Comparing Pentium 3's to Pentium 4's?

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited July 2006 in Hardware
This might be old news now, but I was just thinking about when P3's were the top end, then the P4's came out, and after that P4's weren't sounding so great anymore and AMD Athlon CPU's were getting better and better.

So the question here is:

Would it be accurate to say that Intel made the Pentium 3 the best they could and went all out to give the customer the best CPU they could, then with the Pentium 4 Intel started holding back and dropping off and the P4 was capable of more than Intel would let it have?

I've seen several Pentium 3 computers in the 700-800 Mhz range, and they run pretty darn good on XP Home, even compared to new 2+ Ghz P4 systems.

Comments

  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    The Pentium III was meant to be intels long haul processor, as the Pentium 4 wasn't planned. Then along came the Athlon XP, and Intel had to develop a new processor to compete with the Athlon XP, thus the P4 was born, imho, it never was that great of a processor. Sure, it wasn't bad, but it was kind of rushed into and slapped together in my opinion, which is why it ran hot, consumed a lot of power, and had to have high clock frequencies to perform. In other words, it wan an inefficient processor, which Intel is finally getting back on the right track with their 'core' processor line.
  • tmh88tmh88 Pittsburgh / Athens, OH
    edited July 2006
    They held onto the p4 for a while. And the pentium D kinda just randomly appeared and left. Which was out first, the x2's or D's? i honestly dont remember
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    airbornflght wrote:
    The Pentium III was meant to be intels long haul processor, as the Pentium 4 wasn't planned. Then along came the Athlon XP, and Intel had to develop a new processor to compete with the Athlon XP, thus the P4 was born, imho, it never was that great of a processor. Sure, it wasn't bad, but it was kind of rushed into and slapped together in my opinion, which is why it ran hot, consumed a lot of power, and had to have high clock frequencies to perform. In other words, it wan an inefficient processor, which Intel is finally getting back on the right track with their 'core' processor line.

    Wrong. The Pentium 4 was in the works before the original Slot A Athlon, circa the Katmai PIIIs but Intel was in no rush to develop the P4 as they had no competition.

    PIII Katmai
    Athlon Classic
    PIII Coppermine
    Athlon Thunderbird
    Athlon XP and Wiliamette
    More Athlon XP cores
    Northwood
    Hammer
    Prescott
    More A64 Cores
    Conroe

    Is the timeline.

    The p4 is no more capable than a cripled squirrel is spry.
  • macdude425macdude425 Mr. Roger's Neighborhood
    edited July 2006
    tmh88 wrote:
    They held onto the p4 for a while. And the pentium D kinda just randomly appeared and left. Which was out first, the x2's or D's? i honestly dont remember
    IIRC, the D's, by ONE day. I remember this because of an Intel fanboy making a big deal about it and how great Intel was for doing this...
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    The Intel fanboys can definitely get excited about Conroe. They are even better than Intel's propaganda had wanted us to believe. Finally, Intel's first great CPU in over three years. The Pentium D's...well, that's another story. I should know, I've got a stable of them, purchased through fire sales (pun intended) on eBay.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    You forgot the Pentium III Tualatins. Those processors are still awesome, they overclock like mad and my 1.4GHz P3's outrun my 1.8GHz Northwood. I had a pair in my MSI Pro266TD pegged at 1.7GHz for awhile but backed it off due to thermal issues. Finding decent socket-mount heatsinks for 370 is a pain.

    The Tualatin core came out just as the first Williamettes were hitting the market. Intel overpriced the Tualatins and did a pretty good job keeping the rather embarrassing performance figures for the early P4s secret so not many were sold. Most of the ones that were came under the Tualatin-S moniker and only functioned in server boards. Even the desktop processors wouldn't work in older Coppermine boards because Intel decided to shift some pins around. It's sad really, they made this great processor and then nerfed it.

    Until Banias came out it was the crown jewel for the P6 architecture. I'm glad Intel finally ditched Netburst. Next time I'm building a PC I'll actually have a choice in processors and with competition AMD will stay honest on prices.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • miragemirage
    edited July 2006
    Netburst was a totally new architectural design with the intention to scale upto 10GHz. But due to underestimated power leakage problems it could not even reach 4GHz. Fortunately, the old Pentium III architecture was also being enhanced for the mobile platforms under the Pentium-M brand name by transferring some technology from Netburst. When Netburst was finally proven to be a hopeless track for technology development, Core architecture came out with the addition of all the lessons learned from Pentium-4 and Pentium-M developments. Intel seems to be finally on the right track after 5-6 years of struggling. Now it is AMD's turn to catch up and I hope they can do this very soon.

    I still have a 1.33GHz Tualatin running as a file server and I still feel suprised how responsive it is when I am on the console. It is using a 150W power supply and doing its job perfectly cool and silent. I am writing this post using my Pentium-M desktop which has a 180W power supply again cool and silent. On the contrary, I recently saw a 1KW power supply on Newegg. The coolers are another ridiculous story, each of them turned into an industrial size cooling tower. I hope this power madness can slow down a little bit with the Core architecture. It is now time for the GPU manufacturers to optimize their products for power consumption.

    We have a cluster room in the university, where I am administering and maintaining one of the Linux clusters. I feel the "power madness" most intensely when I am there: the heat coming out of the computers and deafening noise of all those fans and airconditioners. I am excited about the Core architecture but there is still a long way to go for reducing the power consumption.

    Enough rant, later ....
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    Intel seems to be finally on the right track after 5-6 years of struggling
    The struggle came about only because of Intel's stupidity. And what exactly was that stupidity? It was listening to the marketing people over the engineers. Intel has legions of highly competent, if not brilliant engineers. Sure, those engineers thought Netburst had potential, but even early R&D was showing the leakage problem. There were many within the brains component of Intel who saw AMD's approach to efficiency, lower clock cycles but more processing per cycle, and wanted to take that approach. The marketing guys won, thinking that the mass market sheep would forever only look at the megaherz rating on the computer box to make purchasing decisions. It worked for a while. Two groups though, took notice of the ever increasing P4 power demands and excessive heat output - the enthusiasts and the professionals. Businesses with hundreds or thousands of computers couldn't shrug off the increasing electricity demands for their energy hungry computers and the increased air conditioning needs. Enthusiasts just got fed up. AMD hacked out huge market share gains. Intel bet that the old model of ever higher CPU frequencies would maintain their market share. Not only did the hoped for speed ramps fail to materialize, but what advances they did make where hot and energy hungry. That's when the struggle began. Intel had to play catch up with innovation, what they had ceded to AMD for two or three years. And they DID catch up.
    I am excited about the Core architecture but there is still a long way to go for reducing the power consumption.
    The Conroes achieve 40% higher performance than the previous generation Intel chips at 40% less energy consumption. I call that amazing. I expect AMD to continue increasing performance also without increasing power demands. But I agree with you. It would be good to see energy requirements drop even further.
  • miragemirage
    edited July 2006
    Leonardo wrote:
    It was listening to the marketing people over the engineers. Intel has legions of highly competent, if not brilliant engineers.

    I agree with you there. Well, guess who is the CEO now and laying off whom at Intel. Many of the competent technical staff should be feeling so much pissed off. And, that is not a good thing for the future of a company.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    It was my understanding that the CEO's intent was to let go 1000 management positions, positions that were perceived to be stifling innovation and delaying progress.
  • miragemirage
    edited July 2006
    Job cuts are deeper than that and 1000 management positions are a small portion of it. Most of the eliminated management positions are going to be first level management positions as I read in the news. I think that is a good move in the right direction which will supposedly enable a more dynamic business environment without deep management levels, although I feel bad about the ones losing their jobs.
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