by Beverly Rosenbaum
Should you upgrade your processor? Which chip is right for you? If you have a 486, you can upgrade it cheaply to the level of a Pentium 75 with a $100 chip from Kingston or one from Intel for $200, to run office applications well. If you have an early Pe ntium, you can upgrade to a Pentium with MMX to run the newest games faster. However, the multimedia performance improvement is dependent on the type of application and the degree to which it has been designed for MMX technology. There are also several o ther ways to improve performance. You can do any or all of the following: increase memory and hard disk space, improve video and monitor capability, or increase modem speed (for Internet applications).
On the other hand, if you are in the market for a new system, Intel is planning to produce new processors and chipsets specialized for every level of computing, including low-end, midrange, and high-end products. At a recent Intel Developers Forum, Intel Corporation Chairman Andrew S. Grove revealed Intel’s strategy to expand its product line by using a common foundation, the P6 microarchitecture, across an entire family of new products designed for all market segments.
Since its debut in 1992, Intel’s Pentium processor set sales records and became an industry standard. The Pentium® processor with MMX™ technology is both software and pin compatible with previous members of the Pentium processor family, and is fully comp atible with all software written for the Pentium processor, as well as the Intel486™ and Intel386™ processors. It is available at speeds of 166, 200 and 233 MHz. Software designed for Intel MMX media enhancement technology was intended to provide more co lors and more realistic graphics as well as full-screen, full-motion video.
For a good interactive PC experience, the system must provide high performance in three areas — integer, multimedia, and floating point. While typical productivity applications, such as word processing, presentation applications or personal finance progr ams, require good “integer performance”, applications such as video, 3D games and PC imaging would maximize the multimedia and floating point capabilities of your computer’s processor and system.
The next generation Pentium® Pro processors are available at 150MHz, 166MHz, 180MHz and 200MHz core speeds. They are optimized for 32-bit applications running on advanced 32-bit operating systems and are scalable up to four processors and 4 GB (that’s gigabytes) of memory.
Pentium II
The Pentium® II processor integrates the attributes of the Pentium® Pro processor plus the capabilities of MMX™ technology.
The Intel Pentium II processor family includes 233, 266, 300 and now 333 MHz versions for desktops, workstations, and servers. Pentium II processors provide the best performance available for applications running on advanced operating systems such as Win dows 95, Windows NT and UNIX. You cannot upgrade your existing Pentium system with this chip, because it uses a completely different (and patented by Intel) connector, so this option is only available if you purchase a new system or replace your motherbo ard. The processor core is provided in a proprietary Single Edge Contact (SEC) cartridge package.
The Pentium II has 7.5 million transistors, more than double the amount of the original Pentium. It also includes the bus design for level 2 cache first used in the Pentium Pro. A new technology called Dynamic Execution speeds up performance by increasin g the data that can be processed in parallel. The Pentium II and its cache reside in a plastic and metal cartridge (SEC) that plugs into a special slot called Slot One, which requires a new motherboard design.
Industry sources say Intel plans to use Slot One to protect its territory from compatible chip makers such as AMD and Cyrix. Though AMD and Cyrix’s new processors may fit in some existing Pentium sockets, they are incompatible with sockets designed for I ntel’s patented SEC.
The Pentium II and Pentium Pro use Dual Independent Bus Architecture, which can provide a performance boost of up to three times over older Pentium buses. The processor/main memory circuit supports concurrent parallel operations, breaking free of the seq uential instruction process that caused a bottleneck in previous Pentiums.
The new Pentium II 333MHz processor is the first chip in a family unofficially known as “Deschutes,” and has the potential to reach speeds of 450 to 500MHz within a year. But the best thing about these chips is that the huge 512KB L2 cache chip runs at t he same speed as the processor.
Mobile Chips
Intel plans to introduce more of the “Deschutes” line of processors. The 233-megahertz and 266-MHz Pentium II chips for laptops will debut this month, with a 300-MHz processor due by the end of the year. According to an anonymous industry analyst, Intel will release the mobile chips on April 2 and Compaq plans on the same day to introduce Armada laptops using these processors, which will sell for between $6,000 and $7,000. Intel’s 350-MHz and 400-MHz desktop CPUs are set for an April 15 th release. At that time, they will also announce a new BX chipset which will allow motherboard I/O to run at 100 MHz, compared to the current 60 MHz or 66 MHz speeds. Also on April 15 th, Intel plans to release its 266-MHz “Covington” chip for the sub-$1,000 PC market.
Intel’s mobile chips are slower than its top of the line 333-MHz Pentium II for desktop PCs, in part to conserve power. The laptop chips will run at 1.8 volts and consume less than 8 watts of power, roughly the same as the Pentium 233-MHz MMX and 266-MHz MMX mobile chips available now. However, users should expect to trade battery life for high performance. While performance may be boosted by as much as one-third over the previous fastest chip, the battery life is expected to be reduced by about the sam e amount. Users who desire power-hungry features such as 14-inch displays and larger hard drives will barely get 2 to 3 hours. Battery life of notebooks that use Intel’s current thrifty mobile Pentium, “Tillamook,” is typically 3 to 4 hours.
AMD is expected to aim versions of its K6 at mobile computers. Sources close to AMD report the company is expected to launch 200MHz and 233MHz versions of the K6 for mobile computers, although such designs could require special motherboards to deal with the special heat and power requirements of the sixth-generation chip.
Next month’s Trumors: Where does Intel get those processor code names? With 85% of the desktop market and nearly 100% of the mobile market, does Intel have any competition?
Beverly Rosenbaum is a HAL-PC member who can be contacted at brosen@hal-pc.org .
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