NY Times review of Intel's P-4.
Slower Than Its Predecessor: Pentium 4
December 28, 2000
By DAVID POGUE
Remember the old song that
goes, "I love you, darling,
don't you know?/As sure as winter
brings the snow,/ As Windows
ne'er can be surpassed,/ And each
year's chips outpace the last?"
Neither do I. Besides, even if such
a song existed, each line would
need an overhaul to reflect
changing times. For starters, funny
things have been happening to both
global weather patterns and
Microsoft these days.
As for the last line, it's always been
true that whatever PC you buy now
will be made obsolete by next
year's faster models. But now the
unthinkable has happened: the Intel
Corporation has released a new
processor chip, the Pentium 4,
that's actually slower than the
Pentium III.
The Pentium chip, of course, is the
square silicon brain inside most
Windows- based computers. So
why is the Pentium 4 slower than
its predecessor? The simple answer
is that its assembly line for
processing commands is twice as
long. The full explanation requires slogging through a technical analysis that
will put you to sleep faster than a mug of warm Nytol. (An example of
chip talk from the Pentium 4 press release: "The Rapid Execution Engine
allows frequently used Arithmetic Logic Unit instructions to be executed at
double the core clock." Hey, thanks.)
As any exasperated computer-magazine editor can tell you, there's no
good, reliable, consistent way to measure the speed of a computer. Every
test gives different results, depending on the kind of software being tested
and the components of the PC.
So with very little resistance from Intel and computer stores, most
consumers wind up comparing computer horsepower by studying a single
statistic: clock speed. That's the number you see in computer
advertisements expressed in megahertz, which is computerese for miles
per hour.
Depending on how important computers are in your life, you're probably
either vaguely or obsessively aware of its clock speed. A year ago, 700 or
800 megahertz was considered extremely fast; earlier this year, 1 gigahertz
(that is, 1,000 megahertz) chips became available. You can imagine how
pleased Intel must be, therefore, to announce that Pentium 4 chips are
available in two unheard-of clock speeds: 1.4 and 1.5 gigahertz.
To the millions of people who believe that clock speed is a good
comparative gauge of a computer's speed, those Pentium 4 numbers may
induce shortness of breath, salivation and in extreme cases, an involuntary
movement of the hand toward the wallet.
But beware: You may be a victim of the Megahertz Myth. As it turns out,
megahertz ratings are valuable only when making speed comparisons
between chips in the same family: comparing a Pentium III with another
Pentium III, for example. They're meaningless when comparing different
chips. That's why, for example, a 500-megahertz Macintosh chip is much
faster than a 500-megahertz Pentium III. Getting excited about a chip just
because it runs at 1.5 gigahertz is a little like pouncing on a house just
because it's $50,000; first you'd better find out whether it's a Taj Mahal or
a tool shed.
In various studies performed by PC World magazine, IT Week magazine
and Web sites for techies like www.anandtech .com and
www.sharkeyextreme.com, the Pentium 4 makes it around the test track
of everyday computing tasks at a speed that's about 10 percent slower
than that of the 1- gigahertz Pentium III chips. And if you crave ultimate
speed, note that the first- place winner in almost every test isn't a Pentium
at all; it's the 1.2-gigahertz Athlon, a chip made by AMD, Intel's rival.
Yet a PC containing the slower Pentium 4 chip costs $500 to $700 more
than a PC containing a Pentium III or Athlon chip. To make matters
worse, the Pentium 4 requires a special kind of memory (Rambus memory,
or RDRAM), which costs about $250 more per 128 megabytes than
standard memory. (Intel plans to remedy that drawback with a new
Pentium 4 model in late 2001 that won't need special memory.)
Intel has spent five years creating this slower, hotter, much more
expensive chip (and eliminating the Roman numeral from its name). What
on earth was the company thinking? Surely the Pentium 4 isn't simply a
cynical play on consumers' belief that more megahertz is always better.
Intel maintains that it's not trying to mislead the masses. Instead, it says, it's
marketing to specific groups of multimedia maniacs, like hard-core game
players and people who encode MP3 and video files. "If you're looking for
a machine to do what you're doing today, then a Pentium III machine will
do a wonderful job at a lower price," said Howard High, an Intel
spokesman. "But if you're more involved in graphics, video compression,
3-D games and so on, then the P4 may not be a bad choice." But even
here, the Pentium 4 beats Pentium III and Athlon chips in only one speed
test: playing Quake III.
Clearly, the Pentium 4 is all about the future. For example, the chip can
understand 144 new audiovisual software instructions — in fact, it can
process several of them in a single gulp.
Unfortunately, that powerful acceleration technique will lie untapped until
Windows programs are rewritten to take advantage of it. When that day
comes, the Pentium 4's speed advantage may well become a marvel to
behold. Intel says it has already extracted promises from at least 80
software companies to rewrite their programs for that kind of Pentium 4
acceleration.
Intel also points out that the Pentium 4's new design has plenty of room for
expansion. A 2-gigahertz model is on the drawing boards for late 2001.
For now, however, the Pentium 4 is a prime example of that rarely heard
adage, "More is less." But that hasn't stopped major PC makers from
offering the chip in new computers. For example, the Dell Dimension 8100
and the Gateway Performance 1500 start at about $1,800 for
stripped-down models (if a 60-gigabyte hard drive, 128 megabytes of
memory and a Pentium 4 chip can be said to be stripped down). With a
monitor, fancy speaker system, DVD player and other goodies, the dream-
system prices can exceed $3,000.
Dell and Gateway lent me machines in the highest price brackets for
review. These machines were truly droolworthy, born to run the kinds of
programs that require raw, dripping horsepower. Both PC's met my speed
challenges — morphing photos in Adobe Photoshop, transcribing real-time
speech with L&H VoiceXpress — without even breathing hard. Both
machines also come with the companies' superbly redesigned keyboards,
which offer specialized Internet buttons and the best key touch ever.
The only thing wrong with these Pentium 4 machines is the Pentium 4
inside; by ordering a 1-gigahertz Pentium III chip in its place, you save
several hundred dollars and gain some speed.
In a year, the Pentium 4 may well be the chip to beat. (Intel expects the
Pentium III chip to be phased out completely sometime in 2002.) But for
the moment, you'd be foolish to pay for it. Remember the final verse of
that old song: "In time, my love, all things shall fade: /The kings, and all that
they surveyed, /The cities, reaching to the sky,/ But marketing shall never
die." |
