P4@1.5 GHz same speed as a PII@1GHz!!!

[Rags]

A new case, really??? Every upcoming motherboard as of yet (including Intel's) is ATX. My case won't hold an ATX motherboard even though it's an ATX case? Those bastards, if that's true

I don't like Rambus any more than the next guy, but we won't really know how this will all pan out just yet. Every one of your above arguments held true for nearly every major processor upgrade: 386--->486--->pentium--->P-pro--->P4. I am playing the waiting game to see where this really leads us. I remember reading another "himself" back when the first pentiums were released, while the 486 DX4 was kicking just fine. A few bumps in speed, and some better motherboards later, that argument was very lost, and I suspect we may see the same here. I don't think the P4 is a K7 killer, but I don't think it will be a lost cause for intel as of yet.

AMD has made similar decisions as of recently. They were and have been ready to launch "Mustang", it would run at the same speed as the current fastest P3 (1 Ghz), and a 1.2 Ghz was supposed to follow soon. But they found out that "Mustang" would not be able to ramp in Mhz as well as they want, even though it would perform better at 1 Ghz than their T-bird does at 1.2. Ramping up speeds is more important to both of these companies right now, and with both of these platforms, the more Mhz, the more power, the more systems their OEM partners sell. And that's the bottom line.

Rags

[alessandro]

Isochar,

It was announced in Comdex that the Hammer will have SSE2.

[isochar]

My bad, I guess I missed that part in the comdex reports. I'm surprised Intel would shoot themselves in the foot...

[alessandro]

Just go here http://www6.tomshardware.com/busines...comdex-01.html .

[Himself]

Originally posted by Rags:
A new case, really??? Every upcoming motherboard as of yet (including Intel's) is ATX. My case won't hold an ATX motherboard even though it's an ATX case? Those bastards, if that's true

Read the review linked to by paulcs, you need a new case and a new power supply.

I don't like Rambus any more than the next guy, but we won't really know how this will all pan out just yet.

If you buy a P4 with rambus ram, you will be screwed when Intel gets a ddr ram version out. I don't expect a lot of P4 rambus motherboards from VIA and company, not with Intel playing it both ways, so expect prices to remain high.

Every one of your above arguments held true for nearly every major processor upgrade: 386--->486--->pentium--->P-pro--->P4.

386->486, replace the cpu.
486->Pentium, new cpu and mb, new ram as option, simm sockets made the upgrade gradual.
Pentium->PPro, who did that?
Pentium->P3, new cpu and mb, same ram, same case, atx as option and yes generally accepted better way to go, but AT motherboards were available.
P3->P4, new cpu, new mb, new ram, new case. BTW, Intel seems to be moving more towards WTX.

I am playing the waiting game to see where this really leads us. I remember reading another "himself" back when the first pentiums were released, while the 486 DX4 was kicking just fine. A few bumps in speed, and some better motherboards later, that argument was very lost, and I suspect we may see the same here. I don't think the P4 is a K7 killer, but I don't think it will be a lost cause for intel as of yet.

Intel can sit back and do nothing for years and still come back into the cpu business and kill everybody, I just think this product is a dog. Buyer beware!

AMD has made similar decisions as of recently. They were and have been ready to launch "Mustang", it would run at the same speed as the current fastest P3 (1 Ghz), and a 1.2 Ghz was supposed to follow soon. But they found out that "Mustang" would not be able to ramp in Mhz as well as they want, even though it would perform better at 1 Ghz than their T-bird does at 1.2.

Who decision is that exactly? Seems to me to be an opposite decision to Intel's. Intel found the P4 didn't perform all that well and are releasing it anyway, forcing it through to get it over with and not having anything better. AMD are working on a "palomino" instead of a "mustang", both code names, no benchmarks, all speculation.

Ramping up speeds is more important to both of these companies right now, and with both of these platforms, the more Mhz, the more power, the more systems their OEM partners sell.

Too bad in the P4's case, the more MHz does not equal more power. It does seem to showcase rambus though, how nice for Rambus Inc.

I suspect AMD can get a new speed grades out any time they like, but why should they? They need to get DDR out there more than a new cpu, QDR would be better.

And that's the bottom line.

The bottom line has a lot to do with the P4, too bad it's not engineering.

[alessandro]

From Anand:

By the end of the first quarter of 2001 Intel expects the 1.5GHz Pentium 4 to completely take over the performance market segment, and thus paves the way for the 1.4GHz Pentium 4 to begin to be seen in the more expensive mainstream systems ($1,500 - $2,000). In order to aid the Pentium 4’s transition to a mainstream processor, Intel will be releasing a 1.3GHz Pentium 4 in Q1-2001.
However the 1.3GHz Pentium 4 surprisingly disappears from Intel’s roadmap by the end of the first half of 2001, at the same time that the 1.13GHz Pentium III is introduced. There is a great possibility that the performance offered by the 1.3GHz Pentium 4 will be too low to compete with that of the 1.13GHz Pentium III thus causing Intel to ditch the 1.3GHz Pentium 4 after the 1.13GHz Pentium III hits the streets

hehe


[This message has been edited by alessandro (edited 20 November 2000).]

[Rags]

. AMD are working on a "palomino" instead of a "mustang",

Yup, that highlights my reasoning exactly. They(AMD) KNOW that 'mustang' will not be able to even stay close in the Mhz race, thus they are just massaging their current core to do just that.

both code names, no benchmarks, all speculation

I'm sure you wouldn't know about all that, but really the mustang was a performer, and you deep down inside know it to be true as well. AMD is dumping performance for Mhz, too.

Pentium->PPro, who did that?

Don't be an idiot, you know damn well I was saying PPro as in P-Pro (ATX only case, special motherboard, and yes new ram in some cases), P2(same as P-Pro, except when the FSB went to 100Mhz, new RAM was required), P3(same diff there), etc.

Pentium->P3, new cpu and mb, same ram, same case, atx as option and yes generally accepted better way to go, but AT motherboards were available.

Show me a P3 motherboard that is ATX, a P3 that runs on 12 ns SDRAM. Again, don't be an idiot, you know this to not be true. I am sure there were a couple of AT motherboards for P2's, and maybe you were one of the four total people who bought one.

Read the review linked to by paulcs, you need a new case and a new power supply.

We will see.

If you buy a P4 with rambus ram, you will be screwed when Intel gets a ddr ram version out.

Ummmm....I seriously doubt this. Rambus screams on this platform. DDR SDRAM will have to put in some seriously better numbers for it to compete. I think all early adopters of any platform get screwed. You always pay too much for what you get.

I don't expect a lot of P4 rambus motherboards from VIA

Me neither. VIA had a hard enough time producing an SDRAM platform board, imagine if the delved into RAMBUS..weeee! So, I don't see this as a bad thing.

Too bad in the P4's case, the more MHz does not equal more power.

You have to start thinking beyond what's happening in the now, and think about what's going to happen in the then. With a new platform that can ramp up speeds fast, and scale accordingly, this can't be all that bad. Especially for AMD fans and the sort. This can only make them produce faster and faster chips, making current chips drop in price. Maybe that's too hard for someone who can't see beyond their third nostrel hair, but it's been happening in all segments of the computer marketplace.

You don't have to buy a P4, I don't have to buy a P4. But I know who will. Dell, HP, Compaq, Micron, etc. These are the guys who matter. Joe blow doesn't read benchmarks. Only people like Rags and Himknowledge do. Joe Blow looks at the sticker and sees that computer A runs at 1500Mhz and computer B runs at 1000Mhz, so computer A is the one he wants. This has been proven again and again. This is why the K6 series stayed alive, it was relatively competitive in Mhz. In benchmarks, it blew skeeter nads.

Rags



[This message has been edited by Rags (edited 20 November 2000).]

[isochar]

I'm looking forward to the socket 478 P4's. The .13 process should let them ramp up the clock speed even more! >=)

Hopefully Intel still throws two sticks of RDRAM with the retail packaging, too.

Overall, looks like the P4 was "made" for my crowd. Games, MP3s, Multimedia...

[alessandro]

So my topic title is 80% correct, you see PIII is in fact Faster than P4 in some benchmarks:








[This message has been edited by alessandro (edited 20 November 2000).]

[isochar]

Those Q3 demos in Tom's aren't High Quality, here's what Firingsquad had at 800x600 at HQ. (1024x768 was limited by the GF2)
http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardwa.../q3high800.gif

What I found interesting is that a lot of the sites found Win2k a better peformer than Win98SE.
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardwar...um4/q3m-98.gif
http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardwar...um4/q3m-2k.gif

Now if you notice the difference between the results of Sharky Extreme and Firingsquad...

[Novdid]

I won´t buy a P4 until it comes with DDR. I know that the P4 will kick ass in games but I think an Athlon is a better buy. Soon the palomino core with 266MHz FSB and with MB´s supporting DDR will come and will whoop the P4´s ass in all areas except games.

The game thing is a result of the P4´s extreme FSB (bet a lot off Q3A freaks (the rich ones) will go out and buy a lot of P4 gaming rigs)

By the way the palomino core is able to do 1.7GHz on a 0.18 process. To be able to ramp up those speeds, AMD has implemented a deeper pipeline resulting in a performance loss but making higher speeds possible. To improve performance to match the T-bird by a clock basis AMD will probably change the mediocre Branch predictor of the T-bird to a better one matching the branch predictor in the P4 in performance.

Concluson:
So the P4 will have a hard time in the tests (benchmarks)...But then again MHz sells.

[isochar]

Novdid,

Where did you get the info that the new Athlon's will have a deeper pipeline, better branch predictor, etc?

In response to your waiting for DDR SDRAM, Tom's Hardware had to say this:

What do I think of the components around Pentium 4? I have got to admit it, but with Pentium 4 Rambus is finally able to deliver for the first time. If you look at Pentium 4's design closely enough, you can see that it's engineered to live with RDRAM in perfect harmony. The memory benchmarks from above show that Pentium 4 really requires the 3,200 MB/s of data bandwidth supplied by the two Rambus channels. I doubt that it will perform as well with DDR-SDRAM, unless two channels will be used. One DDR-SDRAM channel offers 'only' 2,122 MB/s of data bandwidth, which might make quite a difference with Pentium 4.

From my understanding of DDR, a dual-channel is highly unlikely because of the amount of PCB space it would take up. (Athlon mobos will only have 2 DDR slots because of insufficient space)

[This message has been edited by isochar (edited 20 November 2000).]

[Himself]

http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/r...le_id=15000196

Not all games.

Rags,

I'm going to drop it, you are not convincing me, and I'm not convincing you.

Misc,

DDR just needs more signalling on each ramp to get QDR levels of rates, (plans already announced) it doesn't need dual channels, that is a Rambus architecture thing. Only thing about QDR using DDR tech is the basic access frequency is still 1X, not 4X.

The assumption seems to be that the P4 will just be able to be clocked higher and higher with no limits, we'll see, there is speculation out there that 2GHz is near the end of the line. I personally have no idea, I hope for Intel's sake they can.

P4, what to think, it has 4 times the bandwidth, 50% more clock speed, and it is only showing real $$$ worth improvement in memory bandwidth tests. It is really more a vidication for Rambus than a showcase for Intel, the cpu should be at least twice as fast as the competition with it's advantages. Looks like they decided to make a K6-2 like design, one relying on SSE2 support. They must have something else in the works, I can't believe they would rely on this.

[isochar]

I think (someone else mentioned this too) that this release of the P4 is just a marketing ploy so that they can claim the mhz crown for the holidays.

The real bread & butter will be early next year when the socket 478/.13 micron P4s arrive. That's the "something else" that Intel has in the works...

Himself, so you agree that DDR is not the solution for P4? QDR might be the answer, but how long will it take to get to market?! DDR hasn't even arrived yet, and you're already looking to the next-gen product Don't forget that in that time, Rambus (with it's huge income from royalties collected, heh) will have time to improve on current technology.

I've been hearing DDR this, DDR that, I still don't have a full DDR solution yet.

[Himself]

iso,

Just pointing out that a dual channel DDR system is unlikely, that would be a 128 bit bus, it would rock though, the addressing latency would be cut in half. On the other hand NVIDIA is planning on a chipset that has exactly that, a 128 bit DDR bus, if not dual channel. Should be interesting to see what comes of it all.

As for the P4, Intel is already planning on a DDR solution, the point is moot.

From reading a few more reviews:

Cases, you just need 4 holes drilled in your existing case to support the heatsink, and you will need an ATX 2.03 power supply. A note on ATX 2.03 power supplies, or at least mine, the holes that mount the power supply may be different than the holes in your case, at least for proper intake fan orientation. If I were to install my power supply according to the screw holes, the intake fan would be pointed upward. I had to make some more holes to mount the thing properly.

Overclocking, well, it is likely that the P4 retail version will be multiplier locked, that means you will have to get the muskin equivalent in DRDRAM terms and possibly add a fan to the motherboard chip. It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference in performance anyway.