Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz! - Computer music & technology forums

Forums - Computer music & technology

Subject: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

Pages: 1 2 3 4

Original Message 1/32 25-Nov-00 @ 12:06 AM - Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

Posts:

Link?: No link

File?: No file

Just read the PC Pro tests on the new Intel Pentium 4 and it makes interesting reading. On their floating point performance test, the most important for Audio performance, the P4 1.5GHz only scored 884MIPS compared to the 1GHz Athlons stunning 1386MIPS! On normal applications there was little difference between the chips and the P4 was quicker for 3D (games) by 20%. These are amazing results given that the P4 was clocked 50% faster than the Athlon. Even more intersting is that you can actually buy a 1.2GHz Athlon now, whereas I doubt you'd get your hands on a P4 until early next year.

Intel will claim the worlds fastest chip, but it's real world performance that matters, not clock speed and for that the Athlon looks the best choice. Maybe software specifically compiled for the P4 will run quicker, but do we really want to have to get new versions of our software every time a new chip is launched? No wonder Intels sales figures are so poor!

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 2/32 25-Nov-00 @ 05:57 AM - RE: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

99devils

Posts:

Link?: No link

File?: No file

Intel can't continue to drive the market as fast as it is. It's products are starting to suffer, and everybody's working on crazy overpowered machines in the consumer market... I mean, I wouldn't need this 700mhz Athlon to surf the web, I can do that on the P-166 I gave to my mother...

I still develop at work on a Dell P-II 300mhz laptop at work. I have no complaints...

-Craig

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 3/32 26-Nov-00 @ 10:48 PM - RE: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

Posts:

Link?: Link

File?: No file

Yeah, check out the testing done at this site.....

www.tomshardware.com

and you'll see very similar results. He even overclocked a P4 to 1.7Ghz and it wasn't faster than a 1.2 Athlon!!

Pretty fucked up really.

Si.

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 4/32 27-Nov-00 @ 10:00 PM - RE: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

Posts:

Link?: No link

File?: No file

I worked out from Intels own figures that even if the code was compiled with the P4 optimisation the 1.5GHz P4 would only just beat the 1GHz Athlon by about 10%! which is not noticable to the user.

So you can by an AMD chip that gives higher performance than the latest Intel chip and at far lower cost.

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 5/32 28-Nov-00 @ 01:25 PM - RE: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

easyed

Posts: 2

Link?: Link

File?: No file

The whole point of the new architecture is that it will allow them to ramp up the clockspeed a lot quicker, so there is no point in buying the first ones on the market. Pentium came out at 100 and went to 200, P2 started at 233 or whatever and went up to 450, P3 launched at 450 and went to a gig (*almost* 1.13Ghz, heheh)so you can expect the P4 to end up doing at least 3-4 Ghz, some ppl are predicting even faster speeds....
Also, have a look at the link above concerning optimisation - an MPEG4 encoder performed over 3 times quicker ofter being optimised for SSE2, although I'm not sure how this would relate to audio apps.
I'm certainly not Intel's biggest fan (AMD have been ahead for a while, and Intel use some pretty dodgy business tactics) but all I'm saying is that the thing has just been released, so it's too early to draw conclusions. There are pros and cons with any design of CPU - the P4 has a wider pipe for instructions or something (I'm not an expert on this shit) which means it can run at a higher clock speed, but instructions have to wait longer to be processed. In the long term, this is going to get A LOT quicker, whereas Athlon will max out at about 1.4 Ghz, so Intel will be ahead for a while until AMD bring out their next completely new design.

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 6/32 28-Nov-00 @ 10:02 PM - RE: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

99devils

Posts:

Link?: No link

File?: No file

T-Birds are expected at 1.5 Ghz shortly...

Have you ever stopped to wonder why a
400 mhz Pwer PC CPU performas comparably
to an 800 mhz P-III? Or why Sun
workstations still use CPUs under 500 mhz?

There's a lot more to a CPU than clock
speed. IMHO, Intel is trying to
schnooker the home market by simply
driving up the mhz/ghz number quicker
than anyone else. Which, as we all
know, doesn't necessarily equal better
performance - but most home users
probably don't know that! We'll see if
my prediction pans out...

-Craig

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 7/32 28-Nov-00 @ 11:21 PM - RE: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

Jasper

Posts: 424

Link?: No link

File?: No file

I'm sold, my next pc is a tbird 800...

roll on the new year!

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 8/32 29-Nov-00 @ 04:29 PM - RE: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

volley

Posts:

Link?: No link

File?: No file

CK, the P4 is an entirely new architecture. Intel is aiming for the future; as someone said, they'll be able to boost clock speeds a lot faster.

Also, the P4 has something called SS2, which essentially is bunch of new instructions permitting parallell execution of floating point instructions. If software manufacturers started using them, the P4 would look a lot better. However, AMD will also support them... =)

My humble advice today is: go for AMD Thunderbird if you want performace today, and go with AMD Duron if you want price/performance. =)

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 9/32 29-Nov-00 @ 05:32 PM - RE: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

uncle Remus

Posts:

Link?: No link

File?: No file

ha.. dell and others are trying to flog off rambus P1.4's even tho rambus & intel have split and rambus is dead... remember the story about the tortoise and the hare tho !!!

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Message 10/32 29-Nov-00 @ 09:33 PM - RE: Pentium 4 1.5GHz slower than an Athlon 1GHz!

Posts:

Link?: No link

File?: No file

Yes I've read all about this "New Architecture", but it's just an evolution of the PIII architecture with lots of marketing spin. There is no point in boosting clock speeds faster when the architecture is over 33% less efficient running existing applications, its pure marketing nonsense. Just wait for the AMD Sledgehammer...

But the really interesting bit is who actually needs these chips. For most business and home users the current PCs are overpowered. PC sales are right down this year, why, because last year a lot of corporates replaced PCs to ensure Y2K compliance. Intel relies on everyone upgrading every 2-3 years to drive the whole process. The big question is will companies see the need to buy 2GHz chips to run office and E-Mail because if they don't then I think that the days of ever increasing PC performance may be limited by economics. Maybe if speech recognition takes off they will, but we'll have to see...

[ back to forum ] [quote]

Pages: 1 2 3 4

There are 32 total messages for this topic

Reply to Thread

You need to register/login to use the forum.

Click here to Signup or Login !

[you'll be brought right back to this point after signing up]

Back to Forum