What is SSE/SSE2?

[klumsyboy]

Hi I was wondering why Pentium 4 is supposed to process sse/sse2 stuff better compared to AMD Athlon?

I went to the site you recoomended ie http://www4.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q1/010322/athlon1333-03.html

and it shows that p4 lags behind athlon in terms of office products!!!

please explain why you said sse/sse2 would work better on p4 (when results point to the contrary) after explaining what it means.

[RobRich]

Here is the short explanation of SSE/SSE2:

The P4 architecture also extends the standard x86-32 register set with the newly inducted SSE2 multimedia instruction set. As noted in our AMD K8 Preview, registers are basically extremely fast memory locations within the CPU core used to create and store the results of CPU operations and other calculations. SSE is a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) processing scheme. SIMD combines several intensive computations into a single instruction. The single instruction can then be processed in as little as one CPU clock cycle, thus allowing for much improved performance over traditional core operations.

The Willamette will support SIMD instruction for both integer (MMX) and floating-point (SSE, SSE2) calculations. For integer operations, the base 64-bit MMX instruction set found with earlier Intel CPUs has been expanded for 128-bit support. Intel hopes many software developers will move to the 128-bit MMX set, but retains complete support by including the eight traditional 64-bit registers as well.

Intel will aggressively market SSE2 as the new standard for FPU operations. The aging x87 FPU design is no longer efficient enough to sustain today's high performance games and multimedia applications. By coercing software developers into supporting SIMD instructions, Intel hopes to discard the x87 process in favor of the more streamlined SSE2 approach. Performance will be directly impacted, especially if Intel can gain the projected support needed. Even rival AMD will be offering full SSE2 compatibility with their upcoming K8 architecture. Many expect most future games to support SIMD, and SSE2 is shaping up to be the mainstream standard.

This was referenced from SysOpt's own P4 Architecture review from last year. Here is the article link for more in-depth reading:

http://www.sysopt.com/articles/p4/index.html

The Athlon lacks support for SSE/SSE2. Instead AMD utilizes an advanced form of its competing SIMD instruction set, known as 3dnow!. In relative terms of performance, SSE2 is a more powerful instruction set than 3dnow! for supported floating-point intensive software. Most popular software developers currently support both 3dnow! and SSE, but only a relatively small portion of the software industry is currently shipping SSE2 enabled applications. SSE2 will likely gain in popularity as the P4 is transistioned to a lower price point, thus gaining in popularity. Until this happens, go ahead and buy the Athlon. It generally offers superior performance with the largest variety of software currently being marketed.

Hope this helps,
Robert Richmond

[klumsyboy]

Hello, Thank you for replying.

In the article, you made reference to a preview of amd k8...is it just me or does your search engine not work? I typed in AMD K8 and it said error????

So is k8 the next generation of AMD processors? All I know is that the amd Athlon Thunderbird 1.33 ghz is a K7

Also, I have been reading that the AMD 760 mother chipset for the mother board has not been released yet...and the current ones that support the processor arent optimal?

[RobRich]

Most reviews and articles can be found here:

http://www.sysopt.com/reviews.html

The K8 Platform Preview can be referenced here:

http://www.sysopt.com/articles/k8/index.html

The K8 is AMD's next-generation 64-bit processor. It will offer competition to Intel's Itanium/Merced/"whatever they're naming it this week" 64-bit platform. To some extent, also expect the K8 to compete with with other already established 64-bit offerings from Sun, HP, Intel, and Compaq/Alpha. Eventually AMD hopes to market the K8 to the desktop market, perhaps as early as Q3-Q4 2002.

As for the AMD760 DDR chipset, it is in full production. Here is my review of the Asus A7M266 at Sharky's:

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/reviews/mainboards/asus_a7m_266/

When most reviewer's reference the "unoptimized" nature of the AMD760, they do not account for the technical aspects of why they did not receive this "mind blowing" performance differenece between similar PC-133 SD-RAM and PC-2100 DDR-DRAM test systems. DDR does offer more bandwidth, but generally at the cost of higher latency. Thus the performance improvement is usually in the 10-15% range, not the 30-80% as early DDR marketing hype indicated.

Robert Richmond

[klumsyboy]

Hi I know by know you have figured out I dont know much...

Ok heres questions for you...

1. Is the AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.33 GHZ DDR or do we have to choose when buying?

2. What does DDR mean and what effect does it have on computer games? Im trying to put together a decent computer gaming system.

3. Is 512 k ram noticibly faster than 256k? (a general non related question) cos I hate it when im playing games and then it slows down to a snails pace and then I get killed before I see it :0

4. Are all Thunderbird's PC 2100? or do we have to choose btwn that and pc 133 when buying? The shop was offering pc 133 when I asked.

5. The Asus A7M266 you reviewed, is that the "best" board for the Tbird 1.33 ghz?

Do you know anything about gigabyte motherboards? I was offered a GA-72XR revision 2.2...is that any good for the processor? or was the shop trying to get rid of old stock?

Ok thanx again for replying