Intel bribing THG? Is it possible?

Page 10 - Seeking answers? Join the Tom's Hardware community: where nearly two million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
>And you're so sure no company ever planned it, that WinXP
>64 isn't there, or how about just WinXP?

Please rephrase, I am not sure what you are trying to tell me. However, I don't see the relevance in the fact that WinXP64 isnt here yet today, it will be with us within roughly 6 months. If you buy the fastest cpu now, do you plan on replacing it and its motherboard again in 6 months ??

>I can't help but wonder if MS didn't think about that at
>some point.

They did, thats why they made sure the NT kernel was 64 bit clean almost a decade ago, and thats the reason of the release of windows for IA64 and AMD64.

>Many users use WinXP with big amounts of RAM for certain
>purposes.

*Sigh*.. you just don't get it, do you ? or are you just trolling ? No matter what 32 bit OS & CPU you can come up with, they are ALL limited to 2-2.5 GB address space per process. By definition. That address space includes both physical RAM and virtual memory.

PAE is not a susbtitute, its an ugly and slow as hell workaround that allows you to have multiple processes each having 2-2.5 GB of address space. On a 32 bit cpu, one process is <b>ALWAYS</b> limited to 32 bit pointers, a big part of which are used by the OS, hence you get roughly 2 gigs of address space. Sure you can buy large x86 SMP systems with dozens of gigs of RAM, but those are utterly useless if you are not giong to run dozens of apps or even multiple simultaneous OS's or OS instances on that machine.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
 
You've still not convinced me 2GB is something I gotta consider next year.

--
<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/album.html" target="_new"><font color=blue><b>This just in, over 56 no-lifers have their pics up on THGC's Photo Album! </b></font color=blue></A> :lol:
 
I've given up trying to convice you. But that's okay, it won't stop applications from continuing to grow in memory footprint like they have over the last 2 decades (roughly doubling every 12-18 months), and you will hit the 2 GB wall soon enough, regardless if you don't have the money to buy more than a gig of RAM (at a whopping $130). The concept of paging and virtual memory seems to be beyond you, so I can't help it if next year your $925 P4EE will refuse to run Unreal Editor or load your one hour video in your favourite DVD authoring software because it can't allocate enough memory. Don't expect me to feel sorry when you find out a 2 or 4 Gigabyte RAM upgrade doesnt help squat either.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
 
You've still not convinced me 2GB is something I gotta consider next year.
I've got to back up Eden on this one. Most SOHO users consider themselves 'power' users just to have 512MB. And most SOHO users <i>aren't</i> 'power' users. (Heck, my wife's Celeron only has 256MB.)

Even my scientific company produces software that processes 4096x4096 32bpp frames (which is the absolute top-end of our product lines, most people use 512x512 and 1024x1024) and yet only ships 1GB in our systems.

Two gigs won't even be important for the vast majority of users for another two years still at least. It'll probably be three or four years before 2GB even becomes 'the standard' for desktops.

<pre><A HREF="http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030905" target="_new"><font color=black>People don't understand how hard being a dark god can be. - Hastur</font color=black></A></pre><p>
 
It'll probably be three or four years before 2GB even becomes 'the standard' for desktops.
I think your estimates are a little off myself. But this is admittably pure speculation on both of our parts. Myself I see 2GB becoming common in about 1 and 1/2 years maybe two. If this is the case then the time for 64 bit is now not then. This allows time for software engineers to write 64 bit apps before they are neccesary. Why do you think M$ is devoted to bringing a 64 bit OS to market? Do you really think AMD has enough pull to convince M$ to do so if M$ thought it was a waste?

All this being said, posters such as Eden seem to be stuck on the whole 64 bit argument as if this is the only the the A64 has to offer. What they fail to comprehend is even without 64 bit the A64 is a worthy processor in 32 bit mode.

Now lets rehash the argument we had going about large memory congfigurations in the 1-4 gig range without using ECC.


It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!
 
I see 2GB becoming STANDARD in 3 or 4 years. It will become common amongst enthusiasts much sooner, obviously. Let's face it, most low-end systems come with 256MB standard and medium to some high-end come with 512MB. Current top models usually offer 1GB, and not very many people buy computers that high-end.

So, right now, I'd consider either 256MB or 512MB the 'standard'. Which means in about a year or two, it'll probably be 512MB or 1GB.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>
 
XP barely runs on 256 meg. Each flavor of OS has roughly increased the amount of memory by roughly a factor of 2x. Low-end is just that low-end and not what I would consider "standard". Also bare in mind "Standard" and "common" are two different things. Processor speeds as well as Graphics cards have increased in speed much nearly a factor of 2x in a year. More and more users are getting into home audio/visual apps which can be quite memory intensive. I fail to see where a 4 GHZ computer running 512 Meg of RAM makes any sense what-so-ever.

It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!
 
I currently run 512MB, and am considering upgrading to 1GB soon. However, I don't NEED 1GB of RAM for what I do. Most home users don't even require 512MB and most do just fine with 256MB even with Windows XP. I prefer having 512MB myself, but I realize not everyone needs it.

As for a 4GHz running 512MB of RAM, why wouldn't that make sense? If you don't even fill 512MB worth of RAM, why would 1GB or 2GB make sense? To me, it makes no sense to have 1GB or more of RAM when you hardly tax 512MB worth.

<font color=red> If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it. </font color=red>
 
As for a 4GHz running 512MB of RAM, why wouldn't that make sense? If you don't even fill 512MB worth of RAM, why would 1GB or 2GB make sense? To me, it makes no sense to have 1GB or more of RAM when you hardly tax 512MB worth.
Conversly then you don't need a 4 GHZ processor then do you? You could probably do just fine with a p3 1 gig. Probably don't need a video card with 256 meg of RAM either. Need is relative. Point is, if you really need a processor that fast then you most likely need more than 256-512 meg of RAM.


It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!
 
>Two gigs won't even be important for the vast majority of
>users for another two years still at least. It'll probably
>be three or four years before 2GB even becomes 'the
>standard' for desktops.

What part of "virtual memory" isnt that you people don't understand ? I am not claiming 2+ GB of physical RAM will be the norm next year.. I am claiming the 2 GB / process limitation is beginning to hurt, now, and definately over the next years. Games are sometimes already using in excess of 1 GB off address space, as are 3D renderers, image editors, video authoring software, etc, even though they will still run on 256 MB machines, or even less. The rest is simply paged to disk, ie virtual memory.

You can run pretty much anything with a limited ammount of physical RAM when you have enough diskspace to page to, it will just be (much) slower, but you can't work around the 2 GB limit by adding memory, or increasing swap space.

I hope you all get the point now, even with just 512 MB Ram or even less, a 64 bit address space is usefull, and soon maybe even a requirement for certain apps/games/workloads. It doesnt take 4+ gigs to be beneficial.

Lastly, while several gigabytes of ram may not be a requirement anytime soon, it sure as hell would be nice to run a few gigs of RAM and forget how slow your harddisk really is. 1 Gig is only around $125 today, next year you could buy 2 or 3 gigs of ram for that ammount. You don't need 300 GB harddisks either, but you wouldnt want a cpu or motherboard that would limit you to a single 80 GB disk either, would you ?

>Even my scientific company produces software that processes
>4096x4096 32bpp frames (which is the absolute top-end of
>our product lines, most people use 512x512 and 1024x1024)
>and yet only ships 1GB in our systems.

Can't comment on something I don't know anything about, but it might be worth to check out taskmanager (or Linux equivalent) while the app is running on a big dataload. Don't be surprised if it is scratching the limits of what 32 bits can provide, regardless of the ammount of RAM.

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =
 
Socket 940 will be replaced in the second quarter of 2004 yet the socket the p4ee is on will be replaced in the same quarter as it is made availible!
<i>PapaSmurf</i>Thinking of adding that as my signature, w00t! New socket for Prescott doesn't come out until the 2nd version of the Prescott comes out, which should be roughly the same time AMD switches sockets.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
WOW!
Someone else sees the badly argumented side from Papasmurf!

--
<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/album.html" target="_new"><font color=blue><b>This just in, over 56 no-lifers have their pics up on THGC's Photo Album! </b></font color=blue></A> :lol:
 
All this being said, posters such as Eden seem to be stuck on the whole 64 bit argument as if this is the only the the A64 has to offer. What they fail to comprehend is even without 64 bit the A64 is a worthy processor in 32 bit mode.
"sigh", why do you judge and put words into my mouth?

Everywhere here I've agreed AMD64 is a good idea. I've ONLY and ONLY been opposed to people praising 64-bit NOW. The real deal with it is the extra registers. Perhaps Bbaeyens' recent explanation holds, but for now I'll stick to the majority of the performance boost coming from the 16 registers.

Now, I don't want to start an argument with you, but would you kindly retract that statement you labeled on me? If you think though you are right, then by all means, go dig up my posts and find where I am opposed to the 32-bit performance, and that AMD64 is all the Athlon 64 is.

--
<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/album.html" target="_new"><font color=blue><b>This just in, over 56 no-lifers have their pics up on THGC's Photo Album! </b></font color=blue></A> :lol:
 
You guys do realize the TOM didn't review, so TOM couldn't suck becuase I doubt he had anything to do with the benchmarks at all 😛 Only think he probably did was just use his name in a website that had review done by someone else! I think it unusal that I don't see Tom Pabst making reviews himself that much at all these days! I have feeling he got rich and isn't bothering about it anymore.

Also I would like to note that I believe there are some reviewers in THG that are more biased towards intel or AMD. Like the person who reviewed the throughbred 2800 xp, should that it beat 2.8 intel p4. But later on, someelse on a 2800 xp review showed p4 win out. It seems like people might have biases or could it be different ppl get different benchmarks? Who knows the real thruth anyhow? Don't think anyone can be 100% about anything 😛
 
Tom stopped writing since the arseholes kept sending him racist e-mails calling him a Nazi and stuff. He did a rant on that btw, long ago. It's truly annoying. Idiots flaming him.
So basically he decided, why contribute if people will flame you?
And he stopped writing. He only added recently a message in the GFX Radeon 9800XT article.

--
<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/album.html" target="_new"><font color=blue><b>This just in, over 56 no-lifers have their pics up on THGC's Photo Album! </b></font color=blue></A> :lol:
 
I say performance comes from the on-die mem controller. Programmers still havent sat down and recoded for the extra 8 registers.

As for the games chew up 1 gig [-peep-] in virtual memory big deal I watch my games from 3 years ago chew 1 gig up of virtual space. Just what windows feels it should use for a swap. But since I have chewed up 3 gig of virtual space while running the Morrow Wind Editor I really dont need to say more.

~Jeremy
Unofficial Intel and nVidia PR Spokesman.

:evil: <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq&notfound=1&code=1" target="_new">Busting Sh@t Up In My Buddies Face!!!</A> :evil:
 
Yeah likely. However if I am not mistaken, he said that to me directly via PM when he once posted in the GFX forum!

--
<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/album.html" target="_new"><font color=blue><b>This just in, over 56 no-lifers have their pics up on THGC's Photo Album! </b></font color=blue></A> :lol:
 
Yeah but they did test some apps using AMD64. Performance nearly doubled. I would NOT say it is because of 64-bit, but rather from the registers. It's what most sites who tested, said as well.

--
<A HREF="http://www.lochel.com/THGC/album.html" target="_new"><font color=blue><b>This just in, over 56 no-lifers have their pics up on THGC's Photo Album! </b></font color=blue></A> :lol:
 
Actually most of what he said was wrong:

1.) The 3.2EE at STOCK speed was the CPU Tom's declared the winner, based on the best benchmarks they could think of to represent what types of programs real users will run. His "overclocked" argument: Shot down.
2.) The P4 3.2EE is set at $700 introductory price, that's $33 LESS than the FX-51. His price argument: Shot down.
3.) The FX-51 processor is a standard Opteron, released as a desktop CPU just to save AMD's reputation. Because both processors are server processors, his "Emergency Edition" argument about Intel releasing a server processor just to compete: Shot down.
4.) Both platforms will change sockets next spring. I already mentioned that.

Basically anything he's argued against the review is invalid. Some of the other stuff was accurate, but those were points noone was arguing anyway.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
2.) The P4 3.2EE is set at $700 introductory price, that's $33 LESS than the FX-51. His price argument: Shot down.
Hold on a minute. That is the projected price in quantities of 1,000.00 Supplies will be tight if not non-existant. Look for retailers to sell much higher. ( seen a pre-order asking over $900.00 )

The FX-51 processor is a standard Opteron
Without SMP support. This argument makes the Athlon mp and XP the same also.

released as a desktop CPU just to save AMD's reputation.

Actually the A64 does real good against the the p4 3.2 non EE. It scales much much better and has approximatly 30 watts less of a power drain. ( A fact nobody has yet to address).


It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!
 
I just said both processors were server processors. The EE is a Xeon almost like the FX-51 is an Opteron. In fact the EE sits on the desktop CPU socket while the FX-51 sits on a server CPU socket.

So whatever his argument against the EE due to it's Xeon type enhancements is shot down by the fact that the FX-51 is an Opteron.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>
 
is p4 EE even out yet? I have been looking at pricewatch for awhile and no sign of it. New egg doesn't have it either. Seems like p4 EE 3.2 can't be bought right now. But wasn't supposed to have been realesed by intel BEFORE athlon 64 launch? (or maybe just annouced?) If it isnt out, which is it coming out anyhow?
 
As for the games chew up 1 gig [-peep-] in virtual memory big deal I watch my games from 3 years ago chew 1 gig up of virtual space. Just what windows feels it should use for a swap. But since I have chewed up 3 gig of virtual space while running the Morrow Wind Editor I really dont need to say more.
Carefull, your actually making BB and my argument for us. The 4 GB barrier applies to not only System Ram but System Ram + virtual memory. You say your using that already.

It's not what they tell you, its what they don't tell you!