Intel Readies Earlier Rollout of 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4

Reuters | July 22, 2002

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Intel Corp. is moving up the introduction of its Pentium 4 processor running at 3.0 gigahertz, an industry source said on Monday, as the world's largest chipmaker looks to tap the benefits of efficiencies in its chip manufacturing.

Santa Clara, California-based Intel, the world's No. 1 chip maker, now plans to have the processor to PC makers in time for the year-end holiday shopping season, the source said.

Intel had planned to introduce the 3.0 gigahertz Pentium 4 processor, the brains of a personal computer, by the end of the year. In additional, Intel also is accelerating the introduction of its Pentium 4 running at 2.80 gigahertz, bringing that product rollout to the third quarter, compared with a prior introduction date in the fourth quarter.

When Intel introduces new chips, it typically drops prices on the Pentium and Celeron processors it already has on the market. The accelerated introductions also put Intel farther ahead of its rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., in terms of the clock speed of its processors.

By the of the current, third quarter, Intel will be selling a Pentium 4 chip running at 2.8 gigahertz, compared with 1.8 gigahertz for AMD, with its Athlon processors.

[HAL9000]

Fire extinguisher not included.

[goldstategop]

Is there really that much of a speed difference in real computing time between a 3.0 Ghz Pentium IV and my current 903 Mhz Pentium III?? Gotta wonder why Intel even bothers.

[Benrand]

3000>>930

[aruanan]

3000>>930

Yes, but if performance is set to 1 for the 930Mhz, it doesn't follow that the performance of the 3000Mhz is ~3.23. In fact, it isn't. The question was how much faster (meaning the computing speed, not the clock speed) the 3000Mhz is than the 930Mhz.

[monkeyshine]

Well it's a good thing I just bought a 1.6 Ghz laptop just a few week ago. Just in time for them to lower the prices again.

[goldstategop]

I meant the actual computing speed in launching and operating Windows and basic software. In other words do we really get more for the extra processor speed on the latest Pentium IV chip?

[monkeyshine]

These machines really are getting to be fast enough. Seriously. I mean, some people will need more speed... graphics, sound, video, etc... but for the average person I think we're reaching the limits of what we could possibly want. I have an AMD 1.4 on this desktop, and it loads MSWORD/Excel/Explorer/Eudora in about a second each. I really won't notice the difference if it takes 1/2 a second each on a 2.8.

But at work, where I have a 350 Pentium 2, I really notice the difference. Also, using windows XP at home is much quicker than 98 at the office (obviously).

[Centurion2000]

Criminy ... and here I sit running a P-166 wondering what the big fuss is :)

[bandlength]

right. in a word, no. the price does not justify the so-called improvement in speed.

[Benrand]

But the number is larger...it goes to "elevun".

It would be good if the hard drive it's attached to could move data quicker.

[fortress]

Hey watch it.
From someone who lives in Intel country, men must go higher, farther and especially faster.
All kidding aside they are just finishing up a 2 Billion Dollar Fab facility here in town and I am sure they want to crank it up big time.
I hope their crystal ball is acurate about the future.

[dighton]

I meant the actual computing speed in launching and operating Windows and basic software. In other words do we really get more for the extra processor speed on the latest Pentium IV chip?

"What Grove giveth, Gates taketh away."

[monkeyshine]

Yeah, I got a good deal on SIMMs for that hunk of junk. It's just that I actually am beginning to hate using it. Some days I never turn it on, and just do some manual labor all day and save the computer work for home.

To make matters worse, it's on an old Novel Network that's slow as molassas.

[SamAdams76]

The speed of processors has long ago reached the point of diminishing returns, at least so far as the average user goes. In the room I'm in right now, I have a 1.7Ghz machine, a 733Mhz system and a 400Mhz system that the kids use. All three computers run Microsoft Office, surf the web and play games just the same. I don't notice much difference between them. What differences there are, it is due to better graphics memory, more RAM or more hard drive space.

[crypt2k]

I have some ray-tracing programs that would benefit from running this processor.

[Fabozz]

"Is there really that much of a speed difference in real computing time between a 3.0 Ghz Pentium IV and my current 903 Mhz Pentium III?"

On a workstation, unless you're running something like Mathematica or 3D Studio, the answer is "no." On a server, the answer is "bigtime."

Consider this: Most big-time server software (Oracle, SQL Server, WebSphere, stuff like that) is licensed per CPU. Last year I put together a high-end web site for a worldwide game publisher, with system software that cost $40,000 per CPU. Their expected traffic required three dual-CPU machines, each running what were then best-of-breed 1GHz chips, so that was a cool $240,000 in software costs. Had 3.0GHz chips been available, I could have specced two single-processor boxes, saving $160,000 and change. Plenty of opportunity there for Intel. ;-)

[goldstategop]

Yup. I think that's partly because they all use a 32 bit instruction pipeline. Now unless the new 3.0 Ghz Pentium IV processor chip uses a completely new instruction pipeline to take advantage of the increased speed, you're right its a complete waste of dollars as far as the average computer user is concerned.

[Bogey78O]

P4's are made to throttle back if over-heated. I saw the tests results. An AMD if not seated in a compatible MB would blow up in less than a second while the P4 would throttle back to maintain integrity.