released around januari 2000) Even if Intel's PIII is faster so what? Coppermine is .18 copper tech - current K7 is .25 tech. I'll wait until the athlon is produced in germany where they will also be produced in .18 Bye Intel...

  158. Two simple facts.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AMD Athlon 600Mhz: SPECfp 22.2 SPECint 25.3 Intel Pentium 3 600Mhz: SPECfp 15.9 SPECint 24.0 As I see it, AMD wins.. (SPEC int/fp is the ONLY reliable benchmark)

  159. Re:Gee...screens AND processors... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and of course, what would be really cool is if you could turn the screen for "portrait" or "landscape" mode.... I know I'd *love* something like that, and you could certainly make it comparable in volume to a conventional laptop.

  160. Re:Article forgoes the rest of the updates to the by Epi-man · · Score: 1

    To the best of my knowledge, Dresden is not up yet, only dedicated. AMD isn't predicting product from Dresden until Q1 of 2000 according to their press releases. This means Intel has a few months of 0.18 um production while AMD ramps up their 0.18 um process. Sounds an awful lot like the move to 0.25 um when Intel had several months before AMD could ramp up Fab 25 (Austin). What should frighten Intel more is that AMD is pressing Intel's 0.18 um MHz hand with 0.25 um chips!

  161. Re:Gee...screens AND processors... by JoeShmoe · · Score: 1

    Before someone snipes me with this reason...let me remind you that bigger does not necessarily mean heavier.

    Just make it thinner or of lighter materials like that new magnesium alloy stuff.

    And of course it will be more expensive...but costs come down over time so as long as someone starts making it, I'd be happy.




    --
    -- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
  162. Important, but subtle, point by HoserHead · · Score: 4
    Everyone mentions the Athlon being at 700 MHz, and how Intel introducing their 700 MHz Coppermines doesn't make them the fastest (in MHz). However, mentioned at the top of the article:
    [Intel] said it will unveil 15 processors [...] including the much-anticipated chip family, codenamed Coppermine, with speeds above 700 MHz.
    (Emphasis mine.) Now this means to me that Intel will be introducing either a) 15 new processors 700+ MHz, or b) the Coppermine processors will be 700+ MHz. I imagine b) is correct. However, until AMD brings out its 750 Athlon (and drives the price of the 500 down again, go AMD!) Intel will have the MHz (which is all that rags and marketroids care about) edge.

    Slightly off-topic, the new PIII Xeon are codenamed "Cascades." Is this pronounced kass-kades or kass-kad-ees or something entirely different?

  163. Speed? What about rambus and memory prices? by exa · · Score: 1

    No great news I suppose. Before the mem prices come down and the motherboard features are finally settled for a kinda stable chipset that would last for more than 6 months IS desirable. I care less about having a 5% faster CPU for zillion bucks right now.

    --
    --exa--