Intel's 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Unleashed 284
EconolineCrush writes: "Intel has released a 2.4GHz version of its Pentium 4 processor, and The Tech Report does an excellent job comparing its performance with previous Pentium 4 processors, and the latest in AMD's Athlon XP stable. There's more to this story than just another notch on the MHz pole, as the review showcases some new benchmarks in an already diverse set of tests, and shows the new P4 leveraging an impressive performance from RDRAM-based platform. Incidentally, the slack demand for RDRAM has it almost as cheap as DDR SDRAM."
What's up with the number 2.4?? (Score:2, Funny)
"Average number of offspring has decreased to 2.4"
Re:What's up with the number 2.4?? (Score:2)
Oh well, there's always tomorrow!
GTRacer
- Shouldn't that be 4.2?
Re:What's up with the number 2.4?? (Score:4, Interesting)
'Linux kernel 2.4.19 is out"
PS: don't forget today is 2/4
It's a better number than others.... (Score:2)
- A.P.
Did anyone else....... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Did anyone else....... (Score:2)
The four corners make 6x6 pin "squares," that's 36 each, 144 total.
The four rectangles that connect the corners are 6x14 pins (94 pins), times four make 336.
144 + 336 = 480. Plus, one corner is keyed, and is missing two pins. Voila! 478.
Now try counting the pins on a VAX 7000 CPU slot (the pins are in the system, not on the CPU)
Yippee... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yippee... (Score:2)
Does this really matter any more (Score:1)
Re:Does this really matter any more (Score:2)
Same thing with graphics cards, there is no reason for me to upgrade my GF3 until it gives more than 10FPS increase in games.
we need a killerapp for all these power.
Re:Does this really matter any more (Score:2)
4Ghz. End of next year perhaps
802.11b is on 2.4Ghz..... (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, wouldn't that just suck? Somebody walks in to the room with a new Pentium and your network dies????!!!!!
Re:802.11b is on 2.4Ghz..... (Score:2)
Re: "It doesn't broadcast" (Score:2)
Bullshit.
Intel's P-IV (including 2.4 GHz) datasheet [intel.com] states the power consumption at 49.8 amps @ 1.5 volts. That means nearly 75 watts!
Couple that amount of power with 478 waveguide-like pins to direct it, and you've got yourself a nice little white-noise broadcasting station. Just for kicks, I'd like to see the performance of an 802.11b PCI card trying to coexist with one of these!
How long before some clueless induhvidual brings one of these (in a case with a window mod, thus defeating the Faraday-cage effect) to a LAN party? I give it a couple weeks.
Let's see... P-IV @ 75 watts, vs. 802.11b @ about 1 watt? Which one do you think will win?
The noise floor for 802.11b is going up a few steps, that's for damn sure.
Re: "It doesn't broadcast" (Score:2)
AFAIK there are no PCI 802.11b cards. There are PCMCIA 802.11b cards bundled with a PCI > PCMCIA adapter card. Since the PCMCIA cards already have their own faraday shield and the antenna is outside the computers chassis, I doubt that there is very much interference in either direction. Also, I dont think that any of those 478 pins actually cary any 2.4 GHz signals and probably a third of them are power or ground pins.
Re: "It doesn't broadcast" (Score:2)
More information here .. Netgear [amazon.com] and 3COM [3com.com]. PCI Cards are really useful when you don't want to rewire an office to provide someone connectivity at their desktop. Ok. I'm just nitpicking. :)
Re: PCI 802.11b cards (Score:3, Informative)
First, I never said the pins were carrying 2.4 GHz signals. I said they were "waveguide-like". They will likely facilitate the radiation of some of the ~75 watts dissipated inside the chip package. Simple physics: energy goes from source to sink -- there is less similar radiation outside the package, thus there will be leakage. Fact of life. Need to reduce / prevent interference? That's what the grounded metal case is for.
Second, at 2.4 GHz a signal doesn't follow a wire (or a circuit board trace) like it does at 60 Hz. At 2.4 GHz a wire is more of a 'suggestion' than a 'command'. This is why (radar | microwave ovens | certain satellite communication systems) use waveguides instead of wires. It's also one of the reasons everything isn't running at the same clock speed.
Third, one of the Ten Commandments of /. -- Thou shalt query Google. [google.com]
PCI Cards are installed with the PCB facing in the general direction of the processor (in the ATX spec). I don't know the shielding capabilities of circuit board material, but it sure isn't a solid conductor -- and... many of your traces are exposed to the radiation inside the case. This is where I expect problems and performance degradation to have their roots.
Perhaps you remember a few years ago when it was trendy to install shielding around your audio card for a greater Signal/Noise Ratio? I saw people use copper flashing (the stuff you use to keep your roof from leaking) to construct a box, doing a very nice soldering job, use stand-offs for installation... all to remove a little static. The whole trick was to construct a Faraday cage that would allow the ISA connector (remember those?) as little clearance as possible, without actually shorting it.
We may see a resurgence of that technique.
Re: PCI 802.11b cards (Score:2)
I stand corrected on the PCI 802.11b cards.
As far as waveguides and faraday sheilds go, doesn't a waveguide have to have a greater than or equal to the wavelength of the signal it carries (reasonable multiples and fractions may also work)? Similarly, doesn't an opening in a faraday shield have to be larger than the wavelength of a signal for that signal to get through. Since the wavelength of a 2.4GHz signal is about 5 inches, I don't think that it's likey that these processor pins will function as waveguides for it nor is it likley that any 2.4Ghz emissions that make it past the enormous heatsink and the motherboards groundplane will get through the holes in those shields.
If I am grossly wrong about any of this please correct me.
Re: RFI Emmission (Score:2)
"Waveguide"
"Faraday Cage"
You're catching buzzwords and missing the point. The P-IV processor is packaged in materials not known for their radiation absorption. While the heat spreader is nickel-coated copper, the substrate itself is "Fiber-reinforced resin." (P-IV Datasheet, [intel.com] Page 55)
Plastic.
I have never seen a Pentium (MMX | Pro | II | III | IV) use a grounded heatsink, either.
If you were harboring any illusions that Intel puts shielding in its' processors, please check them at the door, thankyouverymuch. That's what the computer case is for.
If you've ever looked at a Class B (that's home use!) shielded case, you'll see the (unused) external drive bays covered with metal. IBM used to put a very nice braided wire rope gasket on the joints of the PS/1 (among others). You'll also find similar leakage prevention in many rack-mount servers.
Heck, the PS/1 was in the original Pentium days, when processors were running at 200 MHz -- that means a 1.5-meter (nearly 59-inch!) wavelength! All that shielding effort wasn't just for fun, you know.
And, since I'm bothering to respond to all this, I might as well make a point about Faraday Cages:
Now, what if I were to cut a 3-inch hole in that window? It's easily smaller than the 5-inch / 12.5-cm wavelength. By your logic, no radiation will escape. Would you be willing to turn it on and stand directly in front of it for an extended length of time?
(Hint: not a good idea.)
Re: RFI Emmission (Score:2)
While you've provided some interesting practical examples, please explain to me exactly where my misunderstanding about faraday cages [physlink.com], and waveguides [stanford.edu] lies.
As far as I can tell, in order for a waveguide to be functional, it has to have a diameter that is a multiple of the wavelenth (I say again a processor pin won't cut it as a waveguide for 2.4GHz), and faraday cages are generally effective at blocking wavelengths down to about 10x their aperature size (none of the shields on those 802.11b cards looked like they had gaps >.2 inches).
Could you please try a real explanation and not just anectdotes? If there's somthing I'm missing I really do want to understand it and I'm not just being argumentative.
Re:802.11b is on 2.4Ghz..... (Score:4, Informative)
The FCC is very carefull about making sure people's hardware doesn't radiate and interfere with various radio services - that's why you have metal cases on boxes rather than cheapo plastic ones -
Re:802.11b is on 2.4Ghz..... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been shown before that electromagnetic interference from processors can show up in a radio if you listen on the same frequency of the processor.
That is very true. Several years ago, I was working on an antenna design project at a university. We had a spectrum analyzer and a small antenna test rig. Even if I connected a low gain antenna to the unit, I could see spikes at all of the "computer" frequencies...20, 25, 33, 50, 60, 66, 75, 90, 100, 133 MHz. Those were the heady days of the fast 486 and the first- and second-generation Pentium I.
Just to check that it was coming from the neighboring engineering building, I put a directional antenna and could "detect" which computers were in which floors. The undergrad lab had all of the crap 33 MHz boxes. The grad lab on a different floor had the 100s and 133s.
Interference... (Score:2)
Re:802.11b is on 2.4Ghz..... (Score:2)
spread spectrum devices are designed to work around interference at specific frequencies. Anyone know if the processor would mess up if not properly shielded?
metric
Re:802.11b is on 2.4Ghz..... (Score:3, Informative)
Read up on the effects of narrow band transmitters on spread spectrum recievers and visa versa. Typically the frequency hopping mechanism can avoid interference with narrow band trasmitters and narrow band transmitters typically recieve low background noise when adjecent to spread spectrum transcievers. In summary the two devices can co-exist on the same frequencies and pretty much not interfere with the two.
This is probably why the USAF claims their awacs network is unjamable...
pushing MHz (Score:2, Interesting)
When AMD broke ahead of Intel in the MHz race, their marketing department was quick capitalize on this with a media blitz that even included some TV commercials.
However, now that Intel once again taken the lead in the MHz race, astutely AMD has once again retreated its marketing tactics to the knowledgeable and computer savvy.
Every unbiased hardware review page has said pretty much the same thing, clock cycle for clock cycle the AMD is still faster. However, the average computer buyer is still tied down to the more is better idea.
And honestly, that is something that is hard to refute. More RAM is better, bigger HDs are better, bigger monitors/screens are better, faster modems are better...why don't CPU's follow the same rule?
The answer is a pretty complicated one and to explain that would require some basic knowledge that you just can't squeeze into a 30 second commercial. AMD has made noise about a marketing campaign that will educate the public, however so far it has been just that, noise.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:5, Funny)
I wouldn't want a 21" CPU
Re:pushing MHz (Score:4, Funny)
Note: That was sarcasm for the humor impaired.
Oh Come On! (Score:2)
Breakfast (Score:5, Informative)
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2)
Are you crazy?! Just imagine, it's the perfect size to scamble up some eggs on. Heat your coffee. Just start that compile and soon, it's a regular feast for everyone...
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2)
Not very quickly, it wouldn't!
GTRacer
- Or did I just miss something?
Re:On the other hand, (Score:2)
I know a doctor who can shorten it to any length you need.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't even know what a valve is, let alone what the number of valves represents in engine design, but hey, 24 is more than 16.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:pushing MHz (Score:4, Informative)
Not necessarily. The V6 GTI I bought for the wife creates more horsepower than the majority of US made SUVs which are typically based on engines that were originally designed in the 60s. Equally the V8 in my XK8 will easily outperform the V12 engine Jaguar used to use [and still do 20 Mpg arround town rather than 10]
What really matters though is the chasis the engine goes in. For example the GTI will nail any SUV in the street, even if you dropped the Jaguar engine into it. Heck you could drop the engine out of a Ferrari F40 into a Ford Exploder and the Jag would beat it round any track. To go fast arround a circuit you brakes matter as much as your engine.
Its pretty much the same when you get to MHz. A 2.4MHz processor will probably go faster than a 2.0MHz processor all things being equal. However how much faster is pretty variable and all things are usually far from equal.
Unless you have the motherboard and O/S design that will support the beast you will probably notice about as much improvement from a 2.4MHz processor as painting a go faster stripe on the box.
Unfortunately most of the O/S in common use tend to spend a lot of time in unnecessary wait states. They ask a piece of hardware to do something, guess how long it will take and poll for the result. This isn't the way it should be but it only takes one baddly written driver to stonk the whole machine.
Of course back in the days of real operating systems there were these asynchronus service traps...
The bottleneck in UNIX and Windows is the GUI interface in both cases. The Windows GUI has lots of unnecessary blocking states. X-Windows falls foul of the lousy performance of interprocess communications on most modern UNIX boxes.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2)
Cool. But I would sure love to have a ride in the XKEE that R&T reviewed about 30 years ago... I've heard good stories about the Jag 3.4 to 4.2 6-cylinder engines, and the thought of two welded end to end is just too fun.
Unfortunately most of the O/S in common use tend to spend a lot of time in unnecessary wait states.
That is one of my favorite thought experiments I like to bring up when someone asks how well a dual-CPU system might perform. In general, most people would expect to get 20% to 80% over a single CPU, but in certain cases where the first CPU was stuck in a wait-state swamp, I believe that more than double the original performance. Of course, a better solution would be to add a cheap, dedicated microcontroller to stand on top of the polling, but a $2 savings to the card manufacturer is more important than $50 of CPU upgrade to the end user (see: winmodems).
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2)
I very much regret not buying one of those instead of my MGB. Although the MGB cost only a fraction of the cost of an XKE ($2K instead of $10) I have since spent $10K restoring it, the XKE would not have cost much more.
The main disadvantage of the older cats is that they are about as reliable as a Soyo motherboard overclocked to 3GHz in a sealed biscuit tin running a beta release of Windows 3.0.
I like to bring up when someone asks how well a dual-CPU system might perform. In general, most people would expect to get 20% to 80% over a single CPU, but in certain cases where the first CPU was stuck in a wait-state swamp, I believe that more than double the original performance.
Exactly, my twin processor 650MHz machine kicks the butt of most single processor machines when it comes to console work. It is not as hot for compilation but I have engineers to do programming for me these days.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:3, Insightful)
GTRacer
- It's true! It says so right here on this cereal box!
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2, Funny)
They do. Faster CPU's are better.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:3, Insightful)
RAM can help, in fact I place ram as being the second thing that you should upgrade after a HD. Mostly because you don't gain much after you double your ram capacity in a PC. After about 400 megs of ram, you really won't see too much improvment in normal usage. (No, editing 100 meg TIFFs in Photoshop/GIMP is not NORMAL, sorry if your camera generates those)
Of course you can throw all these reccomnendations away if you don't use the PC in a 'normal' enviroment. Servers, crazy mp3 machines and video toasters won't benefit from the same upgrades as a normal PC.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2, Interesting)
I store a lot of my information on remote filesystems (or, yuck, access it through a web browser). How many people use their machines just for email (maybe stored on an IMAP server) or browsing the web? The CPU and even the disk are sitting on their thumbs here. I think that if I finally get one of those palmtop PC's, it's only going to be remote display for something that is stored/running on another machine, just like how I use my laptop now. Sadly, there is no easy upgrade that will "double your network".
In the (database) server market, you're going to find a horrible bottleneck at the memory system, outside the L2 (or L3) caches. Disks, fortunately, are an easy problem to solve. Just throw more spindles at the machine and make sure your database is balanced across them. The number of requests you have hitting the machine can hide the latency of each individual disk. The same sort of thing will not help the PC, since just about everything you do on the PC, to first order, is single-threaded and waiting for an IO to complete (e.g. loading the mozilla binary into memory).
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2)
For all common PC usage scenarios, I completely disagree! I think you're almost completely wrong.
The hard drive is not a performance bottleneck of any kind for desktop use, unless you're performing work like video capture/editing, or if you've got a serious RAM deficiency and you're constantly paging memory to/from disk.
With any kind of modern hard drive, even 5400rpm ones, you've got ideal burst transfer rates of around around 50MB/sec, and sustained transfer of around 25-30MB/sec. Even chopping those transfer rates in half to allow for real-world conditions, think about how much data you're moving back and forth from the hard drive. The answer is: not much. Even large applications are typically a few megs in size, and rarely greater that 10-20MB even including all the associated libraries that need to be loaded.
Additionally, assuming you haven't got a RAM shortage, once the applications are launched, they STAY in RAM. So even a slow hard drive would make your application load more slowly (perhaps by a few seconds) but they'd run just as quickly once they're loaded.
For most tasks, the hard drive is absolutely not the bottleneck. For a few tasks (games, rendering, scientific apps, kernel recompiles) it's the CPU. For games, it's a combination of the video cade and the CPU.
In a lot of underpowered consumer systems, a lack of ram is the real killer. In this case, HDD speed *does* come into play since the swap file's constantly being thrashed, but if it's constantly thrashing your rig is gonna be slow even with a very fast HDD.
The REAL bottleneck in an average desktop PC, though, is the user. Watch the CPU usage... unless you're running a SETI@HOME or something in the background, the CPU is idle about 99.9999% of the time. Most casual users would be unable to tell the difference between a 800mhz with a 5400rpm hdd, and 2.4ghz PC with a 10,000mhz SCSI hdd... aside from the noise, of course.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2)
Wow, I didn't know that HDs could spin so fast!
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2)
It probably isn't, although it depends on what browser you're using. For example, since we're talking Windows, JASC's Paint Shop Pro has a very very fast image browser, rendering a whole directory of 100-200 MB worth of pictures into thumbnails in under ten seconds or so. That browser is probably fairly HDD-bound.
The thumbnail browser built into Windows Explorer, at least in Win2K, is dog-slow by comparison. It slowly renders the thumbnails one-by-one, and is clearly 6-7 times slower (total estimates here! I'm not at my home computer). I don't know what Word's image browser is like, but if it's anything like 2K Explorer's, then it's absolutely, positively not HDD-bound.
Now, I'm not saying a faster HDD won't speed up your system- of course it will. But it's not even close to the limiting factor in everyday use, which the original post ridiculously claimed was the "number one" bottleneck or something like that. It probably "feels" faster to you because you're expecting it to be faster.
Benchmarks generally blow your statements out of the water and back up what I'm saying. Look at overall system benchmarks comparing slower and faster HDD's, like this one [anandtech.com], which is a roundup of 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives. There's not much difference in overall system performance.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:4, Insightful)
You have essentially identified the root of many, many problems, for example, in my world, I personally consider these issues to be very important:
1) Why don't people listen to Ralph Nader?
2) Why do people listen to Britney Spears?
3) Why do people eat Vitamin C and Echinacea in massive quantities?
4) Why do some people believe Creationism belongs in public schools?
5) Why is Prozac(tm) legal and marijuana illegal?
The discussion required to analyze these issues last longer than 30 seconds, so instead:
1) 97% of the voting bloc votes republicrat
2) Britney spears has sold millions of albums
3) Herbal remedies run rampant w/nearly zero clinical support
4) Evolution is market for extermination by some board's of education
5)
Anything that takes longer than 30 seconds to understand is far beyond the Oprah-fried brains of the masses.
What makes us think the masses would care about facts?
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2)
3) Why do people eat Vitamin C and Echinacea in massive quantities?
There's real peer-reviewed science on the benefits of vitamin C. See, for instance, Khaw et al, Lancet 2001; 357 657-63. The authors of this article followed nearly 20000 people for four years, measuring their plasma ascorbic acid (i.e. vitamin C) level. Over four years, the mortality rate of the 20 percent with the highest levels was about half that of the 20 percent with the lowest levels. The probability of this result happening by chance is estimated to be less than 1/10000.
Re:pushing MHz (Score:2)
2) People prefer not to have to think and learn anything. See #1. It's pretty well accepted that you'll be even dumber for having listened...nonetheless, zero effort was used to achieve this effect.
3) Vit C is not a herbal remedy and has over 30 yeras of research which supports it's effects. In fact, the only valid question still left that effects it's use is the required dosage level. Having said that, most studies indicate that it's somewhat higher than what the FDA pushes. MD Anderson even has done cancer research which used Vit C (amongst many others) which yielded a 5% - 15% higher recovery rate than traditional cancer treatments. This was in the fevor of when the FDA had plans to make viters illegal save only for prescription. It's echinecea that has little to no historical support for treatment. Please don't get confused.
4) Because they have a different view on life...and like most people, feel their view should be supported as well. This often has little to do with being right or wrong.
5) Given you're context, actually both are illegal. Having said that, both can be legal given a valid context and a prescription in hand.
Anything that takes longer than 30 seconds to understand is far beyond the Oprah-fried brains of the masses.
What makes us think the masses would care about facts?
This is, about the only thing we seem to agree on , however, I can't stress enough how valid it is. See my answers to points #1 and #2 to support your claim.
Another Article (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Another Article (Score:2)
And RDRAM kicks SDRAM and DDR's butt. RD800 is faster than DDR333CL2.0, and you can't get a consumer-market computer with DDR333 yet, much less one with CAS latency of 2.0. Good luck finding it on the street, period.
RDRAM is way ahead of the curve, and systems with a P4-2.4 and RD800 are as fast or faster than any out there.
That's not bias, it's just the facts.
--Blair
Intel may have the MHz (Score:1)
Wish they'd test with a better OS.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd be nice to see similar tests with a couple of linux kernel variants (1.0.x, 2.2.x, 2.5.x) and some BSDs, Solaris, whatever. Just get some heterogenity in there and see what difference OSes make, hardware vendors are famous for tuning their systems to meet benchmarks after all.
--Charlie
Re:Wish they'd test with a better OS.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Since Microsoft Windows users are about 90% of the desktop computer using population and about 99.9% of the gaming population (as even Linux users who game tend to have Windows partitions because that's where all the games are) and these benchmarks are primarily focused on gaming...Why should they bother testing non-Windows platforms?
Re:Wish they'd test with a better OS.... (Score:2)
Re:Wish they'd test with a better OS.... (Score:2)
Re:Wish they'd test with a better OS.... (Score:2)
(that said, OS 4 is due RSN)
Yes, but... (Score:2)
...can she spin at 2.4 megahertz?
Some Linux Benches (Score:4, Informative)
They aren't the most recent, but they effectively show that for us theoretical chemists, nothing beats P4+RDRAM+ifc for Gaussian98 (the timings are in minutes, not the sad seconds on most sites). Of course, more processors help, but the benchmarks looked at single chip+motherboard.
Re:Some Linux Benches (Score:2)
[quoting from their conlusions]
The Intel Fortran Compiler is able to further optimize the binary of GAUSSIAN 98 compared to PGI Fortran, and invaribly provide speed-up for AMD Athlons.
I found that one particularly interesting.
Do I understand correctly that using Intel's FORTRAN compiler under Linux provides speed-up over the Portland Groups FORTRAN compilers for the AMD CPU?
Sounds to me as if maybe AMD ought to put a few dollars into PGI and into the gcc effort, or are the tricks of the Intel FORTRAN compiler just too expensive to replicate?
Either that, or Intel needs to put in a "go slow" branch when on the AMD CPU:)
Re:Wish they'd test with a better OS.... (Score:2)
It'd be nice to see similar tests with a couple of linux kernel variants (1.0.x, 2.2.x, 2.5.x) and some BSDs, Solaris, whatever. Just get some heterogenity in there and see what difference OSes make, hardware vendors are famous for tuning their systems to meet benchmarks after all.
--Charlie
XP is basicly Windows 2000 (NT 5.1 vs NT 5.0). Win2k has proved itself to be extremely stable as an OS, and XP is likely no exception.
Also, gamers usually use windows. It's just that way.
Seriously what's the point. (Score:1, Interesting)
Hell most the clients of my company have pentium class computers and access us via the web. They have no problems outside of bandwidth limitations. Speed is an insignificant issue.
A New Benchmark... (Score:3, Informative)
Intel wasn't entirely stupid in choosing RDRAM. The P4 really needs the stuff (and the new 533 MHz FSB is really needed too). Meanwhile AMD is
going to be using Hypertransport to get DDR II to
run properly with the chip (DDR 333 is not that great a performer because its 166 MHz base is not synched with the chip's 133 Mhz base FSB).
My rambling point is that clock speed of the processor is rapidly becoming less of an issue in performance than the chip's ability to move data fast. So, should we start trying to talk about chips in terms of data throughput rates as
a better 1 line answer to how fast is it?
I know that CPU speed is a very complex and tricky thing to measure, but sometimes its nice to have a metric that can give you a snapshot of
performance. Raw clock speed used to do that, but now maybe we need something different.
Re:A New Benchmark... (Score:3, Interesting)
In many ways it's easy to go after MHz (in CPUs or memory transfer data rates) Intel's really good at that - it's something their marketting people can sell. But in the real world average latency is today's memory performance killer
I am wayyyyy obsolete. (Score:2)
I gues I am getting further and further behind the Jones'.
Corrrection (Score:4, Insightful)
"Incidentally, the slack demand for RDRAM has it almost as cheap as DDR SDRAM."
Correction: The increasing demand for DDR RAM has caused DDR RAM prices to rise dramatically in the past few months, and the prices are approaching those of RDRAM.
You could spend 600$ on this or... (Score:3, Informative)
[H]ocp review (Score:3, Informative)
The song remains the same (Score:4, Insightful)
Run standard stuff on it, AMD moves faster at a much smaller mhz.
Run stuff optimized for P4 on it, Intel now has the advantage.
Pay through the nose for Intel's latest and greatest.
So...whenever one of them releases a chip it comes down to do you run something that is intel optimized where you would get the performance boost? Also, do you want Intel on Intel, which'll work with 99.9% of stuff out there, or do you want to save a bundle and get AMD on Via/AMD/AliMagic/Whatever and have some possible incompatabilities?
Re:The song remains the same (Score:2, Insightful)
Just a little searching ...
... ~$241 (on pricewatch.com)
... ~$583 (on pricegrabber.com)
Athlon 2100+
Pentium 4 2.4Ghz
Re:The song remains the same (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The song remains the same (Score:2, Flamebait)
If I hear ONE more person say "I'm not buying AMD 'cause VIA chipsets suck", I'm going on a killing spree.. damnit.
Re:The song remains the same (Score:2)
And it HAS been the least problematic board I've ever dealt with.
Re:AMD chipsets are fine (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The song remains the same (Score:2)
Personally I'm waiting for the fixed MPX to come out.
Via - won't touch
I'd better run right out and buy one. (Score:2, Funny)
Time for .13 Athlon (Score:3, Informative)
And in other news today... (Score:5, Funny)
:-)
If a tree falls in the woods and no one's around.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:If a tree falls in the woods and no one's aroun (Score:2, Interesting)
Never underestimate the ability of Microsoft (Score:2, Funny)
I'm guessing Intel won (Score:3, Insightful)
In order to defeat the lameness filter, I will point out that MP Athlon boards are a lot cheaper than a few months ago and that I want one, and that it's about timeto hit Pricewatch.
100x (Score:2)
and wireless router (with 1 wireless and 2 ethernet interfaces).
Re:100x (Score:2)
But why upgrade? It works fine. I do not use it interactively and performance is good enough for
routing/firewalling.
Seen better (Score:3, Interesting)
I still don't really know how the new and old P4s compare. For all I know, it might be the memory difference.
I understand that you probably can't get the new P4s with DDR SDRAM, but he should have used RDRAM on the old ones to compare, not DDR SDRAM. Both would have been fine, so you can compare those as well.
Your most favorite 2.4 (Score:5, Funny)
b) 2.4 Megabit
c) 2.4 ERA
d) 2.4 Linux Kernel
e) Article 2 Section 4 of the US Constitution
f) 2.4 Cowboy Neals
Memory bandwidth? (Score:2)
I'd be interested to see the performance of the Athlon XP if it had access to the same amount of memory bandwidth as the P4. . . I'd be willing to put money on the Athlon coming out on top.
So, is there a dual channel DDR chipset for the Athlon? Give the thing 4200GB/s memory bandwidth, and watch it kick the P4's arse even more . .
himi
s/GB/MB/ (Score:2)
himi da foo'
These benchmarks are a bit impratical. (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't compare the MHZ or model numbers between the Geforce and Radeon video cards - we only compare price and performance. The same should go for CPU's.
What about pricee/performance? (Score:4, Informative)
Pricewatch doesn't list 2.4Ghz P4s yet, but a P4 2.2 mb/cpu combo is $570, and the Athlon 2100 combo is under $300. The fastest Intel mb/cpu combo under $300 listed is 1.9Ghz, which can NOT keep up with an Athlon 2100 setup.
There's certainly more to a purchasing decision than price and performance, and I don't expect every article to cover every angle, but the disparity in price/performance ratios between the companies seems VERY signifiant to me.
Perhaps this article is too targeted for gamers. Business and home users will be more concerned with economy, and professional high-performance users (server/workstation/research) will probably spring for dual processors if raw throughput is so important.
In any case, I look forward to AMD's next moves.
Rambus for a reason (Score:2, Informative)
Well lets add another technology to the long list of products that were better than many commonly used products, yet never got significant market share. (BeOs, Alpha Processors, etc. etc.)
Re:Rambus for a reason (Score:2)
$600+ on Pricewatch... (Score:3, Informative)
For the moment, Intel may even have the highest preformance, lower priced processor (so as to exclude the Alphas, Itanics, etc.), but on a total price performance basis, the AMD chips beat them hands down.
Re:$600+ on Pricewatch... (Score:2)
Where the speed will go (Score:2, Interesting)
Competition is Grrrrreat! (Score:3, Insightful)
One monopoly in the OS market and we have restrictive bloated ultra expensive insecure operating systems! Back in the 80s, I wonder if this is what people were dreaming about...
So.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Too slow (Score:2)
I'd bet that they probably feel somewhat comfortable being a little bit faster than AMD. They will likely keep to smaller speed bumps and go back to the standard update path so long as they keep just a little bit ahead of AMD.
They probably could jump to 3 Ghz if they wanted to, but want to keep their profitable upgrade cycle going as much as possible. They'll stay just with or a little ahead of AMD, but not too far ahead.
Re:Too slow (Score:2)
sorry, couldn't resist the pun, Mr Freely.
If Intel could jump to 3gz, they would, then they would leverage that against a marketing blitz to drive the "We're faster in all area od CPU benchmarking" . drive AMDS "value add" down, which wall street would take as negative(which they should) and cause AMD stocks to slip. Then do "bumps"
Intel would be much stronger short term and long term. Unless AMD has something up there sleeve waiting to use as a trump.
Re:Too slow (Score:2)
Moores law (18mth) equates to 3.85% per month, so you will have to wait approx 6 month for a 25% boots ie 3Ghz
More 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Benches here & @ 3GHz! (Score:2, Informative)