Pentium III reality vs. hype

So finally we can tell all about the Pentium III. This has been the longest unveiling of a new product since Gypsy Rose Lee debuted on Broadway. Unfortunately, it's not nearly as exciting.

When Intel moved from the 8086 to the 286, it was cause for celebration. Similarly, the move from the 16-bit 286 to the 32-bit 386 was a big, big step. Even the move from the Pentium to the new cache designs in the Pentium Pro was an exciting and momentous step.

But it was about then that the marketing department took over. Although the Pentium II was simply a reworking of the Pentium Pro, it got a whole new number, as if it were another great new chip. About the only real innovation with the Pentium II was the packaging -- and that new slot one design was all about freezing out the competition, not extending computing.

The Pentium III actually adds a little bit. Intel included 70 or so instructions to the chip. But besides those new instructions, nothing's different. The two chips even look the same -- the prototype Pentium III in our test system from Gateway was even packaged in a Pentium II shell.

Our benchmark tests show that the Pentium III is no great shakes either. Given that a 500MHz chip runs a little more than 11 percent faster than a 450MHz chip, you would expect benchmarks to run about 5 percent to 6 percent faster, because the processor makes up only part of a system's performance.

And that's about what we found. On our business benchmarks, Winstone 98, we found a 500MHz Pentium III equipped Gateway delivered about 7 percent more performance than a similarly configured 450MHz Pentium II.

But wait, you say. Those 70 instructions have to do something, don't they? Well, in a word, yes. And here's where the Pentium III really shines. If you like playing 3-D games, like Quake, Descent, Half Life, or Battlezone, you'll love the PIII. Microsoft's new 6.1 iteration of Direct X includes support for those new instructions, and it shows both in benchmarks and demonstrations.

Our 3-D Winmark results were impressive. That same 500MHz Gateway delivered 67 percent better results than its 450MHz PII cousin, and both included the same hot new Riva TNT 2-D/3-D card from STB. And my casual viewing of the games displayed at Intel's Pentium III preview last week corroborates those results. If you like video games, you'll love the PIII.

Intel claims that the Pentium III also improves Internet performance, but I'm not convinced that it's due to more than the clock-speed bump. Dragon Systems claims that the new instructions help with the training process on their voice recognition system, reducing it from thirty to three minutes. An advance, sure, but even that's too long for most of us in the instant-gratification computing world.

I'm told by hot-rod magazines that if I can figure out how to get colder air into the combustion chamber of my engine, I can get a free 7 or 8 horsepower improvement without doing much else to the engine. And if I clean my injectors, I'll get better gas mileage.

And that's essentially what Intel has done. They've upped the clock speed, which would be great on whatever they call the chip. That's the cooler air part. Then they've cleaned the injectors, which gives better performance to the 3-D aspect of my computing.

But would you pay an additional $500 for that incremental improvement? Cooler air and cleaner injectors simply aren't worth that premium. I think Gypsy Rose Lee would agree.

What do you think about the Pentium III? Let me know in the talkback below.