James Governor / 3 February 97 / MMX feature / The Room

Intel released the first versions of its Pentium processors with Multimedia Extensions (mmx) technology last month in a bid to improve the sound and graphics performance of Intel-based machines. But just how good are they? And should you rush out and buy one?

Intel has made a firm commitment to the architecture - all of its processors from now on will include MMX - designed to allow several multimedia tasks, such as frame manipulations, to be carried out simultaneously. Andy Grove, Intel's president, said at Comdex last year that the PC industry must fight television to catch the consumer's eye. Which is why MMX has been designed to deliver lifelike colour, full-screen video and graphics, real-time animation and image manipulation and 3D audio. But at the moment it's a technology in search of an application. MMX will not improve the performance of existing software, but instead requires code to be written specially for it. For almost any other supplier this bleeding edge approach could create a problem, but Intel owns the market, and therefore, by definition controls it. We will buy MMX but the real question is when?

To show off the capabilities of the chip Intel ensured that some examples of MMX-optimised software was available at the launch, and most of it will be bundled with machines as they are sold. The problem is that these demonstrations are poor. One of the first available games is POD, from Ubisoft [www.ubisoft.com], a scifi racing game, which has some nice touches in the graphics rendering but is essentially naff. It looks and feels primitive compared to most console-based racing games, bad news for Intel as it strives to take on Nintendo and Sega in wooing the sweaty palms of the consumer market. Maris Multimedia's Space Station Simulator also has a few nice ingredients, taking advantage of improved CD-ROM control, but overall doesn't really impress.

However, to do the MMX chips justice, they do process MPEG beautifully. Full screen videos barely flicker, and it is not until three windows are being used to run MPEGs simultaneously that performance begins to degrade. And the sound processing is better too - higher sample rates mean a real improvement in clarity; your PC won't sound as good as your stereo yet, but it's getting there.

Intel made a tacit acknowledgement that it waiting for applications to take advantage of MMX when it claimed it ' is the most significant enhancement to the programmer's view of the Intel architecture in the last ten years'. The company is appealing to code writers, not users, to make the platform a success.

The sofware industry has required little persuasion of MMX's charm. Zipper Interactive, which developed Deathdrome for the chip, is already looking to the next generation MMX, which its president, Jim Bosler, recently said 'will be killer for games'. Another significant player will be Sega, which has also announced support for the chips - MMX allows direct translation of code from its arcade machines into the PC arena - the first game is released this month: Cyber Troopers Virtual On is a shoot-em-up frenzy, and the more of those available, the better.

One other feature of MMX which must be mentioned is improved network interaction, as Intel pushes to overcome the 'bandwidth barrier' of the Internet. The drive is towards applications that run primarily on the PC, with Internet updates only when absolutely necessary. The best PC game ever, Elite for the BBC micro, overcame memory restrictions in a similar manner, only making occasional calls to the disk drive. As PCs are so fat, and the Internet so slow, this seems the right way forward. It could also mean a revolution in networked games. POD is playable with a range of options, including multiple player scenarios with some participants on a LAN, and some connected across the Internet. Doom and Quake may have set the standard for playability in these games, but playing them across the Internet is a whole new shooting match. Videoconferencing should benefit from similar techniques, and may fulfil its promise with MMX.

One final caveat - MMX is likely to reduce performance on standard floating point applications, because it is so tuned to multimedia calls, but most users, whether business or home, don't really need the bravura performance of the higher specification Pentium processors anyway.

To buy or not to buy. That is the question.

If you can't make up your mind, that's OK. The release of MMX machines will cause standard Pentium prices to drop dramatically, as home buyers opt for the Ferrari rather than the Ford, which is good news for those of us who don't see the PC as a wily extension. Corporate users may even take the window of opportunity to upgrade old 486s. What's really great about the announcement is that late adopters will not be penalised. Intel is set to launch a Pentium Overdrive processor during 1997 giving MMX performance to many standard Pentium machines. Unless it is ridiculously expensive - and pricing details are not available yet - you may save money by waiting, but won't lose anything if you don't. By the middle of next year MMX software should really take off. Even Intel doesn't know how good MMX really is, but there are some hot shot programmers out there just waiting to show us.

[what does Intel say about it? go to www.mmx.com]