What if the Consumer-P4 was mated to...?

[MadRat]

...a standardized onboard L3 cache that plugs into its own slot?

Nobody is going to want an SDRAM-based P4 motherboard. If you are aiming at the P4 then you are already willing to invest a good deal of money into your system. Alternatives are cheaper than the P4 that offer similar performance.

The raw price-point of PC800 RAM is another reason the P4 sales are being held back. The cost of PC800 RAM makes the P4 a unattractive design for OEMs for the target market. You are more likely to see the OEMs mate PC600 or PC700 RAM with their P4 systems to cut down memory costs, making an SDRAM-option rather unattractive.

If there was a standardized L3 cache that ran at the speed of PC800 or better, yet only cost a small fortune it makes it an addon worth tempting. So the P4 comes with SDRAM for now, later on you can pay $100 and add in 32mb of "low-latency" 5.2gb/sec L3 cache...

See my point?

 

[MGMorden]

Would be a nice idea, but I still think a DDR chipset for the P4 would be better. I don't see P4 as a bad chip (Athlon is not bad either), but RDRAM is definately holding it from high market penetration. DDR would bring it to a price point so that many Anandtechers might would at least consider the p4 platform rather than immediately dismissing it.

 

[JJ8]

Adding L3 to the P4 was discussed on the board a while back....PM explained why it was not viable.

 

[MadRat]

PM explained for a narrow definition, moreorless based on its design to be a multimedia-streaming platform. If the cache was defined as a standard then AMD would likely adopt it, too.

High-speed Low-latency L3 caches work. Period.

 

[fkloster]

<< DDR would bring it to a price point so that many Anandtechers might would at least consider the p4 platform rather than immediately dismissing it... >>



Why do people keep thinking DDR or SDRAM will save the P4? DDR would strangle any benefit that the P4 might have. DDR will NEVER EVER have the bandwidth P4's need to perform. Who will care how stinkin' cheap a DDR/P4 is if the sucker performs on par with a P2 350.

 

[shathal]

DDR will never have the bandwidth to feed the P4?

Well - not entirely true. For a start, DDR has lower latency that RDRAM, which will help it a lot. Also, if you were to go there from a multi-channel approach, you could get the performance you need. Also - an interesting move on from DDR would be QDR (Quad Data Rate) which (AFAIK) is supposed to start sampling at the end of the year.

SDRAM is defiantely a &quot;cheapo&quot; alternative for the P4. But DDR might definately be interesting. I think Intel would prefer to use RIMM's however (the prices are SLOWLY becoming more &amp; more humane) ... but hey - what can you do?

Let's wait &amp; see, shall we?

 

[MadRat]

If we had a standard L3 cache between Intel and AMD boards we'd be able to use slower system RAM. The biggest bottleneck in your system is the harddrive. Why not use tons of cheaper, slower RAM to make up for that? If you did on a P4 then you'd get creamed by the P4's hunger for bandwidth. However, the L3 cache would be able to stream a good bunch of the data dependng on the size of cache.