x86-secret has provided an extensive review of Intel's coming 3ghz Pentium 4 (with HyperThreading).

The translated article can be found here.

The good news: According to these benchmarks it tops the Athlon XP2800+ in almost every area.
The bad news: HyperThreading may not live up to the hype. According to these benchmarks, while it often increases performance, it also sometimes decreases performance.

Only reason Intel has the head start on AMD is the 800 MHz clock speed advantage. Clawhammer will whoop up on every Intel proc, mark my word
Also, the 2800 is ahead of the P4 2.8 in many, if not all, of the benchmarks shown on the site - one must keep that in mind, as that is the range on which the 2800 is to "perform equal if not better" in terms of MHz/Performance rating/

intel also has to run with rambus to stay ahead of amd they can't touch amd with ddr.

I am not sure any sane person thinks Intel is a better company than AMD... they do have more research money though :-P

But us at PR maybe should have some respect for Intel due to the extreme overclockability of the P4s :-)

Chaz, I thought you were an Apple guy.

I agree, the Intel CPUs overclock very nicely. It is easy to hit those high MHZ with an Intel CPU, but if you can clock the crap out of an AMD you have proven that you are both a hardware and software guru. It takes a lot of finesse, experimentation, and cooling hardware to properly overclock an AMD.

I run an AMD processor, but I kind of laugh at the guys who say "Price vs performance, the AMD is the better buy." On paper, yes. But when you factor in the $200 water rig or peltier setup, or the $50 heatsink with the mod so you can run a larger, higher CFM fan, the price vs performance kind of balances out.

I went with AMD because I like the motherboards better, and the fact that it is a little bit different and harder to maintain. I like to consider all my computers as "work in progress". If I had an Intel and was able to clock it way up with minimal effort, what would I have left to shoot for?

Quote: Originally posted by bigakita Chaz, I thought you were an Apple guy.

Hell yes! Apple for life! But I enjoy PCs too :-)

The 2800 is close to the 2.8 and has the same downsides and upsides as the remainder of the line (being the whole AMD clcoks faster framerate in games, but Intel's workng with SSE2 overrun anything in applcations for 2D and 3D rendering). The whole 'ease of OC' isn't exactly much different as the only difference is that the multiplier is locked on Intel's...you're still going to need watercooling or some good heatsink and fan to overclock to even greater heights.

And what is taking so long with that clawhammer anyway? I mean, I should hope it's out before the 3.2ghz P4 (with all the wonderous hyper-threading) which shouldn't be long to arrive anyway.

I tell ya, I am definitely getting a 3 gig chip rather than dual processor...but let's just hope some companies actually come out with some motherboards that aren't incredibly expensive.