PIII vs P4

[996GT2]

I've read on the net that a 1 GHz PIII outperformed a 1.5 GHz P4 in a lot of benchmarks (i.e. sysmark), and was only beaten in video encoding by the P4. Is this true that a PIII giving up 500 or 600 mhz of clock speed to a P4 can be faster due to its shorter pipeline?

Edit: Just brought my Dell Dimension 4100 back from its dusty box and I'm running WinXP on it at 1152*864 @ 85 Hz. This comp has a 1.0 GHz Pentium III Coppermine EB core with 256k of on-die cache and a 133 mhz fsb w/ 7.5x multi. It's also got 512 mb of Toshiba 133 mhz SDRAM, a 60 GB Maxtor HDD, and a nVidia Riva TNT2 32 mb Graphics Card.

The funny thing is that it feels as fast as, if not faster than my P4 computer, which had a 2.66 GHz Northwood with 1GB of DDR333. I expected this computer to lag somewhat with XP and full visual effects and whatnot, but there's no whatsoever. I think that's because theres a lot less junk on this comp, having just reinstalled Windows, but I'm still shocked at how fast this P III really is, even when running Windows XP with all the visual effects on.

 

[aka1nas]

Thats probably about right, especially considering the P4 is a first-gen Willamette core. The P4 became more competative when Northwood was released and they had chipsets out that gave the chip more memory bandwith to play with.

 

[rstrohkirch]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2004/12/21/the_mother_of_all_cpu_charts_part_2/

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: 996GT2
I've read on the net that a 1 GHz PIII outperformed a 1.5 GHz P4 in a lot of benchmarks (i.e. sysmark), and was only beaten in video encoding by the P4. Is this true that a PIII giving up 500 or 600 mhz of clock speed to a P4 can be faster due to its shorter pipeline?

The specific comparison that is often mentioned is the Tualatin version P-III vs. the Williamette P4, and I believe the Tualatin in question was supposed to be some odd part of a GHz, such as 1.03 or some such.

 

[JBird7986]

I think that it was 1.13GHz.

 

[Maximilian]

Dont think a 1.0ghz P III beats a P4 1.5, although it was very competitive at the time. The 1.4ghz tualatin would on many cases outperform a 1.7ghz p4, not on gaming or video encoding though, and the FSB of 133mhz limited it. However it was not as good as the 1.8 or 2.0ghz p4's they simply had too much brute clock speed on the tualatin. The 1.0ghz you mention though may beat a 1.3 ghz p4 though.

 

[dexvx]

A 1Ghz P3 might've been competitive on 1.5Ghz Willamette at the time of release, due to non-SSE2 optimized software, but given modern benchmarks, any Willamette will blow the water out of a 1Ghz P3. Just look at the THG archival charts.

 

[imported_Kiwi]

Originally posted by: JBird7986
I think that it was 1.13GHz.

I do believe your recollection is better than mine was. Now, if either one of us could recall where that article appeared, and what P4 it was compared to (not a "1.5" I am quite certain).

The particular bench marks used would probably be pertinent, of course.

 

[aka1nas]

Originally posted by: dexvx
A 1Ghz P3 might've been competitive on 1.5Ghz Willamette at the time of release, due to non-SSE2 optimized software, but given modern benchmarks, any Willamette will blow the water out of a 1Ghz P3. Just look at the THG archival charts.

I'll concede that point with the additional caveat that it would need to be running on an i850 chipset with RDRAM. The vast majority of systems sold with that generation of P4 were of the i845 variety which used SD-RAM. This severely hampered performance on an architecture that requires high memory bandwith to perform efficiently.

I know from experience, you can't make an SD-RAM based P4 rig fast.

 

[Fox5]

At the time of the P4 release, I remember that a 1.4ghz P4 was about equivalent to a 1ghz to 1.2ghz Pentium 3, depending on the app. (this may be pre tualatin though)
The P4 was also equivalent to like a 800mhz Athlon, and a Duron matched a P3 clock for clock.
P4's gained a lot from better chipsets, more cache, hyperthreading, and faster ram. SDR was a huge limit for P4s to start with.

BTW, from what I've seen, SDR doesn't really limit a cpu until a certain clockspeed...but even with PC-133, that limit came around 1.2ghz. So basically an athlon system, a p3 system, and a p4 system, regardless of clockspeed over 1.2ghz all performed like they were 1.2ghz, except the athlon performed best per mhz, followed by the p3, followed by the p4.

 

[Painman]

Last night I did a bit of work on my legacy rig (CuMine PIII 700 @ 933, ASUS CuBX, 512 megs PC133, Ti4600) including a reformat of Win98SE. Its purpose in life is classic gaming - anything from old DOS titles up to Y2K era 3D, emulation, and occasional private server hosting. Just like the OP, I was quite impressed at how smooth and responsive this old thing is with general tasks. It isn't giving my main rig any run for its money, but it holds its own. I'll be very sad when the caps on that CuBX finally blow up, though I don't run the machine 24/7. Not too many boards will run procs > 1 GHz while still sporting an ISA bus for real, honest-to-god native DOS, but that one does.

 

[dhkkim]

even my p3 750 with 256mb ram runs great.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Originally posted by: 996GT2
I've read on the net that a 1 GHz PIII outperformed a 1.5 GHz P4 in a lot of benchmarks (i.e. sysmark), and was only beaten in video encoding by the P4. Is this true that a PIII giving up 500 or 600 mhz of clock speed to a P4 can be faster due to its shorter pipeline?

Edit: Just brought my Dell Dimension 4100 back from its dusty box and I'm running WinXP on it at 1152*864 @ 85 Hz. This comp has a 1.0 GHz Pentium III Coppermine EB core with 256k of on-die cache and a 133 mhz fsb w/ 7.5x multi. It's also got 512 mb of Toshiba 133 mhz SDRAM, a 60 GB Maxtor HDD, and a nVidia Riva TNT2 32 mb Graphics Card.

The funny thing is that it feels as fast as, if not faster than my P4 computer, which had a 2.66 GHz Northwood with 1GB of DDR333. I expected this computer to lag somewhat with XP and full visual effects and whatnot, but there's no whatsoever. I think that's because theres a lot less junk on this comp, having just reinstalled Windows, but I'm still shocked at how fast this P III really is, even when running Windows XP with all the visual effects on.

Of course a P3 1GHz won't lag in Windows XP! Now try some gaming and you will definitely feel the slowness compared to your P4 2.66GHz.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Painman
Last night I did a bit of work on my legacy rig (CuMine PIII 700 @ 933, ASUS CuBX, 512 megs PC133, Ti4600) including a reformat of Win98SE. Its purpose in life is classic gaming - anything from old DOS titles up to Y2K era 3D, emulation, and occasional private server hosting. Just like the OP, I was quite impressed at how smooth and responsive this old thing is with general tasks. It isn't giving my main rig any run for its money, but it holds its own. I'll be very sad when the caps on that CuBX finally blow up, though I don't run the machine 24/7. Not too many boards will run procs > 1 GHz while still sporting an ISA bus for real, honest-to-god native DOS, but that one does.

Lol, I had two or three boards with an ISA bus that would run athlons up to 133fsb, which I think meant up to a 2600+ athlon xp.