P-4 puts Thunderbird to shame !!!!!!!!!!!

[dougjnn]

Nos440 --

>>I am currently thinking about buying a Thunderbird to see for myself what all you guy's are raving about and I will be suprised if I find it to be even close to refined as this P-4. I just don't see how it could using all the outdated technoligie it uses in its motherboard and memory sub system. But hey I'm going to give you the benifit of the dought and do what I said I never would. Thats Buy a AMD BSOD machine processor. >>

Ok, here's what to buy. Just the basic system.

T-Bird 1200 (comes w/multipler unlocked) oem (no hsf)
Abit KT7a board (run at 143fsb once you get it going) (or the somewhat pricer Asus 133fsb board if you prefer)
Taisol 742092 hsf w/YTech 27cfm fan for ~ $31 (or an Alpha Pep66 or 6035)
IBM 75gxp 30gb drive (or 15 if you prefer)
128meg of PC133 SDRAM Cas2 (crucial has a good deal on now, or Muskin)
any decent CD-Rom
Case with a clean (Athlon approved) 300w ps (these can be had for $60-70 or so, probably less)

Go for it. (Run at perhaps 9.5 x 143 = 1359 after a day or two burn it at rated 1200. Or try for higher, after burn in.)

 

[dougjnn]

NOS440 --

<<I dought that I'm sure that none of you will admit that the P-4 is not crap and is really the wave of the future !!!>>

It is likely to be the wave of the future, in some modification of its current architecture. I.e., once the greater pin number is released in the 2nd half.

I view it as a new architecture which is not yet cost effective. But which may well be down the road, after the chip / manufacturing process has had time to ramp up in speed, and software has had time to be recompiled for it, on C++ compliers optimized for it. That will take some time.

I can see the P4 being the processor of choice in its larger pin configuration, once these things have happened, and once the .13 version is out and off its first newness pricing. Middle of 2002 at the earliest. I can see myself maybe converting over to Intel P4-II (more pins) end of next year. But I'll have to see what AMD is offering then also.

I'm not wedded to either company. But I like cost effective high end performance. Rather than paying huge premiums for small percentage increases in performance at any one point in time. Although right now the P4 is in fact lower performance in the large majority of real life applications than a 1.2 Tbird on a KT133A mobo (133++ fsb).

 

[Zephyr]

Thank you NOS, I try

Doug


<< Huuuhhhh? I'm virtually never on the computer, without multitasking. Except when playing some games. (Even some of them can make use.) >>


I second that. I probably spend 95% of my time with the computer doing some sort of heavy multitasking. I usually have between 30-60 processes running (as reported by W2K taskmanager)
I'd say my Classic650 feels a lot faster than my buddys Celeron533@900 when it comes to multitasking. How the P4 does in this kind of environment I can't say anything about though.

 

[systemshock1701]

Okay, I see we've decended back into childishness again..

At the risk of pissing off EVERYONE, I will say this. Athlon is an impressive design, for about the next 2 years, this includes the Palomino version, which no doubt is going to run into some of the pipelining problems Intel did with P4. P4 IS however, not a dumb design...they knew very well what they were doing, sacrificing current-app performance for real increases with optimized software. Think about this...even you AMD zealots...those of you with T-birds running from 600 to 800, do you REALLY think you are going to see that big a difference going to one of the new 1.1~1.2 GHZ T-birds? No, you are not, except maybe in something like 3D studio max, and maybe not even then. AMD started a clockspeed war mostly for PR it looks like, and to a certain degree, it worked. Current architectures (Athlon, P3) are not really going to be able to sustain the PC market by merely clocking higher. Witness the downturn in the PC industry. There are NO apps that take advantage of what EITHER processor can do, Intel or AMD. Intel is now dumping the responsibility back onto the software people, and giving them compilers to do so. THIS IS A SMART MOVE. Even us gamers (Myself included) really are not going to benefit from higher clock speeds. This underdog bullcrap AMD zealots pull has gotten out of hand, because, quite frankly, to carry that concept to the fullest, Intel could have, at great expense mind you (Justice Department) bought AMD a long time ago. So the thing that you all say is the reason why you hate Intel and love AMD can be made moot at any time IF intel REALLY feel pressured. The last time a new Intel architecutre launched, AMD was not nearly as big a factor, so the P6 design was allowed to grow and be honed in time to become the cool products we all loved (Celeron, P2, P3 coppermine). This time, there is now a bitter, angry (for some reason?) group who will not give Intel time to optimize their product and lead another performance revolution in the industry. Let us be honest. Say AMD gets the performance of of the Athlon core all the way to around 2.5 ghz? Then what? The architecture will be the same. Big deal. It's the same thing Intel had to put up with by the time P3 came along. SSE didn't help all that much. It took a die shrink and on-die L2 cache to greatly increase performance. These are relatively important core changes. I see nothing like that (other than Palomino, could someone please give some details) for AMD. Sledgehammer looks interesting as a competitor to P4, but only time will tell. the point of this long post is, to NOS, Zephyr, and Priit, neither side really make a whole bunch of sense. Intel did what they did for a reason, since part of their job as the industry leader is to look 10-15 years into the future and move the hear and now toward that. They are not performing well now versus their cheaper competition. Fine. They're not SUPPOSSED TO!! That's what Tuluatin is for. The server market, well, that is going to depend on how well the 760MP does, and VIA still does better chipsets than AMD. Point is, give Intel a break, they're not sitting there thinking of ways to screw people over, despite what many have said on the web. Let us appluad AMD for coming back from the brink of disaster to compete on a level basis for once with Intel and for giving the consumer better performance at a lower price. We will all benefit from Intel's leadership and AMD's price/performance pressure....now could we PLEASE get some sanity here!!!?!

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Ok I have not read the entire thread it's way too long. I just wanted to say a p4 1.5GHz costs 1750$ here in Canada. The p4 might not be crap but it's the worst price/performance ration on the market.

 

[dougjnn]

systemshock1701 --

I don't disagree with much of your post. But this is flat out 100% wrong:

<<quite frankly, to carry that concept to the fullest, Intel could have, at great expense mind you (Justice Department) bought AMD a long time ago. So the thing that you all say is the reason why you hate Intel and love AMD can be made moot at any time IF intel REALLY feel pressured.>>

No, they couldn't. There may be a good deal of discretion in anti-trust enforcement, but this falls way outside the gray zone. To have the chipmaker which controls ~70% of the desktop and laptop cpu markets be allowed to buy the chipmaker which controls ~25% of those markets isn't remotely close to being on. In the US the FTC or Justice department would stop the merger in a heartbeat. Wouldn't take them more than a week or two, for appearances sake (of having studied the market shares).

As well, the EEU monoplies board has had real teath for the last few years. They too would prohibit the merger in a heartbeat (on pain of the combined companies not being allow to export ANY product from the combined companies into the EU, and perhaps sanctions against European located plants of the combined company). They'd also call up the FTC and embarass them if they had the remotest thought of allowing it to go through, and leak all sorts of stuff to the press.

That merger couldn't REMOTELY take place. I promise you. This is an area I know about. There's not the remotest chance in hell. Regardless of who is in the White House.

 

[dougjnn]

systemshock1701 --

This is the guts of your magnum opus post --

<<Intel did what they did for a reason, since part of their job as the industry leader is to look 10-15 years into the future and move the hear and now toward that. They are not performing well now versus their cheaper competition. Fine.

... Point is, give Intel a break, they're not sitting there thinking of ways to screw people over, despite what many have said on the web. Let us appluad AMD for coming back from the brink of disaster to compete on a level basis for once with Intel and for giving the consumer better performance at a lower price. We will all benefit from Intel's leadership and AMD's price/performance pressure....now could we PLEASE get some sanity here!!!?! >>

And I completely agree with it.

One quibble. Could I recommend the *paragraph*.

 

[techg7]

both good companies. amd cheaper. my tbird 1.1 outperforms p4 1.5 in some benches. ive owned a p3 system for years and worked on many many more, there is nothing wrong with them. my new amd system is just as good. you have nothing to base your claims on other than biased things you read on forums and tech sites. neither company is trying to sell you crappy products, screw you over, take over the world, rip you off, or kill your dog. give it a rest. my two cents. here come the flames...have fun kiddies

 

[DarkMajiq]

systemshock1701: Like dougjnn pointed out, an Intel acquisition of AMD would have no chance in hell of getting past regulators, and even if it did, I don't think AMD stockholder would approve it. It would be seen as a desperate, last-ditch effort by a failing Intel to try and kill the competition before the competition kills it.

 

[Buddabudda]

Buying one of those $1750 P4 machines is probably one of the worst things you can do. To quote Tom's Hardware latest P4 article,

&quot;So what's the bottom line? Well, firstly I have to repeat myself for the 10,000th time, reminding you that systems with AMD's Athlon or Duron processors are the best you can get for your money right now. I also don't want to fail to mention that you can of course configure a Pentium 4 box that beats Micron's Millennia MAX XP in a few benchmarks, but for what price? I leave it up to you to decide what you want to think about Dell, the only large OEM that still doesn't offer systems with AMD processors. Are they really caring about their customers? I honestly wonder ... &quot;

Those bargin P4 setups are not such bargins.
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q1/010130/index.html

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Thats 1750$ just for the cpu. You have to buy RDRAM and all the rest of the system on top of that.

 

[Zephyr]

<< P4 IS however, not a dumb design...they knew very well what they were doing, sacrificing current-app performance for real increases with optimized software. >>


... or one could be choose to believe that Intel crippled the design to get it out of the door quicky. One could also choose to believe Intel sacrificed preformance on the alter og more MHz, cos MHz sells everybody and their grandmother wants MHz.


<< AMD started a clockspeed war mostly for PR it looks like, and to a certain degree, it worked. >>


Yes AMD needed to establish themselves as a real alternative, so they did. Would have been stupid for them not to take advantage of Intels problems with ramping clockspeed on the P6 architechture.


<< Current architectures (Athlon, P3) are not really going to be able to sustain the PC market by merely clocking higher. >>


I can still remember the &quot;nay saying choir&quot; when the P54C first came out. &quot;Nobody can ever take advantage of this much clockspeed&quot; bla bla bla... if we have the cpu power the need for it will arrise... some people still think great


<< This underdog bullcrap AMD zealots pull has gotten out of hand, because, quite frankly, to carry that concept to the fullest, Intel could have, at great expense mind you (Justice Department) bought AMD a long time ago. So the thing that you all say is the reason why you hate Intel and love AMD can be made moot at any time IF intel REALLY feel pressured. >>


FTC would never allow Intel to buy AMD.


<< The last time a new Intel architecutre launched, AMD was not nearly as big a factor, so the P6 design was allowed to grow and be honed in time to become the cool products we all loved (Celeron, P2, P3 coppermine). This time, there is now a bitter, angry (for some reason?) group who will not give Intel time to optimize their product and lead another performance revolution in the industry. >>


Do you remember what cpu prices were like 2 years ago? That's what happens when Intel &quot;lead&quot; a &quot;performance revolution in the industry&quot;.


<< Let us be honest. Say AMD gets the performance of of the Athlon core all the way to around 2.5 ghz? Then what? The architecture will be the same. Big deal. It's the same thing Intel had to put up with by the time P3 came along. SSE didn't help all that much. It took a die shrink and on-die L2 cache to greatly increase performance. These are relatively important core changes. I see nothing like that (other than Palomino, could someone please give some details) for AMD. >>


2.5GHz Athlon? Then apps will be written to use a 2.5GHz Athlon. Basically the K7 architechture is the best one out there, and should have a long lifespan. However AMD can recycle a lot of the technology use din the K7 later in the hammer family, so either way it will live on, even if the Hammer replaces it within a not so distant future.


<< Intel did what they did for a reason, since part of their job as the industry leader is to look 10-15 years into the future and move the hear and now toward that. They are not performing well now versus their cheaper competition. Fine. They're not SUPPOSSED TO!! That's what Tuluatin is for. >>


I fail to see how the Tuluatin can pose any threth to the Athlon. Quite frankly the Palomino should stomp all over the Tuluatin unless Intel has some major core improvements up their sleeve. Even if Intel got the P6 up to say 1400MHz they would still be way behind since AMD has the 1400MHz palomino on their roadmap for Q1/Q2.


<< . Point is, give Intel a break, they're not sitting there thinking of ways to screw people over, despite what many have said on the web. >>


I think history has proven otherwise. This is the typical behaviour for a near monopoly, if I had a monopoly I'd certainly screw people over, as AMD investor I'd expect AMD to screw people over if they got the same chance Intel got (unlikely to happen fortunately)


<< . We will all benefit from Intel's leadership and AMD's price/performance pressure.... >>


No we will benefit from AMD and Intel being equal competitors. One single strong marketleader is potentially dangerous situation, we all saw AMD almost destroyed by Intel on several occations (by either lawsuits or price dumping). If we're going to applaud anything let's applaud the better product, as consumers we should not settle for less just because it has an &quot;Intel Inside&quot; sticker on it.

 

[Brainiac2000]

holy crap even i if i had enough time to read all this i might say something but all of my bases have been covered. I'm just sitting here with a humble 500mhz Celeron i bought a year ago for $60. IMO performance doesn't mean jack unless you want to regret the .1 fps or whatever it is. Just get what suits your needs and is fast for you. What is the difference between 1.4Ghz and 1.5?? 100mhz when compared to 1400 mhz isn't really that much. I'd get a P4 just because it would last longer in the long run (the 400mhz bus, etc.) I buy what will stay compatible the longest, not what would be beat to death by competition the quickest.

 

[Brainiac2000]

Which reminds me, i need to get something faster now. How does a 1Ghz P3 w/133 mhz bus sound on my current Abit BE6-II? Theres an example for my previous post.

 

[Brainiac2000]

Heres my metaphorical interpretation of AMD and Intel:

Intel's Pentium 3 &amp; P4 are like a big Semi: They can hit big speeds, and carry big loads, but their performance may be degraded a bit.

AMD on the otherhand: Processors that are quick and zippy and can pump out that high FPS, just like those little scooter cars (As my mom likes to call em) with 4 cylinder engines. Yes they can go fast, buy when they try to tow something, they can't, and when they hit something, they crumple up like a little ball of paper.

Personally I've seen AMD chips crash more frequently than Pentiums

 

[StickHead]

Why is this thread so long? I'm going to start a new thread and just bicker like an idiot.

 

[Moz]

Braniac, I don't think you can get a 1G on that BE6-II, I thought 850 was the max with the current bios?

 

[Zephyr]

<< Yes they can go fast, buy when they try to tow something, they can't, and when they hit something, they crumple up like a little ball of paper. >>


Actually it's the other way around. The K7 arhitechture is perfect for &quot;towing&quot; heavy apps such as 3DstudioMax or prof. openGL.
If you wanna make the analogy I'd say Intel chips are like regular cars while AMD are all terrain vehichles. Yes the P3 does keep up very well with the Tbird in spite of a much less powerful engine, when stayin on the road (apps that are optimized for SSE and such) but when going into rought terrain (regular x87) the K7 pulls through In this analogy the P4 would be a train, it will run fast wherever there are track laid out (Q3A and FlasK) but pretty slow everywhere else.
Anyway I'm not sure what terrain I'll encounter so I'll go with the allround AMD solution any day.

 

[mechBgon]

StickHead, there is still time. We need a thread titled &quot;THE CYRIX3 R00LZ THE THUNDERBIRD AND PENTIUM4!!!!!!&quot;

ok, ok, just kidding!

On a serious note, I have a 3D modelling application called trueSpace 4.3, by Caligari. It is a relatively modest 3D-modelling app, only $600 at the time. Not exactly 3D Studio Max, but the same general idea... an application that can tie up any computer continuously for days if you are rendering an 1800-frame animation with a complex scene involving heavy raytracing. I can attest to the capabilities of the K7 core, because my Duron (!) handles the task very well, even with only 64kb of L2 cache, and it doesn't run like a bogged-down Cyrix if I have the render job running in the background while I multitask. So I don't think those remarks about the K7 core not handling &quot;heavy&quot; work well are on the mark, and I look forward to upgrading to a Thunderbird and enjoying more of the same good performance.

 

[NOS440]

Man I leave for a few hours and you guy's are at it. Now lets not say I instigate all this Okay .

I will probably be absent from the mix tonight because dam comcast is down here in michigan again. So don't even start celebrating thinking I gave up.


I will be back later to put all your silly post to there grave


there are some good points made though.

Hey Zephyer we haven't been stifiled yet ?? LOL!!

 

[AdamK47]

Hello. Average Joe Sorry Man here. I'm going out tomorrow picking myself up one of those Compaq Pentium 4 1.5GHz systems. It's loaded with everything. I has the super fast TNT M64, 128MB PC600 memory, a 30GB 5400RPM HD, a huge 15&quot; monitor, loud 10 Watt speakers, AC97 sound, and a kick ass cup holder/CD-ROM. I don't know anything about these things. All I know is 1.5GHz is higher than 1.2GHz. Doopy doopy doooooo!

 

[StickHead]

You gone yet?.... Ahh, your a fool. You probably don't even have a P4 you just like to brag, you also probably have and bad case of herpies and need to vent. Don't lie you dumb guy!!! Wheres the asprin?

 

[systemshock1701]

&quot;I think history has proven otherwise. This is the typical behaviour for a near monopoly, if I had a monopoly I'd certainly screw people over, as AMD investor I'd expect AMD to screw people over if they got the same chance Intel got (unlikely to happen fortunately)&quot;

Zephyr--

Trying to be as fair and impartial as possible (something you should try) Responding to the above, you obvisously A) did not read my earlier post about this subject B) don't keep up with stocks. Again, Intel is first and foremost answerable to their stockholders, so pricing behavoir that WE think is screwing people over is in fact an attempt to keep the greedy people who own stock in the company happy.

As far as Palomino is concerned, I really don't see it as too much of a threat, since it is widely assumed that in order to reach >1.5 Ghz, they are going to have to resort to some of the pipelining tricks used in P4, thereby crppling performance...

You brought up the intersting topic of what Intel has done to be anti-competitive...keep in mind that they could be doing a lot more of that (they can afford) it but they did not.

Again, the primary point of my posts is to get people like youself (and by extention tom from Tom's Hardware) is to get people like yourself to quit the Intel OR AMD bashing...since the facts will be twisted on personal bias to suit whatever their personal opinion is. I have read reports of Engineers at Intel who wanted a stronger FPU and larger caches, but they could not...NOT BECAUSE IT WAS RUSHED OUT THE DOOR!! instead the did it because they could not do it with the current .18 mu process.

Zephyr, and to others on both sides....could we PLEASE, PLEASE stop all this bull!!! Zephyr, you in particular, could you at least TRY to be fair, and not gloat or boo or hiss either processor? I think we all know that Intel is NOT marketing hype alone. Why? Well, again, I know some people, and they actually, a few years ago sample a few different concepts for the P4, one of which would have been very similar to the P6 (actually very similar to the K7, but with larger L1 and L2 caches and SSE-2) and the other one, with the &quot;NetBurst&quot; architecture. They ended up taking a stripped down version of the second because of clockspeed issues, deeming that the later would be more scalable for later clockspeeds. Really that's irrelevant, since we've been here before (the beginning of the P6 design--Pentium Pro, which I remember sucking pretty hard at first) I would again ask you all for some logic and some impartiality....Friends have wondered why I prefered Intel and went in for AMD bashing, even in the last year when they were obviously were producing the better product? Well, I did it as a statement against AMD Zealots....I don't go in for bandwagons, especially bandwagons with this kind of unreasonable bitterness and hatred...I just don't get it....even the arguments against Intel are never delivered with anything but sarcasm and harsh words (that's my issue with Tom Pabst). So, Zephyr, I think you're wrong in many of your technical criticicms of Intel, and I'm not really expecting Palomino to do much (sledgehammer, on the other hand, looks interesting) and I also think you are uninformed as to Intel's motivations. You should read the article Anand linked to a few days ago where they are going in depth into the P4's architecture. I found it very enlightening, and gives me hope for the future of the P4 (when P3 dies, they're gonna HAVE to bring prices down). Again, this is not really a real criticism of Zephyr or anyone else, merely a plea for an end to this partisan bickering. How much longer with this go on?

 

[Compellor]

<< How much longer with this go on? >>



Long after we're all dead and buried.

 

If you think the industry leader will put out sh!t technology, then your a fool.
Do you think that intel with a budget the size of AMDs entire company annual budget, would just turn tail and run or just get blown out of the water.
You have to look forward in computing, new software and instruction codes will be built.
When you look at computing as a whole, money should not be a factor. It should not be based on, &quot;well that 20% maximum performance gain isnt worth the $550 extra dollars.&quot;
Thats a rather petty way to look at it. Its new, it has potential to be and amazing product (p4).
It may lack in rather older ways of computing data compared to the k7 architechture.
But with further development it is going to improve along with the code written for it.
Its almost like the same bashing that M$ went through when they put out win95.
Everyoue says its BS, but, what is the majority using now?
Its like nope, im holding on to what I got here, its goin good, im not changing.
But what it comes down to is that the industry is going to be forced to change with it as well.
Because the MONEY is there. And of course the evolution of technology.
Its amazing to watch the circles of thought and hype that comes about with new technology coming out.

just my $.02