Intel’s recent announcement that it will start shipping motherboards with built-in 802.11b sparked an interesting question in a ZD Net article: is this a sign that Intel has realized that most people don’t need faster processors? If demand for 3 and 4 GHz processors is going to be mild, then the logical step for Intel is to move into other areas, like building more stuff onto the motherboard.
Intel is the Microsoft of the processor world.
As Microsoft is to Operating Systems, so Intel is to processors.
While not a fan of ZD Net’s “journalism”, the author does have a good point; Who REALLY needs these multi GHz CPUs?
I work for a large US based consulting firm, and we develop our software of 700 mHz PIIIs with 256 MB RAM and windows 2000. The machines work great and we get our (software development) work done with no problems.
I have a small fleet of AMD K6-2/K6-2+ 500-550 mHz machines at home, and they too are more than adequate for the work that my wife and I do at home.
We don’t need all those extra cycles.
Intel is not forcing you to buy intel. unlike microsoft, you dont have to buy intel, you can buy sparc , ppc or AMD. I wish we had the AMD of OSs, a windows-like OS that will be able to run win32 apps. I still would use Linux , but its good to have. If Intel was the M$ of the processors world then AMD would not be around today.
A company that I know recently hired a woman to design advertisements and pamplets with Photoshop and take orders from clients through e-mail. The previous employee at that position had been doing the same work on the same machine for about a year. It’s an 800mhz machine with 512mb of ram running Win98SE. On the first day, the woman demanded that a new PC must be bought for her because that one was too slow. Now she’s getting a 2ghz machine with a gig of ram. For simple graphics.
At home I run a 300MHz P2 (server/firewall) and a 1.4ghz Athlon XP (main workstation). Both run Linux. And I get all my work done on them plus I can play the latest games at a good frame rate (gf2mx400 is keeping me back a bit though). So who really needs these 4ghz CPUs? And for what?
“While not a fan of ZD Net’s “journalism”, the author does have a good point; Who REALLY needs these multi GHz CPUs? ”
Me!. I work with video and audio. Not just pushing them around, but manipulating them as well. I’d like to get all that done in a reasonable time frame. People in technical fields need it as well.
Remember computers are not just for YOU, but others as well.
As far as what Intel is doing. With the soft market, diversification is the way to stay in business.
If Intel was the M$ of the processors world then AMD would not be around today.
Intel could not pass the message of higher clock – better computing. Many people still works with PIII, like me (1 Ghz PIII). They should consider to move to 64 bits computing but they are saying “we are not on a rush for 64 bits desktop”
I would rather change my other duron 1.2 Ghz machine to an athlon XP 1800 or athlon 64 bits (64 bits cpu line name unknow) for desktop price/performance.
I don’t need a 3 or 4 ghz boz….mind you, I’d like one, with at least a gig of ram. again, i don’t need it, and I get my work done fine on my AthlonXP 2400, and I even got my work done on my AMD K6-2 350 that I just retired last month.
If I can reduce the time it takes to start an app, or process data bring it on. I don’t want to feel that the computer is slowing me down. While working, when I click something, I woant it to happen NOW….not 3 or 4 seconds FROM NOW.
Computers should’t ever feel like they’re getting in the way of doing business, and unfortunatley they still do. Mind you, there’s a lot of other factors that need improving too. Memory speed, bus speed, HD speed, etc, etc….but if a faster processor and more memory can help make everything **feel** faster, then so be it. I’d welcome it.
“OSnews asks: Does ZDnet still matter?”
Playing around with Maya and certain upcoming games could use the upgrade. I don’t see much application in office work. Intense Photoshop work could also but them to use. I for one get annoyed with painting in it and my near 1 ghz can’t quite keep up when working with large brushes at high resolutions. Though it is a far more obvious problem in Painter. Just a few off the top of my head!
This has been said time and time again.. “Who really needs a 10gig hard drive? Who really needs 128mb of ram?”
Yeah at the moment you don’t NEED a 4ghz CPU because the latest apps and games don’t utilize it. That doesn’t mean that in 2 years they wont.
“Me!. I work with video and audio. Not just pushing them around, but manipulating them as well. I’d like to get all that done in a reasonable time frame. People in technical fields need it as well. ”
So true… I always manage to forget to finish my statments
Research scientists and similar types of work, as well as audio/video editors need the high powered processors, but the average person does not.
Hardcore gamers do as well, but that’s why I have a console instead of a game PC…I don’t want to have to do hardware upgrades every 20 minutes when the technology changes…
WTF are you using 1 processor for? why not use 2x AMD’s at less than half the cost of 1 Intel? Nvidia now makes a Dual AMD board. Look up the prices and do the math.
PS. The reason your machine runs slow is that the code you’re running was programmed like crap.
Had a meeting with an Intel FE last week…he was saying that Intel wants 4GHz before the end of the year. From an engineering standpoint Intel can’t slack of the cycle push. Yes, they can get more efficient from a feature standpoint, but that won’t change their focus – which as he mentioned is still processor cycles.
sheee dont let the artist know these things.
we want them to spend money like crazy because these people are special.
But what do I know, I’m just a programmer.
Kind of missing the point there, aren’t you?
The audio/video field hasn’t hit the diminishing returns point yet. The need for cpu cycles haven’t gone away with a dual-cpu approach, mearly spread out, at a better price point.
As far as your “programmed like crap”, when was the last time you built a hammer?
I don’t think the issue is with the speed of your machines it has to do with the design of the software. A lot of software out there running on WinTel boxes is written in things like VB, which really wasn’t designed to build full blown applications, but it was easy to create apps with. Hence there is a lot of crap products out there that bogg down your boxes. In order to compensate for that chip makers had to make faster chips that supported more memory, which just lead to more crap-ware. What really needs to be done is these apps need to be rewritten in c/c++/object-c then you could do video editing on a 350 – 500 Mhz box no problem. People are too hung up on how pretty the app is vs. its functionallity.
All this speculation because Intel is putting Wifi on their mobos? OMG, imagine if they put ethernet onboard too, oh wait, they do!
There obviously aren’t too many graphics jockeys who need the extras, but when I’m running an 8-1/2 x 11″ photoShop file at 300 DPI with about twenty five layers, I don’t want to sit around for a half an hour for some filter to render. I don’t want to wait twenty minutes for a save to complete.
What Intel needs to focus on is the system bus and memory speeds. 3 GHz processors being choked by 333 to 533 MHz bus speeds is a crime!
Vic
Does ZDNet really matter? Or are they just trying to grab headlines for their mediocre “news” site.
Of course Intel matters. They control most of the PC processor market and – with the Itanium – just might control the highend market too.
Until software demands catch up to the current hardware capabilities, I expect processor sales and new computer sales to be slow. So it’s very wise of Intel to branch out into different segments of the hardware market.
Personally I have a three-year-old 800mhz that does anything I have asked it to. With simple RAM and graphic card upgrades I even run the newest games, although not always on the highest settings.
Best Wishes,
Bob
WTF are you using 1 processor for? why not use 2x AMD’s at less than half the cost of 1 Intel?
What makes you think we’re not?
PS. The reason your machine runs slow is that the code you’re running was programmed like crap.
You’ve obviously never done any real math, or if you did it’s a miracle you passed.
Why not Wi-Fi on the mobo?
Most people who have had broadband for the past few years are also setting up wireless networks because they’re easier and maore convenient. And who needs more wires than the PC already has?
Vic
the problem with speed is not the processor themself, it’s that new software coded on new computer give a hard time to those with some year older machine.
The solution would be some kind of ISO normalisation to quantify a PC performance. That would allow the consistency of software performance we get in game console, this time in the PC world. Special app like science app, compiler, video editing etc… could still be made, but they would not be endorsed by the standard organisation.
One thing many fail to see is that low speed processor cost more to do than high speed one for Intel. Processor (the raw material) cost the same. Price is only function of the IP behind it. So doing and selling hight speed PC give a big scale production economy.
Now my last point, the X-Men evolution jump. If we would not have those high speed PC in the feild, the market for new kind of app would not be there. For exemple, vocal recognition and neural network will happen when free CPU cyle are sparse enough to allow it. But, nobody would start developing such an app if they would have to themself sell special hardware to allow their app to run.
256 color PC was such an elolution jump, 3d accelerated game was another, MP3, MPEG4 and so on. Next one will be vocal/visual recognition, the need for Voxel in games because current programmed fake physic suck, internal database search in OS etc…
Yes. Who says were not. I use a Tyan Tiger 100 with the 440BX and TWO PIII 550s at home and a Tyan Tiger 133 with TWO PIIIs 900s at work, both with a GHz of RAM.
And I have to wait a lot! Saves on the crashes and I can run PhotoShop, Illustrator, Outlook 2000, FrontPage, Quark XPress and our bloatware CRM SalesLogix all at the same time.
Vic
1. On-board SCSI on all mobos. Time to bring down the prices of SCSI.
2. Legacy-free mobos. This year. I don’t wanna buy crap computers from HP or IBM. No IDE ports, SATA and SCSI only.
3. WiFi on-board with all mobos. I don’t care if it costs 100$ more for SCSI and WiFi. We have too many cables coming out of the back of the computer.
4. Commitment with RDRAM support for future P4s and Xeons.
Ummm…you know there’s a difference between front-end (pretty) and back-end (codecs, etc) don’t you?. A lot of apps are NOT written through and through in VB, but at least in a mix, at most they use some other toolkit. For those serious about the field, they use serious tools that recognize that fact.
Also your position ignores the fact that there are problems that work better the more cycles you throw at them, not less. That’s just the way things are.
ok Intel has a 802.11B/A because A is a standard while G is STILL just a draft
BUT Intel have completely forsaken BlueTooth out of sheer stupidity they see it as Not Invented Here and failed to put it in but pray tell what happens when your out on the road and you want to collect your emails ?
your on the road !
NO there arn’t 802.11 hotspots
NO there is nowhere to plug a modem into without going through the call charges nightmare
pull out your mobile and use the bluetooth to connect rather than a mass of wires from nokia/sony/fools
and anyone who says its not good because they use the same freq as 802.11b is living in a dream world… you dont use bluetooth at the same time as 802.11b you enable one or the other and they have freq hopping
hope Intel do get around to Bluetooth as they need it in their ARM based phone chips
regards
John Jones
I think we’ll need faster chips, as more work that is usually done by hardware is going to be done by software.
When 10ghz chips are cheap, we will see low end computers with directX/openGL compatible software graphics renderers, software modems, software MJPEG decompression, software network interfaces, software modem drivers etc, software soundcard 3d effects+sound fonts+mixing/format changing that are normally done by dedicated soundcard DSP.
It will be cheaper to use a single fast chip than to distribute the functions among many. It won’t run any better, but since when has that been important to the box-shifters?
I run Windows 2000 on an Athlon 1Ghz with KT133 ( IE slow RAM )
I think I’d see more benefit from a better mobo than a faster chip.. planning an upgrade to DDR RAM and ATA133 instead of ATA100.. but frankly its not a priority.
I do a lot of graphics work, play multimedia stuff, and swapping to the better code of Opera 7 and Winamp 2.81 from MSIE 6 and Windows Media did more for general speed than several pricy hardware upgrades might.
The only thing thats really quite slow is bootup… perhaps time to jump to XP.
The point is, as somebody has already mentioned, that Intel is branching and diversifying, not to mention that this is more of a logical step than a hint of the future. For email, surfing and very basic stuff people are fine with 800+ MHz. In fields of science and engineering you must have all the cycles in the world. It will be nice when the rest of components catches up. There’s place to improve OS and software but for comps used for making money and research good old saying still stands: Time is money.
I know several people still using Dell Dimension P1xxv towers with 32-64Mb RAM and Pentium 1 chips between 100 and 166mhz and Win 95/98 for regular surfing, email, messaging and Mp3 playing.
these machines are very cheap in the used market in the UK, staggeringly well-built and still fast enough to cope.
“Who REALLY needs these multi GHz CPUs? ”
“Me!. I work with video and audio. Not just pushing them around, but manipulating them as well. I’d like to get all that done in a reasonable time frame. People in technical fields need it as well.”
Yes, that is very true. However, the VAST majority of people don’t need them. I rely on my K6-2/500 packing 128 megs of RAM (really should up that number, shouldn’t I?) for all my professional work, and it suits my just fine. I don’t work with 3D graphics or full-motion video, just text and simple graphics (and some video-game goofing off, too). I have friends and colleagues who DO need these things, but not many of them. I suppose what I’m attempting to get at is that the market seems to have bifurcated: there is the huge majority who are happy with 1.5 Gh (give or take) or less, and there’s the tiny minority who, like you, really do have a need for increasingly faster/more efficient CPU’s.
We’ll all need to upgrade someday, but not now.
Imagine this: workplace = dual Xeon 3.06 GHZ, 1GB RAM, home machine = AMD Athlon 850 MHz, 512 MB RAM. This translates to work-related free home atmosphere, at least for me 🙂
Well that falls under the “I predict…” umbrella. How many people own digital cameras? How many own camcorders? What will they do with the output of those? Of course they can pay people like me to handle that for them.
There’s also games as well. More realism will soak up those cycles (AI anyone?).
I think that the main performance is spent in old/unwise OS design. I have a PII 350mhz Machine, a 256MB RAM SD100 and a normal UDMA100 Drive. Nothing Special. I use the BeOS System. I prefer my small machine for video and graphics manipulation even before a P4-1.8 with tons of RAM and so on where Windows XP is installed. Of course: where brute force is asked the P4 is in a clear advantage. But my BeOS System on the P4 machine is just FREAKING fast and at the same time more flexible. Before adding new hardware think about changing to a an OS that almost meets realtime OS requirements.
I have figured out that people rarely complain about execution speed. Because peple work with Windows GUI blocks and slow system/app startup/shutdown prcedures, thread interrupts, network overprioritizing are bothering people on no matter what hardware.
How else will it ever not seem slow?
WTF are you using 1 processor for? why not use 2x AMD’s at less than half the cost of 1 Intel? Nvidia now makes a Dual AMD board. Look up the prices and do the math.
We aren’t. I work on a dual Athlon MP 1800 using Video Toaster 2 for video editing and live productions. While most home users probley don’t need 3 GHz CPUs it would be stupid to call them useless because one segment of market doesn’t need them.
I run a K6 450 w/ 192MB Ram with RH8.0 and GNOME at home, and have been doing so for 3 or 4 years. Why? Because it does everything I need it to.
All of my server machines are higher than my personal desktop machine. My personal machine is only 464Mhz and it’s the first computer that I own and use. I am pretty happy with this 464Mhz/384mb ram machine for over 4, 5 or 6 years (don’t remember). I am able to watch movies (DivX, Xvid, DVD and etc), use Gimp/Photoshop and other apps without a problem, but not Java stuff and emulator stuff. Java stuff usually slow down my machine big time.
Jack, go to pricewatch and compare the prices you Mathetmatical Genius, you!
I run a dual athlon xp1800 with a gig of ram. Everything runs great. If photoshop didn’t suck so bad, it wouldn’t take so long to do things– ah hah! there’s a new market then, create tools that are compatible with Adobe’s formats, yet don’t SUCK. Why does a large PDF file just about lock up my 2.4GHz Intel machine? because Adobe sucks.
question for Adobe users out there, has there every been any comparison between a dual Mac and a dual x86 machine with regards to rendering times, or compile times (for programmers) ?
To the other guy, yes there is a need for a 4GHz+ machine, it was totally described in a DELL commercial where a company department head exclaims to the IT professional: I don’t know what kind of PC I want, but I want one that’s faster than everyone elses.
for those of you who have to wait 25-40 minutes on a dual modern machine, I’m guessing you’re rendering whole movies or complex animations, etc–why don’t you put together a computer-number-crunching-cluster, ala SETI? Why not buy a couple of cheap dual CPU systems and distribute your render amongst them? Yeah it would be difficult to setup, but if you do this all day long, the time you spend researching and implementing it would be worth the time you save rendering.
For the cost of 1 p3 3.06ghz, i could probably buy 3 dual amd XP2000s, and YES XPs work perfectly fine in SMP (as long as you mod them.)
As for the programmer (I’m a programmer too, Intel, Microchip, Motorola Assembly,) trust me, the software runs slowly because it was programmed poorly–and no, I can’t do better personally.
To the moderator, sorry for the diatribe.
I just ordered a new P4 2.8ghz w/512MB of RAM. I work a lot with music & audio, so I’ll take all the horsepower I can afford
I agree that processor speed in reaching a usability limit (not a technical one). I would love to see the energy put into chip speed not into disk speed. The largest bottleneck now a day is i/o to the hard dirve. Applications will seem faster and more responsive if the disk i/o was better. Plus it would help increase VM.
Above should be “now”, not “not”
sorry.
Put the R&D into hard dives.
for REAL multi-tasking, while I’m burning 9GIPS in wait loops, I could be getting my hard-boiled eggs at the same time from the resevoir of a liquid cooled 10 GHz P4.
Rise of XT/AT/86 stopped real computing(architectural) progress. Solid state technology progressed instead, that is. Current x86 computers are stil that XT-crap with hacks, cracks and workarounds. Maybe only PCI was nice exclusion from architectural POV. As result of intention to use same machine for all purposes now we can bake cookies on our machines, and laptop working even at least nightday on single battery charge is still far-far dream, which, i supect, never realizes with current trends.
Ok, situation is as is, but what we can do?
Diveristity and little specialization, brought by h/w manufacturers or even by software houses.
What do i mean?
Imagine, when you bought for $300-500 professional image processing software, you got, instead, e.g. stupid dongle, little hardware add-on. PCI for techies, fast USB/Firewire for “simple” users. An it processes all matrix and related math in special chips. Even specialized filters may run there as whole. Upgraded soft? Well, you can flash this add-on with bundled firmware or load updates in add-on RAM.
Same for Video, gaming, DTP/XML/Postscript.
And this is game field also for PC manufacturers – they ahve too low margins now, and need some added value customer will to play for – why not to produce “Dell for photo-artist”, “HP for physicist”. Ok, same PC but with just that integration with some more specialized chips-on-board. Intead putting blue-tooth in video-card.
At least some progress and diversity.
>> How else will it ever not seem slow?
Hahahaha that’s a good one
I like it 
hehehe unfortunately it is true but I will stop here as we may all go off-topic and start a flame-war.
Back to topic. Yeah Intel is pushing the GHz of its CPUs but the real questionis, does it really make a difference in terms of speed? I have used a 256MB RD RAM, P4 2.0 and also a P4 3.0GHz 256MB DDR RAM and in terms of responsivnes I didn’t see much difference. I expected the performance of the 3.0GHz machine to be lightmimg fast in Windows XP but I didn’t see much difference between both machines. I know RD RAM is quicker but this is P4 3.0GHz we are talking about.
Some of us were (damn economy)! For those who have the space yea, I’d recommend your solution. For those who don’t (guess who?), I recommend rack-mount. Doesn’t change my “cycle soaker” argument though. BTW I prefer AMD myself.
this is true
I agree with your post, just wanted to add that Linux has had an internal database search in the OS for years, called locate. And I’m sure it could be expanded to include whatever type of schema a user wants to create. But I don’t understand why we don’t just install a mysql or postgres database by default? Overkill? I’m wondering how much database search functionality an end user could really use? But I don’t have a lot of db experience, so about all I can do is wonder.
I think a database like that should be used along with something like SGIs oss.sgi.com/projects fam and imon. I also noticed a port of their failover software to Linux, very cool! We love you SGI!!!
Anyway, fam or imon could be used so something like locatedb doesn’t need to be schedule in cron or picked up by anacron and waste my CPU cycles. Between locatedb and magicdev I’m not sure which one causes the most harm to end users.
Er, this is getting off topic, but…
If you really want a locate database that always is up to date, then it really should be in the filesystem, and not implemented as a hack on top that detects all changes and then updates the database. It would also be more efficient if it was simply handled directly.
Jack, go to pricewatch and compare the prices you Mathetmatical Genius, you!
Bluce, go to your local public school how to read! Some of us are using dual processors, or even more, in our work!
Just because software takes a long time to do a computation, does not mean the algorithm is written badly. Some important problems are known to require massive time and space. There are cases where code bloat and inefficient program add trivial time & space to the computation. There are cases where it is known you cannot improve the algorithm any better, and still get a correct answer in a short time.
That was my point, is all.
I know that with Cubase SX and Nuendo there are problems with P4 induced noise when recording onto hard drives. I am using a dual AMD MP setup with no problems. Now if only it didn’t blow so much air )-:
True miracle with be processing power with no bloody noise.
How about super cheap all in one boards (firewire, USB2, LAN, video, bluetooth etc). The Via Eden ITX boards sound interesting. Something like the Eden boards with dual C3 fanless processors and gutsy hardware multimedia (eg mpeg acceleration) support in an industry standard form factor would be ideal for many users.
Upgrades would simply consist of replacing the integrated mainboard as it becomes obsolete.
I’d like a silent ‘pizza box’ PC (fond memories of my Mac LC111) with a DVD burner, no legacy hardware (keychain drive rather than floppy)and strong multimedia performance for around US$400-500. The time for ugly and noisy tinplate miditowers has passed.
today maybe not for most people
but the faster computer the faster heavier tasks go
like doing an divx movie for instance of course takes alot less time to encode, having more realistic high res resolution games, there is no need to stop, running a faster cpu makes eye candy just fun not fun that slows down the computer…
today im quite happy with my amd 1900+, but next computer will sure be a 4+ghz computer doing much more on the fly..
to say that its already enough is to say 640kb should be enough for everyone… sure sure computers of today is good, and do alot with good speed, but tomorrow and the day afterthat it wont be enough for some tasks, imagine unpacking a 600 meg rar file on a 5000mhz computer compare to a pii 450mhz… day and night, the computers of yesterday will feel like an xt compared …
speed is not everything but faster computers are needed both now and tomorrow.. but it all depends on what tasks you wanna do, i bet a 2000mhz computer will last a little longer then a 400mhz did… (speedwise compared to newer software etc )
Lets face it though, on a <1ghz cpu windowsXP feels as fast as windows95 did on a 60mhz system of the time, and don’t give me that crap about extra features, most of the size of windows and to a slightly lesser extent linux is unnecessary bloat. It really is that simple. BeOS and qnx can do almost everything media wise that windows can do, and they can do it a damned site faster than any windows distribution from 95 onwards on the same hardware. You shouldn’t need 2,3,4 ghz cpus outside of things like games or scientific studies for everyday things. 800Mhz to run an office package at anything like a quick speed is insane, totally insane. A lot of users take for granted just what power there systems have, but really, can you honestly tell me that a word processor should need 100Mbs + of ram available to it to work? Come on fellas.
Programmed like Crap is cutting to the chase, when was the last time a M$ sat down and thought about how he could make his or her programs smaller? If office and windowsXP are anything to go by, a very long time ago.