PIII - dead end technology? 151
S. Casey writes "It looks like Intel is beating a dead horse, and then some, at least that's my impression from this review of Intel's "PIII" and its Slot-1 competitors. The best part?
"The PIII at 560 has a 7.57% increase in 3DMarks over the 300A at 450MHz. Less than an 8% increase in speed despite a 24.4% increase in clock speed... from a processor that costs twelve and a half times as much as the 300a." The review compares 4 of Intel's "best" CPUs and pretty much demonstrates that the PIII is a waste of time. Bring on .18 micron.
"
Eww. (Score:2)
Can you say Pentium98?
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Pentiums Suck Ass (Score:1)
AMD K7! (Score:3)
Well... (Score:1)
prefer AMD or alpha (Score:1)
This demonstrates... (Score:1)
Well, I like my ppro.... (Score:1)
If Intel continues to build faster, but not better processors they will stagnate and become a has been. Creativeness and ingenuity make a company great, and a product welcome. Reliability makes it perfered. If a company dose not offer both, it's going to decline.
Silly Rabbit MIPS are for kids (Score:1)
uh, sorry. I couldn't resist. RISC, however, is my current favorite processor. I wonder if I could use a couple of the P3's to replace my oven though.
prefer AMD or alpha (Score:1)
and all the game developers are happy to support it.. also, yes, the CelA has on chip cache, but the K6-3 has twice as much.. and both these chips were starting on the drawing board at least several years ago, and neither one could have likely known of the other..
in fact, 3D-Now! should be, from what i have gathered so far, a better performer..
KNI uses 50+ instructions to do what 3D-Now! does in 21.. Intel used a CISC approach, AMD a RISC..
AMD didn't waste as much valuable opcode space..
sure, game developers will support KNI - but it'll take a year for that support to reach the levels of the games that are out now or about to be that support 3D-Now!
well (Score:1)
Can you say "Abandon Ship [ms-starship.com]"?
Intel's continuing chip sham... (Score:1)
My question is, how much horsepower do you need for a departmental file-print server?? Run Linux on an old Pentium, and you should be fine, right? Anyway, my point is that Intel scams its customers by creating a lot of confusion in the marketplace (Celery, PII, Xeon, etc.....) and trying to impress the stupid public with new clock speeds, even though the gains in performance are marginal at best......
Just what I thought... (Score:1)
and on module cache...
and possible L3 on the mobo..
and i doubt intel will do DDR unless forced because Rambus ain't workin, but K7 north bridges will handle it..
and i did hear that sometime end of year, the K7 will be available in socket variety..
hrmm..
What you fail to mention... (Score:1)
/. effect (Score:1)
Man, some people are morons... (Score:1)
Once hardware vendors start releasing P3 optimized OpenGL and display drivers, we will see a teriffic performance boost from P3's. And no, I don't work for Intel, but I happen to be writing P3 optimized stuff right now, and believe me it's really something
Biological switches, buddy. (Score:1)
Does Intel have a future? (Score:1)
AS =)
Just what I thought... (Score:1)
Like it or not, this chip will define Intel's high end desktop offerings. If you buy intel, this is where you are going to find your highest clockspeeds.
Intel should add more cache. (Score:1)
Also, the Alpha's are a different animal. They have an on chip L2 cache. The 2 & 4 MB caches are on the motherboard (or chip carrier) and have higher latency and lower bandwidth than the cache on the celeron or the P3.
prefer AMD or alpha (Score:1)
1. They have Socket 7 chips that keep up with PIIs on cheaper motherboards, and have for some time.
2. They have a 3d api that actually has shipping code written for it. KNI may be better, but it has come later and it has no support.
3. The K6-3 is an incemental improvement, but given what they have done with an older bus-protocol and off-chip cache, I think it will be a competitive chip, when it finally comes out.
4. The K7 looks very cool and it may well be the fastest x86 chip around for a while after it ships (provided it doesn't slip much further)
Somebody poop on your Stroopwaffles? (Score:1)
besides, in three years, the 3d accel boards will offload everything anyhow
Well, I like my ppro.... (Score:1)
Can you say "IA 64"? I'd bet my annual salary that Intel's best minds are hard at work on their 64-bit architecture. The x86 architecture is definitely minor league at this point.
So, Riddle me this, batman (Score:1)
The reason this difference strongly affects the overclockability is that the fundamental speed limit of the P2 line is around 450MHz. Most P2s and Celerons can do that, or around it -- some higher: up to 500 or so fairly common (20%?); 550, possible but almost none. Lower is occasionally the case as well, with some of the 300As unable to get up to 450 (maybe, 20%). I have a 300A that does 450 stably (2.1v required), but it just will not do 464. A fine demonstration of the limit.
Given that limit, the 300A is usually the champ. You raise the bus speed to 100Mhz, and it goes 450 -- 80% of them do, anyway. With the 366, the 100Mhz bus would yield 550Mhz core -- but almost none of them can actually run stable (or at all, really) at that speed. So, you can try using intermediate speed, 75Mhz or 83Mhz bus. These will most likely work, at least as far as the CPU is concerned. The problem here, especially with the 83Mhz bus, is that it yields a PCI bus at 41MHz -- too fast for many peripherals; 33Mhz is the spec they are built for. (At 100, the PCI bus gets a 1/3 multiplier, keeping it perfectly in spec.)
Fool. (Score:1)
The thing with cache is that in most cases it follows the law of diminishing returns. You get much more performance increase going from 64Kb to 128Kb than you do from 128 to 256, and from 256 to 512 etc...
The alphas are obviously aimed at server applications, where large amounts of cache are more useful than in most consumer applications, due to the huge amount of data they are required to handle. The improvement in speed that you'd get from doubling the cache on a PIII is minimal for most consumer applications. Especially when you compare it to the increased cost.
Unreal III? (Score:1)
- A.P.
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"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
Pentium::Microchip -> Windows::Operating System (Score:1)
Intel's continuing chip sham... (Score:1)
You might be surprised... (Score:1)
Pentium98 (Score:1)
Aw... nevermind.
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I have to concur with the first caller. (Score:1)
Here at intel, trained dancers are busy putting FUN into the processor! Shake it!
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New Suns, SGI and Commodity Parts (Score:1)
Transmeta (Score:1)
Didn't apple realize this a while ago? (Score:1)
do the OS.
It's interesting to see how AMD and Intel have made
a big deal of these "new" SIMD instructions, which
appeared on MIPS and UltraSparc years ago.
Richard
The Bill (Score:1)
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You are a free person, I hope (Score:1)
The whole issue here, I think, is an underlying bitterness that Intel, the proven market leader, is not supplying the minority demands - that is, it isn't catering specifically to the more informed section of computer users. It knows where its income is coming from, and it isn't going to do a U-turn purely because a few people don't like the way it is going.
Ya got options, bub.
-seizer, of the AMD.
What are you smokin? (Score:1)
prices from Pricewatch's PC proccessor price listings [pricewatch.com]
PIII 500Mhz = $747
PII 450 = $469
PII 400 = $303
AMD K6-2 400Mhz = $139
AMD K6-2 450Mhz (preorder, due out this month) = $279
disregarding the fact that AMD uses super 7 (allowing for cheaper prices at equal speeds to intel brand PII motherboards),
So AMDs are less than half the cost and only slightly less powerful at equal Mhz. (not to mention the fact they're smaller and not run as hot. better design, imho).
prefer AMD or alpha (Score:1)
3dNow is AMD's MMX.
The K7 is supposed to contain SIMD features similar to KNI, or Altivec.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Mis-information! Rambus is stupid (Score:1)
PC133 offers some solutions, especially with the ddr; read/write on rise and fall of clocks, so not only is latency reduced/minimized, throughput is simultaneously increased by 2.6 times as well.
And it will be cheaper too.
Gotta love Intel's marketing machine. Go read some articles on new tech and what competitors offer; Intel may be more reliable yes, but innovation from companies willing to take risks to outperform the incumbent is vital.
AS
Yes, the P-III & NURBS might speed up the internet (Score:1)
As soon as I have the money I'll cough up for one, though. A lot of buck for the bang, sure, but hardware NURBS support will be a huge help for high-quality 3D imaging, and the CGI landscape will look a lot different once 3DNow! and NURBS have been incorporated into all Intel clones. I'd love to write a program using the NURBS instructions for a senior project!
P.S. Don't let Intel make you think they invented NURBS--the paper was published in the 80s.
New Commercial (Score:1)
Biological switches, buddy. (Score:1)
And why would these be better? Could it be that you simply thought that biological technology is en vogue, so it will be faster and more effecient? This kind of thinking is so prevalent... grrr
Is clockspeed performance? (Score:1)
I would! I wanna see how insanely fast One Must Fall would run!
MOO! (Score:1)
It's pretty obvious that Intel is simply milking the IA-32 architecture for as long as possible while simultaneously working on IA-64. Who wouldn't extract the maximum amount of revenue possible from a development? If you know better, simply don't buy it.
-- IG, a happy Cyrix customer
times change... (Score:1)
Silly Rabbit MIPS are for kids (Score:1)
You should have a PIII for good Internet??? (Score:1)
No Joy (Score:1)
*ahem*
http://intel.com/home/pentiumiii/
*coff*
Yes, we should all get over it. (Score:1)
Pricing based on actual value? Get outa here! Companies should be able to slide by on market share, advertising, and backward-compatibility.
Whats the point in getting our collective nickers in a twist? Let's all relax, take some soma, and enjoy reruns of Friends! If you haven't seen it 2-3 times already its almost sorta new to you!!!
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CPU OpenGL acceleration. (Score:1)
Actually, MMX and 3D-now have been supported for a while, and people have been working on KNI drivers for a little while also (the figures I've heard state a performance boost of about 25%).
Of course, as was pointed out, the graphics card will usually be better at accelerating graphics than the processor. KNI will be coming out just in time to meet graphics cards with geometry processing, which renders it useless.
MMX is very nice for accelerating 2D graphics operations. If I wanted to do, say, alpha blending of a 2D sprite in software, I'd love to use MMX for it. However, we've had graphics cards that do 2D acceleration for quite a while now. So, MMX is just used as a way to move memory around twice as quickly (it has 64-bit registers which can be loaded or unloaded in a single operation, as opposed to 32 bits per operation for EX).
3DNow is a nice solution for packing SIMD floating-point instructions into the old Intel register model. Unfortunately, this means that you can't operate on very many floating-point numbers at a given time, which makes real performance gains marginal (you have extra overhead for massaging the data into a form that can be readily fed into the new registers).
KNI is looking like a somewhat nicer solution, as Intel has the clout to introduce new registers and make software vendors support them quickly. However, it's still a bit cramped, and will shortly become useless when on-card geometry acceleration is introduced into the consumer market some time this summer.
So, while I agree that in the long term KNI won't amount to much, I think that you are incorrect about it and similar additions not being used.
Well, at least it's civil =) (Score:1)
The other thought was that Rambus had latencies slightly lower than the fastest SDRAM, with the point of the comparison that you would only use the fastest SDRAM against RDRAM or whatever Rambus call's its memory.
Rambus2 I may very well believe to be a useful technology, just as EPICs second generation of the newest IA-64 architecture will be better than current generation IA-32, PowerPC, or Dec Alpha. In the meanwhile, it is cheaper, easier and more effective to go from PC100-PC133, double the data rate by using both clock edges, using a slightly faster speed to increase the data rate to 2.667 times, and then use VCR and cacheing algorithms to further reduce latency times...
Its really an argument of Intel pushing an expensive, proprietary, royalty ridden architecture slightly before it's cost is feasible, vs a slight evolution of the current design. It's the same argument that a 1GHz Dec Alpha or a 600MHz PowerPC would more than likely outperform the newly released 700MHz Merceds, next year.
We'll see if industry standard PC133 or Intel endorsed Rambus succeeds.
BTW, there are 2 Rambus standards; 600MHz and 800MHz. The 600MHz is for manufactureres and motherboard designers that can't cut the mustard, and can only go halfway =)
AS
Actual figures == ? (Score:1)
About a 25% speed increase under real-world conditions, from what I've heard elsewhere.
This is definitely worthwhile, but it unfortunately won't mean much when graphics cards with geometry acceleration come out on the consumer market (this summer IIRC).
Developer support (Score:1)
Why wouldn't it be useful? Granted, it'll take a while for EGCS to support the processor (it's just now getting "official" support for the G3, and even that code's still in CVS). But once that's taken care of, Linux and BeOS will be able to use it (and if only Be would get off their butts and get support for the G4 or at least the G3, than man is that OS gonna fly...)
I might add that the specs for AltiVec are already out there; Apple even has an AltiVec emulator for developers. Theoretically it's possible to start adding in the AltiVec support now.
true, its wrong to bench 3D performance. (Score:1)
it is wrong to use SPEC- compiler dependent
AMD K7! (Score:1)
M3? (Score:1)
AMD K7! (Score:1)
Silly Rabbi, kicks are for Trids. (Score:1)
Hmm... the topic was the PIII. What a waste.
It's all about AMD this year... I see their stock at least doubling by the end of 1999. Nasdaq is getting nailed now, but it will rally in another month, AMD will ride that wave up, and the popular press will cry "the King is dead, long like the King!"
What are you smokin? (Score:1)
Here's one reference.. (Score:1)
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"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
The name Pentium is still appropriate... (Score:1)
The biggest thing holding back my PPro right now is the 66MHz bus. That's the only thing that would make me want to upgrade to a K7... faster memory access.
Processors named after elements (Score:1)
They did that! Xenon. No, wait.. it's Xeon.. never mind
Silly Rabbit MIPS are for kids (Score:1)
Apple, Windows, let's call the whole thing off ! (Score:1)
While the government looks at Microsoft one can only wonder how the other members of the gang get to slink away with their tales between their legs.
I'm not a programmer or hacker, just an average computer consumer and let me tell all open source, gift ecomony advocates reading this post...the consumer is sick of the Wintel, software ripoff!!!
With the digital invention of Internet, UPgrades could be delived over the net, right? Not a $100 UPgrade at that. Digitally delivered software, UPgrades and who knows what all, at an affordable price.
Now is the time for action. The computer is in enough homes that a truely new and innovative way to deliver the goods of high quality has a ready and willing market.
I hope i'm seeing that need met with Linux, etc.
The demand from the consumer will only increase.
I'm 47. Maybe it's time to learn new tricks?
Diminishing returns you complete idiot (Score:1)
the 300a, clocked at 450 or even not over clocked, is a damn nice bang for your buck. feel free to add more L2 cache to processors, and you will experience the nicely curved Diminishing Returns graph. at some point, it just doesn't matter you have more. your p90 only has 2 ALUs, the Celeron has the pPro architecture, with 3 independant ALUs - meaning if one stalls the other continue - unlike your p90. the L2 cache is fullspeed at 300 or higher. if you haven't built one and run it, then shut the hell up. it is like people moaning about fords when they own chevys - but have never owned one. i have built two 300a boxes that just kicked ass and were cheap. i don't use them, though, i have my two pPro boxes, so i'm happy
AMD K7! Aye, Expensive, but it will be worth it. (Score:1)
And while the price might seem outragous for those of us with little money to spend on such costly items, keep in mind that, as far as I have heard, AMD will continue to provide the K6-x generation of chips on the socket 7 boards (I believe that the K6-3 is in fact waiting for release, with all testing done).
So, in my eye, I look at the the K6-x/K7 relationship like the PIII/PIII-Xeon relationship, except, of course, the chips are better... =)
Elder
PS - I also have used nothing but AMD chips since my last Intel 386
Intel Outside (Score:1)
What to do with all those transistors? (Score:1)