Comment Articles

Prescott's performance dictated by cash, not cache

Rupert Goodwins ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 03 Feb 2004 13:55 GMT

The standard excuse for new architectures going slower is that the new ideas have more headroom -- wait for a bit, and you'll find Prescott going places that Northwood could never reach. Yet you can't abandon your old chips -- and if you cut their prices to reflect their near-obsolescence, what was the point of bringing out new chips with better margins? So, sweep out the old, bring in the new, and ride out the wave of complaints that things ain't what they used to be. It worked when the early Pentium 4s replaced the late Pentium IIIs, despite the lack of performance increase: it'll work this time.

The trouble with making a change that is no change is that it leaves many questions unanswered. Will the new Pentium Ms work so much better in the near future -- especially where power consumption is concerned -- that the Prescott P4s will look poor alternatives? Will pressure from AMD's 64-bit enhanced chips mean that a later revision of the Prescott will include similar features -- and if so, why buy in now? There is no way that Intel's public roadmaps can reflect these considerations: this is a company that was vigorously denying the existence of the Extreme Edition Pentium -- a server chip wearing a spacesuit and toting a blaster ray -- in the face of direct questioning an hour before it was launched. We cannot expect too much help in decoding the runes, but the answer will lie not so much in the technology involved as the old journalistic adage: follow the money.