Too much variety

[Emc2]

I'd like to see Joel write an article on how much variety there is in today's market. If you go to the grocery store or to McDonald's you have billions of choices, all with the same price, and all of which leave you mildly satisfied.

This is especially true in the IT world. I'm sick of seeing Intel and AMD coming out with their latest chip which is 100-200 mhz faster than the last one. Intel was extremely ridiculous with it's P3's. You could buy 450, 500, 533, 550, 566, 600, 633, 650, 666, 700, 733, 750, 766, 800, 833, 850, 866, 900, and so on. And then there were endless motherboards offering the same or different features from god knows how many different brands. Don't even get me started on video cards.

My solution is for Intel, AMD, and all of the other giants to wait and release chips/cards that are worth the effort of releasing. Not to offend anyone, but it's like sex: the more you wait and anticipate, the better. You just don't want to wait too long.

I'd be happy if processors were released every 1 ghz from now on. There's only a slight difference in chip architectures for every .1 ghz anyways. And I'd be happy if there were different features on motherboards, not the same. I don't want to talk about video cards. I'm actually kinda glad 3dfx no longer makes cards; they were just another compatiblility issue.

Why do we need so much variety these days? Most people in line at McDonalds don't even know what they want, and computers are quite the same way.

[Dputiger]

Actually, ironically, if a person asked me what 3D card would be most compatible with the TOTAL array of 3D-accelerated software available a 3Dfx card would win hands down.

However, to your greater point:

Its important to remember that AMD and Intel are businesses, not just chip companies. This means they are subject to the whims of the market.

Because the two are locked in a war, one cannot allow the other even a slight advantage if its at all possible to remove it.

For instance, if Intel released chips only 'per Ghz' as you suggest, we wouldn't see another P4 until....mid 2002! Meanwhile, AMD comes creeping up steadily behind them, with smaller leaps, but incremental ones.

I agree with you in theory--66 Mhz clock speed jumps are pretty pathetic--but the market still buys the product...

[MiKe85]

Of course major companies (Software, hardware, etc.) Don't personally care what is going on, as long as the market sucks the product up.

That is why when the economy goes into a slump, major corporations slightly pullback the manufacturing of a certain product until the economy starts recovering from it's nosedive.

Hey - Can't beat those 66 mhz clock speed jumps. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[Yar1182]

No way. if anything Intel and AMD don't come out with enough CPU's. Herar me out. Every time they put out a new CPU the previous ones drop in price. So if they put out a faster CPU every other month you can get a lot of bang for the buck if you buy 2 levels down from the fastest CPU. If they put out a new CPU like twice a year, but they were significantly faster you wouldn't want the next level down, and would have to pay a premium for the latest chip. You may think this works out OK in the end, but it's not. If you buy a CPU 2 steps down with todays scheme it's stays closer to state of the art longer (thus more enjoyment).

[Emc2]

But part of the reason for the downturn in the economy is the saturation of variety. The average customer doesn't want to spend $100 on the same thing for products every other month.

[Dputiger]

Actually, I wrote a research paper on this topic:

The reason (at least partially) for the downturn is the Ghz war between AMD and Intel.

If you look at the CPU market over a twenty year span, you see that Intel releases a new chip design about every three years.

1980--8086
1984--80286
1987--80386
1989--80486
1994--80586 (Pentium)
1997--Pentium II
Mid-1999--Pentium III (Katmai)
Late 1999--Pentium III (CuMine)
2000--Pentium IV

See the trend? Intel, in the last four years, has sharply accelerated their processor rollouts.

Let's look at this from another perspective:

In August, 1999: Fastest speed chip available: Pentium III 500

In January, 2000: Fastest speed chip available: AMD Athlon 1 Ghz.

Now, understand something: This doubling of clock speed in SIX months was a huge shock to the industry. Intel was doubling speed every two years or so.

Because Wintel chips are so prevalent, software development moves at a speed more or less equivalent to the speed of chips available on the market. It does NO good to have software available that's so turbo-powered that most PC's can't run it.

However, software development takes time--lots of time. So when the speeds of chips doubled in six months, the excess speed isn't needed by modern software.

Literally, the software hasn't caught up to fully needing the strength of the hardware.

This is why your market slowed down. There's no REASON to buy new hardware, because modern software was written expecting a slower hardware development curve. When the hardware quantum-leaped ahead, software didn't catch up.

[DanU]

I'm surprised that Intel and AMD even continue to compete. Now that there are only two major players in the x86 CPU market, it would be so easy for them to manipulate the market. If one were to slow down it's development cycle, the other would simply follw suit. Consumers would get fewer, more expensive, lower performing CPUs. The airline industry does this all the time. If one major airline raises it's ticket prices, nearly all of them soon follow.

I guess the bitter animosity between the two companies really drives these two businesses to excel. That's the great thing about competition. More choices, lower prices.

[j moy]

All i have to say is who bought the intel 666 processor? lol http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[solo-pc-tech]

Who bought the Intel 666? Me. The BIOS actually says 667MHz when it boots up.

I agree that processors finally got ahead of software. But with Microsoft coming out with bloated OSes every year now, let's hope that the processors stay ahead. And more and more auxiliary processing such as DVD decoding has been offloaded onto the CPU.

Ever wonder what would have happened if for some technical reason processors had hit a roadblock at say 500MHz?

Would people then have started writing tight code and supercompilers to increase performance?

Or maybe we would then have gotten a genuine revolutionary advance in processor design.

I agree the 66MHz increments are ridiculous. Think of it in percentage terms. Pentium 133 to Pentium 200 was 50%. Of course Intel did offer a P150 and a P166 but 133 to 150 was still 13%. P III 933 to P III 1000 is only 7.1%

[Emc2]

Popular Mechanics recently released an article on Microsoft's Win XP, or Windows eXperience. Suggested system components are around 1 ghz processor, 256mb RAM and 4GB Harddrive.

Rumor around my dad's work has it that microsoft will release a new graphics engine which will require at least the power of a geforce+ 1ghz cpu.

WinXP and Office XP are scheduled for a 2005 release. By then, at this current rate, intel and amd should have 5-7ghz processors, with .1ghz-.2ghz increments between releases. That to me sounds ridiculous.

[Canon]

LOL
I have a PIII 667 too!
I believe it is 666.66 or something, and it is just rounded up . . *shurg*
Funny how it's rounded up . . . I wonder what kinda reaction would the public have for a processor with the designation of 666.

[Goldwingnut]

One headache that results from al of this is overnight obsolescence.

Try to find a replacement for a Celeron 466. It can be done, but maybe 2% of vendors have them. This computer is less than four years old.

With this constant speed increase / OS bloat going on, you should plan on throwing away the computer when the CMOS battery wears out. By then the drives are two generations out of date, the CPU is irreplaceable and it won't support the latest OS or software.

[t048]

It'll be kind of funny to look back on this in a few years. Kinda like when the 1 Megahertz was the biggest thing. Soon, hopefully, we won't need to measure the increases in 1/10th of a gigahertz.

[brandon184]

I also have a 667Mhz PIII... http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif