Pentium 4 Review

[warped]

Looks like GamePC has posted the first P4 Review.. 1.4 and 1.5 GHz

http://www.gamepc.com/reviews/hardware_review.asp?review=pentium4&page=1&mscssid=&tp=

 

[MikeyP]

Wow, we got one a day early Looks like there is going to be some good competition for the next year! Nice work.

 

[Viper GTS]

$5 says they get their balls busted by Intel...

But why do I care? I'm readin' it!



Viper GTS

 

[BenSkywalker]

What a bunch of BS.

~7% clock boost for the PIV results in ~24% performance jump? Yeah, Ok.

I have this bridge for sale.....

 

[MGallik]

<< Intel also faltered in the low-end markets, as the flip-chip based Celeron (dubbed Celeron II, or Celermine) performed amazingly low despite being able to achieve very high clock rates. Intel's continued support of the 66 MHz front side bus for the Celeron hindered performance in every aspect, which simply can't stand up to AMD's lower-cost Duron processors >>




Wrong! The Celeron II is slow because Intel intentionally added latency
to keep the C II's from competing directly with the P III's. The speed
difference would have been less than the Celerons was to the P II.

I quite reading the article at that paragraph. If the reviewer doesnt know
what he's talking about here, how can I believe anything else he may write?
If he does know, and wrote this drivel, then he's just another Intel puppet
writing what Chipzilla wants us to believe.

 

[Remedy]

Hey benny i though the samething your thinking too. I always like chris' reviews but i think he fudged this one alittle.



<< Ok, now we get to the meat of the review, is the Pentium 4 worth the money? At this time, no. It is the fastest thing on the market for 3D gaming right now, but with AMD's Thunderbird's so low in price, it's pretty tough to justify and extra $600-$700 for a very slight performance gain, not to mention the added cost of the Rambus DRAM sticks. >>





<< Intel claimed that the Pentium 4 would deliver 44% more performance in Quake III Arena, and actually they were not far off. Comparing a P4 1.5 GHz to a P3 1 GHz gave us around 36% net performance improvement in the best case scenario (Q3 Normal test). >>



Wtf, that resolution was only 640x480 as if someone actually paid 1100 to 1300 just for the processor alone not even the system itself would actually play at that resolution.:disgust:

 

[zippy]

MGallik...

<< Wrong! The Celeron II is slow because Intel intentionally added latency
to keep the C II's from competing directly with the P III's. The speed
difference would have been less than the Celerons was to the P II. >>


Wrong! It is slow because of the 66MHz bus primarily, secondarily because of only 128KB L2 cache, and finally because of the latency. WCPUID says that there is a tiny bit more latency, but nothing to call home about.


<< Wtf, that resolution was only 640x480 as if someone actually paid 1100 to 1300 just for the processor alone not even the system itself would actually play at that resolution. >>


The reason to use 640x480 is because that is the resolution that the video card will most likely NOT be the bottleneck. I agree, why would someone pay so much to play at such a low resolution? But it is a benchmark, something to give a general idea on the performance of it. It is showing how fast the CPU is in terms of raw power. BTW, 1.5GHz P4 yields only a 36% gain over a 1GHz P3?! Ouch...that sucks. Considering that it should be a 50% gain if you want to go by clock speed, however that is never achieved, and more than that considering that the P4 is supposed to be an IMPROVEMENT! LOL!

Bring on Palomino...it will lay the smack down on the P4...and for a few hundred $ less, too!

 

[Goi]

remedy, I think intel just said that as a best case scenario, i.e. with all other bottlenecks taken out of the equation as much as possible. At low resolutions, the graphics subsystem doesn't become a bottleneck, and so an increase in CPU speed is more proportionally reflected in performance.

 

[Spook]

Do you selectively read all of the time....



<< At resolutions above 1024x768x32, the video card bottleneck comes into play again, as you see all the numbers even out for the most part. >>

 

[Terrapin]

Well, I read the review and it sure seems to me over this next month is a great time to pick up a fast Intell PIII if Intel is what a person wants. The prices should drop a lot.

It's interesting to note that the test used an Ultra GEO 64mb card and found that to be a bottle neck.

Even for gamers like myself that are ambitious enough to go Ultra 160 SCSI with a Cheetah X15 and GEO Ultra 64mb, this new P4 sure seems like overkill for 99% of the people out here, not to mention the additional cost of RDRAM.

I'm designing a system now and am going Intel. Think I'll wait a few weeks and pick up a deal on the PIII 1gig or 933, take advantage of the low cost SDRAM and call it a day.

Terrapin

 

[Dulanic]

Now we just wait for Palomino next year to kill this thing. The P4 took quite a hit in performance clock for clock. The Palomino should get a pretty nice increase in clock for clock performance. So we may see 1.5Ghz Palomino's just smashing a 2Ghz or more P4.

 

[MaxFPS]

<< They've also stated that they are going to license out the Pentium 4 bus technology to third-party companies like VIA and ALi to make their own Pentium 4 chipsets, which will undoubtedly use DDR-SDRAM as the memory of choice. >>



Anand said in his latest Intel RoadMap article that Intel denies that they're working with VIA to get them to make a chipset for the P4. So where's Chris getting this from? Inside sources?

 

[Pyro]

Dulanic, you said it.

The bulk of those benchmarks showed a 1.2GHz Tbird with PC133 almost on par with the 1.4 and sometimes outperforming both the 1.4 AND 1.5. Now consider the cost factor. The 1.5GHz would cost you 4-5 times more and the ram would cost 3 times more. Then you have the extra cost of the mobo (said to be 1.5 the cost of current ones) and the case.

When 760 mobos start shipping (5 bux says they ships before p4s) a 1.2ghz athlon will probably be on par with the 1.5.

Finally, when the palomino comes with 512KB cache, lower power consumption and heat dissipation, new BPU and higher clockspeed AND SMP, I think AMD will once again steal the performance crown from intel.


PS. the writer stresses optimized software the for p4 A LOT, but never mensions anything about athlon optimized software....

 

[RagingGuardian]

The palomino and DDR will spank the P4 on a clock for clock performance level. The problem is that I don't think that the Palomino will scale to the kind of clock speeds Intels road map point to next year. If AMD goes ahead and add more pipelines (as rumoured) then the BPU will have to be better than the current Athlon core for us to see a major speed increase.

I do have faith in AMD however and with a die shrink I think the Palomino has a bright future.

 

[Valhalla2000]

I can't believe they are saying the benchmarks didn't take advantage of P4. When Athlon came out, there were no benchmarks optimized for it and yet none of the reviews seemed to care. Even today, most of the benchmarks didn't take advantage of Ahtlon. The review also claimed there were no supplying problem of P4 boards?? Just name one motherboard that i can find now for P4, lol

 

[Remedy]

I told yall that the review seems fudged. They use q3a as a benchmark with the athlon yet q3 doesn't have heavy 3dnow! exts. But do you ever hear sympothy for amd and the fact that 3 out of every 4 benchies are sse enhanced? i used to love chris and his reviews but after today not anymore this is enough.

 

[Pyro]

as far as the BPU on the palomino goes, I read some stuff about AMD, it turns out the classic athons had horrible branch predictions. It improved with the Tbirds, but they say it still isnt as good as intel's. I think a BPU improvement is going to be one of the biggest things on the palomino. As for clock speed. well, AMD says it will be able to scale pretty well (just look at the current tbirds) so we'll have to wait and see. I dont think it will scale to speeds like the P4, but whatever speed they scale it too, I am sure they won't let Intel beat them...

 

[ElFenix]

MaxFPS - anand said that intel has &quot;no comment&quot; instead of flat out denying it. which usually means that there is something going on. if it wasn't happening, why not deny it? of course if it is, you can't deny it because that would be in violation of SEC regs or something.

 

[Goi]

The Athlon does indeed have an extremely simple branch predictor for such an otherwise advanced superpipelined core architecture. It has a 2048 BHT together with a simple 2-bit Lee-Smith predictor. This is one of the most basic forms of branch prediction, and is in sharp contrast to the BPU of the K6, which consists of an 8192 BHT and a 2 level GAs predictor. The K6's BPU was superior to that of the K7 and P2/P3s.

 

[JellyBaby]

Damn people stop pinging that site I can't get in.

EDIT: managed to reach the product page. Intel Pentium 4 1.5 GHz OEM $1,176.00. Ouch, let go of my arm!

 

[Dulanic]

The reason the Athlon has stuff like poor BPU because they needed to rush the Athlon out. Thats why there have been lots of articles on how now that AMD has had time to make these changes that the Palomino will get quite a boost out of all the tweaks they did to the athlon score... ive seen estimates from 35%-50% faster.

 

[snow]

ElFenix

You're right about it being an SEC violation (not a good thing). However, most companies just don't comment on anything to keep from violating the regs. Unless you do that, then everyone knows what's up - you deny what's not true and have to no comment what's true. Either way, there's no doubt VIA is working on a DDR P4 chipset, especially in light of Intel's latest Rambust comments.

 

[RagingGuardian]

As far as I know the Classic Athlon and Tbird both feature the same BPU. The only performance enhancing feature that was added was on die L2 cache. I don't think we'll get a %50 increase in performance with just a better BPU though since more pipelines will be added to the core.

I hope we get and advanced like that of the K6 2. That would be just awesome

 

[Dulanic]

Raging your right the T-Bird and Athlon are the same except cache.... However Palomino will have more than just a better BPU... do you think AMD took a year to develop just a better BPU? No there will be alot of enhancements.

 

[Pyro]

I certainly hope so. I've been saving dough for a whole damn year just so I can get one of these babies along with DDR.
One thing that bothers me though is that I'll have to wait til march to get it, along with a nice Asus board with a via chipset.
I was hoping to get it for Xmas

oh well, &quot;good things come to those who wait&quot;. at least I'll be able to get a Radeon2 or Geforce3 to go along with it