Intel's chip breaks the headline barrier

By MICHAEL FOREMAN

When chip manufacturer Intel launched two Pentium 4 processors running at 1.9 and 2 gigahertz (GHz) last week, it knew the faster version would grab the headlines.

Handouts given to journalists were full of phrases that were designed to ring nicely with the Pentium 4's new top speed, like "the latest milestone in the PC's 20 year history" or "two digital decades: 2GHz".

Intel is also clearly expecting computer users will be willing to pay a hefty premium for a 2GHz speed, as this version will cost manufacturers $US562 ($1285) in 1000-unit quantities, while the 1.9GHz chip costs $US375.

In other words PC manufacturers must pass on or absorb an extra $US187 just to wring out that final 100MHz of speed.

By comparison, $US103 will buy manufacturers the latest 1.1GHz version of its low-cost Celeron chip, while the 1GHz and 950MHz types cost $US89 and $US74, respectively.

Colin Brown, managing director of local computer assembler The PC Company, remains to be convinced that his customers will be prepared to pay for the cachet of 2GHz.

Mr Brown was anxious to point out that his company offers PCs with either Intel or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processors, but as it operates a build-to-order model, it is the customer who chooses.

Though he believed Intel had now "come into the sweet spot", the 2GHz processor which first featured in The PC Company's advertisements over the weekend, it has yet to make much of an impression.

"So far the response has still been strongly in AMD's favour. I expect we will sell some PCs with 2GHz, but not many until the price comes down. Historically the top processor doesn't draw too much demand."

However, Mr Brown said the 2.2GHz Pentium 4 was not too far away.

When this appeared the 2GHz price would drop.

Mr Brown said the low-cost Celerons would be included in the company's catalogue once they became available: "However we doubt the success of them because at the higher end we feel most people will go for Pentium 4s."

According to John Robinson, Australia New Zealand country manager at Intel's rival AMD, clock speed no longer gives a true indication of performance.

"It's like saying a car with an engine that runs at 10,000 rpm is going to go faster than one with a 5000 rpm engine. You can't say that - one could be a four-cylinder engine while the other one's a V8."

Mr Robinson asserts that AMD's processors are the equivalent of the "V8", as they include extra features that improve performance at lower clock speeds.

In the AMD Athlon these include three floating-point units, which speed up calculations, memory caches and improved "pipelining", and other features which speed up the amount of work the processor does on each clock cycle.

"These are quite important features," says Mr Robinson.

Asking chip manufacturers to provide benchmarks is a bit like asking a politician to interpret an opinion poll, but AMD says its 1.4GHz Athlon processor is able to outperform Intel's 1.7GHz Pentium 4 on a variety of real-world applications and tests.

For example, the Business Winstone 2001 benchmark runs on the Athlon 1.4GHz 13 per cent faster than on the 1.7GHz Pentium 4, and the game Half-life, for example, may run 28 per cent faster on the Athlon, while Quake III Arena is about 1 per cent slower.

Mr Robinson says many independent benchmark-related websites show the Athlon is able to beat the 2GHz Pentium 4 as well.

"Admittedly, you will find a few where the 2GHz P4 wins but you won't find many."

On its website, AMD even suggests the Pentium 4 is the first chip to take a backward step in the work performed per cycle, and one company spokesman has been reported as accusing Intel of "devaluing the meaning of the megahertz."

But Colin Purkis, Intel New Zealand channel account manager, says AMD may be using out-of-date benchmarks.

"You need to take a look at modern benchmarks to measure modern processors," he says, pointing out that the 2GHz Pentium 4 has achieved the world's highest desktop processor score according to the SPEC CPU 2000 benchmark.

"Benchmarks are a problem because it's very easy to tweak them. I'm not suggesting this has been done, but it's very easy to do."

According to Intel, the Pentium 4 is 30,000 per cent faster than the Intel 8088 processor which powered the IBM PC 20 years ago, but the time may have come when the only way of comparing that performance with other chips is to run an application and watch how fast it goes.

Links


Pentium 4 performance

AMD - understanding processor performance