Now that I got your attention, wait a few seconds with the flamethrower. The major complain from the Intel fans about the PIV review is it's possible future performance, especially when SSE2 is implemented and scaling capabilities. But this, and most other hardware review sites are *not* directed against investors interested in the potential impact on stock prices, but on current buyers.
When, if ever, has there been profitable to buy hardware in order to perform tomorrow, not today? *When* SSE2 becomes a standard, *if* it performs better than the processors it's competing with at that time, it *will* be availible in higher speeds at lower costs.
So unless you have specific software that *is* SSE2 optimized (or will be in the *immidiate* future) with a proven advantage over Athlons FPU, i.e. you're not a SGI developer or similar (no pun intended), you're just the average Joe/Jones in the fast lane running normal home/business apps, I don't see any reason to buy it TODAY.
That is the key issue here. The PIV may be the processor of tomorrow, but not of today. Many technologies exists that never took over and became the standard, but was surpassed, was only an intermediate step, or never reached more than niche use, most because current technology with huge momentum developed faster. I remember predictions of IDE/EIDE dying and SCSI taking over. MCA was supposed to replace ISA. I'm not saying that is the case with PIV, but the hyperpipelined core of PIV is new. At best it's likely that there is lots to gain in later versions of it, at worst it's a big misstep and most apps won't be optimized for it. In either case, buying it now is a mistake.
If it scales well, PIV may very well be the processor Intel needs to hold the CPU throne. But today, I see only big risks, both price and performancewise, and little gain with buying one now compared to buying an AMD now, and a P4 later, should it ever prove worthy (assuming you have the cash to spend on a P4 system today, and you'd be replacing them fast anyway, why else would you buy *the* fastest machine at a premium?). And without decent current sales, we'll just see how much money Intel can afford to lose waiting for the PIV to perform to the limit of it's capabilities...
Kjell Rune
When, if ever, has there been profitable to buy hardware in order to perform tomorrow, not today? *When* SSE2 becomes a standard, *if* it performs better than the processors it's competing with at that time, it *will* be availible in higher speeds at lower costs.
So unless you have specific software that *is* SSE2 optimized (or will be in the *immidiate* future) with a proven advantage over Athlons FPU, i.e. you're not a SGI developer or similar (no pun intended), you're just the average Joe/Jones in the fast lane running normal home/business apps, I don't see any reason to buy it TODAY.
That is the key issue here. The PIV may be the processor of tomorrow, but not of today. Many technologies exists that never took over and became the standard, but was surpassed, was only an intermediate step, or never reached more than niche use, most because current technology with huge momentum developed faster. I remember predictions of IDE/EIDE dying and SCSI taking over. MCA was supposed to replace ISA. I'm not saying that is the case with PIV, but the hyperpipelined core of PIV is new. At best it's likely that there is lots to gain in later versions of it, at worst it's a big misstep and most apps won't be optimized for it. In either case, buying it now is a mistake.
If it scales well, PIV may very well be the processor Intel needs to hold the CPU throne. But today, I see only big risks, both price and performancewise, and little gain with buying one now compared to buying an AMD now, and a P4 later, should it ever prove worthy (assuming you have the cash to spend on a P4 system today, and you'd be replacing them fast anyway, why else would you buy *the* fastest machine at a premium?). And without decent current sales, we'll just see how much money Intel can afford to lose waiting for the PIV to perform to the limit of it's capabilities...
Kjell Rune
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