pr flack (Score 1)

I doubt that any site has objective information on the Pentium4. When the PentiumPro was released, Intel carefully managed expectations downwards. When the PentiumPro was released, it actually was the fastest CPU in the world (as measured by SPEC); faster than all the RISCs (for a short period of time, of course). Everyone is still talking about how cool the PentiumPro was. (This article even mentions that).

Intel already did a good job spinning this. They released a cacheless Celeron in order to damage the Celeron brand name among the techies. When they released the real Celeron that was really faster than the daddy Pentium II in many cases, people believed it was slower, and would continue to pay more for the inferior Pentium II.

What does Intel want to spin here? Do they want to lower expectations, so that when really units start shipping people start exclaming how fast it is? Or do they want to manage expectations upwards to sell more and hurt AMD? For example, have they purposely designed the core for higher MHz despite lower IPC in order to simply get the MHz crown, which will fool the unwashed?

What I'm trying to say is that:

• are those claiming the Pentium4 is fast just mindless stooges echoing what Intel wants them to say?
• or are those saying its SLOW the ones that are the mindless stooges?

My bet is that the way they've described things that they are trying to manage expectations lower.