it just dawned on me...WOW...(think back a year or two..amd vs. intel)

[extra]

Think about where we are today...all the gamers building systems with amd chips that are just as good as their intel counterparts...who would've thought???

I mean, think back a year or two...k6 vs. pentium2, etc...i mean, it wasn't even close...anyway sorry for the off-topic thoughts where do you think we'll be in a year or two? think intel will ever regain the clear performance lead? would anyone want one company to get the edge? would prices go through the roof if one company did?

 

[Scouzer]

I want AMD to lead due to their prices, but I always want Intel to be somewhat competitive or else AMD would shoot their prices sky high. I suspect AMD will remain in the lead for the next year...beyond that...well P4 might ramp up to high enough GHZ that it'll smoke the Palamino...we'll see.

 

[TunaBoo]

<< Think about where we are today...all the gamers building systems with amd chips that are just as good as their intel counterparts...who would've thought???

I mean, think back a year or two...k6 vs. pentium2, etc...i mean, it wasn't even close...anyway sorry for the off-topic thoughts where do you think we'll be in a year or two? think intel will ever regain the clear performance lead? would anyone want one company to get the edge? would prices go through the roof if one company did? >>



IT depends on who is more inovative, and who adapts to the changing marketplace better.

Could go either way.

 

[Scouzer]

Intel DOES have the better chance right now because they have much more money than AMD...they've still got a firm grip on the standard clueless consumer.

 

[Rankor]

<< k6 vs. pentium2 >>



Shouldn't that be K6-2 vs. P-II?

The Classic Athlon, Duron, and Thunderbird (literally) became the phoenix rising from the ashes.

Intel's playing ketchup but is in no way out of the race. Gaps may or may not widen or shorten. That's left to be seen. (Intel's) Tualatin seems to be speedier than the P-IV. The Itanium (IA-64) was something that I've been looking at ever since (Intel) came up with it's codename &quot;Merced&quot;, w/c I believe was back in 1997; a long time ago.

I'd watch for Cyrix . It's gonna kick some serious booty. I don't know where but (somewhere) it will.*

*
[Disclaimer]

Take note that absolutely no processors whether intentional, accidental, or coincidental have been harmed during this opinion. Any projected similarities to possible past, present, or future events is purely incredible.

[/Disclaimer]

 

[TheCorm]

If in the mid 90's someone had said &quot;AMD will become the gamers cpu by 2001&quot; when they were standing there with a P166MMX in one hand and a K5 PR166 in the other what would you have said?

Looks like Cyrix may make themselves a little niche in the Duron/Celeron area all things being well. Also back in the old K6 days, I would have said that a K6-3 450 could easily give a PII-400 a run for it's money in various apps but I don't think the K6-2 was much of a match for the PII, Celeron maybe.

Corm

 

[MGMorden]

I agree that Via (not really cyrix. the cyrix guys are gone and via is using the centaur engineering team for cpus) is gonna take up some good market share on the lower end. They just have to push out the absolute cheapest chip. People will then buy it. That's very good too. Even more competition in the low-end just pushes prices further down (and will force Intel and AMD to push their high end products up faster to make sure they are seperated significantly from the lower end parts). I've heard that Via will have a new chip out (the Via C4) by the end of the year debuting at 1.2ghz.

 

[Thawk]

The competition is good for us! I was always an Intel faithful. I live in AZ and have many friends that work for them (I may soon). But the AMD pricing finally won me over...at least this time. I just bought the 1.33 chip. Can wait to build it!

 

[Cimmerian]

Back in mid-98 I considered AMD to be very comprable to what intel had at the time. That is when I but my first computer with a k6-2 300 vs PII 266 and 300. Since then I have always used AMD processors in the 'home' computer I have built in that time. I guess some people brake out of the intel mind set easer then others.

 

[NelsonMuntz]

Since I switched my Pentium 233 MHz to a K6-3+ 450 MHz a while back I can only foresee having both an Intel processor and an AMD processor in the house all the time. My next major upgrade will be to a Palomino for my main system and then my 850 MHz (BX board which I will hate to lose when the time comes) P-3 will become the backup system. The question is the next build after the Palomino whether it will be an Intel CPU or an AMD CPU. If AMD continues to dominate the price/performance category, then it will probably be an AMD CPU, but if I were able to get an Intel CPU for cheap (maybe I was working for them or something silly like that) then it might be built around that. Anyway, hard to say, but AMD will definitely be the next build.

 

[MWink]

<< If in the mid 90's someone had said &quot;AMD will become the gamers cpu by 2001&quot; when they were standing there with a P166MMX in one hand and a K5 PR166 in the other what would you have said? >>



Given the choice knowing what I know now, I would have taken the K5. Those chips were a great deal faster than their Intel counterparts. I benched a K5-90 vs a P-90 and the K5 came out far ahead in almost every benchmark. The problem was AMD did not get the K5 out fast enough.

 

[TheCorm]

From what I was aware of, the only processor that had a worse FPU than the K5 was the Cyrix 5x86

 

[Cocytus]

According to the benches on Anand, comparing the 1.8 P4 to the Palomino 1.4....looks like Intel may have eeked out a small performance lead again.

But a price vs performance analysis may change people's minds.

I've had both chips in the past, and they are JUST CHIPS, but I hope the race is a long and close one........

 

[Noriaki]

<< From what I was aware of, the only processor that had a worse FPU than the K5 was the Cyrix 5x86 >>

I think you are thinking of the K6. The K5 had a fairly compotent floating point unit for it's day.

The problem with the K5 was that it was late coming out, and couldn't ramp very high. So in desparation AMD bought a CPU desgin from NextGen and labelled it the K6. Which turned out to be very compotent at integer apps and capable of high speed, but lacked FPU power.

And even that isn't totally fair, the K6 line has a low latency FPU. Given a single fpu operation, it can complete it as fast as (if not faster than) a P2 at the same clock speed. The problem is throughput. If you get something with a lot of FPU operations, the P2's superior throughput buried the K6.

 

[TheCorm]

righto, agreed there

 

[teddymines]

I think it is funny how people push their systems to the limit to get every last ounce of speed out, all the while running a Windows operating system. Too bad such a bloated OS takes away so much of the hardware gains.

Imagine if an operating system could exist that took advantage of the hardware itself, rather than jumping through all the software layers necessary to, say, perform an i/o operation.

 

[EMAN]

I don't think Intel is playing catching up at all. I think they surpassed AMD now.

The Palomino is faster clock for clock but companies support Intel. They still lead in sales. AMD did catch up with their Athlon but now I think AMD is going to have a hard time if they don't have a good chipset and change the Core of the Athlon. I'm already thinking about getting a P4 and ditch my athlon setup. Via chipsets suck so hard. Like I really need more problems with personal computers.

 

[Rickten]

I wish intel would admit defeat and just make chipsets. I want an intel chipset with my Athlon 4. Personally price doesn't bother me. No being able to use products because my Via chipset sucks bothers me.

 

[Noriaki]

<< I wish intel would admit defeat and just make chipsets. I want an intel chipset with my Athlon 4. Personally price doesn't bother me. No being able to use products because my Via chipset sucks bothers me. >>



In what way has intel been defeated?
So the P4 is slower than the P3 now. Big deal.

The first incarnation of the p5 (Pentium) was slower than the fastest 486.
The first incarnation of the p6 (Pentium Pro) was slower than the fastest p5 (P-MMX 200/233).
The first incarnation of the p7 (Pentium 4) is slower than the fastest p6 (Coppermine P3).

Look at a P-MMX 233 vs a 486dx4/100. Or a Coppermine 1Ghz vs a P-MMX 233.

At the initial release the new architectures are rarely faster. But compare the speed of later generations of an architecture to the old.

A PPro may not have been significantly faster than a P-MMX.
But a Pentium2 was.

A P4 isn't all that much better than the P3. But give it a few months some optimizations and a bit of clock speed ramp and it will leave the P3 in the dust.