Member Avatar for Catweazle

Intel have announced that plans to offer a 4GHz Pentium 4 processor have been scrapped. Future development for Intel desktop processors will move toward the PentiumM processor technology, which runs at much lower clockspeeds and uses less power consumption.

This move leaves Intel in a position where they will not be competitive with AMD in the desktop market for quite some time to come.

These two articles from the Inquirer provide a quite comprehensive outline of the situation:

http://theinquirer.net/?article=19105

http://theinquirer.net/?article=19110

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correctly flags the key point: Intel abandoned the raw- GHz race and signalled a shift to Pentium M–style designs. That was not just marketing — it was an architectural decision. NetBurst (Pentium 4) was built around a very long, clock‑focused pipeline that drove up voltage, heat and power consumption faster than it improved real application throughput. Pentium M (P6‑derived) traded peak clock for higher instructions‑per‑clock, better branch handling and much lower power draw, so a lower‑clocked Pentium M could often match or beat a higher‑clocked P4 in real workloads.

Why that matters here: chasing 4+ GHz ran into practical thermal and efficiency limits. AMD’s Athlon 64 family (including the FX‑53) had strong desktop showing because of a different design tradeoff — good IPC, an integrated memory controller and solid single‑thread performance — so ’s enthusiasm for AMD makes sense in the short term. ’s reaction captures the surprise many felt when clock speed stopped being the simple way to judge winners.

Practical, platform‑level guidance for late‑2004 decisions: for raw desktop/gaming benchmarks favor a well‑specced Athlon 64 system with a mature chipset and low memory latency; for laptops, small form‑factor builds, or systems where heat and power matter the Pentium M path offered better performance‑per‑watt. Use real application tests (game frame rates, compile times, multimedia transcodes) and monitor temperatures/power draw instead of relying on synthetic GHz numbers. Also weigh platform features (memory type, expansion, SATA support and driver maturity) — they often decide real‑world experience more than peak clock speed.

This thread marks a clear turning point: architecture and efficiency, not raw GHz, became the decisive factors going forward.

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Member Avatar for rcrevolution

So AMD is the kill of the hill, and the AMD 64 FX-53 is the best CPU to date! :twisted:

*chant* "ALL bow to AMD"

Member Avatar for Young Teck 06

Hmmmmmmmm, thats a real kick in the ass(ets)

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