THE BEST GUIDE TO PROCESSORS EVER!!!! (Volume 3453453) (General Comments on Processors)

Member Name: Tzunami

Product:	General Comments on Processors
Date:	30/12/00 (842 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Information on processors

Disadvantages: Long!!!

Wondering which processor to upgrade to? Which is the fastest? or just curious? then you've come to the right place. This is the TzunamiBodgeIT guide to processors!!!

AMD
AMD are my personal favourite at the moment. They are relative newcomers, and break years of intel dominance in IBM compatibles (basically a fancy way of saying PC!)
They began as far as I can remember with the K5 socket 7 chips. They could use the same motherboards as the pentium 1, and were seen as a cheap option. They were quite a bit slower than Pentium chips though.
next came the K6 chips, and these were basically a small improvement on the K5. They operated at slightly higher clockspeeds and (I think) were 686 architecture - the same as Pentium 2's. However they were no match for the Pentium 2 and were soon superceded by...
the K6-2- This was where AMD started to get really serious. For the first time ever, Intel faced a major opponent in the processor market. For a small drop in performance and a big drop in price, the K6-2 was a viable alternative to the pentium 2. It boasted it's own instruction extensions set which also incorporated intels MMX it was called 3D NOW! And found increasing support amongst software producers.
K6-3 was the next revision to the chip. It had an increased amount of cache, and altered instructions. It was meant to challenge the Pentium 3, and while some users reported higher match for match clockspeeds, the K6-3 was beaten by the Pentium 3's SSE (Streaming SIMD extensions) yet a further instuctions revision. AMD were quick to respond however with the Athlon or K7, which also used 686 architecture. For the first time AMD had created a chip for an exclusive motherboard style, following Intels move towards slot architecture. It beat the Pentium 3 hands down for price and performance, and made a massive dent in Intel's performance processor market. It had more and faster internal cache and ran on a DDR (double data
rate) bus (200mhz!!!) and included more new instuctions. Ironically AMD again followed Intel in the move back to socket processor with it's two new versions of the chip
The Athlon Thunderbird - a socket (Socket A) version of the Athlon which used smaller, faster architecture which crammed even more, smaller transistors into a smaller space. It also had more cache. It beats the **** out of the Pentium 3 offering about a 10 - 15% increase in speed for like clockspeeds. It is also cheaper. I highly reccomend it to anyone wanting to upgrade their processor.
The Duron - This is essentially a cut-down version of the Thunderbird. It still uses AMD's socket A design, but has less cache. It is aimed at the same market as the Celeron, and although being comparable on price, it's performance is nearer to that of a Pentium 3 rather than a Celeron.

The future looks bright for AMD. With the release of it's next generation of processors scheduled for early 2001 and set to increase the clock speed of the Athlon design to 1500mhz and beyond.
But the really exciting stuff is further away. The Sledgehammer, sheduled for early 2002 is a 64 bit processor (as opposed to 32-bit present chips) Unlike Intels proposed Itanium 64-bit chip, it is designed to be backwards compatible with 32-bit architecture to allow use of 32-bit software and hardware. There are two proposed chips - the Clawhammer(for the single and dual processor markets) and the Sledgehammer which will be aimed at the four or eight processor market to rival high-end sparc Unix servers. Imagine Eight 64-bit 3GHz processors in a PC, and you can imagine why AMD has got people excited. The other good thing about AMD is that it is a European company, based in France and enlisting a lot of English help it is good support for the economy.

Intel
Intel are the original players of the processor market, and have long since held a monopoly on the processor market. As a result they
have built up a lot of respect and loyalty, and this is why so many manufacturers still use Intel chips.
Intel chips date back further than I can remember - to when the CPU was just a small collection of non-unified logic commands.
The earliest chip I remeber is the 286 (or 2x86 as it should be properly named) this operated at very low clockspeeds (4MHz!) compared to now, but at the time was the best and commanded prices of up to £2000 for one chip!!! This was followed by the 386 and then 486 which most people should remember. the 486 was stretched to it's limits and reached clock-speeds of upto 133MHz, but this involved a form of overclocking, and wasn't very viable so a new chip was needed.
Enter the 585 (5x86), but as Intel finally wised up to the world of consumerisation and the increasing market for home computers they named the new chip series the Pentium (playing on the 5 in the name)these began at 66MHz and continued upto 200MHz (later extended to 266MHz) They used the socket-7 architecture which is still used by some chips todaywhen Intel hit 200MHz the thought they had hit a brick wall with the 586 architectue and in true Intel style switched to 686 design. But the new chip wasn't the pentium 2, it is the much forgotten Pentium Pro, and was aimed at the server market. It was not as much of an improvement on the Pentium as it should have been. However it did have extended amounts of cache. It was a comercial flop. Intel, keen to forget their failure came up with a new idea of adding new instructions to the chip without totally redesigning the architecture, and so the x86 series was extended with the first large-scale instruction additions - namely MMX (multimedia extensions) while Intel squeezed even more life out of the Pentium 1 (to 266MHz)
Intel's second attempt at a 686 processor was much more successful. they had learnt from their earlier mistakes, and aimed the new processor initially at the power-user market. Intel use
d one of the biggest ever IT advertising campaigns (incorporating annoying dancing spacemen)They also created a Pentium Pro style version of the chip called the Xeon, which offered upto 2mb of onboard cache!!! there was also a cut down lower cache version called the Celeron. The Pentium 2 was the first chip to utilise slot architechture rather than sockets. But again this was aimed at High-end markets and servers. The pentium 2 was followed by a chip identical in almost every respect...
The Pentium 3 was virtually the same as the Pentium 2, except it contained SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions) a new set of instructions revisions building on MMX. It is a good high-quality chip, but has a price-tag to match. It is currently available at clock-speeds of upto 1.23 GHz, using a new 133MHz FSB (Frontside bus) and using copper technology.
The Pentium 4 (Williamette) offers the first change in architecture since the pentium pro, and could essentially be described as a 7x86 chip. It offers newer buses and technology capable of reaching much higher clock-speeds than before, and starts at 1.4Ghz. It also includes a new set of additional instruction - SSE2 - read the full review of this chip in my opinion on it.

The future
Intel are also looking to enter the 64-bit market with a chip known as Itanium. This was originally announced publically about 2 years ago codenamed Merced. It is a joint effort with Hewlett Packard (HP)It is planned for release around summer 2001 (which in Intel terms means around early 2002) Surprisingly, the first chip will be released at 733 MHz, however Multi-chip pc's will be available, and Manufacturers have already announced 32 processor model plans. Instead of just adding a new set of instructions as before, Intel has decided to work from the ground up with a new system called EPIC (Explicitly Parallel Instruction set Computing) whereby Itanium processors can work on upto 20 operations at once. This technology suonds very
promising, and if Intel can deliver what it says then there is still hope for them yet.

Cyrix
Cyrix have quite recently been overtaken by VIA, and produced a series of low-end chips designed to compete with firstly the Pentium and then the Pentium 2. However there have been very few recent additions. The MIII Chip currently reaches 600MHz and should be avoided if you are looking to upgrade. It is based on Intel's socket 370 architecture.

SPARC
This is a standard of chip rather than company. SPARC chips have utilised 64-bit technology since 1995, and are manufactured by companies such as Sun and IBM. They are aimed at high end markets and are capable of utilising many processors at once (Sun's UltraSPARC III can acess upto 1000 processors at once!!!) Obviously this sort of technology is not required for the everyday used using word and playing the occasional game of Quake 3, rather they are used by serious high-end servers and workstations - powering massive websites and Intranets or databases - such as in the MOD or Universities, or to recalculate DNA patterns or render graphics for movies such as Star-Wars. The main problem with it is, however that it is largely incompatible with the x86 32-but world.

Glossary

Processor - or CPU or "chip". This is the main part of any modern computer, it is a collection of Billions of logic instructions and is in effect the "Brain" of the computer.

x86 - a standard of PC architect that comprises an original set of instructions that has remained unchanged for years. It is a standard that all IBM-Compatible PC's conform to.

Cache - This is a small amount of extremely fast computer memory - initially placed on the motherboard, but later on the chip. It is the computer version of a notepad of post-it notes.

Overclocking - A method of increasing the clock-speed of a computer to increase performance without changing the physical prop
erties of a chip.

Clock-speed - This is a measure of the number of operations a chip can perform per second, but not necessarily an indication of the chip's comparative speed overall as this depends on many factors.

Bus - A bus is (like a road bus) a method of transportation between components, but instead of carrying people, it carries data. The faster a bus, the faster data can be transferred.

Phew, I hope you find that useful. If anyone has any questions or comments please leave your email address and I will try to get back to you if I can help you with anything.
If I have made any mistakes, many apologies :-)

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