Was the Pentium 4 the worst processor design in history?

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: dancingwllamas
Actually, they did release a 3.8 Ghz chip.

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reselle...processors/pentium-4/feature/index.htm

Oops! That one must have slipped by me. I would have sworn that the fastest P4 they made was the 3.73 Ghz EE.

 

[nullpointerus]

Originally posted by: Viditor
The one thing Cyrix did do (an I agree that it was a very good chip for it's day) was to embarass Intel a bit...
Andy Grove had given a speech wherein he stated that Intel had determined that a FSB faster than 66MHz was just not physically possible...2 months later, Cyrix released a 6x86 at 75MHz FSB.
That said, it was the first and last time I ever saw Andy Grove with egg on his face...

Yes, but the 75 MHz FSB chip had one major problem: its PCI bus ran at 37.5 MHz, which is out of spec. That's probably why Intel said >66 MHz wasn't physically possible. Of course, nowadays we have locked busses...

 

[sdsdv10]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: dancingwllamas
Actually, they did release a 3.8 Ghz chip.

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reselle...processors/pentium-4/feature/index.htm

Oops! That one must have slipped by me. I would have sworn that the fastest P4 they made was the 3.73 Ghz EE.

Yep, I have one of the P4 670 (@3.8GHz) in a refurb Dell Otiplex. Got the entire box for ~$1050 (2GB RAM, 160GB HD, DVD burner, XP Pro, etc with 3 year warranty) when the chip alone was going for ~$675. It is working very well for us.

 

[stevty2889]

Originally posted by: soydios
Clarification: Prescott (the third-generation Pentium 4 core) was terrible. The Northwood cores, especially the 2.4GHz ones, were easily overclocked. Prescott was supposed to take the P4 up to the 10GHz that had been previously promised by Intel, but they hit a power wall just short of 4GHz.

Fixed..Williamette was first generation, northwood second, prescott 3rd, and cedar mill final. Prescott wasn't supposed to go all the way to 10ghz, that was later down the line, none the less the power, heat, and leakage was too much to get far.

 

[SunnyD]

Nominally, I would have to bring up the good old NexGen 586, which wasn't really a 586 at all. It was based on a 386, and during the Pentium era it didn't have a floating point co-processor built in.

However... one little known tidbit on it... NexGen was assimilated by AMD, and a good portion on NexGen's ideas made their first appearance in the form of the Athlon K7 architecture.

 

[Aluvus]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: dancingwllamas
Actually, they did release a 3.8 Ghz chip.

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reselle...processors/pentium-4/feature/index.htm

Oops! That one must have slipped by me. I would have sworn that the fastest P4 they made was the 3.73 Ghz EE.

The Pentium 4 670, 672, 570J, and 571 are all 3.8 GHz. There was also reportedly a 3.8 "F" part with EM64T.

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Nominally, I would have to bring up the good old NexGen 586, which wasn't really a 586 at all. It was based on a 386, and during the Pentium era it didn't have a floating point co-processor built in.

However... one little known tidbit on it... NexGen was assimilated by AMD, and a good portion on NexGen's ideas made their first appearance in the form of the Athlon K7 architecture.

K6. It was essentially a retooled Nx86. Maybe the best decision AMD's management ever made.

 

[VooDooAddict]

P4 design has some drawbacks, but I think they really made the best of it. They had to as AMD was really giving them performance competition.

The worst CPU that I can remember was a Cyrix all-in-one integrated CPU ... I think it was called the "MediaGX". They tried to combine a Pentium Clone CPU, sound processing, and video processing (and maybe memory controller) all on one die. Compaq released a small form factor computer based on it back in late 1997. While the idea was sound ... lower the total system cost by integrating more features onto one die. The end product was highly flawed. The performance was abysmal. It was supposed to be comparable to a Pentium, but even year old i486 systems decimated it for just general use. I felt really bad for people that bought them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaGX

 

[Childs]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: DrMrLordX
Guys, are we forgetting some of Cyrix's amazing competitors for the original Pentium?

Did any of you remember the 5x86 processors that would sometimes burn out at stock settings with factory cooling solutions? I do. Cyrix produced some truly awful chips.

Then there was IDT and their amazing Winchips.

Going back even farther, how about the 486SLC chips? These were basically (IIRC) Cyrix/IBM clones of 386SX chips with 16 bit interface, with a 486 compatible instruction set, were pipelined and had a tiny cache (1k or 2k?). So, what makes a chip a 486? Is it a minimum performance level? If so, then these 486SLC chips were not "486" level. Is it instruction compatible? If so, then these 486SL chips really were "486" chips.

pics of 486SLC

So basically these were really fast... for a 386SX.

Hey, I had one of those. Bought the optional math coprocessor too. It was fairly spirited when it came to running Doom. 486 performance at less than a 386 price.

I personally think the AMD K6-2 was the biggest POS ever. 3DNow! my ass. That was a ghetto processor that let you know that you were ghetto.

 

[JasonandBecky]

The P4 brought us hyperthreading. That alone was popular enough that was the start of the trend towards dual core. So if even thats the only thing the P4 is responsible for, its enough for me to be considered innovative.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: VooDooAddict
P4 design has some drawbacks, but I think they really made the best of it. They had to as AMD was really giving them performance competition.

The worst CPU that I can remember was a Cyrix all-in-one integrated CPU ... I think it was called the "MediaGX". They tried to combine a Pentium Clone CPU, sound processing, and video processing (and maybe memory controller) all on one die. Compaq released a small form factor computer based on it back in late 1997. While the idea was sound ... lower the total system cost by integrating more features onto one die. The end product was highly flawed. The performance was abysmal. It was supposed to be comparable to a Pentium, but even year old i486 systems decimated it for just general use. I felt really bad for people that bought them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaGX

Oh man, I had forgotten about the MediaGX. I agree, it was definitely the biggest POS ever. I had a 233 Mhz Pentium MMX, and I knew someone who owned a MediaGX that was supposed to be the equivalent of a 233 Mhz PI MMX, although it ran @ 175 or 180 Mhz. We tested them, and my Intel part was roughly twice as fast. Seriously.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: VooDooAddict
P4 design has some drawbacks, but I think they really made the best of it. They had to as AMD was really giving them performance competition.

The worst CPU that I can remember was a Cyrix all-in-one integrated CPU ... I think it was called the "MediaGX". They tried to combine a Pentium Clone CPU, sound processing, and video processing (and maybe memory controller) all on one die. Compaq released a small form factor computer based on it back in late 1997. While the idea was sound ... lower the total system cost by integrating more features onto one die. The end product was highly flawed. The performance was abysmal. It was supposed to be comparable to a Pentium, but even year old i486 systems decimated it for just general use. I felt really bad for people that bought them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaGX

Oh man, I had forgotten about the MediaGX. I agree, it was definitely the biggest POS ever. I had a 233 Mhz Pentium MMX, and I knew someone who owned a MediaGX that was supposed to be the equivalent of a 233 Mhz PI MMX, although it ran @ 175 or 180 Mhz. We tested them, and my Intel part was roughly twice as fast. Seriously.

qft

 

[AgonxOC]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: OVerLoRDI
WRONG FORUM!!!

Edit: Maybe not the worst but it was pretty bad. Considering that the Pentium 3 was actually better.

It wasn't better, it couldn't clock anywhere near as high. Even the Pentium M, a heavily modified Pentium 3 (and thus a different architecture) couldn't perform as well as the P4 in many tasks, primarily the ones the P4 was pushed for like 3d rendering and photo editing.

I'd say the P4 was a pretty good design that ran into some unexpected engineering difficulties. I'd consider the Athlon a better design though, with far worse manufacturing on AMD's side.

I think he means from a design standpoint. When the P4 was released, weren't similarly clocked P3's actually outperforming P4's?

Only because P4 ran into some unexpected initial problems (it was a very ambitious design) and was released at lower clock speeds than expected, and with slower ram the expected. (sdr instead of rambus)

Anyhow, the P3, like the G4, did not clock very high and didn't have high bang per mhz. P-M improved in many areas but was still lacking in clock speed and bang per mhz in some tasks.
And the inefficiency of a P4 really only matters in die size and power consumption, which generally weren't that bad until Prescott.

I dunno, but my Pentium M 760 @ 2.8 GHz Out performed and Out OCed my old P4 3.0E @ 3.6GHz and infact it can outperform P4 @ 4.5+ GHz. I got 800 MHz out of my M and I could only get 600MHz out of the Prescott. The Dothan is much better than the Prescott in 3D rendering and many other things. The P4 Prescott was much better than my old 1.5 GHz willamatte P4. I increase my performance qute alot when I went to a Pentium M with the same RAM, Mobo, GPU. So to me the P-M in much better than the P-4 and much more efficient. The P-M is infact the fastest single core CPU, proven by many enthusiasts outthere.


Alex

 

[Raduque]

Originally posted by: AgonxOC

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: OVerLoRDI
WRONG FORUM!!!

Edit: Maybe not the worst but it was pretty bad. Considering that the Pentium 3 was actually better.

It wasn't better, it couldn't clock anywhere near as high. Even the Pentium M, a heavily modified Pentium 3 (and thus a different architecture) couldn't perform as well as the P4 in many tasks, primarily the ones the P4 was pushed for like 3d rendering and photo editing.

I'd say the P4 was a pretty good design that ran into some unexpected engineering difficulties. I'd consider the Athlon a better design though, with far worse manufacturing on AMD's side.

I think he means from a design standpoint. When the P4 was released, weren't similarly clocked P3's actually outperforming P4's?

Only because P4 ran into some unexpected initial problems (it was a very ambitious design) and was released at lower clock speeds than expected, and with slower ram the expected. (sdr instead of rambus)

Anyhow, the P3, like the G4, did not clock very high and didn't have high bang per mhz. P-M improved in many areas but was still lacking in clock speed and bang per mhz in some tasks.
And the inefficiency of a P4 really only matters in die size and power consumption, which generally weren't that bad until Prescott.

I dunno, but my Pentium M 760 @ 2.8 GHz Out performed and Out OCed my old P4 3.0E @ 3.6GHz and infact it can outperform P4 @ 4.5+ GHz. I got 800 MHz out of my M and I could only get 600MHz out of the Prescott. The Dothan is much better than the Prescott in 3D rendering and many other things. The P4 Prescott was much better than my old 1.5 GHz willamatte P4. I increase my performance qute alot when I went to a Pentium M with the same RAM, Mobo, GPU. So to me the P-M in much better than the P-4 and much more efficient. The P-M is infact the fastest single core CPU, proven by many enthusiasts outthere.


Alex

Only P4 I ever had experience with was an ultra-slow P4 1.5ghz I got for free. It was dog-slow even with DDR. I replaced it with a Celeron 2.5.


I love the Dothan in my laptop; did a pinmod and pulled 561mhz out of it.
But I love my Conroe even more.... OCed it almost a full GHz.... :shocked:

 

[0roo0roo]

just think amd before athlon. it was truely horrific stuff, k2? k3? all had the gaming performance of sh*t, fpu performance of total sh*t.
there was the cyrix 6x86 too, worked like a pentium in windows, but it also had the fpu/gaming performance of total sh*t.
pentium 4 while not perfect was nothing like those total turds. those two were like the difference between integrated graphics and ati/nvidia discrete graphics.

 

[w00t]

No

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Viditor

Originally posted by: myocardia

Originally posted by: Avalon
Yeah, but don't we all agree that Cyrix was absolutely the worst cpu manufacturer ever? They actually made "laughing stock" not sound like such a bad thing, IMO.:laugh:

Cyrix's 6x86 was a good chip.

True, but making one good chip hardly qualifies you as a good cpu manufacturer, at least IMO.

The one thing Cyrix did do (an I agree that it was a very good chip for it's day) was to embarass Intel a bit...
Andy Grove had given a speech wherein he stated that Intel had determined that a FSB faster than 66MHz was just not physically possible...2 months later, Cyrix released a 6x86 at 75MHz FSB.
That said, it was the first and last time I ever saw Andy Grove with egg on his face...[/quote]


yea i had one, it also helped drop prices because they were so much cheaper than intels offerings. i could finally play mp3s at full quality witha 6x86 lol but games... it just couldn't hack it for 3d games.

 

[Compton]

IMO, the worst processor would be the 386SX. At the time, my dad's 286 seemed much faster.

 

[garrius]

my P4 Northwood has been my favorite piece of computer hardware I've ever owned. It happlily munched on games at its default 2.6GHz speed for a couple of years - then just as I was thinking of upgrading I discovered it clocked up to 3.0GHz without any effort or extra cooling at all. And here I sit still using it right now - and only just thinking of upgrading. Talk about value for money!

 

[wwswimming]

depends on the definition of "worst".

i'm kind of attached to my P4C800 with the 3 GHz Northwood myself !

sure, MIPS per watt, it's not great. i had a bug with an Athlon system in about 2003; when i went
to buy a computer that Christmas, i got the P4C with the Northwood - a little gun shy
of the Athlon 64.

so yeah there were better options ... but a lot of companies have gotten a lot of work out of
the P4.

and the profits from the P4 financed the development of Core2Duo.

but, yeah, it is kind of a space heater.

 

[GreenMonkey]

You could get a K6-2 350 for about the same price as a P2-233/266.

The processors might not have been as good as P2s, but bang/buck wise they stomped all over the Intel chips. I built my first PC on a k6-2 350, still have the board/cpu/voodoo3 in the closet.

K6-2 was about bang/buck. Bleeding edge people were always better off with the P2, but those of us on a budget knew where the deal was. The only other budget option was one of those Celery 300As overclocked if you could get your hands on one.

A K6-2 at 100mhz or higher speeds than the Intel would stomp it and it was cheaper. Sounds like a win to me.

Now the Cyrix P1/P2 clone chips - now those were junk. Flaky, unstable, awful performance, etc. They were very cheap though for websurfing type boxes, my buddy and I had experience with a few of them here and there.

 

[0roo0roo]

well, maybe in windows, but in games? the k6 series even with mmx 3dnow extensions was pretty horrible

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: GreenMonkey
You could get a K6-2 350 for about the same price as a P2-233/266.

The processors might not have been as good as P2s, but bang/buck wise they stomped all over the Intel chips. I built my first PC on a k6-2 350, still have the board/cpu/voodoo3 in the closet.

K6-2 was about bang/buck. Bleeding edge people were always better off with the P2, but those of us on a budget knew where the deal was. The only other budget option was one of those Celery 300As overclocked if you could get your hands on one.

A K6-2 at 100mhz or higher speeds than the Intel would stomp it and it was cheaper. Sounds like a win to me.

Now the Cyrix P1/P2 clone chips - now those were junk. Flaky, unstable, awful performance, etc. They were very cheap though for websurfing type boxes, my buddy and I had experience with a few of them here and there.

Hehehe agreed on the Cyrix

On the K6 though, bleh. I had a couple of those, one was a K62-333, the other a K62-450, and outside of Quake2 w/3dnow patch, they were horrible for gaming. Replaced with Celeron 300A, Asus P2B, and I used that thing at 450mhz for a couple of great years. It was miles faster than the K6s in everything I could throw at it.