Originally posted by: Cat
The point is the future, and marketing. Being able to scale far higher than 3.6, and making people feel warm and fuzzy for buying something that sounds fast.
Originally posted by: Rectalfier
I'm not impressed. Oh well, AMD has been in the trunk of the car for the past couple years, so it would be nice for Intel to sit in the back seat for a while.
One thing to keep in mind though, Arcas, is that Intel may not be so lucky this time around. With the P4, they could seed compilers with information on how to handle the longer pipeline, and more importantly, how to handle SSE2. Prescott however has just the longer pipeline, so there's a decent chance Intel won't be able to get back as much effeciency out of the Prescott, since the only thing going for it this time are more pipeline compiler optimizations, along with the larger cache and the better BPU.Originally posted by: arcas
Fast forward to today...the P4 design is currently chugging along at 3+ ghz and by almost any benchmark is far faster than the fastest P3 it supplanted. Likewise, in terms of actual performance, the deeply-pipelined P4 design and the shallow-pipelined Athlon design have largely kept pace with one another. If at any point in time one design were found to offer, say, 5x higher throughput than the other design, I think one could confidently claim that design is superior. But in fact that hasn't been the case. At no time over the past 2-3 years has the deeply-pipelined design had a significant performance advantage over the shallow pipeline design. Or visa versa. So these arguments are largely moot.
Originally posted by: Rectalfier
Here's the way I see it. Intel has already delayed the Prescot due to heat issues. I think they are trying to work around this by increasing the pipeline. It just seems that Intel has done this all of a sudden, since they couldn't produce their original Prescott design, and have thus delayed it. Could this be a massive trip for Intel? The release of the Pentium 4EE sure seemed like an act of desperation. Rest assured, Intel will have something good for us again, but it looks like 2004 will be AMD's biatch.
One thing to keep in mind though, Arcas, is that Intel may not be so lucky this time around. With the P4, they could seed compilers with information on how to handle the longer pipeline, and more importantly, how to handle SSE2. Prescott however has just the longer pipeline, so there's a decent chance Intel won't be able to get back as much effeciency out of the Prescott, since the only thing going for it this time are more pipeline compiler optimizations, along with the larger cache and the better BPU.
Originally posted by: arcas
I'm going to play devil's advocate here...
People made the same comments when the P4 came out and found that the P3 was faster at a given clockspeed. We were subjected to arguments from both sides of the fence...on the Intel side, it was "more pipelines mean higher frequency" and on the anti-Intel side, it was "more pipelines mean more latency and a bigger penalty for branch prediction misses so this design is going to flop."
Fast forward to today...the P4 design is currently chugging along at 3+ ghz and by almost any benchmark is far faster than the fastest P3 it supplanted. Likewise, in terms of actual performance, the deeply-pipelined P4 design and the shallow-pipelined Athlon design have largely kept pace with one another. If at any point in time one design were found to offer, say, 5x higher throughput than the other design, I think one could confidently claim that design is superior. But in fact that hasn't been the case. At no time over the past 2-3 years has the deeply-pipelined design had a significant performance advantage over the shallow pipeline design. Or visa versa. So these arguments are largely moot.
From a marketing standpoint, though, you can't argue with Intel's logic. And let's be honest, Intel's in business to make money so marketing advantages matter.
Originally posted by: Rectalfier
Here's the way I see it. Intel has already delayed the Prescot due to heat issues. I think they are trying to work around this by increasing the pipeline. It just seems that Intel has done this all of a sudden, since they couldn't produce their original Prescott design, and have thus delayed it. Could this be a massive trip for Intel? The release of the Pentium 4EE sure seemed like an act of desperation. Rest assured, Intel will have something good for us again, but it looks like 2004 will be AMD's biatch.
I'm gonna play the logical advocate ^^
In theory, I believe AMD has much more room to work w/ in terms of performance.. They're chugging along at what, 2.2Ghz as their flagship... Intel has a 3.2 as their flagship... for the most part, they run on par w/ each other, correct? Now, what if AMD kept the current pipeline length, but added another 1ghz to the Frequency... We'd have an Intel Killer. It would be more expensive, yeah... but I doubt it would still be anywhere near Intel's EE.
Bill
Best post so far.Originally posted by: mikecel79
Originally posted by: Rectalfier
Here's the way I see it. Intel has already delayed the Prescot due to heat issues. I think they are trying to work around this by increasing the pipeline. It just seems that Intel has done this all of a sudden, since they couldn't produce their original Prescott design, and have thus delayed it. Could this be a massive trip for Intel? The release of the Pentium 4EE sure seemed like an act of desperation. Rest assured, Intel will have something good for us again, but it looks like 2004 will be AMD's biatch.
Extending the pipeline isn't something that can be done in 3 months. They would basically have to go back to the drawing board to extend the pipeline. This was planned well before Prescott was delayed. They couldn't do that in 3 months or even 6 months. Extending the pipeline would not help it deal with heat either.
Originally posted by: Wingznut
Best post so far.Originally posted by: mikecel79
Originally posted by: Rectalfier
Here's the way I see it. Intel has already delayed the Prescot due to heat issues. I think they are trying to work around this by increasing the pipeline. It just seems that Intel has done this all of a sudden, since they couldn't produce their original Prescott design, and have thus delayed it. Could this be a massive trip for Intel? The release of the Pentium 4EE sure seemed like an act of desperation. Rest assured, Intel will have something good for us again, but it looks like 2004 will be AMD's biatch.
Extending the pipeline isn't something that can be done in 3 months. They would basically have to go back to the drawing board to extend the pipeline. This was planned well before Prescott was delayed. They couldn't do that in 3 months or even 6 months. Extending the pipeline would not help it deal with heat either.