(05-12-2013, 12:40 PM)omega_rugal Wrote: Sorry to bump but as i was reading this thread i found this...I never said that. I said that Intel has never produced a cpu that was slower than its predecessor.
Quote:3. Even if it didn't, historically Intel has never produced a cpu
series that was slower than its predecessor (despite the pentium 4
haters who would have you believe otherwise).
So you think P4 Williamette was a GOOD processor in someway?
The main reason that people didn't like Willamette was because it was:
1. Outrageously expensive
2. Improved performance very little over its predecessor compared to previous leaps (pentium to pentium II, pentium II to pentium III, etc.). Little did they know that this new slower improvement curve of 10-20% per year in singlethreaded performance would continue for the next 10 years with northwood and conroe being the only exceptions.
3. Intel's Willamette chipsets only supported rdram. Which was also outrageously expensive.
4. Its performance improvements over its predecessor were inconsistent. It ranged anywhere from -15% to +70% depending on the application despite the 50% increase in clock rate. And people weren't used to that concept at the time. On average I would say most applications were around 20-25% faster than on coppermine.
5. The motherboards were also expensive and choices for chipsets and manufacturers were more limited than the other platforms.
6. It requires more cooling and requires good case ventilation to prevent throttling from overheating. A concept that people weren't used to at the time.
7. It was harder to OC.
8. Due to its small increase in performance and large increase in cost and power consumption it offered less performance per watt and performance per dollar than coppermine or thunderbird/palomino.
9. The internet acts as a sort of "drama amplifier". Especially for hardware and software products. Products that are slightly below average become widely known as "the worst piece of shit ever invented" and products that are slightly above average become widely known as "the greatest thing since sliced bread".
10. Power consumption was higher than coppermine or thunderbird/palomino.
Reason number 8 is a good summary reason. Notice that nowhere in there did I mention it being slower than coppermine, in the vast majority of applications it wasn't. Reason number 4 elaborates on this.
And yes it was good "in a way". It was faster on average than any other x86 cpu at the time. I think if they had marketed it as an enthusiast product rather than a mainstream product it might have done better. The concept that this thing would replace the pentium III completely really scared people.
Also I should point out that while I believe that I have done sufficient research to draw these conclusions I wasn't interested in microprocessors at that time since I would have been around 10 years old. So obviously none of these conclusions were reached from first hand experience.
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-Ron Swanson
"I shall be a good politician, even if it kills me. Or if it kills anyone else for that matter. "
-Mark Antony