Pentium 4: Boon or Bust?

Intel's long-awaited Pentium 4 is big, powerful, and ready for new worlds, but where will it take today's PC users?

Formerly known by the code name Willamette, the P4 has been Intel's Next Big Thing for years. When rival AMD leapfrogged Intel with its 1-GHz Athlon chip, some experts sniffed that Willamette would eclipse it. Intel itself released a 1-GHz PIII--impressive, reviewers said, but wait till you see Willamette.

PC World has tested the P4 and looked into its design, and it's clear that the CPU was made to fit Intel's vision of a computing future heavy with 3D graphics as well as audio and video streaming--a "Visual Internet," to use Intel's term. Unfortunately, for most of us that future seems quite distant and chimerical.

As our tests show, right now most users will be served every bit as well--if not better--by older PIII and Athlon PCs.

What's the Score?

In our tests, PCs with the new processor barely kept pace with the 1-GHz PIII units we used for comparison and even fell behind these older systems on some measures (see the test reports, linked above). Against a 1.2-GHz Athlon PC with DDR (for details, see December's Top of the News), the P4 fared worse.

All tested PCs had 256MB of RAM and ran Windows Me. All P4 and Athlon systems also had hard disks of 31GB or more and NVidia GeForce2-based graphics cards.

The 1.2-GHz Athlon system we tested, Micron's Millennia Max XP, scored 180 on our PC WorldBench 2000 suite of office-application tests and surpassed the top-performing P4, Gateway's Performance 1500, by about 10 percent. One of our 1-GHz PIII units, the Gateway Performance 1000, also beat all three P4 machines, though just by a nose. We doubled RAM to 256MB on an older 800-MHz PIII system we had previously tested and again obtained nearly the same results. Intel has stated that the P4 was not designed to speed up standard office applications, but we had expected to see some improvement in performance.

The P4 PCs began to pull even with Pentium III systems when performing media encoding, one touted strength of the new chip. But even on our tests with MusicMatch Jukebox and Windows Media Encoder (the software behind the Windows Media Player), which involve timing the conversion of audio files from one format to another, the 1.2-GHz Athlon bested the P4. The same pattern was evident on both the Adobe Photoshop test and the floating-point-intensive AutoCAD and Unreal Tournament tests.

In fact, the P4s excelled on only one test. When we used Windows Media Encoder to convert an .avi file to .wmv format, the P4s performed the task in 52 to 54 seconds--at least 14 seconds faster than the 1.2-GHz Athlon system, and 17 seconds faster than the fastest 1-GHz PIII PC.

A multitasking test timing a typical Internet scenario--downloading a file in the background while performing Microsoft Access tasks in the foreground--ran no faster on our P4s, despite Intel's indications that such a task should.

The P4 may actually be slower at processing certain apps that haven't been rewritten for it. But its disappointing performance may be temporary. If Intel convinces developers to optimize applications for the P4, you can expect performance to improve. On the other hand, the processor seems unlikely to deliver much improvement to the office apps most people use heavily.

In Chip

Despite current performance disappointments, the P4 is a milestone in the history of the microprocessor. With 42 million transistors (nearly 50 percent more than the PIII possesses), the P4 represents a major CPU advance. Its widespread design innovations (see " Under the Hood: An Inside Tour of the P4") are directed primarily at cranking up clock speed--to 1.4 and 1.5 GHz initially, with sufficient headroom to double that to 3 GHz in coming years.

And the P4 and its 850 chip set bring design enhancements to widen some of the data bottlenecks that currently limit performance potential, such as the relatively slow 100- and 133-MHz PIII system buses (the P4's bus is 400 MHz) that constrain high-speed CPUs.

Paul Otellini, executive vice president and general manager of Intel's architecture group, says the chip's new design is meant to improve performance "where users will appreciate it most"--in areas like 3D gaming, digital video creation, MP3 encoding, and streaming video.

Intel took a significant step to enhance the P4 platform's appeal in July, when the company announced that it would offer support for the P4 with additional types of high-speed memory besides pricey Rambus DRAM (RDRAM), which was previously the only memory option for the P4. You can expect P4s using double data rate (DDR) SDRAM and the slower SDRAM to appear by the second half of 2001. Via Technologies and Intel will both produce chip sets, which should lower P4 system prices significantly, according to PC vendors and analysts.

The Systems

Our review systems are expensive performance PCs aimed at serious gamers and at users who want to play streaming Web and locally stored audio and video files on the best-looking, loudest systems possible. Web-content and multimedia developers, workstation users, and other graphics professionals may want these loaded computers as well.

The Pentium 4 and Athlon systems pack speedy graphics boards based on the latest NVidia chip, the GeForce2 Ultra, or on the slightly older GeForce2 GTS. All have 19-inch screens, fast DVD-ROM drives, CD-RW drives, 56-kbps modems, ethernet ports, and powerful speakers. To save yourself $200 to $300, specify 128MB of RAM instead of the 256MB we used in testing.

If you need a P4 unit, the $2999 IBM NetVista A60I offers the best value among the three systems we tested; however, its 8X DVD-ROM drive was the slowest here. Gateway's Performance 1500 has the most feature-rich configuration--and a $3999 tag to match. At $3559, Dell's Dimension 8100 is slightly cheaper, perhaps due to its smaller hard drive (40GB versus the Gateway's 60GB) and slower DVD-ROM drive (12X versus 16X for the Gateway).

The clear price/performance victor among the machines we tested is the $2699 Micron Millennia Max XP, the 1.2-GHz Athlon system. It won nearly every benchmark test and features a combination 12X DVD-ROM and 12X/10X/32X CD-RW drive from Ricoh. Micron says the Ricoh drive's JustLink technology minimizes the data gaps that often make recorded CDs unusable. The unit's 31GB hard drive is the smallest here, however.

If buying an Intel-based PC is important to you, our surprising test results should point you toward a 1-GHz PIII like our Gateway and Hewlett-Packard comparison units. PIII systems generally cost $500 to $700 less than P4s. The PIII chip is cheaper, and you can save even more if you buy a PIII with SDRAM instead of the pricier RDRAM.

In the Ether

Within the next year, the P4's value may improve dramatically. By mid-2001, P4 systems equipped with DDR and SDRAM should arrive, shaving $200 or more off system costs. And by the third quarter, industry observers expect P4 speeds to reach 2 GHz. Combine that gain with richer streaming media content and greater access to the broadband needed to deliver it, and the P4's appeal may grow.

AMD will not be standing still. In the first half of 2001, the company plans to release a faster, more powerful Athlon, code-named Palomino, which will target the mobile, desktop, and workstation markets.

Today, the price/performance sweet spot hovers at the highest peaks of Pentium III and Athlon chips. Where does that leave the P4? Just beyond the reach of most users, at least for now.

SUMMARY

Dell Dimension 8100 $3559 800/388-8542 www.dell.com

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Gateway Performance 1500 $3999 800/846-4208 www.gateway.com

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IBM NetVista A60I $2999 888/746-7426 www.ibm.com

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Micron Millennia Max XP $2699 888/224-4247 www.micronpc.com