1-GHz Pentium III Due This Month 248
ReviewSeek writes "According to this News.Com article, consumers will be able to buy Pentium III computers running at 1 GHz from Hewlett-Packard and IBM later this month. Volume production and sales aren't expected until third quarter though. " It's strange to me that for some reason that "One Ghz" thing seems important. But ya gotta love fast.
Faster CPU (Score:1)
Were I to make a purchase to speed up my home computing, a good AGP 3D graphics card would probably be a better purchase.
But cool in theory, I suppose.
Is faster better? (Score:1)
Not to sound like an AMD fanboy... (Score:1)
Why? (Score:1)
-Elendale (is fed up)
Motive is everything (Score:1)
Here's an article [theregister.co.uk] at The Register that explains it nicely.
And there's a stable 1.1GHz Athlon that was shown at CeBIT. Tom's Hardware has more. [tomshardware.com]
IMHO, the question of when the consumer can buy this chip and what quantities they'll be available in will determine who really was the first to release a 1GHz chip.
1 GHz Pentium III? No thanks. (Score:2)
I'm sorry but I can't think WTF I would need 1 GHz for. I'm currently managing with a P133 which, although a little too slow for comfort, still just about manages to cope with my demands. And even if I did want a 1 GHz processor to show off to my mates I'd wait for the 1 GHz Athlon to come out rather than buy a chip based on an outmoded and inefficient design.
And with Intel's recent track record in supplying their processors I think you'll be lucky to get one of the dozen systems that'll be available in the next year :)
1 GHz... (Score:1)
Y2K... (Score:1)
What about the year 2000? Does it seem strange to you that it should be so important? Apart from the Y2k bug, which didn't happen, it's just another year...
Actually, come to think of it, if the year 2001 is the Millenium, then would the 1GHz processer be clocked at 1001MHz ???
T.
1Ghz (Score:3)
We humans have an irrational interest in what we consider to be 'round numbers' whereby we feel that a year with a 'round number' or, in this case, a processor clocked at one will in some way be extra-better as it were over previous incarnations than if it did not have that round number in it's name.
There is also the psychological effect that canging the name of the unit has. Once we are able to rate processors in GHz rather than MHz, people will subconciously expect them to run significantly faster (the difference between 900 & 1000 MHz is not that big, but the difference between 900MHz and 1GHz sounds like a lot more), so the manufacturer who can hit that 'magic number' first will have a bit of a head-start in shifting increased numbers of units.
And of course, the people who buy those processors expecting increased performance gains, will then brag about them, even if they're not noticable, because otherwise they may look foolish.
What very few people will ask is "do I need this". Personally, I have a P166MMX at home, and it does everything I need. I can run Linux, Star Office and Nyetscrape without difficulty. 1GHz would be nice, but frankly, I don't need it.
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Re:Faster CPU (Score:1)
Need for speed? (Score:1)
The thing is that people gagging to get faster and faster clocks, freezing their CPUs to overclock them etc. are probably running distinctly suboptimal systems anyway, because there are usually a whole load of things you can do to a machine to get the best performance out of it beyond bumping up clock speeds.
A while back when the processor and memory clocks were more closely related, you used to run more slowly with a higher processor clock under certain conditions! A lot of P120 systems ran slower than P100 systems for most applications because they ran the system bus slightly slower. Does anyone know if this is still an issue - is there still any kind of relationship between headline processor speed and the bus speed? If not, when did that get decoupled?
Production problems... (Score:3)
So, what, are they going to have a lottery to decide who gets the few precious chips they can turn out?
Oh! I got it. I bet they'll have competitions as to who gets the chips.
First round elimination: Stupid Bunny Suit dancing competition. Points for garish colors and imaginative dance moves.
Second round elimination: Chili cookoffs, using old P60's as the burner. Is that smoke from the food or the chip? Who cares! It burns, baby!
The PIII Superbowl: The person who actually gets the chip is the person who can come up with the least-stupid-sounding reason why the general public needs to drop 1k on a 1Gz CPU so they can check out porn sites and forward the same retarded joke (headers and all!) to a bazillion people.
How usefull will this really be? (Score:3)
They're going to be really expensive and what's the point? So you get an extra 10 FPS in Q3Arena, honestly, I can't tell a difference between my 450 and 550 computers in Q3. One gets about 10 FPS more but it's not visible, they both look about the same. Apps will load a little faster but is that worth the price? I don't see programs coming out that have system requirements for 1 GHz for quite a while so I think I'll stick with my 550 for a while.
kwsNI
Look at the microprocessor trades and see... (Score:2)
Intel is still having production problems with their 800Mhz PIII, whether they will confirm that is another matter. The Register contacted a German distributor and he said that he isn't getting the 800Mhz chips, let alone something running at 1Ghz. Also, a story on The Register a couple of days ago said that Intel had told manufacturers to expect 866Mhz's by the end of February. That obviously hasn't happened.
I find it hard to believe that Chipzilla is going to be able to jump 200Mhz in one month. Maybe they'll take a prototype, tape an ice-cube to it and ship it to Dell so they can say they did. You may see these chips in volume by June, but I sure wouldn't believe this information coming out of Chipzilla now...
1GHz Athlon (Score:5)
Don't get too excited (Score:1)
I've always been one to buy Intel, but I'm thinking my next box will probably have an AMD chip. I expect AMD will have matching or faster chips within a month or two.
My AMD233 still does me fine! (Score:1)
let the Intel bashing begin (Score:2)
Really though its quite sad how anti-Intel everyone is, I mean the reason why Intel became Intel was because of its reliability and performance, this is not to say that today Intel doesn't sing a different tune, but still everytime I read about something that Intel is doing to push the enevelope in CPU technology people just bash it away as if its already been done or there is something better coming around the corner, which is always true, but regardless if the industry didn't have Intel who knows what could of happened, some would argue that another manufacturer would of just taken control of the market and, rightly so, but the history of Intel is very impressive and their ability to stay as one of the top manufacturers of chips is rather astounding, and yes I would like to recognize the fact that they have used some Microsoftesque tatics to stay in that lead, but the credit that has been given to them is rather pathetic people will critique Intel for anything that they do, the point I am trying to make is that I am sick of the same post of people just flaming Intel, if your going to flame them I suppose make it original ok ;), not ohh well AMD is blah blah, or ohh big deal I did that yesterday crap that I keep on reading repetively by people. Think Original, Think Spam, as in the actual Spam.
1 GHz vs. 1000 MHz (Score:1)
Most people don't know what MHz or GHz means anyways--to them it might as well be a model number.
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You're still using Windows?
Why would they? That's easy. (Score:1)
Simple.
Intel wants to be able to have the bragging right over AMD... a little bit of marketing savvy.
Press releases to the media can proclaim they relased the faster chip.
Mailing to the stockholders can announce breaking the 1 gig mark.
Personal I still won't buy one, but I can understand why they would move to put the chip out prior to being able to mass produce it.
Malk-a-mite
A little AC who finally choose a nick.
The talkbacks I don't want to read (Score:3)
Here are a couple of reasons why I could use all the processing power I could get:
If I am working on a project, my code-compile-debug (whatever it's called) cycle is approx 5-10 min plus the time it takes to compile. If in that time I change a .h file, I must recompile most of the project, which takes a few minutes. If my cycle time goes from 10 min to 5 because of a processor that compiles faster, I just doubled my productivity!
As another example, A year ago I was doing some research involving Mandelbrot/Julia sets. Rendering those in large quantities at high quality can take forever even on a fast machine.
I won't even talk about tons of applications in the scientific world--they should be obvious. So if you post that you don't need no faster processor, all that means is you're not a coder.
Who cares when they only can deliver one or two? (Score:1)
-Danny
Supercomputers On Our Desktops (Score:5)
Now Joe or Jane Consumer can easily go out and buy a supercomputer for their family. Yet, in the long run are they doing anything more with their home computer than they were doing 10 years ago (other than surfing the web)? It just seems that all that computing power hasn't really changed what most people do with their PC's -- which is pretty much use it as a glorified electric typewriter, surfing the web and e-mail.
Despite what Intel and Microsoft might say, a 1GHz Pentium III is not necessary, nor does it even enhance the experience of web browsing. It certainly isn't needed for the dreaded paperclip living inside Word.
Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but I just don't see where all this computing power is of any practical benefit to the average user.
Of course 1 GHz is important! (Score:3)
Simply, because it's a benchmark! I don't understand why people don't understand that. It's the same thing with 2000, or with turning 30. It's a round number, and our human nature is to like round numbers.
Personally, I do think, in all irrationality, that 950 MHz doesn't have the same ring as 1 GHz.
As a side-note, to all the people who say, 'Now, what the hell am I gonna do with 1 GHz??' Gimme a break. I heard people say that when the 100 MHz Pentium came out, and when the 1 GB drives came out. but I bet they didn't count on bloatware and games becoming more and more demanding on a system.
Now, you're gonna tell me most games today only require a killer video card. Sure. And what do you think powers the AI's?
4.77 all over again (Score:1)
And I remember replacing my 8088 with a NEC V20 because it was just a tiny bit faster (4.79 or so).
Crusoe throws GHz races out of the window. (Score:1)
Re:Motive is everything (Score:2)
And not just any old Athlon. a 'Thunderbird' (AMD code name) with 256kB full-speed on-die cache.
Where I live (sweden), it is hard enough to get ANY coppermine (P3 'E')... but athlons abound. I'll belive in a 1Ghz P3 when it is marked as 'In stock' at my fave webstore.
dufke
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Re:let the Intel bashing begin (Score:1)
I'm a geek, I don't give a damn who makes the friggin chip, so long as it's fast, cheap, and I can get my hands on one.
Stupidity deserves derision. I would be just as quick to flame AMD if they were suffering from cranial-rectal inversion as well. And yes, RIGHT NOW AMD is better. That will inevitably change at some point in the future, whether it be due to Intel or some lesser known company.
It's just vaporware to fend off AMD... (Score:5)
The reason is that Intel is scared shitless of AMD. Intel knows that AMD can best them in the MHz (GHz?) race at any time, and they know that AMD has 1GHz chips. They also know that the Athlon beats the pants off the old 686 core of the Pentium III (which is really only a Pentium Pro that went uptown).
The fact of the matter is that Intel is scrambling to keep its mindshare, so it makes big news about things that will happen six months from now. People that trade stocks and make PCs now have it in their heads that Intel actually has a 1GHz system, and that they were the first ones to break the GHz barrier. Those people forget about AMD and the K7. That's the really Intel's strategy: keep announcing things that aren't here yet so the spotlight never strays too far, even though the PIII is inferior. Make people forget about that "other" chip company.
But don't take my word for it, no. Go try and buy an 800 or even 750 MHz PIII system. Then go shop around for an 850 MHz Athlon system. AMD announces things when they happen, like a company should. Intel is the hardware equivalent of Microsoft and I hope their subterfuge and bully tactics (look through Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] for articles about Intel and K7 motherboard manufacturers for a little info about friendly old Intel) come back to bite them in the ass.
-B
Re:Faster CPU (Score:2)
I've been building my own PCs since 1988, and I've found that it almost never pays to buy the hot new processor. Software (except, perhaps, for Windows OSes) is usually designed with last year's machines in mind, so you get perfectly acceptable performance at the mid to low range for a fraction of the cost. I remember a friend buying a 486 machine for $10 grand when they came out. 18 months later, I bought a slightly faster one for $1500. Is it really worth it to have "the fastest"? Not for me, at least.
The other thing I find interesting is that while Microsoft seems driven to drive Intel's stock up, making slower and slower software to require faster and faster chips, most other modern OSes make the CPU less important. X isn't getting any slower (thank god) so one can assume that the 2005 version will be as responsive on a given machine as the 1995 version. With that being the case, I think that CPU speed will just become less and less important to the average user. I think they are starting to figure this out, as more and more people refuse to ugrade just because the hot new OS/chip is out. I think they've realized that it's something of a suckers game in the Wintel world. You need to "upgrade" every year or two to continue to do what you've done all along. Really, if you are not a gamer, but just doing word processing, finances, e-mail, browsing, etc., a 1995 era machine would be perfectly adequate.
Re:Need for speed? (Score:2)
Intel's Celerons run 66Mhz FSB. Their cores are not slower than a P2, but the slower memory bus will hamper them in memory-intensive tasks. (Trust me, I have one...)
dufke
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Re:let the Intel bashing begin (Score:1)
on a second note just look at the last 30 replies on this topic, all have been Intel sucks, AMD is the best, or some reply along those lines, what kind of mentality is that? Regardless of what anyone wants to believe having bragging rights is a big deal, remember the US vs Russia space race, it just sickens me to see so many people/sheep following a company like AMD who is just as "stupid" as Intel.
Re:Faster CPU (Score:1)
Right now I need more speed on my internet connection. I'm using both phone lines @44k each (real world) trying to frag all you Slashdotters out there. We don't have cable or xDSL here. I do have an ISP that wants to experiment with wireless but still want over $1000.00 to get it started. I guess this is what I would do with the money. More power to all of you who already have fast connections and can get 1Ghz CPU. I will be joining you as soon as I can.
Throughput (Score:1)
AMD will have 200mhz bus with their 1ghz, and Intel will have 133mhz, which one will be faster? the AMD one, Intel needs to get their act together.
Re:4.77 all over again (Score:2)
Re:How usefull will this really be? (Score:2)
The more players you have on screen, the more you will notice it. Other then that, there really is no noticable difference as you said.
Cheers
Re:Why? (Score:1)
Re:How usefull will this really be? (Score:1)
Well, obviously, you'll need it to run Win2001: A Bloatware Odessy.
I mean, how else would you expect to take advantage of Blinky the Annoying Paperclip's(tm) new AI system?
Re:1 GHz Pentium III? No thanks. (Score:1)
Speed, in itself, isn't an indicator (Score:3)
(RISC processors get MANY more MIPS than CISC ones, but as they only do a fraction as much, that isn't a measure of anything -real-.)
Unfortunately, there is no genuinely useful measure of performance for a processor, and all the benchtests that exist are catastrophically flawed.
(Typically, a benchtest program will fit entirely in the memory cache, and will probably mostly reside in the processor cache. I don't care if you're using X11R6.3 or Windows 2000, there is no way that a REAL application, or even a REAL window manager would be crammable into that kind of space. If your processor, on a benchtest, has no wait states, but is burning 90% of its time in idle cycles for real applications, then the benchtest is useless.)
Personally, I think the P3 is an over-bloated lump of silicon. I feel that it's time that it got divided into a network of high-speed RISC chips that -pretended- to be a single CISC chip. That way, you'd get the speed of RISC, with the power of CISC.
You also don't need QUITE so many duplicate instructions. Last time I counted, I found over 100 ways to program a jump instruction. That is STUPID! Most RISC chips don't even have 100 instructions in total! It makes no sense to scan through that many instructions, when you could start by determining it's a jump, and figuring things out from there.
(This would involve an instruction tree, whereby related instructions are in related parts of the tree. By following such an approach, by the time you're far enough in to need to do a linear search, you already know what you're doing and what is involved.)
However, this is getting off-track. To get back to the main point, if you are going to use/need a single, simple benchmark, the MIPS rating is far, far superior to the clock speed, because at least it measures how much the chip is doing in that time. A 1 GHz chip could only be doing 1 instruction per second - what use is that to anyone?
Re:Need for speed? (Score:2)
Well... depends on how you mean. Intel is currently selling proc's at 66, 100 and 133 Mhz bus speeds. AMD is selling K6-x at 100Mhz FSB, and the Athlon at 100Mhz, but it transfers on both edges of the clock (aka. 'DDR') effectively making it a 200Mhz bus.
(These buses are comparable directly in Mhz, since to my knowledge, they are all 64 bits wide.)
dufke
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Re:Of course 1 GHz is important! (Score:1)
You can always use a bigger hard drive. I don't see anyone saying "who needs the new 40 Gig drives". But personally, I didn't bother with a 100 Mhz Pentium until they'd been out for almost two years. Didn't need it. (Until I had to load "Microsoft Visual Studio".) Hell, that's why I'm moving to Linux, and refusing to upgrade things like Quicken, Word and the like.
At some point, before Moore's law dies, we are going to reach a point where CPU speed is no longer important to the home or business user. We are getting close to that point. The bloatware vendors are becoming harder pressed to cram features that people find actually useful and unbloated alternatives are popping up everywhere. Really, there are just so many things the average user (who are not any of us, BTW) need a computer for. We're nearing the point where a $1000 computer has the power to do all of those things. Probably in the next five years.
If it wasn't for games, we'd be there now.
Re:1 GHz Pentium III? No thanks. (Score:1)
And when I try telling people about AMD Athlon they are like "AMD. I heard they had a lot of trouble working with windows." ARGH!
Re:Faster CPU (Score:1)
Re:Need for speed? (Score:2)
my first computer ran at 3mhz.
fwiw ;-)
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Re:Production problems... (Score:2)
Re:Faster CPU (Score:1)
WHAT MATTERS:Differences between AMD & Intel chips (Score:2)
Now much time has gone by.. I've honestly not heard a bad thing about an AMD chip in a long time. Perhaps they have achived a perfect duplication of the instruction sets that are in PIII's?
My concern is.. I really want a 1 GHz chip. I actually have some stuff that really could use the speed as my P2-400 is starting to feel sluggish. I'm much more willing to entertain the idea of having an AMD Athlon chip verses a PIII. Especially if AMD releases their 1 GHz in high volume production before this month is over (which looks likely).
SO MY QUESTION IS... What do I gain or loose by choosing one over the other? I've seen chip-enhancements talked about.. Like MMX, 3DMax, etc etc... Does AMD support MMX? Or is that strictly an Intel thing?
Basicly.. what I'm getting at is.. You can't have a sound card without Creative Labs Sound Blaster compadibility.. unless you want alot of games that don't support your sound card (at least thats how it was before DirectX). Are we still in that type of time period with using the most popular chip verses a chip (AMD) that only has 16% of the market?
If someone could list the Pro's & Cons of choosing AMD verses Intel.. or point me to a webpage that has such information.. I would be eternally grateful. Especially if it frees me from my bondage that Intel has me in.
Thanks,
-Matthew
Re:1 GHz Pentium III? No thanks. (Score:1)
Re:1Ghz (Score:1)
That cannot be the reason - or intel marketdroids had come with 0.9 GHz Pentium...
Crossing the GigaHertz frontier can hurt!! (Score:1)
Follow my thought: why is 1 GigaHertz important ?
Because we are only human and we are impressed by round numbers, that why there are often prices at 0.9, 9.9 (in any money), because usually people thinks that 1000 is much more than 989 for example.
What does this imply ?
When the price of 1GHz CPU come down, they will sell a lot! That's good for CPU makers..
BUT it has also other implications: people won't be much impressed by 1.3 GHz CPU over 1GHz CPU!!!
So once the gigahertz frontier is passed, people will care less about the speed of their CPU, and will buy more "low grade" CPU... (well if you admit that within 3 years a 1 GHz CPU will be considered as a low grade CPU...).
What do you think ?
PS: once upon a time, radio makers where comparing their radio by the number of transistors included in the radio.
I think that we will reach quickly times where you don't buy a 1.6 GHz CPU over a 1.2 GHz CPU but a computer with Firewire, or a computer which looks good, or which doesn't make too much noise...
Re:How usefull will this really be? (Score:1)
Re:1 GHz Pentium III? No thanks. (Score:2)
For a while I've been programming an interesting raytracing system which can do all of the reflection, refraction, atmospheric, fractal, and textural effects of a standard raytracer but all in real time. Of course realtime is relative. I'm sure it will do it at 20fps or so on a 1gz machine, but on a p133 it won't even be worth looking at.
Now I remember when doing something like that would take at least 6 hours on my old ST :) Seriously though of course there are applications which can always use more processing power. Raytracing is an obvious one, but also doing hard disk recording of multiple audio and MIDI sources with software DSP effects.
AMD is better (Score:2)
The Athlon can outperform any PIII at similar clock speeds, in a few weeks we should start seeing DDR enabled Athlon motherbaords, basically doubleing the memory bandwidth to twice what's available to the PIII. The Athlon is faster than a PIII and it's not even getting all the momory it can handle. With full speed cache (now enabled) and the DDR sytems, the Athlon will make its lead even bigger over the PIII. It will still be cheaper. And with the release of the DDR chipsets will come support for SMP too. (for all those servers) There's no good reason to go with a Cu P3.
Intel's days as the number one x86 CPU maker are numbered.
Re:It's just vaporware to fend off AMD... (Score:2)
It does appear that Intel may hurt its own marketing if it does jump the gun on this one. If AMD's strategy of releasing 900MHz, 950MHz and 1GHz Athlons at the end of this month in production quantities appears, then the later Intel releases of 866MHz and 933MHz are going to be blighted by the time they hit the market. Of course, if there are 1GHz Athlon machines appearing in the market place well before the appearance of similar Pentium III systems, the initial shock value of a 1GHz chip may backfire as the computer-buying public gets frustrated that they can't get hold of a Pentium processor which is 'available'. Remember also that a recent survey suggested that a fair number of people thought that CPU's were made by 'Pentium' - the last thing Intel wants to do is give it's top visibility line a black eye.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:1 GHz Pentium III? No thanks. (Score:2)
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Re:Yesterdays News (Score:1)
if the world ran at 1 GHz... (Score:3)
Eating Breakfast (cereal, 40 bites, 10 chews per) : 0.0000004 sec
Dialing the phone: Local: 0.000000007 sec
long distance: 0.00000001 sec
Germany: 0.000000013 sec
Flipping through a magazine: 0.000000136 sec
Flipping through Machinery's Handbook: 0.000002555 sec
Dealing a game of poker (4 players): 0.00000002 sec
Writing 100 pages of text: 0.000090016 sec
Writing this post 0.000000484 sec
1 GHz (Score:1)
for the people who rip on AMD, even though intel has a larger portion of the market it doesn't make them "better" or "superior", and there is probably not much someone can say to make certain people think otherwise... it's like linux versus windows, some people just like the fact that even though it sucks (windows), it's where the money's at.
-barton
Re:Need for speed? (Score:1)
All motherboard clock speeds are like this, just rounded down so that Intel don't have to start advertising stuff like the P2-333.33333333...
Comparing apples to apples (Score:2)
That was true of the old calorie ratings, too.
(olives have MANY more calories than apples, but as that doesn't take into account digestibility, that isn't a measure of anything -real-.)
Unfortunately, there is no genuinely useful measure of value of a fruit, and all the benchtests that exist are catastrophically flawed.
Personally, I think the giant apple is an over-bloated lump of fruit. I feel that it's time that it got divided into a pile of high-calorie olives that -pretended- to be a single apple. That way, you'd get the calories of olives, with the convenience of one apple.
However, this is getting off-track. To get back to the main point, if you are going to use/need a single, simple benchmark, the calories rating is far, far superior to the weight, because at least it measures how much energy the fruit contains. A 1000 pound fruit could only have 1 calorie per pound - what use is that to anyone?
Sometimes "it's just more" is all the argument you need, when you're comparing apples to apples.
AMD is the "underdog" (Score:1)
Re:let the Intel bashing begin (Score:1)
Re:1 GHz Pentium III? No thanks. (Score:3)
So get back to me when compiling software takes a blink of an eye.
Re:1Ghz (Score:1)
Like Dogbert said - "They're so BIG.... and ROUND!!!"
Does anyone still believe them? (Score:2)
And maybe Intel can even afford to sell such rare silicon for about US$ 1000, efecctively losing on the deal. They can afford it because, well, they still have money to throw away. Being the first to cross the 1 GHz barrier is probably worth it.
BUT do they really think people are going to drink the story this time? Ask Gateway, that got seriously burnt with Intel. I think NOT! It's to damn obvious Intel doesn't have enough 1 giga, or even enough 800 MHz silicone. Itäs so obvious that the marketeering with the "first to giga" won't work. It just won't, no matter what Intel does, they can't cause a collective brain damage to their potential customers. Oh, wait, Microsoft has been doing this for years, and people are still buying the crappier than crapy releases of Win9x...
Re:Faster CPU (Score:2)
as for now, my celery (300a@450) and TNT(1) are just fine for my games, and another 300a@450 with a Matrox G200 is perfect for all of my NT stuff...
Heat? (Score:1)
Re:let the Intel bashing begin (Score:1)
I agree that arguments based on "Intel sucks and AMD is the best" are probably misguided if based on some arcane favoritism. It does not invalidate justified criticism however. So the fact that many people are saying "Intel sucks" is justified because at this point in time, Intel does suck. And people following AMD at the moment are also justified, because at the moment AMD is doing good things.
If you're at the horse races, do you put the money on the horse whose name you like or the one you think will win?
1.0...? (Score:1)
James
Re:(flame below) (Score:1)
Intel can't market there way out of this one (Score:2)
I'm looking forward to Intel's next processor announcement: "The 600MHz toaster over heating element"... they've got problems ahead.
Re:Faster CPU (Score:1)
Though it may just be that my first game was Pong, and all of this is just so incredible compared to my youth that a stuttering screen doesn't seem like much.
Hz not a good mesure of performance (Score:2)
Re:let the Intel bashing begin (Score:1)
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/8/ns-13795.html
Now that they have AMD competing with them well their shortcomings are appearing. They became complacent and are losing market share due to this. I think they will come back, but the current range is lower quality than before and as we have seen shipping is a problem.
Also they are pushing a low spec all in one chipset with high end processors (although developing higer spec multimedia) shows distinct lack of understanding of the marketplace.
I like Intel and I like their previous products, and I think this shakeup and game of catchup will make their R&D work harder and they will become better and more efficient because of it.
I am still happy with my P2 300 Mhz system. (Score:1)
Re:SUN/SGI out of business now! (Score:1)
Re:Heat? (Score:1)
An 1 GHz chip OC'd to say 1.5 GHz...*drool*
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Re:Need for speed? (Score:1)
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Re:It's just vaporware to fend off AMD... (Score:1)
Re:Not to sound like an AMD fanboy... (Score:1)
IA64 (Score:1)
Intel will soon (mid 2000) release their "Italium" processor. This will be a rather big reworking of the chipset. As far as I can see they have built the chip from scratch. It still has the ability to run programs for IA32, but I guess they have to in order to sell them.
For more information see the Intel Itanium site [intel.com].
The Innovation Equilibrium: the 3D-OS (Score:2)
- Game
- Program
- Run an MS OS
Or have some other obvious reason to use 1 billion cycles per second. I believe the need that will come along will be called the "3D OS", and it's coming soon ladies and germs. The combination of consumer 2D and 3D cards into one piece of hardware in the last couple of years was the handwriting on the wall, and these processors are the wall itself.
But I don't need 3D, I'm happy with my command line! the curmudgeons cry. Well fine, and you'll probably still be using your P133's and your command lines 10 years from now and you'll probably still be smug. But there are real benefits that could be realized from a 3D OS, or to go a bit further, an immersive OS. The human mind is built to navigate a 3D, full-sensory world, so it's only natural that making the computer more like that in every way would enhance usability, shrink the learning curve and increase productivity.
You probably didn't read it here first, but you read it here last.
1 GHz is the wrong goal (Score:2)
MHz is overrated!!! (Score:2)
"MHz" is used by both AMD and intel as propaganda and FUD as they try and capture consumers $$$'s. Most consumers nowadays know what "MHz" is, and most are now (unfortunately) under the misconception that "more MHz == better". Sadly, it seems that the
Sure, MHz vs. MHz on a particular processor, the higher the better. But it's not worth singing and dancing about. It's no great giant leap in CPU design - in fact, intel take their L2 cache latency UP to accommodate for higher clock rates. And when you go out and buy your brand spanking new PIII Xeon - have you thought of the fact that its really just a glorified Pentium Pro with a few odds and ends tacked on?
Get real. Intel and AMD aren't giving us anything great by giving us more MHz. (Look at how much intel advertised 66MHz to 100MHz bus speeds - they only made ~= 15% performance increase). It's more cost effective for them to keep upping the clock rates and adding bigger fans - there's not much R&D involved in that - and intel and AMD know that MHz sells.
Why don't these companies invest in some proper R&D and make some
Look at MIPS. An R12000 at 300MHz beats a PIII 700MHz in FP (specbench), and G4's are noticibly faster "MHz" for "MHz". Then again, say the word "altivec" and consumer won't have a clue what your talking about, even though this technology allows a G4 to totally thrash your intel counterpart at half the MHz.
If we all stop worshipping intel and AMD for pushing the MHz barrier
Re:Faster CPU (Score:2)
I'm very picky about a lot of things, but I'm easily amused (probably why I read
Mmmmm.... Pong - look at http://www.ttinet.com/pjf/pong/ shows that pong needs even a decent CPU (it is Java, after all)...
Re:Of course 1 GHz is important! (Score:2)
Taking myself as a fairly standard example, I've got a 7.85GB (formatted) drive in my system. Loads of games - more than I have time to play - and all bar two on a full install. One wouldn't work on a full install (Colin McRae Rally - BIG minus to Codemasters) and I resented 1515 MB for Bladerunner. But everything else is fully installed.
Then there's my personal data. Tons of it, including almost the entire contents of my old Amiga A1200. Way more than I ever use.
Then there's the apps. Loads of programs that look cool on coverdiscs but have been used twice, installed. Three clever screensavers, installed. SmartSuite, installed. Delphis 1 and 4 plus C++ Builder 3. CorelDRAW! Suite 4. Several reference works, massaged to run from HDD rather than CD in a few cases.
Anyway, you get the idea. It's one heavily overloaded machine which I could trim down to 1/4 the used disc space without any significant loss of functionality. So, given that this HDD drive would be regarded as a little small by most magazine reviewers, I must be bursting at the seams, right?
No, just under 5 GB used.
Processors and GFX cards seem to be heading that way fairly fast, too. Doesn't mean I'm not enjoying the games they make to try and use up the extra cycles, but my 18 month-old machine (P-II 400 and TNT1) still performs fine on new demos whenever I try out the latest releases. Not 'runs acceptably on minimal settings' but 'doesn't seem to drop frames on high settings'. Q3 had some GFX corruption, but that's it.
Accelerating the numbers this fast is shooting themselves in the foot. There just isn't the incentive to upgrade there once was, and by forcing the speeds up this fast, they're accelerating the progress towards our not having to upgrade.
Is there anything I want to upgrade in the near future? Yes, memory. 128KB fely huge on my Spectrum, but 128MB feels inadequate under W2K.
Greg
Things to speed up your system NOW (Score:2)
There are three things you can do:
1. Increase the main memory size to the maximum the budget allows. Just going from 64 to 128 MB produces HUGE benefits, because you use your hard drive a lot less as "virtual memory," which speeds up things as much as 50% or more.
2. Get yourself a 7200 rpm hard drive. Higher spindle speeds usually mean faster data reads and writes on the hard drive regardless of whether you're using IDE or SCSI interface.
3. Get yourself a graphics card (if your system has an AGP graphics port) that uses the Matrox G400 or nVidia Riva TNT2/GeForce 256 chipsets. These faster chipsets makes a big difference in many games.
People are usually surprised how much "snappier" their computers get when they following the suggestions listed above.
pricewatch.com (Score:2)
For what it's worth, here's what I see at pricewatch.com [pricewatch.com] right now:
PIII 800 - four vendors listed, one offering at $799, the rest over a grand.
Athlon 850 - fifteen vendors listed, thirteen under $800, the rest between $800 and $850.
Athlon 800 - five pages of vendors listed, prices starting at $522.
Yet somehow Intel is going to jerk the rug out from under AMD's feet in the next four weeks. If you doubt it, you can just ask them.
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Re:How usefull will this really be? (Score:2)
Funny thing is, Michael Dell has been telling Wall Street that W63K is going to make his sales boom this year, for exactly that reason.
And he's Micorsoft's friend!
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Re:WHAT MATTERS:Differences between AMD & Intel ch (Score:2)
I bought an Athlon system as soon as I saw that it was designed by some of the Alpha 21264 team. So here's the differences as far as I remember - Tom's hardware has far more detail in it's articles on the K7 (Athlon).
Take your pick - I've been extremely pleased with my Athlon 650MHz. In fact the only thing I'm less pleased about is that this MHz race is making my processor look slower much too quickly - I'd usually upgrade once the top of the line processor gets to 2-3 times the clock speed of my current one, but at this rate that will mean an upgrade in Q4 this year :-)
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Using those MIPS (Score:2)
Thinking "do I want/need to run my current apps faster" is the wrong question. Sure a few extra FPS never hurt a game, but it's "what will I be able to do that I could never do before" that is the much more interesting question.
BTW, a 1GHz CPU is probably capable of real-time MPEG-2 compression, which is quite a feat!
Re:pricewatch.com (Score:3)
Intel has said that it will be giving "limited quanties" to a small number of vendors (HP, Dell, and some other company I think).
They won't be available on the BYO market until their problem with "limited quantities" goes away.
...and somehow, I think that "limited quantities" equates to something along the lines of "hey! it worked at 1ghz! ship it!" when they do their bin testing...
The Trickle Down Effect (Score:2)
Apple used to make a desktop that ran off of the Motorola 68000. Motorola added analog to digital, pulse width modulation (for music or motor control), serial and IR interface, and LCD control on dye. They called it the dragonball and sold it for $12 a pop. It now runs 3Com's PalmPilot.
Anouncements the such-and-such has a prossesor at X Mhz for $1000 at 50 Watts with no mobo ready does nothing for me. When someone releases a Pentium class MPU for $20 with on chip peripherals that runs off of AAA batteries, then I will sit up and take notice. Transmeta may be a step in the right direction but we are not there yet.
Well... (Score:2)
AMD have no need to push lower speed prices down by announcing the faster parts, since they're already ahead and well positioned. Intel on the other hand is playing catch-up and hence is forced to announce faster parts even before it is capable of shipping them in volume (thereby hurting it's sales).
Re:Adding Megahertz (Score:2)
The simple fact that the units are consistent does not mean a property is additive. Take temperature for example. Intel Marketers would be adding temperatures right and left if it helped them sell PIIIs.
"This processor runs at 150F, this one runs at 160F, together, a staggering 310F!"
No.
I do see your point, but electronics rely on rising and falling waves, not a crank turning out widgets. When you deal with EM waves, adding hertz just isn't done.
-Rothfuss
Re:It's just vaporware to fend off AMD... (Score:2)
I read the entire thing.
This announcement is that 1GHz PIII systems will be available, actually available, by the end of the month. They really, honestly have 1GHz PIIIs right now in the hands of HP, IBM, and somebody else... I forget who.
Really? You honestly think so? The 1GHz PIIIs are available? Not for me at work. Not for my friend's company. Not for the guys that need to actually use that much horsepower for things like 3D rendering or high-end graphics work or middleware workgroup servers.
The only reason the 1GHz PIIIs will be ready at the end of the month is that Intel only has enough supply to give to a few choice customers (likely those same customers that have toed their line). I'd be willing to bet that the faster PIIIs were originally intended to be 900MHz parts and Intel found enough good ones that can be safely overclocked.
The point I'm trying to make is, if you're going to blast someone, at least blast them for real reasons.
I was. For all intents and purposes, Intel doesn't have a 1GHz PIII available. It has a few CPUs -- not enough to go around, mind you -- that it can share with a tiny percentage of the market. All in the name of having the fastest CPU. Why give them out only to the small fry when the real bread and butter is Compaq and Gateway and Dell?
AMD had a 500 MHz Athlon out well before a Joe User could get one. AMD got the real customers taken care of first: they had systems to the people that could actually use them. They were up front about it, and Intel isn't. That's what I'm saying.
The "third quarter" bit refers to when systems will be available for coporate volume purchases. "People" will be able to buy "the damn things" by the end of the month.
As long as I don't want them from my regular vendor I can get them. Wow. Just let me know when they release a 1 GHz CPU that I can actually use.
-B
Re:Hz not a good mesure of performance (Score:2)
Better than that! (Score:2)
That's a huge price penalty to put on Intel systems, even with the just announced cheaper RIMM packaging.
Of course, as an AMD shareholder, I'm enjoying every moment of this!
Re:WHAT MATTERS:Differences between AMD & Intel ch (Score:2)
Possibly. In an effort to maintain their lead through other means than performance, Intel keeps inventing new SSE SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) instructions. You will have noticed that the K7 covers all the standard PII instructions now, and has it's own set of SIMD instructions which go under the moniker of 3DNow. So if you get hold of an application which is *very* heavily optimised to use only the latest SSE instructions, you might see a *slight* performance hit. I think Adobe Photoshop is the only major suite I can think of which has gone this route, and even then there is not much to pick between the Athlon and the PIII. Most other application makers have kept out of the SSE/3DNow battle and just support the more basic SSE instructions which are covered in both CPUs and don't hurt older processors much.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes