Starcraft, you made my point exactly. Read what I said about the Pentium 4 platform. I said Intel's problems start and end with the P7 (meaning, the Pentium 4 processor). Your problems are with the processor, and that is exactly what I said. Their problems with the platform start and end with the P7.
Your blanket statement that the Athlon 64 outperforms the Pentium 4 is not accurate. It outperforms it in some applications, and is easily outperformed by it in others. I really dislike broad generalizations because they are inherently inaccurate when you have processors that run certain applications better, but I would be willing to concede that the Athlon 64 does generally outperform the Pentium 4. Still, there are way over 1% of the people that would be better off with the Pentium 4(see my last paragraph for a big example), it runs a decent amount of applications better, but I do overall agree with you on your point. So, if you are willing to use a more general statement that in most current applications the Athlon 64 outperforms the Pentium 4, and uses a lot less power as well, I think we can agree on that. But again, that is exactly what I said in my message. The Pentium 4 sucks.
So, to answer your question, I wouldn't buy a Pentium 4 unless I used an application that needed it. I wouldn't buy an Athlon or Athlon 64 either. I think they all suck and offer very little over the Pentium III platform. I have several computers in my house, my main one upstairs is a Pentium III 600 MHz that I just built (Katmai) on a new motherboard (I just replaced my K6-III+, which had a fan), and an VIA EPIA SP8000e which is the downstairs model (also fanless). I do have two Athlons, which I hate and never use except when I need to heat the room up. For performance, for example, my favorite machine is a dual Pentium III Tualatin 1.4 GHz with 512K cache using DDR. My 3D Studio Max machine is a dual Pentium III 1.0 GHz with 1 Gigabyte RDRAM. My game server, which has to be online for players 24x7, is a SuperMicro Pentium III motherboard (P3TDE6-G) with dual 1.26 GHz Tualatins. All are fanless, for those that would otherwise require fans I use oversized heat sinks that more than take care of it because they use relatively very little power. So, more than most people I understand completely your dislike of the power/heat dissipation issues of the Pentium 4. Unless I desperately needed the Pentium 4, and I can not imagine currently why I would, I would avoid it entirely. It is, in my opinion, the worst widely known processor ever made.
Luckily, Intel finally understands and doing exactly what buyers like I would want. They are worried about power now, but why did it take so long? I will probably look into their next generation with significant interest, but currently I will stick to the Pentium III. I think the P6, by contrast with the P7, was one of the best cores ever made, and considering it was made in 1995, it is amazing.
I agree with you regarding pricing. But, the price difference between DDR and DDR2 is getting smaller so this may become less of a deterrent to DDR2. Do you remember the Rambus fiasco? That memory is still soooooooo overpriced.
Oh, one thing a lot of people miss about the Athlon 64 is the integrated memory controller. I have even heard people call this an innovation and revolutionary, but in reality it is a desperate move to gain performance. It works well for that, but was done over a decade ago by NexGen with their Nx586 processor so is not revolutionary or even innovative. In fact in the 70s and 80s they made processors with the memory on the processor itself, no external memory. What makes it desperate is, it limits the market for AMD since it makes it more difficult to use integrated graphics controllers that share main memory. After all, the chipset does not have a memory controller (although, it could, but that would add cost and is currently not done, and this would hurt performance badly if implemented), so it is not an easy thing to do. The performance would be horrible using the processor memory controller. Now before you make the statement on how bad these solutions are, they are perfectly adequate for the majority of people, and Intel has the largest share of the graphics market because of their integrated video controllers, so it is a significant factor. For the low-end market, the integrated memory controller creates some problems for AMD.
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Posted by: ta152h
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Date: 09/14/05 07:37:47 PM]
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