intel on the slow side...

[Mik3y]

as we all know now, the 3700 and 3800+'s have come out already and are very strong. i'm curious as to when intel will drop out their 3.7 or 3.8ghz cpu and i'm also curious if it'll be based on the northwood, prescott, or both. otherwise, intel's in major trouble

 

[EeyoreX]

as we all know now, the 3700 and 3800+'s have come out already and are very strong. i'm curious as to when intel will drop out their 3.7 or 3.8ghz cpu and i'm also curious if it'll be based on the northwood, prescott, or both. otherwise, intel's in major trouble

I probably shouldn't respond to this but; What!? Even Intel has finally come to realize that clockspeed is not everything. If you find a current P4 slow, you have unreasonable expectations of current hardware or your OS is so bogged down with garbage that it makes you think your CPU is slow. Furthermore, with around 80% of the market share Intel will be able to stay out of trouble, major, minor or otherwise for a long, long time.

\Dan

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: EeyoreX

as we all know now, the 3700 and 3800+'s have come out already and are very strong. i'm curious as to when intel will drop out their 3.7 or 3.8ghz cpu and i'm also curious if it'll be based on the northwood, prescott, or both. otherwise, intel's in major trouble

I probably shouldn't respond to this but; What!? Even Intel has finally come to realize that clockspeed is not everything. If you find a current P4 slow, you have unreasonable expectations of current hardware or your OS is so bogged down with garbage that it makes you think your CPU is slow. Furthermore, with around 80% of the market share Intel will be able to stay out of trouble, major, minor or otherwise for a long, long time.

\Dan

Okay, that's swell -- so where's my 60-watt, 2.6Ghz desktop Pentium M?

And if you've been following the latest video card news, several games (such as UT2K4) are looking CPU-limited even on an A64 3200+/P4C3.2 if you pair them with a next-gen graphics card. So, yes, within the next year at least, the current P4s will be 'slow' for gaming use (from the bizarre perspective that computer gamers tend to have).

 

[EeyoreX]

within the next year at least, the current P4s will be 'slow' for gaming use

That gives Intel and AMD more than enough time to "catch up". A year can see a lot of changes. People upgraded their machines to play a game that still is not available (Half Life 2 or Doom III) and if they want to play these new games, they will upgrade again when the CPUs are available.

The bottom line, I think, remains the same, and the main point of my post is also unchanged. Intel is not going to be in any trouble because AMDs recent releases may perform better than Intels most recent releases. That's how things go, and have for a while now. For a time one company is on top the other not. Then things switch. If this was a fortelling of doom for whomever was not "the fastest" at the moment, there would be no AMD today. Also, for most average users (I suppose that rules out many people that use this board) and even many of the "above-average" users, current CPUs are more than fast enough for 90% of what people do. I suppose I should have been a little more clear. My major issue was with the baseless and ridiculous claim that Intel is going to be in some sort of trouble, and major trouble at that :roll:, because AMD currently has better performing CPUs on the market.

\Dan

 

[Wahsapa]

2.6ghz m is one thing but a dual core 2.6ghz m is another... i cant wait for thoes to come around

 

[batmanuel]

Intel is still the king of the processor market right now, and there is nothing AMD can do right now that will change that overnight. but you do have to admit that Intel does face some major challenges at the moment that could potentially lead to some significant market share erosion over time:

1. Losing the crucial first battle in the 64-bit war, and having the Opteron/A64 platform become the platform that the first widely available 64-bit Microsoft OS is written for.

2. Having a big gap in their server chip line between the Xeon (fine for 2-way servers, but unable to effectively scale to 4-and 8-way implementations due to their lack of an on-die memory controller) and the Itanium (good for big iron, but can't run 32-bit apps effectively), which gives AMD an opportunity to establish a beachhead corporate world with servers based on their 400 and 800 series Opterons before Intel gets out their server chips with on-die controllers. If there is a significant wait for the new Intel chips, and AMD is the only game in town in that market, even Dell may be forced by customer demand to start offering Operton servers.

3. Having to give up on their reliance on high clock speeds to sell their Pentium 4 and Celeron chips because of thermal concerns and switch to Pentium-M derived desktop chip that is rated with a model number. After training their customers to look at nothing but clock speed for so long, having to re-educate the public about computer performance could be a challenge. Even worse, by spending a lot of money and effort dispelling the gigahertz myth to sell their new Pentium-M derived desktop processors, Intel winds up in the end with a customer that is a lot more receptive to buying an Athlon based system because they will have removed the biggest current customer objection to AMD processors - the lower clock speeds. In the process of trying to sell their next generation processor, they will be doing the hard work for AMD (and Apple for that matter).

4. The nVidia 6000 series graphics cards and their hardware video encoding unit. Once this finally becomes functional and gets proper driver support, and if the unit does actually boost video encoding speed significantly, then it has the potential to remove the last major performance advantage the Pentium 4 porcessor hold over the Athlons. If this technology makes it all the way down into the value nVidia cards (6200?), it could really level the playing field for AMD. If it remains only in the 6800 cards, then it may not have a major effect on things.

5. The fragility and other mechanical issues related to their new socket design. It is a minor and probably fixable issue, but isn't a good thing to have to deal with in light of their other challenges.

None of these issues alone can hurt Intel that much, but taken together they could result in AMD nibbling away a bigger piece of the pie in the next year if they play their cards right.

 

[EeyoreX]

Intel is still the king of the processor market right now, and there is nothing AMD can do right now that will change that overnight. but you do have to admit that Intel does face some major challenges at the moment that could potentially lead to some significant market share erosion over time:

Maybe, but I think Intel will be the top for a long time to come.

1. Losing the crucial first battle in the 64-bit war, and having the Opteron/A64 platform become the platform that the first widely available 64-bit Microsoft OS is written for.

Personally I don't see this as a big issue. Computing at 64-bits is not a big deal at this point. By the time a majority of the consumer computer market catches on, Intel may well be ahead of the game. At the very least they will be "caught up". I don't see 64-bits as a huge battle ground now, and by the time it is Intel will be at least side-by-side with AMD.

3. Having to give up on their reliance on high clock speeds to sell their Pentium 4 and Celeron chips because of thermal concerns and switch to Pentium-M derived desktop chip that is rated with a model number. After training their customers to look at nothing but clock speed for so long, having to re-educate the public about computer performance could be a challenge. Even worse, by spending a lot of money and effort dispelling the gigahertz myth to sell their new Pentium-M derived desktop processors, Intel winds up in the end with a customer that is a lot more receptive to buying an Athlon based system because they will have removed the biggest current customer objection to AMD processors - the lower clock speeds. In the process of trying to sell their next generation processor, they will be doing the hard work for AMD (and Apple for that matter).

I don't see this as a big problem either. It will affect the segment of the market that many of us may fall in: Those that build their own PCs. For each one of us there are what, 100 "average" PC people walking into Best Buy/CompUSA/whatever and buying a computer. I used to be a tach at a Best Buy, and things are still the same. The consumer wants Intel, and most of them don't know/care about clockspeeds. They only know "Intel is the best", regardless of data that may not always show this to be the case. Everyone has heard/knows about Intel. That will probably be more than enough to keep Intel from spending all that much money "re-educating" the masses. So long as the box says "Intel inside" that is all most consumers will care about. AMD really needs to spend "a lot of money and effort" to just get name recognition among average PC buyers. Intel can afford to dispell their self-perpetuated "MHz/GHz Myth". They have the money.

None of these issues alone can hurt Intel that much, but taken together they could result in AMD nibbling away a bigger piece of the pie in the next year if they play their cards right.

I agree that there is potential for any/all of these things to harm Intel. I think the major problems are the Intel name is enough to really help Intel keep a huge chucnk of followers, especially among people who just don't know any different. The other problem I see is that AMD has shown to be unable to take advatage of opportunities like this in the past. And even if they did nibble at the pie, that's all it would be for a while, nibbles. As a final note/disclaimer, I am not by any means an Intel fanboy. I have not owned an Intel CPU since my P2 266MHz. I actually would prefer to see AMD do better, so long as their prices remained stable. I just feel the reality is that the juggernaught that is Intel is not going to be stopped by these little pinpricks, or even some of these potentially larger wounds. I may be wrong, and I'd love to be wrong to see the market split closer to half and half, but I just't don't see it happening soon. Any points I didn't address were due to my admitted lack of knowledge so I am not going to comment on them.

\Dan

 

[Regs]

I was just thinking about that Matthies. Even a 2.8 Amd A64 would likely be limited next to the new video cards. Not unless by some miracle an OS64 with drivers can some how use the full power the A64 has to offer.

 

[T9D]

I wonder if Intel knew AMD would make that big of a jump so fast?
Certainly they must be sweating a little. And since there Prescott chip isn't running like they wanted too. I bet they are scrambling trying to get something to work. We'll see how it pans out. the longer a competitor gets ahead though, the worse the situtation becomes.