Tony,
I wouldn't say that, and optimizations are coming for the P4.
Let's not forget that the market penetration of SSE-2 is zero. MMX was a big yawn, 3DNow and SSE got a little more support, but it is still slow in coming despite much wider market penetration.
The applications where P4 stinks the most are mostly integer based, running under Windows, which is also strictly integer based, so no optimizations will help here, only a substantially higher clock speeds.
I wonder how much of the "head room" has already been used up, and how much is left. I believe P4 was supposed to debut at 1.1 GHz, then at 1.2 and 1.3 GHz. The current 1.4 and 1.5 GHz speeds may already be using up most of this "headroom". Especially since the next processor introduction for P4 will not be 1.7 GHz but 1.3 GHz.
Just to show you how desperately P4 needs the clock speed, take a look at the graphs in this French review:
hardware.fr
In clock for clock, P4 gets absolutely slaughtered by both P3 and Athlon. If AMD can maintain clock speed parity, Intel is in big trouble. P4 needs 30% clock speed advantage to keep up with Athlon in performance.
Intel should forget this lame marketing campaign of Net Burst, Rapid this and that, SSE2, which does nothing for performance. The marketing should be:
1.5 GHz, 1.5 GHz, 1.5 GHz
Joe |
