Author Topic: Intel news, can you say DejaVu? (Read 835 times)

bloom25 · « **on:** July 12, 2001, 02:52:00 AM »

You guys remember when the Celerons first came out and they outperformed the top end P2s? I guess Intel must have learned something from that. Take a look at this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/11070112.htm

What do you figure Intel refuses to release these until they are obsolete as well? They are out in Japan though. I guess the Japaneese are not stupid enough to buy P4s because of nightmares involving golf clubs, vaccuum cleaners, and blue mimes.

I sure hope this doesn't backfire too badly on Intel. I actually am getting kind of tired of AMD's continual delaying of their newer stuff because of Intel's bungling. Unfortunately for AMD their stock holders are not happy either, the other day I think AMD stock was down over $7.00 a share!

Consumers generally come out ahead when these two are fighting each other by releasing chips at higher and higher clock speeds. Unfortunately for us, both Intel and AMD are afraid to let this continue. Intel and AMD have both absorbed heavy losses to their stock prices recently as a result of price competition. When have you EVER been able to buy the most powerful PC processor for less than $200! (Tbird 1.4 GHz being the most powerful right now.)

What do the rest of you think?

1776 · « **Reply #1 on:** July 12, 2001, 07:32:00 AM »

It is all confusing to those of us who don't follow this stuff closely. When ya decide to upgrade to a faster system, heheeeee, by the time the parts arrive at your house, the system is dated!! Geez, this stuff is changing fast!

batdog · « **Reply #2 on:** July 12, 2001, 07:52:00 AM »

BUY LOW! SELL HIGH!

xBAT

Lephturn · « **Reply #3 on:** July 12, 2001, 02:51:00 PM »

It also means the 1.4 Gig Tualatin will likely lay the smack down on a T-bird doesn't it?

Actually it would be good if Inten stumbled a bit more and AMD had a chance to crank a bit of profit for 6 months or so. I'm sure I don't have to point out how awesome it is to have good competition in the CPU space for a change.

We've been kicking the toejam out of Moore's law in terms of raw Mhz lately.. we're likely right on in terms of computing power though.

bloom25 · « **Reply #4 on:** July 12, 2001, 06:04:00 PM »

I was wondering that myself Leph, but the p6 core will never be as powerful as the k7 core at the same clockspeed. The k7 is just plain and simple much more powerful. (If you want to know why, you might want to look at www.arstechnica.com .) All this goes to show is just how bad the p4 really is.

(k7 features over the p6 core include fully pipelined FPU. 9 Instructions in flight at one time vs 5. Larger L1 caches. 72 entry vs 40 entry TLB. Better branch prediction, and above all else the EV6 bus protocol.)

I wish AMD would release the palomino now. They could, but they are waiting on Intel to release faster chips before doing so.

Lephturn · « **Reply #5 on:** July 13, 2001, 11:12:00 AM »

Yep, I've read through that before.

The P4 is marketing driven, that much is obvious. They crippled it to allow it to scale to higher Mhz because that's how the marketing works moreso than with real performance. I think the market is a bit more educated these days at the top end, the enthusiast market... but it remains to be seen if that will influence the mainstream purchases. Doubtful that it would IMHO. The fact is that most folks will compare the numbers, so it's most important to have a higher number. Silly, but that's the way things work.

I agree that on a per Mhz basis the K7 is still superior... although not by tons in real performance. The trick is that the Tualatin will be "pretty close" in real world stuff, and should scale up much better than the old P3's.

Anyway, I just like to see good competition taking place. I hope AMD can make some decent profits, and fund taking the fight to Intel for the long term. A good 2 party battle has been great for us consumers.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #6 on:** July 13, 2001, 11:57:00 AM »

There really isn't much crippling involved with the P4. Its more of a direction. The P-4 will still run your games plenty fast, but it is actually tailored towards multi-media type applications. The main roadblock for highlighting its capabilities is a classic story... nobody <not many> has used the optimized features yet.

The same thing was true when the P-3 was released... the P-2 was actually faster on the benchmarks present at the time. It wasn't until people started using all of the features the P-3 introduced (many used in that wonderful AMD processor) that it finally started blowing the doors off of the P-2.

As far as the article goes... I wouldn't give it much credibility. I haven't seen much in regards to us making a 1.4 MHz P-3. I do know some 1.266 and 1.3 MHz stuff may be coming... but we definately aren't "withholding" any 1.4 MHz P3 processors right now. Don't get too hung up on hypothetical strategy... especially when its actually more mythological.

AKDejaVu

Lephturn · « **Reply #7 on:** July 13, 2001, 11:58:00 AM »

Hmmm... my local shops are listing 1 Gig and 1.2 Gig Palomino's in stock.

You mean they are just not shipping the faster ones?
http://www.mysterybyte.com/pricelst.htm#114

I notice he lists them as "Server Processors", what are these Xeon type deals with craploads of cache?

batdog · « **Reply #8 on:** July 13, 2001, 12:00:00 PM »

OMG... your one of THEM!! The evil empire!

xBAT

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #9 on:** July 13, 2001, 12:21:00 PM »

We are not evil... nor are we good.

Think of us more as a non-discriminating soul vacuum

AKDejaVu

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #10 on:** July 13, 2001, 12:22:00 PM »

Also... something on a slightly different subject..

AMD has recently announced that they expect an opperating loss next quarter. They blame Intel for driving down the price of processors.

I still can't help but laugh out loud at that.

AKDejaVu

SOB · « **Reply #11 on:** July 13, 2001, 12:39:00 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Lephturn:
I notice he lists them as "Server Processors", what are these Xeon type deals with craploads of cache?

I dunno, but Holy toejame!...

INTEL P3 1GHz 133FSB 256K Cache, OEM $358.00

I just bought the same, only in a retail box for less than $200.

SOB

Camel · « **Reply #12 on:** July 13, 2001, 02:37:00 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by SOB:

I dunno, but Holy toejame!...

INTEL P3 1GHz 133FSB 256K Cache, OEM $358.00

I just bought the same, only in a retail box for less than $200.

SOB

Must be Canadian!

SOB · « **Reply #13 on:** July 13, 2001, 04:44:00 PM »

ahh, cc, Monopoly money. That explains it!

bloom25 · « **Reply #14 on:** July 13, 2001, 11:27:00 PM »

Deja, did you mistype or did you actually think the p3 benched worse than the p2? You should know that the p2 and p3 (at least the Katimi (sp) core) were totally identical except for SSE 1 support and the processor serial number. They benchmarked identically unless SSE was used.

I also find it hard to believe the P4 is specifically designed for video, etc. That's just putting a positive spin on the fact that the pipeline is very long, so the applications that get the least performance hit are going to be those that "behave well" with regards to branch prediction. Anyone wan't to guess what applications those would be?

Besides some SSE 2 instructions, I personally can't find a single architectural feature of the Willamette (current P4s) core that is "optimized for video." Nah, it's just that in general video applications perform the same algorithms time after time and generally the conditional statements are very easy to predict.

On the other hand the p4 does have a few very excellent features, but the current clock speeds the chip is running at prevents them from helping the performance much. (I am of course speaking of the ALUs running at 2x speed. As clock speed increases the integer performance difference between p4 and Athlon should shrink up some more.) Right now there is hardly anything the p4 does better than the Athlon, even if the p4 has a 200 - 400 Mhz clock speed advantage.

Personally I'd say if AMD falls behind, which I don't see happening for a while, AND once the 478 pin socket and the new .13 micron P4s (I think Northwood is the name being used) are in full scale use the p4 may eventually be OK in my book. Right now in it's current form it just stinks IMHO.

I'm really unhappy with both AMD and Intel right now, but at least I don't feel like I've violated some ethical code in telling someone the Athlon is better for the money than the p4. I'd have a pretty hard time telling ANYONE to buy a p4, mainly because of no upgrade path for all those who bought systems with Socket 423 and Rambus ram.