Anybody Remember Conroe?

[Markfw]

When Conroe came out I think I had 12 AMD systems and NO Intel systems, I was very happy with how AMD crushed the P4. I still have one X2 3800 and a 3500.

But a few months later, I had 5 Intel systems. My 6300's were at 3.5 ghz crunching along. An then I started in the Q6600's, I think I ended up with 4 of those. Intel crushed AMD, its was the reverse of the P4 vs A64.

Thats what I remember.

 

[blackened23]

I must be the only person that bought a P4 system with Rambus memory. I still feel like a sucker for buying RDRAM, it was pretty hyped at the time. Ugh.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I must be the only person that bought a P4 system with Rambus memory. I still feel like a sucker for buying RDRAM, it was pretty hyped at the time. Ugh.

I had one, too.

 

[NightDreamer]

Pretty sure it was the P3 that had rambus. I remember something was wrong with the board and they had to send out free rambus sticks or something like that to everyone with the board.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Pretty sure it was the P3 that had rambus. I remember something was wrong with the board and they had to send out free rambus sticks or something like that to everyone with the board.

Pentium 4 boxed came with RDRAM.

 

[Arkaign]

Confusingly, RDRAM basically popped on the scene first with P3. June or July of 2000 I think, but the i820 chipset had some issues IIRC. Then that fall they launched P4 and the 850 Tehama chipset came out, and was actually pretty good.

The irritating thing about RDRAM is that the performance was solid, but the price was gobsmack insane, off their rockers crazy. It was so jacked up in price that I sold a 2GB (4x512MB) PC1066 RDRAM pack for like $500+ in 2006! It was just some old system that I found, and lo an behold, RDRAM was still pricey as all hell.

They brought out SDRAM + Williamette setups for P4, and they sucked haha. Then DDR266 845 chipset, and it was okay. The real goldmine was when the 845E and northwood came out, so you could overclock a 1.6A/etc way up there with DDR3-333 memory and have awesome performance.

I seriously think if you cut the willamette and prescott parts of the P4 era off, P4 was a really solid performer. As good or better than Athlon XP in most things, even stood fairly toe to toe with A64 3000/3200 to begin with. Once 3500+ and beyond hit, it was all over for P4 though. Intel failed to meet their ramping expectations in clockspeed, and they could only sit on their hands until Conroe was ready to hit the streets and knock us all flat.

 

[blackened23]

Pentium 4 boxed came with RDRAM.

I kinda miss the fact that OEM CPUs aren't sold at various outlets any longer. I remember back during that time you could opt for the boxed retail or a non-boxed OEM chip without a cooler, which is usually what I chose. I wonder what prompted that change....I still don't think many people use the stock boxed cooler with the unlocked chips.

 

[Abwx]

The real goldmine was when the 845E and northwood came out, so you could overclock a 1.6A/etc way up there with DDR3-333 memory and have awesome performance.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I kinda miss the fact that OEM CPUs aren't sold at various outlets any longer. I remember back during that time you could opt for the boxed retail or a non-boxed OEM chip without a cooler, which is usually what I chose. I wonder what prompted that change....I still don't think many people use the stock boxed cooler with the unlocked chips.

Probably not enough demand these days...

 

[Cerb]

It went like this:
1. OCer could get a Northwood, and overclock it. Said OCer got great value, and pushed the new stuff. Athlon XPs of the time didn't OC as easily. Much like with Conroe, and the A64 X2s on AMD's side, a couple years later, Intel really had a bunch of 2.4GHz+ CPUs on their hands, but sold them at various lower speeds, as well, to make more money, by controlling supply and cost of the faster rated models.
2. Normal person would read all about it, and then buy the P4, instead of an Athlon XP, but never actually overclock it, and effectively end up spending more than they needed to. The additional money went into Intel's pockets . Quite a few games were significantly faster on the Athlon XP, until the 865, at stock CPU speeds.

With the 865 chipset, the need to OC to get better value went away, as long as you were getting C or E CPUs, and the 2.4C was a solid 3-3.4GHz OC CPU. Said CPUs could be bottlenecked sometimes, by the 845 and 848, for gaming and content creation.

http://www.sharkyextreme.com/hardware/cpu/article.php/3261_941741_5/Intel-845-DDR-Chipset-Review.htm
^ Blast from the past, including the 1st year of the notorious Intel-biased Sysmark testing!

I kinda miss the fact that OEM CPUs aren't sold at various outlets any longer. I remember back during that time you could opt for the boxed retail or a non-boxed OEM chip without a cooler, which is usually what I chose. I wonder what prompted that change....I still don't think many people use the stock boxed cooler with the unlocked chips.

Counterfeiting in 3rd world countries, by relabeling, was a major problem, through the early 00s. A slower CPU would be repackaged as a faster CPU. In AMD's case, this included changing multipliers.

That led to making it harder to easily buy unboxed and tray units, to multiplier bridges being hidden, and to OEMs actually desiring locked CPUs (if someone bought 10 Athlon HP or Gateway machines, overclocked them, then resold them as faster, even though the OC was unstable, that made HP or Gateway look bad, in the eyes of the end user). Shady PC shops and distributors were a problem. The unlocked chips, now, are there, or not, for marketing reasons, though, as both AMD and Intel can get a few more bucks for a given CPU.

 

[Arkaign]

oops lol, DDR 333 of course / PC2700

 

[podspi]

Confusingly, RDRAM basically popped on the scene first with P3. June or July of 2000 I think, but the i820 chipset had some issues IIRC. Then that fall they launched P4 and the 850 Tehama chipset came out, and was actually pretty good.

The irritating thing about RDRAM is that the performance was solid, but the price was gobsmack insane, off their rockers crazy. It was so jacked up in price that I sold a 2GB (4x512MB) PC1066 RDRAM pack for like $500+ in 2006! It was just some old system that I found, and lo an behold, RDRAM was still pricey as all hell.

They brought out SDRAM + Williamette setups for P4, and they sucked haha. Then DDR266 845 chipset, and it was okay. The real goldmine was when the 845E and northwood came out, so you could overclock a 1.6A/etc way up there with DDR3-333 memory and have awesome performance.

I seriously think if you cut the willamette and prescott parts of the P4 era off, P4 was a really solid performer. As good or better than Athlon XP in most things, even stood fairly toe to toe with A64 3000/3200 to begin with. Once 3500+ and beyond hit, it was all over for P4 though. Intel failed to meet their ramping expectations in clockspeed, and they could only sit on their hands until Conroe was ready to hit the streets and knock us all flat.

I had a Willamette with SDRAM. Man that thing was a dog. I had the 1.3ghz model. Slower than my good ole T-bird @ 1.2ghz, and it got beat up by my friend's P3 @ 1ghz.

 

[Jodell88]

No one remembers the Pentium D 820? It sold for just over $100 US and overclocked to from 2.8GHZ to over 4GHz easily on air and traded blows with the Pentium Extreme processors at the time IIRC.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Thank god I skipped the P4 generation, especially the Willamette. At the time, I had my first PC, a 600 MHz Celeron (Coppermine). The i810 motherboard it was paired with had no AGP slot, and probably the worst IGPs of it's time, so it's gaming performance was forever doomed from the get-go.

 

[24601]

I remember I got the Celeron 320 for 40 USD shipped and got an Abit Ni8 SLI board for 40 USD shipped.

That was my first self built PC.

I OCed that thing from 2.4 Ghz to 3.3 Ghz.

Best value ever since no games were threaded at the time.

Paired it up with the 7300GS and it lasted me until my E4400 build.

 

[blackened23]

Whatever happened to Abit, anyway? I used to be quite fond of their boards, back in the day. I'd say i've used them and Asus the most back during the 2k-ish time frame.

 

[24601]

Whatever happened to Abit, anyway? I used to be quite fond of their boards, back in the day. I'd say i've used them and Asus the most back during the 2k-ish time frame.

I used them for all of my builds except for my latest (since they are gone now, RIP)

They were considered the best board manufacturer bar none since their inception to their end.

The reason Abit is gone is because of embezzling of company funds by the management and Capgate, which hit the whole industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_abit

 

[tential]

I kinda miss the fact that OEM CPUs aren't sold at various outlets any longer. I remember back during that time you could opt for the boxed retail or a non-boxed OEM chip without a cooler, which is usually what I chose. I wonder what prompted that change....I still don't think many people use the stock boxed cooler with the unlocked chips.

I am lol. I'll get around to replacing it eventually, but I haven't seen many benches that indicate I really need to OC (maybe just didn't look hard enough), for gaming, and I'm playing old games at the moment, so I'm just waiting til I need to before I do.

 

[Zodiark1593]

Hmm, is it possible that Silvermont could be based on Conroe with some power saving extras, and on the 22nm process to boot. Seems like the ideal performance target from a "good enough" standpoint.

 

[jhu]

Hmm, is it possible that Silvermont could be based on Conroe with some power saving extras, and on the 22nm process to boot. Seems like the ideal performance target from a "good enough" standpoint.

No, it's Atom with out of order execution.

 

[Zodiark1593]

No, it's Atom with out of order execution.

That's it???

Suppose I'll reserve my judgement until release.

 

[Arachnotronic]

That's it???

Suppose I'll reserve my judgement until release.

No, that's "not it".

Read this:

http://www.realworldtech.com/silvermont/

 

[Red Hawk]

First: lol at the notion that you have to be an "old-timer" to remember when Conroe came out. That's not even more than 10 years ago. "Old-timer" to me means someone who was into PC building back in the 90s or earlier, with P6-based Pentium CPUs, Durons, etc.

As for the actual topic raised, I both hope and don't hope that Intel can pull off a "Conroe moment" in the smartphone SoC space. I hope so because leaps forward in technology are always good. Intel certainly has the researchers and resources necessary to make it possible. But "Conroe moment" also carries with it the connotation of making the competition irrelevant, as Conroe's release marked the beginning of AMD's spiral into obsolescence, left to scrounge for revenue as the budget alternative. I hope that doesn't happen for phone SoCs, with any designer, be it Samsung, Qualcomm, Apple, or ARM itself. Even competition is always good for the consumer.

 

[Nothingness]

As for the actual topic raised, I both hope and don't hope that Intel can pull off a "Conroe moment" in the smartphone SoC space. I hope so because leaps forward in technology are always good. Intel certainly has the researchers and resources necessary to make it possible. But "Conroe moment" also carries with it the connotation of making the competition irrelevant, as Conroe's release marked the beginning of AMD's spiral into obsolescence, left to scrounge for revenue as the budget alternative. I hope that doesn't happen for phone SoCs, with any designer, be it Samsung, Qualcomm, Apple, or ARM itself. Even competition is always good for the consumer.

I definitely agree. Bay Trail will hopefully have the competition to improve and that's a good thing, but if Intel wipes the others us consumers will regret it badly. I just can't understand why people are hoping for an Intel monopole.

OTOH some posters here are perhaps long Intel and need the stock to gain some more value. At least the OP is long Intel according to his numerous articles on Seekingalpha.

 

[Arachnotronic]

OTOH some posters here are perhaps long Intel and need the stock to gain some more value. At least the OP is long Intel according to his numerous articles on Seekingalpha.

Yeah, I'm here to try to get the rich denizens of Anandtech to try to pump up Intel stock. The stock trades billions of dollars worth per day...sorry, but if I were trying to run a pump and dump (and I'd never do that), I wouldn't pick Intel as my target, lol

But more seriously, people tend to buy stocks when they think they'll go up in value. I think the folks who think Intel's never ever going to be a major player in the mobile computing space are wrong, and I have invested accordingly. Oh, and the company gives me a fat dividend check every quarter...so even if the stock goes nowhere, I still do okay.