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Life at One Gigahertz
Hold on tight, the desktop speed barrier has been shattered
By STUART WHITMORE

Ever since I bought my first PC, I've suffered from megahertz envy. It's a condition peculiar to computer owners, one that has me jealously eyeing other people's desktops to see how much faster and more powerful they are than mine. I'm not going to worry about it any more. Megahertz no longer matter to me. These days I have a far more serious affliction: gigahertz envy.

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, one gigahertz is equal to 1,000 megahertz -- megahertz being the "clock speed" used to measure the basic performance of computer microprocessors. For the last several years, as clock speeds have inexorably ramped up, the one-gigahertz barrier has for computer buffs taken on the significance of the sound barrier or the four-minute mile. And, like those two milestones, it has been surpassed. Both of the leading chipmakers, AMD and Intel, recently launched the first consumer-grade 1-gig processors.

Being a jealous type, I wanted to be among the first in Hong Kong to sample the digital world at speed. The local Gateway people were kind enough to supply me with their Select 1000 desktop machine, powered by AMD's Athlon chip. The Select 1000 is not merely quick. With a standard 17-inch monitor, a DVD drive and 128 megabytes of RAM, it's big. In an age of super-slim and compact PCs, the Gateway has a desktop footprint like Shaquille O'Neal. To be fair, much of the ample CPU tower was empty, earmarked for extra features power users might add, such as CD writers and Zip drives. But a lot of space is occupied by a massive fan that the supersonic chip needs to keep cool. Sitting down in front of the keyboard was like sliding behind the wheel of a vintage V-8 powered Cadillac. As my head sunk below the dashboard, I fastened my seatbelt, fired it up.

And was immediately reminded that, after all, the computing experience is influenced by a wide range of technical factors, such as serial bus and memory configuration, rather than processor speed alone. I had to hum quietly to myself while the machine booted (all the speed in the world can't make a computer turn on and off like a TV) and was still faced with the familiar sight of Windows 98. I ran through a battery of ordinary tasks, starting and running office applications. Benchmark tests of speed used by the computer industry promised an impressive speed gain of around 25% over the 500 MHz machine I was used to. At least it sounded impressive. In practice, my jaded senses detected no significant improvement when performing workaday computing tasks.

No Wow factor was evinced during Internet surfing, either. Over an office network connection, the 1-GHz and 500-MHz PCs served up pages at about an equal pace -- even the heavy-graphics, heavy-traffic websites that choke my doughty four-year-old Macintosh. I logged off and tried something else: making MP3 files from a music CD, a CPU-taxing task which my 120-MHz Mac balks at completely. On the Select 1000, it took a little more than seven minutes to copy an hour-long album. My 500-MHz PC took about a minute longer. The difference was noteworthy, but hardly revolutionary.

What I wanted to see was something the gigahertz PC could do that my old machine couldn't. I found it when I tried to listen to the songs I had just recorded. The sound was no crisper -- but the graphics looked great. Yes graphics, most of the programs that play MP3 files also come with "visualization" software that produce colorful on-screen shapes in reaction to the beat of the music. One of these Dancing Jello displays had always caused my 500-MHz PC to go into a spasms, freezing everything on the screen except an indistinct cloud of pastel that shifted position once every five seconds. Boring. On the Gateway, the blob was transformed into a richly hued translucent jewel that bounced to the bass while shafts of light played over a rotating 3D surface. Trippy.

Indeed, multimedia is the arena in which the gig-machine truly sparkles. The Select 1000 renders 3D graphics roughly twice as fast as its 500-MHz counterpart, a performance gain that will be obvious and compelling to most users -- most especially to seasoned PC gamers. In graphic displays, colors are richer, textures more detailed. Light, shade and movement all take on a photo-realistic quality. I tried a race simulator game, NASCAR 2000, and was impressed by the way sunlight glinted from the paintwork of vehicles as they sped through clouds of wispy smoke. Every one of the dozen cars involved in the pile-ups I caused rebounded off the barricades in individual arcs, just as one would expect in the physical world. I still finished in last place, but defeat mattered less because the ride was so cool.

The entry-level Select 1000 sells for a not-so-cool $3,000. For the money you could buy a 500-MHz system capable of handling all your everyday computing needs, and have plenty of money left over for a PlayStation 2 game console. In fact, you could buy two of each. Is the speed premium worth it?

Not yet. But as surely as you trashed your old Intel 486 machine, the day will come when anything less than a gigahertz PC will not do. Software programmers, game creators and webmasters are always quick to take advantage of leaps in processing power to add richer features. The broken gigahertz barrier opens up new possibilities. Speech recognition could be the next killer app, with huge potential in markets such as China and Japan where the QWERTY keyboard is more a hindrance to computer literacy than a help. Quick, accurate voice-to-text transcription requires masses of computing power. Voice commands may also replace the mouse and icons as the primary way we communicate with our desktop. The PC itself is likely to become the central brain of a networked home, a miniature server in control of everything from your evening's entertainment to the air conditioning. The bigger the brain, the better.

While cheap "Netpliances" will steal some of the PC's thunder, a full multimedia experience remains restricted to the domain of high-end desktops. Don't believe the bandwidth gurus who tell you that the computer you hook up to the Net no longer matters, as long as your connection is fast. Try surfing the Web on a pre-Pentium machine. Even on a broadband line the CPU will struggle to load today's feature-rich websites. Imagine a few years hence taking a real-time, video-quality test drive in a new Cadillac from the comfort of your own couch. A river of data will run through your modem when you hang a left at the traffic lights. The processor at your end will need to be even quicker than the car to put it all on screen, on the fly.

As with all newly introduced electronic devices, the price of a one-GHz PC will fall considerably if you wait six months or so before you buy. On the other hand, waiting will cut down on the length of time you'll hold bragging rights to the fastest machine in town. Besides, Intel is planning to release another new chip, code-named Williamette, by the end of this year. In addition to a new microprocessor architecture, a clock speed of 1.5 GHz is promised. That wouldn't be envy in your eyes, would it?

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