Intel Pentium 4-2.53 and 2.4B GHz Review

[Beeblequix]

Wow. I'm impressed. The 2.53 & 2.4B Pentium4s demonstrate well our new performance king. I'm quite satisfied to know that DDR333 is a superb match with the new P4, making my personal distaste for RDRAM a moot point.:)

What is AMD going to do now? Will they do as Mr. Freeman suggested and release the Thoroughbred Athlon? Will AMD push out a cpu with a faster front side bus (333?)? If they do release an increased fsb I anticipate similar increases in performance to the newer P4s.

My hat's off to Intel for releasing a killer processor. I also give SiS a pat on the back for producing a great chipset, which I'm sure will also be a good value for the consumer as SiS's chipsets are typically less expensive.

B.Quix

[$1500-P4 gamer]

All true but DDR is still the lesser of the two. Rdram is still suported by the new 533fsb hence the pc1066 rdram and the pc1200 is a sign of a even faster fsb under the curtains!

[gibsinep]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhh!

come on AMD what the hell are you waiting for. You better move faster. They had the the chance for the kill and no they are getting killed. :(

[J.A.D]

I dunno, AMD is still much cheaper, right? That is definitely a plus in my book. I don't buy the fastest processor available anyhow.

[JuNacy]

Very impressive. The only thing is that the extra performance of the N'wood B's comes at a premium. But it's good to see both companies trading blows. Competition can only bring good things....:)

[tking]

Originally posted by J.A.D
I don't buy the fastest processor available anyhow.

I don't know anyone who buys the latest processor. If I'm buying for work they want bottom feeders (cheapest possible latest generation). If I'm buying for myself I try and buy in the 6 month wake (you know, the price drop that a relatively new processor goes through as it's about to fall behind in the speed wars). That explains the logic behind the 1.8 P4 I just got.

On a different note, it seems to me that AMD does ground up rebuilds each generation while Intel focuses on scalability before all else. The result is the Athlon flooring the pentium for several months after a new build before the pentium goes shooting off at ever increasing clock speeds. The other effect is that the Athlon tends to touch new technology more often, while the pentium seems like an over geared motorcycle.

From a software manufacturing point of view wouldn't the pentium be easier to write for? If their main focus is increasing clock speed, the basic architecture stays the same, no?

T

[$1500-P4 gamer]

"From a software manufacturing point of view wouldn't the pentium be easier to write for? If their main focus is increasing clock speed, the basic architecture stays the same, no? "

Well intel is more oftenly used in the past for mainstreem so this is why most developers of software then had one. Thus prog.s used to be tested on them mainly and no asurances on others. Fortunately this has changed.

With the P,PPro MMX,P2,P3 yes they are the same architecture with add ons and higher speed aswell as die shrinkage and fab. changes. Kinda like the analogy you gave, overgeared. But effective non the less. The P4 doesnt fit in this catagory at all. It has a totally dif. architecture all together. Dif. FPU and ALU units dif types of cache includeing prefetch. So with a chip like the P4 and upcomeing P5 you the cpu manufac. must seek to maintain compateability with legacy apps. and such while moveing ahead into the future tech like 64bit. The hammer is a good example of this stratagy. Hopefully the P5 will be too!
:)