Anand does P4

[JellyBaby]

Hey Intel,

Talk to me when P4 goes .13u, doesn't use Rambust, games compiled under SSE2 are plentiful, and NV20 (or equivalent) is available so I don't need to run FPS titles at 640x400 in order to see your CPU's performance gain). Oh and lower the price, $1,100 is frickin' ridiculous.

 

[BoberFett]

Soccerman

<< it appears AMD's processors won't quite reach the speed Intel's will this upcoming year >>

As we can see from these benchmarks, AMD doesn't need to.

 

[Sugadaddy]

<< it appears AMD's processors won't quite reach the speed Intel's will this upcoming year (mhz wise). >>



Actually, I think they'll stay pretty close (not that they really need to). P4 isn't gonna come out at faster speeds any time soon, their next part is 1.3 ghz. At least, faster P4's won't be coming out before the beginning of next year, when AMD is supposed to get to 1.5 ghz with a new core... Even if T-Birds are 100 or 200 mhz slower, they'll still perform better anyways.

 

[VisionsUCI]

i don't know if the thunderbirds will &quot;perform better still anyway&quot; but they'll certainly cost less.

 

[Soccerman]

&quot;Even if T-Birds are 100 or 200 mhz slower, they'll still perform better anyways.&quot;

not necessarily true, the P4 takes off in Quake 3, a game that many of u use for benching CPU power (which is why 640X480 is used, it measure's pure T&amp;L power/driver quality).

AMD needs to keep up in terms of mhz to be sure that people won't be drawn away because of glitzy high mhz and higher fps scores in quake 3.

my major concern is when AMD will hit 3.2 gig/second on the FSB, and what will the DDR SDRAM situation be like then (will it be fast enough?).

I know their upcoming processor will help somewhat in the mhz-mhz department (somewhat, don't expect much), and will allow them to scale alot better (less power consumption at the same die process), however Intel could easily release a new version of the P4 to counteract power problems etc as well (they don't release the perfect chip, they incrementally release better chips to milk the market).

getting this k7 core with a 400mhz FSB and equivelent RAM bandwidth abilities would certainly help ALOT in todays situation for AMD (ie, Quake would probably not be boosted so much over AMD with the P4, the only thing it would have going for it would be SSE). the reason I feel it is urgent that they do this sooner rather then later, is because they will keep intel off guard, and also not allow the P4 to garner much support because of it's higher Quake 3 scores..

if I were AMD, I would try to push the next chipset alot quicker.. as for the next core for the athlon (after the Palomino) the timing seems to be pretty good still..

 

[JellyBaby]

Another point is stability. We're talking about a new processor core, chip set and compilation process (for sse2 ops). It all adds up to mondo potential for that nasty errata to rear it's ugly head.

 

[OneEng]

Soccerman,
Intel's copper process is to start producing chips in volume at the first plant around Q3 or Q4. The announcement will likely come in late Q2 IMHO. The copper process Intel is using is not Silicon on Insulator as AMD's is. This new process has shown to be 20-30% faster using the same gate width.

Another thing to consider is that P4 1.5Ghz will not be competing with TBird 1.2Ghz when it is introduced in volume in January, it will be up against a DDR 1.33Ghz Palimino. I will not speculate on the relative performance of Palimino over TBird other than to say it will be faster.

Relative to P4 it will be much faster, much smaller, and much less expensive. The RAM subsystem will also be lower latency and less expensive that P4's and the chipset support for it will have advanced features like on-chipset-cache further reducing the latency of the memory subsystem.

Speaking of latency, AMD's EV6 bus is designed to scale to 400Mhz double pumped. This will offer the same bandwidth as Intels quad pumped 400Mhz bus while providing half the latency.

It appears that Intel is banking on bandwidth and clock speed with P4. I believe that AMD can keep close enough with both of those metrics while maintaining a much smaller and powerful core.

 

[Eli]

Sorry, I wasn't thinking straight when I posted that. Didn't word it correctly. I was just overly enthusiastic that the P4 reminded me more of molasses than a Hyperpipelined processor with NetBurst architecture.


/me snickers uncontrolably

 

[Sharkmeat]

This thread sounds like a pre SOL test for the 8th grade When the products come out to support the P4,s new features you will put your AMD,s into your used baby pampers so they will be in a crap pile that fits the product .

 

[Rectalfier]

&quot;This thread sounds like a pre SOL test for the 8th grade When the products come out to support the P4,s new features you will put your AMD,s into your used baby pampers so they will be in a crap pile that fits the product . &quot;

I sure hope you are joking. The majority of games and applications if any will not support SSE2 or any other P4 feature for at least a year and a half. Developers will not go out of their way to optimise for a processor that will not even become mainstream untill late 2001. By then your P4 1.5Ghz will be about as fast as a paper weight. Also the Clawhammer 2Ghz will be out by then, which AMD has stated will be 3 times faster than an Athlon 1Ghz in classic apps, and even faster for SSE2 apps, this equates to at least 2.5-3.5 times the performance of your expensive paper wieght.

 

[Sharkmeat]

One thing I wanted to mention about the power supply that the P4,s needs to work is only a 4 wire 12 volt plug.If I,m not to inept of a brain you can get a plug adapter to work if the amps or oums are with in limits to the power supply we now have,can handle the power of Intel P4,s to the CPU on the MB.If the MB companys are smart enough,they will include the 12 vote extenion cable for power supple to work with the CPU on the MB as they do for usb and serial ports cables.A 30 cent cable is better than a $100 power supply to solve the problem.I wonder why the brains doing all the reviews dosen't suggest thing like this to the companys.Lot of my idears are on the market so maybe they will give this idear a shot ,will save alot of money if it will work.