Oh let's see here: THE PENTIUM 4 IS CRAP RIGHT NOW!
That "400MHz system bus" is pure crap. It's just got 4 pipelines running at 100MHz each x 4 but that DOES NOT make it a 400MHz system bus. RDRAM is expensive and really doesn't show performance increases over DDR or SDR SDRAM.
Tell your friend he just got ripped off. Tell him he should've waited 6 months for the P4 to come out with DDR and SDR support. Better yet tell him to take it back and get an Athlon or Pentium III-based system, because he will get better performance and not be paying out the nose for crap.
The P4 in it's current state is pitiful. If it had been in line with the orgininal plans, it could've been a killer chip. The L1 cache is a fraction of what the original specs called for, the L3 cache was going to be optional, but Intel dropped that. They also made the mistake of using the most hated memory *standard* as the sole option for the P4. Also, your friend is going to be stuck once Intel stops making P4's in the Socket 423 format for the microPGA socket 478 when the "Northwood" comes out soon.
Your buddy just got screwed over royally.

Thank you for your reply and the information.
 
 
Oh my..... i don't really care about what he does about his computer. the truth is he is giving me S*** telling me that he has got a better system! i won't tell him anything. let his die in hes selfishness!!!!
 
if he was a better person i could have helped him but he doesn't deserve it!!

That man is an idiot, or uneducated, or both. He also had a good sales person, maybe Gateway--as they were telling some people I know that the P4 is the fastest chip out (it's not of course).
I'd advise you to show him some benchmarks from highly reliable sources like Tom's Hardware or Anandtech or Sharky Extreme.
He may not believe you still, but you can at least laugh at the ignorance Intel makes it's money from.
All I can say to this is "There's a sucker born every minute."
 
If you want a faster GF2, the Pro's are pretty cheap, like $150 USD--sometimes that includes tax! And the Pro's are pretty close to the performance of the Ultra's and you can always do some overclocking too.

Quote:
That man is an idiot, or uneducated, or both. He also had a good sales person, maybe Gateway--as they were telling some people I know that the P4 is the fastest chip out (it's not of course).
I'd advise you to show him some benchmarks from highly reliable sources like Tom's Hardware or Anandtech or Sharky Extreme.
He may not believe you still, but you can at least laugh at the ignorance Intel makes it's money from.
All I can say to this is "There's a sucker born every minute."

If you want a faster GF2, the Pro's are pretty cheap, like 0 USD--sometimes that includes tax! And the Pro's are pretty close to the performance of the Ultra's and you can always do some overclocking too.
that shows you have a lot experience! you are right, he is both. and a good sales person. the store name is MDG. it is a frenchise like gateway. they are quite doing a lot of work all over toronto. the only advantage they have is that their prices are a little lower.
but as you said you should NEVER listen to the sales person!!!!!

thanks for the reply

I do realize that you have those who are AMD- or Intel-only people. That's fine, until you lie about the product to justify it's cost, even though a cheaper product is better. And I know that just doesn't happen in computers either--used car salesmen anybody?
Also, I don't know if your neighbor did much research, but doing some of that--doesn't have to be an exhaustive one, and having it be thorough is good.
It's unfortunate that people don't do research on stuff before they buy them if it's such a big leap. I've built both my computers and picked out my parts after I did the research.
If your neighbor had researched the P4 on sites other than Intel, he would've at least know that the current socket is being phased out, plus he's stuck with the awful RDRAM. Part of this is his fault, even if he doesn't know it.
 
You should listen to the guys who work on computers on a daily basis, but not salesmen certainly. You'll still have those who prefer AMD or Intel, but they will (hopefully) be more inclined to tell you a fair story, or at least their bias, even if it is true. Still part of it is knowing the facts not the ads.

Run some Q3 benchmarks on it and watch that P4 whup your weenie P3 800s ***.
 
Seriously. Project IGI is not a game that is very indicative of the performance of a machine, hell, it runs SLOWER on my AXIA 1GHz @ 1.4GHz/GF3 than on my Celeron 566 @ 850/GF1 SDR box.
 
I do like the P4 but mainly for it's stability. You have to remember that Intel gear is always more stable than VIA/AMD. Look at all the crap with incompatability of sundcards/changing AGP drive strength that you get with AMD/VIA.
 
My Gaming rig is an AMD/VIA combo but I would NEVER wish it on a newbee any day, even clocked at default speeds it is no rock of stability. I do a lot of music production at home and I use a P3 450 for that becuase of the compatability factor. All soundcards work flawlessly with no crackle whatsoever.
 
If I were him, I would have bought a P3 system on an i815 board because this is tried and tested.
 
Please don't try to tell me that my AMD/VIA rig is only unstable because I haven't set it up right. A lot of my friends have similar setups and none of them can get them truly stable under Win2K.
 
By the way, when I say stable I don't mean being able to run a 3 hour game of Q3 without crashing. I mean being switched on 24/7 for weeks on end.
 
Oh yeah. You may have guessed, I work with bigass UNIX servers as my job so in my opinion anything built on the x86 architechture is inherrantly unstable due to the abundence of crappy legacy componants all over the place ;-)

Not to mention whatever tweaks you do to your system and a computer is only the sum of it's parts.

hey brian there is one thing about the p4 that u are missing here. Intel can't make a better one without developing them. software has not yet been optimized for the p4's 20 step instruction set (or whatever u call it) anyway p4 does suck right now but it is not a mature technology
 
it will be the sh1t very soon
 
*smiles as he sits back and hits the bong and drools over the thought of a dual p4 2.5 ghz computer with a gig or 2 of ram and some scsi raid*

I'm with ya 4&20.
 
*Me waits patiently for Duallie P4.

it has been said that the 2 ghz + p4 chips is where we will see the performance increase over the compediors. If you have ever seen dual p3 1ghz and win xp you will absolutly **** ur pants when u see what 2 p4 2ghz are gonna do with win xp optimized for the new instruction set.
 
*sits and imagines a dual p4 only to awaken from his trance sitting in front of his p3 500, someday the dual p4 will be mine, someday*

Actually, the P4 would be pretty sweet if it had stuck to the origninal specs at least. It's capable of actually utitizing some of the bandwith that RDRAM has.
However, it's still a crappy chip right now. However, haven't we seen this scenario before where the newer Intel chip isn't faster than the previous generation?
I question a company that tries to tell the consumer that this product is the best, and an older product--that is ususally cheaper is able to perform closely to it, or beat it. By all means, the P4 should be stomping all over the 1.4GHz Athlon, but it's not.
I've already stated this (I think), but the original specs for the P4 called for a much bigger L1 cache than is currently implemented---only a fraction of the original specs. There was also an optional L3 cache--which wouldn't have hurt anything--but was left out.
 
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Intel, but the P4 in its current state is a poor piece of work from Intel.
I have running the only AMD rig I've had and have been running it fine for quite some time. Other than my very first rig feature the Cyrix II chip *shudder*, I've been running all Intel rigs.
No matter what people say, right now, I'd still look at Intel-SMP systems because of the heat AMD's chips put out and the fact that Intel has had working SMP platforms longer than AMD. Yeah, I know AMD has had SMP-enabled chips since the K-6 line, but we've never seen a working implementation until now. Things look smooth, but the fact is that we're obviously going to see a blunder from AMD in the SMP arena.

Quote:
...However, it's still a crappy chip right now.

Not quite. The chip is fine, it's only problem is that it is effectively running in "compatiblity mode" with most applications. When DivX;) was tweaked for the P4, it smoked the AMD unit. Also, the RDRAM platform with it isn't that bad, so much as it's ridiculously expensive. Performance is fast, but the cost difference makes no sense.

Quote:I question a company that tries to tell the consumer that this product is the best, and an older product--that is ususally cheaper is able to perform closely to it, or beat it. By all means, the P4 should be stomping all over the 1.4GHz Athlon, but it's not.

Again, compatibility mode. Almost nothing runs well when it's operating in this manner. Also, Apple made the same claims a long time ago with the "G" series systems, stating that their systems could easily run circles around Intel chips. Then, people started running benchmarks comparing similarly clocked (450MHz) P3s vs the the Apple, and Photoshop ran faster on the Intel systems than the on the Apples. This was attributed to the use of SSE, and that Adobe started tweaking their apps to work faster on Intel boxes than they had in the past. I would expect to see such tweaks in the future, as the Pentium platform moves in its current direction.

Quote:I've already stated this (I think), but the original specs for the P4 called for a much bigger L1 cache than is currently implemented---only a fraction of the original specs. There was also an optional L3 cache--which wouldn't have hurt anything--but was left out.

As did the Athlon, yet I never saw any of the 8MB L2 units hitting the market, but they "claimed" it could.

Quote:Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Intel, but the P4 in its current state is a poor piece of work from Intel.

As am I not against AMD, but I would just like to see both sides mentioned here. They (AMD) made a great deal of promises when the Athlon came out, yet had a great deal of problems with the architecture (like the hobbled L2 cache speed at 750MHz and above) and quality issues with chipsets that were shipping.

Quote:Things look smooth, but the fact is that we're obviously going to see a blunder from AMD in the SMP arena.

Count on it. It's a major undertaking, and while they have learned a lot about engineering and quality control issues, this is still a massive undertaking.

Well it's a bad purchase ..mainly due to the change in socket and die size, as every one said wait for the northwood version. And then wait for apps to become sse2 optimized and go mainstream then we'll see the p4's true colors. But in response to AMd/via..yeha i know what you mean. took me some time but it's all patched up and stable now. blood and sweat during those times. But worht it in the end.

Too bad the caches that were supposed to come out got dropped.
Glad to see that someone is willing to help provide a balance, clutch, as I know I do present a biased side sometimes.
I don't think the chip as far as stability or compatibility is bad, but the speed should be killing the Athlon at all the benchmarks. However, yes, somethings the P4 does much better on.
The worst part about the P4 Willy, is that the socket is getting changed, and I've heard it likened to what Intel did with the PPro and socket 8 then jumping to the PII.
Of course, I still remember when AMD was laughable for any power pc.
 
The one thing AMD is starting to do now is not follow in Intel's footsteps. It seemed that the original Slot A Athlon came out to compete with the PIII and was beating it until the Coppermines came out, and then whatever happens, both companies keep trying to 1-up each other and slash prices--all to our benefit:D
 
I heard some talk about the i845+DDR as being the next BX, but I can't remember where. If that does happen, the P4 will be sweet.