Intel is lost.

[Darthgary]

Ok, I am not biased but I do have opinions.

First off, I am not a fan of the Athlon XP series, they were good at appz that needed more ALU work, but other then that, they were a slug with multitasking and mem bandwidth based proggy's. I really liked the P4C, I thought it was great. But then AMD cures all things I disliked about the Athlon XP and released the Athlon 64, extremely efficient in every aspect at a low frequency, hyper transport is a dream and the heatspreader really helps.

Intel is very lazy, they cant keep scaling the P4 to compete with AMD. They need to put all their effort into creating a more efficient processor. For god sakes the 64 competes well with a CPU thats 1 GHz faster in frequency.

I dont think Intel is in any position to do anything about it. I think they are doomed. The only thing they have is the dumb OEM market.

Suprise!

[HeadBand]

i am glad to see with the prescott...although not much of a speed advantage and usually slower they added alot of other things that i think will help out in the future...i am glad to see that they are taking their time to make a good processor and keep pushing the tejas release date back instead of rolling up crap to keep up with the realese date...hopefully these will have 64 bit instructions....who knows the prescotts might even have 64 bit instructions switched off...if they do i suspect they will be unveild when the socket t comes out

[wallie_x]

I think the question is: can peoples pocket books, marriages, sanity and minds keep up with the ever accelerating technology?
I'm hoping for an Athlon 64 machine, but that’s at least a year away due to financial constraints (not to mention my wife would kill me). By this time next year will the Athlon 64 be the equivalent of a P III 600Mhz as it is today? I just built this Athlon XP 2600 rev.# 2 (333Mhz FSB) machine just a few months ago, and now it’s almost washed up?
Are computers going to become like clothes? When the technology wears out (in months..maybe weeks?) we simply trash the old style for the new.
How often do you super computer buffs change/build new machines?
It seems to be continually accelerating ever faster, is it going to slow or stop?
Don't look like it to me. And I used to think astronomy was an expensive hobby.

[RamonGTP]

Just cause soemthing newer is available, that doesn't mean what you have is "washed up." Name one application out there that won't run well on a 2600+???... And seeing that a P3600 is a lot closer to 3, maybe 4 years old... I don't think we'll see the A64 in a year the way we see a P3-600 the way we do now.

Performance is dependant upon the intended use of the system. My daily use notebook is a P3 650e. What is the point of upgrading it? All it is used for is surfing the web, checking email, and writing the occasional document.

As to an Athlon 2600+, it should be a viable system for many months to come, atleast from the mainstream software perspective. While I will be forced to soon build an AMD64 testbed system, my P4C@3GHz will probably be on my personal desk well into 2005.

Robert Richmond

[beppodmime]

My thoughs exactly, Rob. I don't see software moving very far ahead, for me at least, for well into 2005. And for that reason, I don't think my next major system upgrade is going to be anytime soon. Before this, I used a P3-600, and before that, a Pentium 166. For the stuff I did at the time, I didn't need anything more from my system.

But then, I didn't say I wouldn't be building OTHER systems in the meantime... Just not upgrading this particular one. Well, there's really only the TBD HTPC project. After that, I'm set.

The A64's benchies that I've seen do show some promise for AMD as compared to the P4's, and other Athlons. It'll be some time before I, myself would plunk down on a processor, though. Let's see where the price war heads from here, shall we? Real world gaps in performance are hardly noticable between the two, almost across the board. Let's see what overall platform costs start to look like. This could be interesting. On tomorrow's episode, AMD announces profit, Intel announces Prescott... Who will be ko?

Then again, it's not like it's a soap opera.

And kudos Rob for giving this thread and question front page exposure.

[sweeper2]

I agree with not upgrading everytime a new cpu hits the market. I have my 2500 overclocked to a 3200 athlonxp and I think it will last me many years to come...I don't have any plans of replacing my system, also in part of financial situations and my wife would also kill me. I built this system starting last Oct. and think it performs very well. maybe a few mods here and there and maybe uping the video card if need be due to the graphics comming out, but as for now, i think my system will last for at least a couple+ years...

ps I ran a 1.3 duron on an old msi board with pc 133 ram at 512 mg and an gForce 2 32 mg video card up to last year...

[Darthgary]

Its kindof good that CPU's evolve so fast, it does not meann your current processor is obsolete. But when you upgrade, you really get your money's worth.

I am just tired of seing, The all new Pentium 4 3.4, the all new Pentium 3.6, the all new Pentium 3.8 Its getting old. Increase the catch here, raise the FSB their. Intel is beating around the bush with the Pentium 4.

[butch81385]

i do agree that intel has to be more efficient. my amd 1800+ 1.6 ghz is equal in performance to a 1.8 pentium? and that is on the small end. a 3200+ is equal to a 3.2? just think if intel was as effecient as amd and made their 3.2 equal to a 4.something...