Why exactly does everyone bash the P4?

[AoD]

I was just wondering because, it's not a bad processor thinking that it is a predecessor to a 64-bit chip soon to come. Which I have seen and used the P4 1.5ghz and those things fly. Not that I have the money to fork out for one but if I did, I would probably snack one up for myself. I have yet to see a good benchmark from anywhere. I want to see the Tbirdette vs the P4 in an almost identical situation, stock clocks, then to thier max overclocks. Anyone ever seen these? Maybe both with a Geforce 2 ultra Ddr 64mb or something. It seems like all the places I have seen with benchmarks always cut down the P4 system for "cost". I mean, I want some real competition benchmarks, not price cut cards and crap components. I want to see the truth, not the price.

[phantom punisher]

i think all the stink is because its misleading when were all used to rating chips by there mhz and then these come alonge with 1500 and 1200 and dont improve on our p3 at much slower clocks. ive read up on them and theyre awsome just not as awsome as we all hoped. im forgeting your post now but i think some of the most powerful chips right now are the tbirds even though they run slower(clock) than p4. sounds like the best idea is to hold off tell the next big thing as far as buying set ups goes.

[Phil]

they are a terrible chip, I have seen many benchmarks that put them behind a 1ghz athlon, and haven't seen thgem beat something like a 1.2ghz tbird ddr system, intel cut enough things off it to make it perform badly but not enough to make it affordable, it's only saving grace will be sse2 which should let it perform similar to a tbird of about the same clock speed but without these optimisations it is a terrible chip, the only thing it seems to do better than the tbird is multimedia encoding such as mp3's or mpeg4 video etc.. but even then the price is too high to compete with an amd chip

[dimmreaper]

Willy is awesome in SSE2 applications
Willy blows in non-SSE2 applications

There are three major things stopping me from going for Willy:
Good RDRAM is still a little too expensive.
Willy is a bit too expensive
Northwood will be replacing the willy in a few months, leaving Willy boards without an upgrade.

Right now is a horrible time to buy a new machine! The only thing you should buy is a good KT133A MoBo and a high-end T-bird if you feel you have to buy right now. Else wait till Palamino/Morgan and CAS2 PC266 memory become widely available, or wait till a Northwoody DDR solution is available, or wait till K8 next January.

[[OC]_SR20DE]

hi Jeff..

Sorry, I haven't done much reading on what will be happening betw. Intel and AMD chips. Does any1 know if there's any hope for P4/Willy will be competing with the next gen (K-8)? I know that the AMD is making better chips right now and seem very bright for the future.. However, I also have a feeling that P4 has its potential in the near future.. I'm talkikng future's multimedia, software, gaming , etc is where P4 may perform so well. P4 is still very immature and just-born-like thing. There can be some good support for the P4 and do some wiping out in the future ya think??..

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

In my own bench testing..my PIII at 1.1g outperforms the P4 in cpu and multimedia benchmarks...and I think it's bacause of the floating point..(math coprocessor). my P3 blows the p4 out of the water in drystone, and whetstone marks...and the only thing my P3 falls behind is in the memory bench....and this is compared to a 1.5g p4...my P3 currently runs at 1101mhz, but even at 1087, it still walks over the p4.
In all fairness, I am not sure that Sandra is optomised for the P4....but if it is acurate, then the P4 is a dog
but I also think they will iron out these difficulties in their .13micron ver, due to come out in q2, or q3 of this year, and should be even better clockers, given intel's track record. I have not seen a p4 in operation, but I'm sure it will be a force to be reconed with in the near future...besides intel has come up with a transistor the size of dna...so within five years or so you might see a cpu with 400million transistors, and maybe as much as 4mb cache on die.
The P4 is a terrible choice now, but in the future just might be the only one to have.

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

here's what I'm talking about...btw, I was wrong about the whetstone.

[Phil]

you should see the list of features that intel cut to get it out on time and shrink the die size, there is no way other than taking it to silly speeds that this will ever be a good chip, it may perform well but nothing like as well as a chip running at around 1.3ghz-1.6ghz should do and considering the price then I really hope this chip fails and teaches the marketing department at intel a lesson, not to try and do the engineers jobs, the original spec list for this chip was really good, as much a step over the p6 core as the athlon was over the k6 core it's just a shame what got released

[OpenFriday]

I agree with Phil's 1st post. Not to bash the P4 or anything but when a 1.5ghz cpu can be compared to a 700 oc'ed to 1.1 it seems a little iffy to me. Ive also seen many reviews of the P4 compared to the 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 tbird. The tbird in most cases won a considerable amount of the tests considering 300mhz less and it costs a ton less. Not to bash the P4 but it just seems when comparing it to a tbird the choice, for me at least, is a no brainer.

[Sohryu Asuka Langley]

how fast can you all do FlakMPEG? my friends 1.3Ghz with SSE2 FlaskMPEG is about 5 times faster then me ans he still burns CDS (8x) and surfes teh net at the same time ... 30Gb 75GXP is teh HD BTW.

yup yup... SSE2 native rocks.

doesnt mean im fast as a P4 :)
[img="http://iow.free.fr/sandrammx874.gif"]

[AoD]

What I was saying was that many people bash the hell out of the P4. I have three friends with P4's and all three of them are more than satisfied. And I can almost garuntee you, each and every one of them would say, "If I had to choose which processor to buy, I would still choose the P4". I can understand all the benchmarks but to me really, benchmarks mean crap. Benchmarks won't mean you will dish out enough frames for me in Need for speed 5 now will it? :)

[DaveB]

Why, OK here's a few.

1. First there are the AMD fans who, for reasons known only to themselves, hate everything Intel. Dunno what say about them, they remind me of the Mac fans back in the late '80's. The seem to think they are part of a holy war against Intel. Or maybe it's like a Star Wars thing. I don't get it.

2. They're too expensive.

3. There aren't any applications that can really exploit the SSE2 instructions.

4. The current 850 chipset only supports RDRAM, and everybody hates RAMBUS! The Brookdale chipset supporting SDRAM will be out later this year.

[Kerman]

P4 will only come in to its own when it hits the 2Ghz or more area!!!

[Phil]

the p4 won't be any better when it runs at 2ghz as 1.5ghz tbirds will still out perform it, it is true that it encodes multimedia stuff faster which is mostly down to the incredible memory throughput which also costs an arm and a leg for the rdram that is usually slower at most other things due to the higher latencys, but it is not as good as a tbird for price/performance and when dual tbirds come out with cl2 ddr sdram I've no doubt they will kick a p4 system costing the same price's arse

[William]

the p4 is a good chip for the average person. But for overclocking people who build their own systems, the p4 is too slow for the hefty price to justify buying. For the p4 and mobo and rdram, i could easily get an athlon 1.2, mobo, a good amount of quality ram, and an excellent heatsink and fan and maybe even more and get better performance. Why would I want a p4 in that case?

[Phil]

I don't think the question should be "why do people bash it" it should be "why do people defend it", the reason I bash it is because intel is a huge, gready company that has had a monopoly for so long and for the first time has some real competition fro amd, but instead of going back to the drawing board they rush out an unfinished, sub-standard chip at a huge price that the only thing it has going for it is that it can run at high clock speeds, though these speeds don;t reflect it's performance. I want to know what intel has done to earn to loyalty of the people that defend this chip, as I said earlier I hope the chip is a complete failure as it will teach intel a lesson, lets just hope that all this success doesn't go to amd's head so they think they can churn out what ever crap they want.

[AoD]

Well call me strange but, isn't the use of the P4 for newer technologies in the making? I mean they are bringing out what looks to be it's big brother here sometime soon. It's not like AMD hasn't screwed up like that, I mean look at the K6-2's, I know a friend with a K6-2 500 and my Old Katmai 450 at stock clock burns the hell out of it on ever bench that I have seen. Not to sound "different" but, I like the P4 systems and, I would love to have one (Especially seeing that post ont eh front page where that insane Japanese guy hit 2.8ghz rofl). But anyways, it's a good processor stuck on the x86 platform which, the x86 platform is kind of.. well.. Old and needs replacing. I belive myself that it's only a begining of new things to come, it may not be the best but point be proven over and over, it's definetly selling well.

[The Faceless Rebel]

The P4 sucks why?

1. The FPU on P4 is weak sauce. It is crap.

2. No applications will use SSE2 for quite some time. Non SSE2 apps will use the FPU unit, which as I mentioned is weak sauce.

3. The P4 uses RAMBUS. Now someone please explain to me again why I have to pay 2-4 times as much for memory which is only about as fast as PC-133 SDRAM? Eh? (Yes I know the P4 shotguns 2 RAMBUSes, but that only makes it even more hideously expensive.)

4. RAMBUS is overrated. PC600 RAMBUS is *exactly* as fast as PC-133 SDRAM. PC800 RAMBUS is only marginally faster. OCing an SDRAM PC to 150FSB will actually make its memory FASTER than PC800 RAMBUS.

5. P4 doesn't have nearly enough cache. It has a wonderful new cache architecture which is then starved by its smallness.

6. P4 is ALREADY OBSOLETE. Just like the Pentium Pro was when it first came out. Intel is moving from the present Socket-432 to the new Socket-438 as early as summer. All new P4 will be for Socket-438. Socket-432 users will be orphaned, and F***ed in the ass.

IF YOU BUY PENTIUM 4 NOW, YOU WILL SURELY DIE.

[Sohryu Asuka Langley]

yup yup im waiting for the sdram qdr boards to come out with willy :)

then i upgrade.

[AoD]

I don't see how you get that PC600 RDram is "as fast" as SDRam at 133mhz.. or even close. Saying that is like saying DDR is slower than SDRam. Anyways, the P4 is still in it's first stages, just as that T-Bird was with the K7 athlons a good while back. And a P4 has 256k L2 just like the P3's. I'm starting to think AMD is some sort of "trend" or something. Yeah P3's might be faster than P4's and AMD's T-bird might be faster than the P3 but who cares? The K7 athlons at 1ghz back in the days of old were marginally slower than P3's at 700mhz. I have seen that for a fact. Noone really "bashed" the K7's then. Oh well, I guess noone see's my point of view in this.

[William]

actually, i believe the rdram vs sdram issue is due to the fact that initial calls(i can't thing of the word, sorry) to rambus are much much slower than sdram chips. After that RDRAM's monster bus takes over. But this is really only useful in really high end stuff. Other than that, SDRAM could average out to be faster. The p4 is a weak cpu, Intel severely crippled it to get it out. SSE2 would make it much better, but nothing has it. The Athlon is as fast or faster(still some debate, most lean athlon, but i have seen otherwise) and the athlon is much cheaper. The p4 is just a bad choice for the money, especially for the money. If you are buying a name brand system and all they sell is intel, the p4 is not horridly expensive and is the fastest you could get, so why not get it, especially if you are not home building. I don't advocate the p4 being a great chip, but it certainly was not great leap like the p2 was in computing, not even as big as the p3. It is just a miniscule improvement.

[Nagorak]

The P4 is a bad chip, plain and simple. The argument that's it's fine for most people is total crap. Let's face it, most people WOULD NEVER KNOW if they were running a 300 MHz Celeron instead of an Athlon 1.2 GHz or P4 1.5 GHz. They honestly would never know! Therefore any argument about what would be fine for "average people" is voided. Also, I'm sure most people would appreciate spending less than $500 on a processor, so excuse me if I fail to see how the P4 is so great for them.

Bottomline, the only people who can fairly judge the P4 are people who know something about computers. The P4 has gotten buried on every single tech site on the net. I don't know a single one that said that the P4 is a good chip. And, no surprise there because it ISN'T a good chip. It's total crap. Other than encoding video, it can't do anything else well. So if you rip a lot of DVDs, then maybe the P4 is your thing. Then again, you can buy a lot of DVDs for the price of the P4 and get better quality video, 5.1 sound and special features too.

The only thing "good" about the P4 is that it can be ramped to higher clock speeds. Only problem, it is slower at higher clock speeds than a P3 or Athlon! It needs SSE2 optimizations to run decently. Well, excuse me but isn't that an example of a BAD design? Besides once AMD releases a chip supporting SSE2 instructions, we're going to be straight back to square one with the P4 getting massacred. Bottomline: WHAT USE IS THE P4, AT ALL?!!

Let's have an analogy, shall we: Ford designs a new car engine. It runs at twice as many RPMs, but in fact doesn't accelerate as fast as a conventional engine and actually tops out a slower speed. Does Ford 1) pull an Intel and sell it anywhere, ignoring the obvious uselessness of their new engine or 2) go back to the drawing board. I'll bet you 1 million dollars that they would go with #2!

It seems only in the processor market can a company create a totally bad product and not only get away with it but have apologists out there defending them.

Now I'm going to be called an "Intel hater" by some, but all I can say is get your head out of the clouds. The P4 sucks, plain and simple. It will continue to suck next year too.

[AoD]

Well first, don't get me started about cars or engines or I would make a post that would take a LONG time to read. Anyways, was the P4 specially built for you? Like I said before, it's stuck on an x86 platform which evidently sucks. The processor is still in it's first stages, it has time to grow. I have seen DVD's played on a P4 and it's quite amazing with the abilities in multimedia applications that it has. It's a new technology. People said the same exact thing about Windows NT when it first hit. "It's slow" "It's crap" "IT SUCKS!". Look at where NT is now? Can you see what I am saying or is something else clouding that fact? The P3 was not as good in it's first steps as well. Katmai's weren't all that better than the P2's of the time. Coppermines were the "new" thing which made the P3 what it is today. And as for knowing a Celeron 300mhz to an Athlon 1.2 or P4 1.5. I would have to consider that statement totally null. Yes I said it is null. The "average" user is what makes the business go. There are 10x maybe even 100x more "average" users than there are "power" users. You think AMD or Intel could give a damn about "power" users? Well if you do, you are wrong. Business looks to be where money is, the Average user is where the money is. Such as the OEM markets. Intel and AMD makes so much more from OEM's than independent resellers. Anyone who doesn't know that is either incredibly stupid or incredibly egotistical to thier "kind". The P4 is the next step into a bigger technology. Ask yourself, in four years, where will T-birds and P3's be? Probably nowhere when there are 64-bit platforms running at 3ghz+. Servers that make the ASCI White look like a 486sx 25mhz. Systems that are smaller and more powerful. If you don't know yet, Microsoft has in thier press release something about "Win64" which Intel and Microsoft are working together on. The first age of 64-bit platforms.

Now this is my opinion in the P4's current technology. The P4 was placed simply to compete in the OEM market with AMD. Who cares if they lose X amount of money, they still are making one hell of a lot of cash. The current P4 is probably just a 32-bit x86 platform processor, a "temporary" competitor processor for now. You must remember the x86 platform has been around forever and quite frankly, it needs replaced. Anyone who knows "jack" about computers should see that. Intel seems to be doing exactly that. As some of you may have seen, Intel has released a "new" version not to long ago called the "Foster". The Foster was on a four CPU SMP platform with 4gb of Ram. If I can find the url again, I will post about it. Anyways this is the "Xeon" of the new age though not 64-bit. They didn't show any benchmarks of this system but it looks very neat in my opinion.

Ok anyways, enough ranting. All I am saying is to more or less wait. The P4 is new and isn't fully developed. So what if the 32-bit P4 "SUCKS!" so bad. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Just look ahead and see what's to come. To many people want everything quick and they want it now. Remember, waiting usually wields better results.

[Shadow ÒÓ]

AoD (Apr 04, 2001 04:05 a.m.):
What I was saying was that many people bash the hell out of the P4. I have three friends with P4's and all three of them are more than satisfied. And I can almost garuntee you, each and every one of them would say, "If I had to choose which processor to buy, I would still choose the P4". I can understand all the benchmarks but to me really, benchmarks mean crap. Benchmarks won't mean you will dish out enough frames for me in Need for speed 5 now will it? :)

aaight.....here's an answer......MONEY. A lot of the post here are comparing AMD to the Willie, but lets compare PIII to it. Now your friends have paid about a grand for the processor.....ALONE. Then they can buy the system which probably ran them a minimum of $2,500.

Now lets compare. I can buy a PIII for about $220 plus the accessories......lets say $1,200. Now lets compare our systems.

The Willie "may" win a few benchmarks against my overclocked PIII gig, but you asked about preformance too. Can we see the difference? nah....almost none IF you see any. And I saved about 1/2 the price. The P4 was rushed into market.....it's suffering some loss as it doesn't have all the code a PIII does. I'm a huge Intel fan but I refuse to buy a P4 until those issues are worked out and a REAL chip is released by Intel and called a P4.

[AoD]

Well, the P4 is in its very first form. It might not be what everyone expected but it does the job for people who bought them. It's a known fact that clock speed is what gets an "average" user to buy a selected system. An "average" user would take a Celeron 667 over a P3 600mhz anyday because it has that 67mhz higher clock number. Also known as "bragging rights". Most "power users" know that the P3 would most likely thrash that celeron any day. But the "average" user couldn't have a clue what they are missing. That is the point in my opinion. They may be wrong but hey, they are "my" opinions. Not someone elses.

Let's make an example. Say this guy. He has say around four thousand dollars saved up for a computer, but he can't home build a system because he doesn't know the first thing about doing so. Now this guy goes to a local computer store and see's two computers. Without others opinions or "knowing" how systems perform he has to make a choice. Now there is a brand new P4 1.5ghz machine sitting there shining with that big 1.5ghz sign. Then over on the other side there is a T-bid 1.2Ghz. Not to sound too sceptical but that 1.5ghz sign is going to catch his eye more. He would probably be thinking something along the lines of this, "Hmm I could really brag about 1.5Ghz, and people might already have them so the 1.2Ghz would be as 'cool' as the 1.5ghz". Then our subject would see the price tags. Now say this P4 system is twenty-five hundred dollars and the T-Bird system is only around seventeen hundred. Our subject would be saying to himself, "Well I have four thousand so I could get the 1.5Ghz with the bragging rights and a few cool games and software titles or I could go with the 1.2 and get more software and less bragging rights." Most likely he is going to choose the 1.5Ghz. That is where money doesn't have as much of an effect, but if he only had two thousand, he would probably have to go with the 1.2Ghz T-Bird.

Do you see the point I am getting at here?

-AoD

[Phil]

I still don't get why all these people defend intel, it is obvious they have made a bad expensive chip, the car analagy was good, except maybe it should have been more to do with removing features to bring the cost down the effectively make the new features a waste of time, as for blaming the x86 platform for it's shortcomings, it doesn't seem to have stopped the athlon chips peforming well, if sse2 instructions and a rambus memory bus the it would out perform the p4 in the one thing it does well (video encoding) and still be miles ahead in everything else

[dude]

The only thing that got me mad about all this was quote about Ford. Ford is one of worst car manufactures on the market. They put unreliable pos parts in cars that cannot evern compare in quality to foreign car(Japan). I talk from experince in dealing with Ford.
Yes, Ford would pick option #1 because there are those peolpe out there that believe buy american no matter what, and would buy that car with that crappy motor just because ford said it was a good car.
Sorry I just really hate ford.

[William]

AoD, granted the p4 is in the first stage, but Intel is now continually releasing CPUs with probs. They had the prob with the 1.13 ghz pIIIs and then there was the fpu on the pentium. Intel should be doing better. They have much greater resources than AMD. That should only happen to AMD, not Intel. The crippling of the p4 to get it out was just Intel showing a sign of weakness. They should have waited.

Your price point is correct, consumers will buy that P4 to have the fastest out there, but they are wrong. That 1.2 is faster. We are not saying Intel is going out of business, far from it. But they did release a crippled, overly priced chip. Maybe they have taken too much heat from it, but, they really should have done better. Hopefully they will remedy themselves. I still tip the scale to AMD, even in stability.

[William]

let me clarify. PIIIs are more stable overall, and thus a better solution in the OEM industry. What i meant with my stability comment that the scale tips to AMD even with the stability factored in. They are not as unstable as Shadow would have you believe.

[Danny]

We bash it because AMD can do the same thing with half the transistor, half the price, and with less MHz.

It's also a perfect example of Intel's former mindset when it didn't have any compatition, they intended to charge an arm and a leg for this thing.

[Shadow ÒÓ]

dunno260 (Apr 06, 2001 10:46 p.m.):
let me clarify. PIIIs are more stable overall, and thus a better solution in the OEM industry. What i meant with my stability comment that the scale tips to AMD even with the stability factored in. They are not as unstable as Shadow would have you believe.

maybe I came across wrong. What I meant was the AMD would crash 3 times a day where the P III would only crash 2 times. (not a specific #.....just a comparison)

I truely believe the AMD is a dynamite chip....ALMOST as good as the Intel. And if you are not guarding critical information, I'd highly recommend it. If you are running a critical server like the one here at OC.com......you need the chip that is "slightly" better.

[AoD]

I see my point is still being garbled. I'll say it as clear as I can. The Pentium 4 release has been looked upon as a mistake by many, I see it as a begining. You(the reader) may not, but that's your opinion. I do blame the x86 platform for being outdated. The architecture of the x86 is old an all the AMD chips do is make it twice as fast with twice the pipelines through the bus. It needs replaced in my opinion, and I would imagine that is Intels idea. What's to become of the P4, noone knows but the makers of the next generations of these chips. I'm not disagreeing that the AMD chips can be faster but is that really my point? No, it's not what I am getting at. Things always change for the better, such as EDO going to SDRam, what an improvement that was. These are the first P4's in the lines of a newer system yet designed for an old system of things. We haven't seen the 64-bit platforms or do we know anything about them. Yes the instruction sets are a key factor and the FPU is another one but do we know what is to come within those witha 64-bit platform? The P4 is new, that is my point. Do new things always suck? No, not always but AMD "sucked" in the beginning now they are in one of the largest races in the computer industry. The race to provide the fastest chip in the shortest time. So what they released a "crap" chip to some peoples standards but the clock speed that means almost jack is what is making the thing even sell. It's a chip that Intel didn't even have to release on the 32-bit architecture, but they did for the common place "average" user to buy. They are making money on it just like every chip is basically designed to do.

All I am saying is that the Pentium 4 hasn't made it's name in the market yet. Wait until it comes out in full force on the 64-bit designs. Then you will see what it was designed for.

Oh and one thing I do dislike about the Pentium 4. Those stupid blue guys, sheesh where did they come from? :D

-AoD

[Shadow ÒÓ]

hey AoD, I totally agree. Look at my sig as well as my posts and you'll see I'm a complete nut about Intel. However you gotta see both sides. None of us here are average users. If we were we wouldn't be here. The Intel P4 is only for the average user so some shmuck can say "I have a P 4 1.5". In truth it's not a compliment to Intel....it's a money maker for braggin' rights. Yea you own a 1.5, but I can smoke you with my 933 and not even over clock it! That guy will argue with me till the day he dies no matter what benchmarks I show. He's gotta protect his investment to the best of his ability, and unfortunately his "best ability" is ignorance.

The P4 is a failure....no one is arguing that.....but you're right too that it's A) the first step and B) too keep up with the market. I whole heartedly believe the next generation of the P4 will be a profound improvement in the P4 current. But I won't say the current is a stepping stone......rather a stall. Give the people what it takes to keep us on top....and give em better quality when we have some time.

[AoD]

Well I don't dispute the fact that it isn't everything some looked to it to be, though it is a new design. It's new, I say give it time to go through it's first steps then let's see how she does on a totally redesigned platform. Then we might see some new things come of the Pentium 4 and the Itanium processor lines. :)

[DocClock aka MadClocker]

Ok, if I read it correctly, the P4 is a totaly new architecture...not x86...but IA-32, which decodes x86 instructions to IA-32, and then processes it, which would account for the delay...but with the way M$ wants to implement OS's in the future, many will not even see IA-32 software...because of M$'s stupid policies...and to realise the full potential of the chip, you might have to go with Linux, or IBM OS, or BE...The full benefits won't be realised till a fully implemented IA-32 os comes out, and you can bet you will pay thru the nose for it.
I think M$ is biting off their own nose with the XP debaucle, and only time will tell.
I still have to say that the P4 is not a good choice today....tomorrow is another day

[Nagorak]

This is totally ridiculous!

First of all let me address the person who had a problem with my analogy. I just pulled the name out of my hat, it's nothing special. I wasn't trying to make a point about Ford at all!

Secondly, you guys are defending the P4 for vague reasons like "it's the next step". Well, that's great, but there was nothing stopping Intel from making that NEXT STEP when they were completely ready to do it. The P4 is just trash, and that's why people trash it all the time.

Someone said something about the P4 not being made personally for me or some nonsense? Who the hell IS the P4 made for? People who compress a lot of video. Geez, that's your everyday user isn't it?

Furthermore, how can the P4 be good for "average users" when they cost over $500 each? I'm glad those people you know are happy with their P4s because they sure spent enough money on them and frankly, regardless of what they think about it, they got ripped off. Don't worry though, just make sure to tell them not to ever run any benchmarks on their machines and they'll be JUST fine. Of course, they'd be doing just as well with $300+ in their pockets and a PIII 1 GHz or an AMD 1.2 GHz.

I'm sorry if I'm coming across rudely, but there's just no logic in anything you are saying to defend the chip. It doesn't really matter if two years down the line Intel produces something actually decent based on a few of the technologies in the P4 core. The fact of the matter is, as the P4 core stands right now it is a BAD chip. And because it is bad, it is criticised.

What is so hard to understand about this fact? What do you think everyone that dislikes the P4 has some secret vendetta against Intel, or something?

Also the stability of AMD CPUs is clearly equal to that of Intel CPUs. If there is any difference in stability between the two platforms it rests squarely upon the shoulders of the VIA motherboards which run AMD chips.

Also, you talk about Intel Haters earlier in your posts, but I think that it's clear that there are no Intel Haters involved in this thread. Instead we have Intel worshippers. Let's face it, if AMD had produced the P4 you guys would be burying and saying how "Intel is the only game in town." But because Intel made the P4 suddenly you are jumping up to defend it.

Geez, I don't even know why I wasted time getting involved in this pointless thread.

[high_lander]

AoD,

I think that most folks bash the P4 so badly is because they are disappointed.

In the early days of O/Cing, Intel was the only game in town. The glorious days of the C300A @ 450, on an ABIT BH6, are gone. When the Athlon came out, people flocked to the cause of AMD. I even defected for a while and had a 650 on a FIC SD11. Then I heard of the incredible gains of the PIII 700E. I went out and got a CUSL2, some Mushkin Rev2 & Rev3, and went to work. I slowly upgraded the fan and other components. As of now I am awaiting a Leufkens Peliter kit.

I thought about a P4 for a minute or two and read the same things you did. Most of the sites were comparing the P4 against a TBird and so on, trashing the P4 and everything Intel. I like Intel. I like the products they make. Do they price high? Yeah, unfortunatly they do.

I don't think the products that AMD makes are bad. I like AMD, too. However, for MY uses, Intel is fine. If AMD works for you FINE! But please stop the trashing of us Intel folks PLEASE? Very few sites out there say "Hey look! If you like Intel chips, check this out" If I want to OC a Willy just show me how to do it with the best tools available. I don't need the OC guide and at the end have some little commentary about how Intel sucks against the TBird.

Personally, I am tired of these sites being so one-sided. I used to go to Tom's all the time. Why doesn't he just call it "Tom's AMD site and Intel trashing guide"? That's all the guy does. I don't go there any more. Simple as that.

I am excited to live in theses times. Computing is at it's height. It has yet to reach it's zenith. I hope the new versions of the Willy are gonna crank. I really do. I am waitng on Willy to go .13 and Brookdale. I hope Rambus pulls thier heads out of thier asses. Lower the price, and let the games begin.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope I have made my point.

[AoD]

Tom's definetly is biased, has always been. Most sites these days are price biased and doing reports on the competition with rather cheap standards. I don't like how most "AMD Followers" are trashing the Pentium 4. It is new, and the first press releases from intel back when the P4 was a "whet dream" (Sorry I had to), they said that they were never going to release the P4 on the x86 platforms. But they changed thier mine, so what it sucks to you. If it sucks so bad though, why is it one of the top selling processors in the OEM market? Heck, one of the greatest OEM's, Alienware, still leads thier systems with the P4 processors. If it sucks so bad, why that then?

[[OC]_SR20DE]

From Aod's one before his last post, as "Shadow" agreed with what "Aod" has been trying to make his point about P4, Yes........I agree too. I know "exactly" what you are talking about and Agree with your point also, Aod :) Yep yep yep... that is what I was refering to even at my first reply in this thread.
As Aod has said, P4 is indeed in its very first form or era. As what Aod also said and I say, "GIVE IT SOME TIME!!! DAMN IT" yes yes... Intel rushed it,.. but this can have some serious wiping AMD in the future simply because the software to be used in the near future will be applied for the next gen of P4.


To: Nagorak

You quoted, "Someone said something about the P4 not being made personally for me or some nonsense? Who the hell IS the P4 made for? People who compress a lot of video. Geez, that's your everyday user isn't it?

Furthermore, how can the P4 be good for "average users" when they cost over $500 each? I'm glad those people you know are happy with their P4s because they sure spent enough money on them and frankly, regardless of what they think about it, they got ripped off. Don't worry though, just make sure to tell them not to ever run any benchmarks on their machines and they'll be JUST fine. Of course, they'd be doing just as well with $300+ in their pockets and a PIII 1 GHz or an AMD 1.2 GHz."

-->> I think you lost Aod's point. When Aod said about P4 is used for the "average users", he meant it's for those "dumb users or those who think higher mhz is better" those who dont overclock, those who don't know about the full concept computer hardware, Not the f*ing money part. Those who buy P4 spending more money is their business, not you.


You quoted, " Also the stability of AMD CPUs is clearly equal to that of Intel CPUs. If there is any difference in stability between the two platforms it rests squarely upon the shoulders of the VIA motherboards which run AMD chips."

-->> That has been discussed before but I'll say it again,.. it is clear that AMD chips simply consume more power, and burn up much more fuel , resulting very high CPU temperature. In other words, it's not energy efficient.
If both P3 and T-bird was to run at default speed for example, if the HSF department goes wrong on any of those two processors, you know which one you'll smell something from? guess. T-birds and Durons will burn immediately. I have seen P3 survive even without the HSF for couple of booting windows. Now what you gonna say to that?


You quoted, "Geez, I don't even know why I wasted time getting involved in this pointless thread.

-->> I know you're quite loyal to AMD. Why don't you then stay over at AMD section?... what wonders me is that you shouldn't have even stepped in this thread discussion about Intel in the first place. :)

[Phil]

I still don't get people who "like intel" intel is just a company who makes chips, the are gready, monopolistic and don't have consumer interests at heart, the same goes for amd (though not quite as much as they aren't as big as intel) and every other pc component manufacturer. Every so often they do get something right, the celeron for example, the mendicino core celeron is the best chip intel has ever made, it performed as well as the full priced p2 when overclocked to the same speed and was really cheap, could be run in smp and basically went way beyond it's budget chip target, this wasn't intels intention but an accident, they intended on crippling the chip by reducing the L2 cache and disabling smp, but by putting the reduced cache on the core it made up for it's lack of size, and they didn't do a very good job of disabling smp, this meant that your average person buying it got what they bought, a budget chip running at slower speeds that the expensive chip but only because of the slower mhz value, but when in the hands of more advanced users was a great chip, unfortunately becasue of intels greed, not wanting a small minority of users to get something they consider to be getting for free they really went to town on the celemine, completely disabling smp, making the L2 cache not only smaller but less efficient than it's bigger brother, and not making it as good a value, the 800mhz celeron costs about the same as a 700mhz p3 which will out perform it by about 15-20% just because it has a higher number,
this is one of the reasons why I won't tolerate the p4, it is a terrible chip which ever way you look at it, blaming the x86 architechture is wrong, it is becasue the intel engineers have no idea about the marketing side of things and went nuts designing a really good chip which took up too much die space and would have cost a fortune, and also because the marketing department has no idea about chip desing and though to themselfs how can we make this chip cheaper with no regards as too how it would affect performance, the only new technology the p4 has brought to consumer chips is sse2 which is just an advancement rather than a real revolutionary thing, things such as L3 cache and a trace cache that is of any use rather than the pitiful 8k which makes it slower than the normal instruction cache on a p3 would have made it a real advancement in chip design but instead it's just a fancy number that people that know nothing about computers will buy just to brag about having, the only reason I can think for any one defending it is a lack of understanding of it's deficiencies, or multimedia encoders with more money than sense.