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Intel Snags PC Mhz Crown Back From AMD
textral writes "The Adrenaline Vault is running an article about Intel announcing the new jewel in its crown, the 800mhz PC, again foisting the 'fastest processor on the market' belt away from AMD's 750mhz Athlon. " Its fun watching the big boys do battle over silly little things like megahertz. Every time they up the ante, my poor P2 feels slower and slower. Jerks.
Directory Services
NIS, NIS+, LDAP, NDS...
USB
Has been available for Linux for some time now. Meanwhile, Microsoft has had USB support for NT 4.0, but has been sitting on it to encourage the upgrade to NT 5.0. Right! That's a winner...
High Speed networking
??? AFAIK, Linux supports any networking you have drivers for.
good multi proc support
Linux's SMP works very well on some things, poorer on others. Just like NT. The Mindcraft problem was the single-threaded TCP/IP stack, which has been fixed in 2.3. Next...
standard application base
That old thing? Please. There are thousands of POSIX applications that do everything I want to. (NT cannot run many of them, BTW.) The only thing I lack on native Linux is a lot of games, and Windows 2000 doesn't score too well in the compatability department there...
good web server performance
Which explains why Apache has twice the installed base of IIS, and IIS is dropping...
stability improvements
I'd prefer an OS that was stable to begin with...
You're free to use Windows 2000, but me, I'll stick with Linux any day.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Uhh, cryotech already has the Athlon running at 1000. Just because it is cooled, doesn't mean that it is not "officialy" at that speed. If that were the case, may Cray machines were "unoficially" overclocked from the factory =)
Watch for AMD to beat this by 50MHz or so pretty soon...
:-)
800 Mhz Athlons are already out. I'm not familiar with the exact details but suffice to say that the K7 was designed to scale much more easily in clock speed than Intel's parts. Coupled with the good luck AMD is having with yields it looks like Intel is going to be playing catchup for the foreseeable future.
And don't forget that and the same clockspeed Athlon delivers up to 40% more floating point power, making this the world's finest Quake II engine. Then there are the 3D now instructions.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Over at Ace's Hardware, they've got a news item about AMD's forthcoming announcement of an 800 MHz Athlon, supposedly today as well. And (AFAIK) unlike Intel, AMD's supposed to be able to be shipping them in volume very soon. Intel's still got volume problems, especially with the 800 MHz chip.
It just doesn't matter to most people, at least practically-speaking. As people pointed out in a recent discussion, even though it doesn't matter, people will still buy the hottest chip around. Very much like how people buy the greatest SUVs, the fastest Porches, etc.
Agreed, but some people do need to crunch serious numbers, and it's good if you're running large servers and suchlike. But if you're just running Office and reading email, 800mhz isn't going to help you much. However, 800mhz CPUs will drive down the price of a 500mhz {insert prefered CPU here} chip, so overall everyone (performance freaks and "normal" people) wins.
But consider that VW does well with their "0-60? Yes." advertisments. How long will it be until a processor company pops up with a similar ad campaign? I give it 12-18 months.
Celerons already have that reputation among geeks, though it's not advertised as such (in fact, I don't remember ever seeing an ad for celerons (or athlons!), just P3s). I know a coupla people running dual overclocked celerons that they got fairly cheap. However, I detest Intel and their bloated architechture, so I would probably get a K6-3 or an Athlon anyway . Yes, same bloated architechure, but at least AMD didn't create it. And from what I've heard the Athlon internals are Alpha-like, which is cool (it would also help explain the performance!).
Intel(R) Pentium(R) III processor- Advanced Processor Technology for Powerful DesktopPC
The Pentium III processor sets a new baseline for high-performance business desktop computing, and is also available for entry-level workstations and servers. And now, the new mobile Pentium III processor enables greater productivity on the go, at speeds of up to 500 MHz.
Right here, straight from the source. 500MHz is the max that a PIII will do. The rest must be overclocked. I hope that those of you who bought >500MHz chips don't melt 'em.
marotti.com
Let's check out the www.thechipmerchant.com ...Hmm, no 750Mhz PIII there, but the Athlon 750Mhz is there. Well it must have been a fluke, let's look at pricewatch.com. Gee, there isn't even a search category for PIII 750, plenty of Athlon 750's though. You're about as likely to find a PIII 750 (or 800) as Boss Hog is likely to turn down a pork chop. Intel can take the crown when they aren't selling vaporware.
1Ghz Althon (granted its overclocked. but safely and guarunteed for 1 year).
been out for a month. Super G from Kryotech.
TomsHardwareGuide has reported on the easy of overclocking Althons and the problems getting a PIII to just go 50Mhz faster.
-Z
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
Celerons already have that reputation among geeks, though it's not advertised as such (in fact, I don't remember ever seeing an ad for celerons (or athlons!), just P3s).
You know, you're absolutely right, they really are filling that niche. I hadn't thought about Celeron a) because it's Intel, an existing company and b) they don't advertise it as such.
I wonder if, upon advertising it appropriately, Intel could have Celeron capture that market?
>This is like cars that do 0-60 in 2.4
>milliseconds and can go up to 250mph.
No, it's not like that at all. Cars that can go 250MPh (show me one) are irrelevant because there is no speed limit that high. Unless I've missed something, there is no speed limit on processors.
>It just doesn't matter to most people, at least
>practically-speaking
To the unwashed masses, it doesn't matter; but that's not who the chipmakers are targetting in their first releases. I work for an investment bank whose traders won't be happy with 1GHz; faster math processing = faster trading = more profit.
Also, as someone else pointed out: how important was the PII to the "average person" when it first came out? Just as important as this speed bump, I'd say. Newer, faster technology at the top pushes prices down at the bottom and all the way up. When an even newer, faster technology comes out your "average joe" won't buy anything less than n-1 tier technology.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
AMD hasn't announced an 800MHz chip yet. The fastest they've announced is 750MHz, and those are quite easy to find. The Register was saying last week that actual systems with the 800MHz PIII won't be available until *March*. They're not shipping them in volume today, just sampling them to top-tier manufacturers. So if you ask me, they're still behind AMD.
The next step up in speed is great since it makes the lower end processors cheaper but why the hell are most of you whning? AMD is better, no Intel is better. Blah blah blah. I'd like to see either company come out with a system architecture that was wholly faster than the previous one. A few frames in Quake or a minute faster on a scene rendering in 3DS isn't going to impress me much. If I saw a doubling of the framerate for Quake I would be much impressed. I read somewhere AMD might be planning a 64bit x86 processor, doing the AltiVec thang and running 32bit code on a 128bit core. Four 32bit instructions get run on a single clock which speeds things up a good deal. AMD just needs to givure out how to speed up the rest of the system, DDRRAM is one step. So is a 133mhz PCI bus. Maybe x86 will stick around a little bit longer...
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
And if you don't believe me, look at your current software and OS and tell me you would just as soon run it on a 4MB 486SX/25Mhz.
I draw a line between my various computers. Each one serves a purpose. I do most of my writing on an an IBM PS/2 Model 30. That's an 8086 with 640K of RAM and a 20MB hard drive.
Why? Because it works.
But I'm writing this now on a 350mHz G3 with 190MB of RAM and 8MB of VRAM. Why? Because I like to play Quake on this machine.
I use most of my systems as appliances. They do a few things, and that's all that I want them to do. And I strongly believe that this is a trend that more and more people will follow. But they don't want multiple computers as they think of them now, but devices. (With, as discussed today, Be as the OS.)
So, yes, in that sense, I fully believe that there will continue to be a use for less-than-stellar processors, for the VW bug of processors. (Though I maintain that some people will knowingly purchase traditional desktops with less souped-up processors.) Whether Celeron or something else, there will be room for them in a mass-market sense.
The Intel Chip might have a higher MHz rating, but the fastest Athlon Chip will still cream it, especially in Floating Point perfromance. MHz for MHz, the Athlons are about 15%-20% faster than an Intel. I wish that they would hurry up with SMP Athlon boards. I am going to have to build a computing cluster soon, and I would LOVE to make it out of Dual Athlon Boards, but it appears that SMP Athlon Boards won't be out until Q2 or Q3 2000. :-(
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
For the near future at least, Alphas are still sitting on top of the performance heap. With API's (www.alpha-processor.com) new UP1000 AMD Irongate based motherboard (uses the same chipset as all Athlon boards), you can get a >40 SpecINT, >60 SpecFP computer for under $5000 (www.dcginc.com) . Nothing on the market is this fast.
For the price, Athlons and PIII's are great, but for serious number crunching, Alphas are the way to go.
You just give two CPU's the exact same tasks to perform and measure the amount of time it takes... Therefore, the Alpha's faster...
If you still want to say otherwise, i'd venture to say that both the K7 and P6 (especially the K6 though) are not really executing x86 instructions anyhow... They've got microcode that converts x86 instructions to their native instructions, because x86 was just too cumbersome...
Regardless, though... It's not at all hard to compare an Alpha to a Pentium...
I *LOVE* my dual-processor Celeron system, overclocked to 550Mhz (with some REALLY big heat sinks/fans on the processors)...
I've got the distributed.net software & povray crunching away on it, day and night...
You may wonder why there is such a race to crank up the clock rate on processors. The reason is that most consumers do not understand all the intricacies of what processor is faster, but can understand that 800mhz > 700mhz.
People who read Slashdot know that clock rates are only directly comparable between identical processors. We know that different architectures have different performance at the same clock rate. The vast majority of people that purchase processors these days don't know that. Most people don't understand why (if they are even aware) a PowerPC, SPARC, or Athlon has better real-world performance than a Pentium at the same clock rate.
Most people look at the "megahertz" and use that as the sole comparison of the processors performance even when they don't understand what that number actually means.
For this reason, the mantra at processor companies is "Megahertz At All Costs"
I just found http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/gs-20.12.99-00 1/> saying that AMD demonstrated two version of their CPU running 900 MHz, one who aluminium and one with copper interconnections. Well, the article is in german, so ask some babelfish to translate!
An air-cooled 1GHz Alpha 21264 has already been publically demonstrated (perhaps at Comdex, I forget). If you like the floating-point performance of the Athlon vs. PIII check out the Alpha benchmarks. On fp, Alphas crush* all-comers. At a price. (*)Ok, maybe not some IBMS ;^)
SSE - makes 3dNow improvements irrelevant.
While this may be true of the K6-2 3DNow! instruction set, the Athlon introduced some more 3DNow! instructions. The long and the short of is that Athlon 3DNow! and SSE are basically equivalent in terms of performance.
I believe that neither of these instruction sets are being rendered irrelevant due to lack of vendor support, the only other real issue.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
When the Athlon was first released, Toms Hardware did a very detailed write up on the architecture of the Athlon, and how it relates to the PIII.
You can find that article here. To summarize, this advancement from Intel is basically irrelevant, as AMD could (probably) have 1GHz Athlons on the market already, the Athlon is designed to run at those kinds of speeds, and has a (in their opinion) dramatically superior architecture to the PIII.
Tom mentioned somewhere in the article that AMD would probably do to Intel what Intel had been doing to them for years, which was to one-up whatever speed they come out with. Watch for AMD to beat this by 50MHz or so pretty soon...
Anthony
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
This is like cars that do 0-60 in 2.4 milliseconds and can go up to 250mph.
:)
It just doesn't matter to most people, at least practically-speaking. As people pointed out in a recent discussion, even though it doesn't matter, people will still buy the hottest chip around. Very much like how people buy the greatest SUVs, the fastest Porches, etc.
But consider that VW does well with their "0-60? Yes." advertisments. How long will it be until a processor company pops up with a similar ad campaign? I give it 12-18 months.
And I'll get one, too, because I don't need the latest, greatest hardware. 'Cuz I run Linux.
The real crown will be who busts 1GHZ. It will be interesting because both Intel and AMD are looking at making some serious headway in the design process and 1GHZ will be a landmark for years to come. Look for 1GHZ by early 2nd quarter if we keep up the pace we have been on. Alright show of hands, who 3 years ago with the release of the K6 actually thought AMD would be around this long and this competitive. You in the back with your hand up. Put it down, your lying! Just that much better for the consumer, btw P2 266 gonna upgrade to the Athlon once they release the new motherboards with 133MHZ bus and 4X AGP. =)
Hangtime
Stuff that matters to people with disposable income. All this is to me is another outrageously frivolous component. Hmm... that 500MHz not enough for you? Why not shell out about a grand on a new 800MHz processor. Get less than twice the performance for over three times the price. This is silly, and hardly all that newsworthy. See this for components that people who are not Internet billionaires can afford.- -----------------
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Why are so many people buying into this? Let's see some BENCHMARKS!
I want to hear about number crunching ability. I want Quake2/3/Unreal Tournament framerates. I want to see distributed.net and seti@home rates. I want to know how fast it can compile a 2.2.9 linux kernel.
MHZ is as meaningful a measure of a processor's ability as bogomips.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Intel cannot afford to announce only the processors they can do volume on. If they did AMD would have a small lead in MHz number. Then manufacturers like Gateway and Dell would think about rolling out AMD based machines. By announcing fast chips, whether there is volume or not, Intel strings these guys along just enough (OK, co-marketing money helps too) to keep them from making any significant investment in Athlon machines. We have already seen Compaq and others introduce Athlon machines, if Intel cannot keep the MHz crown, AMD might get a foot hold with all the big US manufacturers. Intel would not want that.
The flip side is that AMD has probably been holding back a little bit to maximize revenue from each step up in MHz.
Those who can do. Those who can't sue.
And if windows 2000 isn't technologically advanced as you would expect, then i can't imagine how linux could appear to be superior or even competitive..
Directory Services, USB, High Speed networking, good multi proc support, standard application base, good web server performance, stability improvements (my nt servers now run longer then my linux boxen on todays hardware.. but if i throw linux on my trusty old p2 systems, its vice versa).
So yeah, in this case the AMD and Intel is working for the customer.. as true for Microsoft and all its competitors.. the best man will win and has been winning. And as for choice, i choose Sun Solaris for my databases, NT for my file servers and linux for my development boxes. And now i get to choose which CPU i want to use. Too bad AMD hasn't released its Multiproc systems yet, or announced any developer chips for 64bit systems..