Conclusion
Intel have released the 2.4B and the 2.53B, the 'B' means that they are running
at 133FSB. As we have already talked about, the new P4s (after today)
will all be 133 Bus CPUs. Intel have not made any changes to the Northwood CPUs
to make the Bs except for making them run at 133 Bus. If Intel had decided to
push for the 1066 Ram support you would have had the highest possible bandwidth
on both CPU and on memory support.
Intel are pushing ahead of the top AMD units now with these 133 bus CPUs. Intel are
clearly the clock speed leaders running at a huge 2.53GHz. Intel also have
the highest performance CPU on the market. But the Athlon XP CPU is still a good
performer.
But with all of our testing we did with PC800 memory on an 850E motherboard - we
kept to Intel specification for the testing. To get the highest performance from
your P4 you will need to use the 850/Rambus option. There is no way that the
superior bandwidth which is offered by Rambus can be beaten by a P4 DDR
chipset on the market today. But the P4 needs Dual channel DDR, and we all know
it - but the question is who will bring it to the market first. VIA? Intel? SiS?
We have recently taken a look at the 845E this is a strong platform with good
performance but 850E is still a higher performer than the 845E. Intel are
planning to release a lot of new chipsets in the up and coming months it will be
interesting to see how it all pans out.
AMD need to get the .13 micron CPUs out soon - we have been told that they are
around a month away - but they are going to have to release CPUs in the XP2500
range to be able to beat the Intel lead - but AMD do not ramp the CPU clock
speeds as quickly as Intel do - so it may take something like the Hammer to beat
the P4 at this rate, but this is totally dependant on what Intel decide to do.
The P4 is rumoured to hit 3Ghz before the end of the year - if this happens then
AMD will have a route to follow - but they want to be in front.
But we are talking about performance here, we are not talking about
cost/performance ratio - the AMD Athlon XP2100 is around £180 on the UK market
the 2.53Ghz P4 is going to be over £500 and 2X the price. The AMD CPU
platform is a much better option for the cost / performance criteria. So AMD
have a good price on the CPU level but they are no longer top dog - what can
they do ? Well They need to get the TBred on to the market, it needs to be a
good performer. Until then - this is the fastest CPU on the market.
