First of all I don't know too much about computers, just enought to get along.
The wife just bought a new computer from Gateway 1.3 gig Pentium 4 w/windows millenium edition etc....
 We have a cable internet connection. But so far man I don't see any improvements over our old system (amdk62 333 mghz).
 So far when surfing this thing gets alot of I don't know what to call it...lag maybe??
  When you try to click on anything there is a pause til you hear the click sound (sometimes long), you can't move the cursor during this pause, and then finally the item loads, also any videos etc. on media player take forever.
  To tell you the truth the computers I use at work are like 233 mghz and they are much faster on the web, and with videos. I guess I expected more from a puter with this kind of power.
  So does anyone think that our system has a problem and I should take it back to Gateway?
  Or maybe we just don't have things configured
properly for optimum efficiency??

[:(]

You paid for the warranty. Take it back or call them.


[IMG]http://ubb.mcuzi.com/ubb/icons/icon68.gif[/IMG]

It won't be until they can get it ramped up beyond 2GHz. But then again AMD is kicking there ass all over the place.

[IMG]http://www.mpz.co.uk/cwm/otn/violent/headshot.gif[/IMG]

I bet you paid an assload for that dell p4, what a waste. Now's a good time to buy a P3, its still really fast

P3s are just as big of rip-off. For raw speed/$ an AMD Athlon is the only way to go.

The Intel P4 is a marketing-driven sham of a processor.  It costs more than the superior Athlon, and all you're paying for is the "Intel Inside" label.  The P3 was basically a souped-up budget Celeron processor, but when Intel found it outperformed the P2, they dubbed it the P3 and quadrupled the price.  

See if you can return it and find an Athlon system.  Also if you have a hot processor and spped isn't great, trying doubling the amount of RAM in your system. But I am sure your problem is with the crap P4.

One of many technical articles on the P4's suckitude: [url]http://www.inqst.com/articles/p4bandwidth/p4bandwidthmain.htm[/url]

The PIV is no more special than a PIII. PIIs ARE outdated however. For starters, intel shipped the wrong software with the first couple bunches of PIVs which was cause for some concern. Also, you are running Windows ME which could be the problem in the first place. Switch to 2000pro or 98SE. Millenium is no good.

"The P3 was basically a souped-up budget Celeron processor,..." You got that all backwards, the celeron was a downgraded PIII. They just removed the onboard cache.

I bet you don't get invited to many Intel functions.

A question for you jaybob. Is your cable modem pluged in through USB or the ethernet card. I have seen a lot of probles with cable modems and USB connections. I have a AMD 900 MHz 256MB, and my dads P4 1.3 GHz is faster on the internet. I also set up a computer for a guy a P4 1.5 Ghz 512 MB Rambus and a cable modem through ethernet card and its blazing fast. Its as fast as the P3s we use at college that have T1 lines to the server on campus. I would guess you have a hardware problem. Windows ME sucks too, I know because im using it too.

No, YOU got it all wrong.  The Celeron was around before the P3, if you'll remember.  It was at first a downgraded P2 with removed cache, designed for laptops and competing against the cheap AMD processors.  But it was a little too underperforming, so they developed a souped-up Celeron.

This second Celeron was almost as cheap as the first Celerons, but it was more powerful than the flagship P2.

So did Intel market this cheap ass processor to destroy AMD's bread and butter of the budget processor market?  Nope.  Instead they decided to overcharge the general public who bought their systems through PC clone makers who used Intel exclusively.  Their greed saved AMD's ass then, and AMD is eating Intel alive today.

orginally posted by jaybob:


That has to do with your internet connection, not the computer itself.  Can't speak about cable with USB modem, I run dsl/ethernet.  I only have a P2 450mhz but get little lag or packet loss thx to a 1500/384 connection.  Athlon is probably a better value and is faster on most apps.  For games though I would go P4 if the price was close enough with the Athlon.I agree with the remark that windows ME sucks.  Games and graphic intensive work is probably the only place where you would notice a big difference between your P4 and your old K6.

Celeron vs P3.  The other guy is right.  The later celerons are P3s with secondary cache disabled.  Your thinking of the older celerons.

System halts/lock-ups while waiting for IE to load a page are most definitely a system problem.

I hate to tell you, but Athlons are not any cheaper than P4's. I trust Intel more than AMD

Per Pricewatch:

$163 AMD 1.4GHz Athlon 266 FSB
$173 - AMD 1.4GHz Athlon 200 FSB
$129 - AMD 1.33GHz Athlon 266 FSB
$98   - AMD 1.2GHz Athlon 266 FSB
$92   - AMD 1.13GHz Athlon 266 FSB
$81   - AMD 1GHz Athlon 266 FSB
$216 - AMD 1.2GHz Athlon MP
$189 - AMD 1GHz Athlon MP
$129 - AMD 1.3GHz Athlon 200 FSB Socket A
$89   - AMD 1.2GHz Athlon 200 FSB Socket A
$89   - AMD 1.1GHz Athlon 200 FSB Socket A
$81   - AMD 1GHz Athlon 200 FSB Socket A


$322 Pentium 4 1.7GHz
$228 Pentium 4 1.5GHz
$166 - Pentium 4 1.4GHz
$155 Pentium 4 1.3GHz
$172 - Pentium III 1GHz

Pretty much the same price to me... give or take a few bucks

Jaybob,

From the symptoms you're describing, you have a hardware conflict which is hanging your system for brief periods of time.

You might have a driver conflict, or a SW problem, the behavior you're seeing isn't normal. There is a HUGE difference between a P4 1.3 vs. a K6 233.

So, I'd suggest taking it back to Gateway, and getting it fixed. It should be a screamer, especially on video and music.

Also, I suggest going to other sites than ar15.com for computer info (arstechnica.com planethardware.com tomshardware.com and others) if you want to learn about computers. I've read more mis-information (I'm being polite) on this thread about Intel vs. AMD etc...

The Athlon is a decent processor, but the P4 is everybit as good now, and is ramping up speed and funcationality every quarter. Already, the performance crown is again Intel's 1.8 P4, and the gapwill continue to grow.  As for AMD kicking INTC around, I'll be the first to admit that in the last 18 months (since they got the Athlon out) AMD has done very well, it's a solid processor. It's also 2 years old, doesn't scale performance with frequency, and is tapped out for getting more performance out of the existing architecture.

Maybe AMD will be able to do something with Palimino, (their next rev of Athlon) but that's been delayed on the desktop... They aren't gods and Intel a bunch of clowns, you're talking about fabbing the most complex devices on earth.. It's a hard job getting a processor out on time...

Long term, it's really tough to beat Intel down for any length of time. I think you're going to see AMD struggle very soon above and beyond this quarters financial numbers. Intel has gotten a huge wakeup call, and is working 24x7 like dogs to make sure they are the performance leaders. There has been major restructuring, execs who let this happen have been wacked and drummed out, and hungry sharks are leading hundreds of world class HW developers who have taken this attempt to wrestle the processor crown from INTC real personally. I think you're going to see INTC burn the legs off of AMD and TMTA and anyone else trying to get into the microprocessor space as they try to keep up.

And just so you don't think I'm another yahoo blowing smoke up your bottom, I'm an engineer at their R&D site in Oregon...

GunCrazy223 had a good suggestion, you might have your cable modem configured wrong.

And yes, Windows ME sucks, you're better off with Win2000 or Win98se if you have a choice.

call gateway, they should fix it, it's a system problem.

A 1.4GHz Athlon is Faster than a 1.7GHz PIV

So your talking about twice the $ for the Intel CPU.

course no software programs are around yet to handle all that speed except heavy duty video editing and i mean like multi thousand doller software think Final fantasy movie video.

Here is the secret information...

The P4 systems from the majors i.e. Dell, Gateway etc are NOT optimized.  In the Intel technical solutions training were we built a P4 1.4, 128mb, 20gb drive 32mb Geforce, etc.  First we loaded Win2k and drivers like a standard system build, then benchmarked with 3Dmark...bench=2500.  Then we reformatted and loaded in an optimized sequence and the benchmark=4000.  The intel rep said "the P4s out there now will perform like P-III800s"  FYI Athlon 1.2 benchmarks at 7200.  Return it...

dave@shadows

I've got to agree with the engineer from Oregon. The misinformation here is pretty deep and very few messages address the actual problem you are reporting. Your AMD K6/2 333 is a Pentium II class system and it isn't very fast at all. I have several systems, a INTC p2/233, an AMD K6/2 350, a AMD K6/2 400, a INTC P3/500 and a INTC P3/700. Your P4 is MUCH faster than my P3/700, and my INTC systems smoke my AMD systems, hands down.

Your real question was "It doesn't seem right that my new P4 is slower than my AMD K6/2 333"

The answer is, you're right, that isn't right. It sounds like you've got a problem with the hardware or with the OS to me. But you should call your vendor and complain. I think Gateway has on-site support, so they'll send a GE Appliance repairman out to fix your computer, and if the problem is simple enough, he'll fix it quickly and you'll realize just how deep the BS was getting in this thread.

As far as the personal opinions here are concerned, AMD grabbed the lead in processor speed for about a month with the 1ghz barrier. INTC has reclaimed the lead with the 1.7ghz (which is, despite the claims, faster than a 1.4ghz Athalon). At comparable performance levels (1.4ghz Athalon vs. 1.4ghz P4), Intel is only about $50 more expensive. For this extra investment, you get a level of Q/A from top to bottom that AMD can't seem to match. I believe a big part of this is that AMD does not control the motherboard chipset (VIA) and that many of the quirks and odd behaviors attributed to AMD are caused by this fact. I was a big fan of AMD until I encountered very similar problems with reliability and stability on four or five different AMD systems. I then moved to Intel with a p3/500, which was the flagship at the time. The reliability was rock solid and the performance gain was astronomical. Until AMD released the Athalon, there was nothing that could touch the P3 (which is NOT a butchered Celeron, that guy DOES have it backward). When I saw friends and associates having the same kind of issues with Athalon systems that I had with K6/2 and K6/3 systems, my next purchase was a P3/700. The Intel chips just make the foundation of a much more reliable machine.

Note, I am currently a IT systems engineer in Folsom. I started switching to Intel CPUs long before I was hired by the company, and neither Intel nor I actually "sought" each other out, it just happened this way. These are my opinions and my experiences, and do not reflect the opinions of Intel Corporation. I believe that AMD gives good competition to Intel and that there are people who are willing to sacrifice quality and stability in their PCs to save a little money. Let those people buy AMDs. It is my opinion that the smart consumer will spend the extra $50 to go with Intel. You'll see some people respond about some of the flawed releases Intel has had recently. This is simply a matter of name recognition. If Microsoft releases an OS with a flaw in it, it is front page news. If Redhat or another Linux distributor, or Mac/OS, or any other M/S competitor does the same thing, if it gets to print at all it is a miracle. The same thing applies here. AMD and VIA have their share of fubars... they just don't get paraded around in the press like Intel does when they make a mistake. It isn't fair, but when you're seen as the Big Dog, everyone wants to take a swing at you.

Get rid of the Milenium Edition. Gauranteed it is junk. My wife works at Gateway. She is in a department that deals with it and it is positively junk!!! Take it back in and they will download 98 on it for you. Windows Milenium and AOL mainly don't work together but they also have conflicts with other ISP's.

orginally posted by Janus:


yeah I goofed.  I misread the problem, focused in on lag.  My friend had a similar problem when he would attempt to drop the dialogue box in IE.  He was running NT though, never figured out problem.




depends on which benchmark test you are doing,  is it faster on a quake3 demo? Everday applications, I would say yes, the athlon is faster but then how fast do you need to do spreadsheets? I need fast 3D graphics and the P4 spanks the Athlon for now.

orginally posted by Dave@shadows:




I don't understand the 3Dmark numbers you are using.  On 3Dmark 2000 CPUMark a P4 1.5 puts out 457 marks to a 1.2 DDR Athlon  437 marks.  On 3Dmark 2000 video the P4 had 37.6 fps vs 32.4 for the Athlon. 3DWinmark for P4 221 to 209.  Are you looking at a different test?

You know whats going to happen if you send it back to Gateway, they'll just reformat and do a complete reinstall.  I would agree with the others and get 98SE if they will let you.