Make an AMV. Buy a Powerbook.

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 11:30 am

the Black Monarch wrote:
alternatefutures wrote: Athlon 64 later this year and Intel releases Prescott early next year.
This "Athlon 64" that you speak of... don't you mean the Opteron?

Prescott is just the P4, only with a smaller die size.

Athlon 64 != Opteron

Opteron is the server chip codenamed "Sledgehammer" and Athlon 64 is the client side (i.e. desktop computers) codenamed "Clawhammer." Oh and I'm fairly confident in this being that I work there and specifically work in the Chip department.

As for Prescott, yeah, it's a die-shrink to the 90 nm process.

alternatefutures · Post by **alternatefutures** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 4:17 pm

Prescott != 90nm P4

Amoung the improvements:

L1 cache from 8K to 16K
L2 cache from 512K to 1M
13 new instructions (PNI)
Advanced Hyperthreading (Doubling the integer register file from 128 words to 256, it could possibly support up to four threads)
LaGrande security technology (which may be more of a bad thing than good)
"better pre-fetching"

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 5:01 pm

alternatefutures wrote:Prescott != 90nm P4

Amoung the improvements:

L1 cache from 8K to 16K
L2 cache from 512K to 1M
13 new instructions (PNI)
Advanced Hyperthreading (Doubling the integer register file from 128 words to 256, it could possibly support up to four threads)
LaGrande security technology (which may be more of a bad thing than good)
"better pre-fetching"

Well it IS a 90 nm P4...WITH improvements. I didn't feel like posting them since I work for the enemy. I mean it is still being called a P4 and it is a die-shrink yes? Then, Prescott = P4

I mean P4's ever since their introduction have had improvements (just as AMD's athlon has), but it's still a P4 yes?

alternatefutures · Post by **alternatefutures** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 5:23 pm

Ehhh... it's not really clear if it's going to be called a P4. Judging from the rehtoric coming from Intel spokesmen, you'd half expect it to be called a Pentium 5 (which I find amusing, actually). The P4 has actually had a long run for the Pentium family.

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 5:38 pm

alternatefutures wrote:Ehhh... it's not really clear if it's going to be called a P4. Judging from the rehtoric coming from Intel spokesmen, you'd half expect it to be called a Pentium 5 (which I find amusing, actually). The P4 has actually had a long run for the Pentium family.

Yeah I heard the same thing about them finally ++1 to the Pentium line, but then heard it got shot down and it'd remain P4.

A good argument though would be that Prescott is still architecturally a P4. There are no real changes to the pipeline that would warrant the "P5" name. P3 -> P4 had significant changes architecturally like going from 12 (or was it 13) pipeline stages to 20+.

In conclusion, I think they'll stick with P4 since Prescott is just another tweak of the P4 core and not a big architectural change (which I hear is in the works).

the Black Monarch · Post by **the Black Monarch** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 5:52 pm

That's never stopped Intel. The Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Celeron all used the same architecture (again, with "improvements")

A full megabyte of L2 cache? Yum-MAY!

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Mon Jun 09, 2003 9:07 pm

the Black Monarch wrote:That's never stopped Intel. The Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, and Celeron all used the same architecture (again, with "improvements")

A full megabyte of L2 cache? Yum-MAY!

Uhm, again you'd be VERY mistaken.

The Pentium II and Pentium III have big changes in the architecture in the pipeline stages themselves, the super-scalarness (ha a new word) and memory. You're very mistaken on this one and this is coming from a Computer Architect.

The Celeron of course is still just a modified P4/P3 and IMO sucks ass. Just another way Intel has duped consumers into buying crap, but then again this is coming from an AMD Computer Engineer.

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Tue Jun 10, 2003 6:58 am

The celeron was not crap

Atleast everything after the 300A. Because it was basically 128KB fullspeed ondie cache, vs. 512KB half speed offdie cache. Celerons overclocked better as well. 300A was known for going up to 500 - 550Mhz.

Those were the glory days.

The Duron is a knock-off of the Celeron silly

. Same concept. Had the same core, just neutered cache. Duron 600 ^_^ sweet processor. Overclocked mine to 950Mhz. It POST'd at 1Ghz but then failed on boot

klinky · Post by **klinky** » Tue Jun 10, 2003 7:00 am

I should mention the Duron was a knock off the Celeron in that it had the same core as the Athlon but half the cache.

dwchang · Post by **dwchang** » Tue Jun 10, 2003 2:59 pm

klinky wrote:The celeron was not crap Atleast everything after the 300A. Because it was basically 128KB fullspeed ondie cache, vs. 512KB half speed offdie cache. Celerons overclocked better as well. 300A was known for going up to 500 - 550Mhz. Those were the glory days.

The Duron is a knock-off of the Celeron silly . Same concept. Had the same core, just neutered cache. Duron 600 ^_^ sweet processor. Overclocked mine to 950Mhz. It POST'd at 1Ghz but then failed on boot

Well to a degree I agree since the Celeron/Duron architectures are fundamentally just knock-offs of their respective companies, but at the same time...they're "crap" to me when compared to the "real thing." Given...they get the job done and are supposed to be the "value" segment and they...well...do fulfill that. So I guess it's "crap" if you want pure performance, but if you want cheap processors that work...they are a sucess...