How bad are P4's?

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

Obviously they perform so bad on a clock to clock basis that intel.com's benchmark for the P4 don't include AMD anything, and they don't even include P3's or P2's or anything but other P4's, Not only do they play on ignorance of the consumer with the Ghz #'s they don't include all the information so people don't know that a P3 1Ghz will beat a P4 at some clock speeds, nor do they mention how a Duron will beat thier processor. Intel is so lame, they blind the ignorant.

At least AMD has the ability to post Intel scores on thier site, Palomino 1Ghz get's beaten by a P4 1.7 in single processor setup.

and they admit that. Even if thier numbers are a bit off (We expect that) at least they could include Intel scores without the embarrassment of having thier Processer beaten.

[camaro]

Most of pc buyers are very ignorant about pcs. Not everyone is a member of sysopt. But on the other hand, they don't need ALL the power. They don't play the latest FPS. So it won't matter in that case. There are people out there buying pc for family use. ie word, internet, school, excel, light gaming, etc. They just go into a store and pick something out of 10-20 pcs that they see there. They are probably going to buy the higher MHz so the pc will last longer. So that's where Intel comes in with the briliant marketing strategy. Build a very scalable core so that no one can catch up and market the MHz. After all, that's the ONLY thing an average buyer can distinguish one pc from another. Look at the labels on typical pcs. 2GHz CPU, 32MB video card, 17inch monitor, printer, scanner, keyboard, mouse, sound card, speakers, 30GB HD, CDROM, etc. So when they shop they compare that to another system with specs written in a similar way.

You know what intel is thinking now? "Oh no, we're losing the hardcore gamers and pc educated ppl, lets see thats 1% of our buyers. Oh well."

[daveleau]

Clock for clock Intel cannot hold a candle to AMD. Even the 2 GHz barely beats the 1.4 T-bird in benchmarks.
I am beginning to see others' stances ont he P4 as I look deeper. The P4 does have alot of potential, right now. As long as Intel continues with lowering prices, then there might be a swing back toward Intel in the not so distant future.

[Rhino302]

I think it would be illegal or at least frowned upon for Intel to post AMD benches on their site. Its that thing, where the market leader not dissing a smaller company in advertisement.

[Wizzard~Of~Ozz]

Rhino, That doesn't explain why they don't include thier own P3 as a reference. As I see it, Intel doesn't want the consumer who does minimal research to see that buy a Tulatin 1.1Ghz can have the same speed as a P4 1.4.

[Rhino302]

Exactly, I was just pointing out the AMD part because I see it brought up a lot. Intel shouldn't even put any benches. They're worthless. Anyone knows a .1.7 ghz p4 is faster than a 1.5.

[Parts]

Many vendors here are blood suckin sons of b****es, they sell 256 MB DDR with the Price of 512 MB and 19'' with the price of 21'' monitors....You show them your price range..after finding the real prices with proof, and they turn red and pretend that they were not suckin your blood..They say like" others are doin the same thing" .. I hate it here, all people wan't is money,it's ok to want money, but don't feck someone just to get extra

[Wilan Wong]

Intel is just using marketing strategy against AMD, as most non-literal computer users would think that the faster the clock speed the faster the processor.. The P4 is actually a threat to AMD, since most buyers won't know the actual performance of the P4.. and another problem for AMD is that the P4 can scale to very high clock speeds, and the current AMD chip can't.

[L0uis]

I just upgraded my machine from a PIII to a P4. Even though, it's only been a day... I'm extremely happy with it. I haven't really finished installing, or tweaking it out yet.. But I'm really anxious to see what it can do.

I spent the whole week (Monday->Friday) either at Fry's returning incredibly crappy Athlon based boards, or at home trying to get them to work. I tried: Asus a7a266, Iwill KK266Plus, some abit board, and an MSI K7<something>. All to no avail. After so much heartache, I went and returned it... Picked up a Tyan board (i845 S2090, a godsent. [No ide raid, no onboard sound!]) and a P4. Came home, and boom. It was runing in not even ten minutes.

I consider myself a fairly knowledgable user, but I just could not get those boards to work. From the experience above, I probably won't ever buy AMD again. It also renews my hatred for the ATX form factor, and pc hardware. (I love Ultras ..)

Don't get me wrong, I still think AMD makes good products, as does Intel. But so far, from my grasp, it seems like AMD is geared more for gamers/people who like to optimize more, and is trying to keep be fairly inexpensive. I just want my stuff to work, and while I don't do as much tweaking as some of you, I get different hardware to compensate. (Ie: SCSI based everything, LVD/10k rpm hdds, hardware dvd decoder, etc.)

The Athlon based systems I did manage to boot were incredibly unstable. With **** like IDE RAID, onboard sound, and PCI-to-USB Bridge devices... It's not hard to imagine why I had so many problems. I don't EVEN USE IDE in my systems, and even though you disable the onboard sound... There are still sometimes problems.

Each have their use, each has their market. I wish the best to both, and recommend not putting one down just because of your favourtism of the other. Just my .02 Pesos.

Regards,

-l

--
"insanity takes a toll ... please have correct change."

[Wilan Wong]

I find AMD from my experience to be quite reliable and stable, I wouldn't say that P4's are "bad", but I will admit that both Intel and AMD produces good quality and excellent performing CPUs, even though there is consistent battling between these two CPU giants (which is good for us), the P4 isn't slow but it lacks the performance/price ratio that most users are after for. That's what makes us go to AMD more than we do for Intel.. IMHO..

[L0uis]

I'd say that AMD used to be inexpensive. I was able to buy a 1.6Ghz (boxed) P4 for cheaper than the price of a boxed 1.3Ghz Athlon. I didn't try online, as I didn't want to waste my time with RMA procedures and various other B.S. And at the same time, I figure we here in the Silicon Valley can enjoy Fry's prices as the best in the world as far as person to person/in-store pc hardware prices.

Plus, the Tyan board I chose only does PC133/100 and not Rambus, so it is indeed cost effective. I say for once Intel is heading in the lesser expensive direction (with a p4 product, yet not forsaking us with Celerons) while AMD is trying to move to more expensive ground.

Again, cheers for the price battling comment, as it benefits us end users. (And them, in the long run.) I've yet to test things, so I can't really comment performance wise. Benchmarks from each of the manufacturers tend to be biased, as well as middle-men-representatives. I recommend doing your own testing, and coming up with your own results before coming to a conclusion. Each person's setup is different, and not all setups exploit/benefit each architecture's various resources. So, to all their own.

Regards,

-l

--
"insanity takes a toll ... please have correct change."

[hippo]

The P4 and Athlon/P3 have diffrent average IPC beacuse of that you can't compare them 'clock for clock' to get a performance indication.

Also note: Pentium Pro. When it first came out, it wasn't any faster than the Pentium...a year later, more advanced compilers improved the performance/clock by 10-20%. A P4 called Northwood is coming out next (it's expected in january). It has a improved features such as 0.13micron and 512L2 etc. As i see it, it's great! We will have AthlonXP and P4 Northwood. The competition is good for us customers.

My 0.2$

[Wilan Wong]

Certainly the Northwood P4 and the Athlon XP would be quite competitive, as the Northwood has performance enhancements that allow it to perform "closer" to the Athlon XP without needing a lot higher clock speed. However, there aren't any benchmarks that see how the P4 performs, but it will certain perform faster with the 512Kb L2 Cache as seen by the move from the Coppermine Pentium 3 to the Tualtium Pentium 3...

[outlaw_revolver]

My god L0uis

How many motherboards did you have problems with? Sounds a little fishy to me but I believe you.