Athlon XP1900+ -- Faster Than A 2GHz P4? 299
doormat writes "AMD releases their AthlonXP 1900+ Processor today, thats 1.6GHz. And it seems like its enough to topple the P4-2.0GHz, even in Quake 3 Arena!! AMDMB has a review of it." Ian Bell points out an AMD press release on the new processor. I love watching my old Athlon get slower every day ...
I guess it's time to upgrade my motherboard (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone stop the insanity!
Linuxrunner
Not a *couple* MHz (Score:3, Interesting)
We're not talking a couple of MHz, we're talking 130MHz for the AthlonXP 1800+ over the TBird 1.4GHz and 70MHz of the 1900+ over the 1800+. When you consider we're still barely in the GHz range, MHz still matter! If they released on every few 100 KHz that'd be different, but until we get up to say 15GHz or more MHz makes a difference, especially considering AMD's IPC over Intel's. But I'll step off the soapbox before I slip ;)
I guess you do have a point though... for bleeding edge people they won't care, but Intel and AMD are competing businesses in a big market, so they can't afford to slip behind each other, it's a vicious game.
Re:Payola ? (Score:3, Interesting)
As far as price/performance goes, AMD are beating Intel quite handily, and now they're even beating them on plain performance.
The transmeta thing is hairier; they have a damn fine product, but it doesn't have the performance to compete with even mobile Celerons and Intel have done a fair bit of work on Speedstep to reduce the power consumption of their mobile chips. If nothing else, Transmeta have forced Intel to re-evaluate mobile priorities.
apple (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Toppling the P4? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, according to the shootout that Tomshardware had, on the most important test of Linux kernel compilation (:)), every AMD from the old Athlon 1400 to the XP 1800+ beat every Intel up to the 2GHz one.
And thats even without factoring in the price difference on CPU, motherboard and RDRAM. Or the ethical considerations of purchasing Rambus ram.
My next computer will be my first AMD without a doubt
Re:That press release: (Score:2, Interesting)
"Is there any bad news? Yes, but only for Intel. The Athlon XP 1800+ sees AMD back as the undisputed king of the performance castle. With a score of 5.24 in our 2D application benchmarkss, the MESH is comfortably ahead of any 2GHz Pentium 4 machine we've seen. In 3DMark 2001, meanwhile, it achieves a monster score of 7,611 at 1,024 x 768 in 32-bit colour. The fact that it can still delIver 5,271 3DMarks at a resolution of 1,600 x 1,200 speaks volumes - Athlon XP and GeForce3 Ti 500 Is a potent 3D combination."
The same issue has a review of a 2GHz P4 which benchmarks at slower than an Athlon 1.33GHz!
Re:I guess it's time to upgrade my motherboard (Score:1, Interesting)
Since AMD went to the Socket A interface, they haven't changed the format of their interface. Compare that with Intel and their P4 mess.
Sure, sometimes faster memory or a faster bus mean a new chipset will be needed, and hence a new motherboard. But the old motherboard doesn't stop the new processor running, just not as optimally as before (and slower).
In the end, it depends on whether or not you want to upgrade your computer system every 6 months, or every 3 years...
Y.A.A.A or Y.A.L.A (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering the last time a topic such as this compared the Intel's best P4 to AMD's best Athlon.
The Car/Engine analogy was used to no end and many valid points were made, but noboday really put it into a conclusive and easy to understand "package" that the Average Joe User could understand.
Recall, if you will, the movie "The Fast and the Furious" as the analogy of Intel vs AMD saga.
Remember the scene at the end with the race between the souped up Honda and the Toranado?
Intel's P4 is akin to the Honda, as it has a lot of "high-RPM's" and "high-tech" under the hood (i.e. 2.X Ghz and Rambus et al).
The Athlon is like the Toranado(?) and American Muscle car that had the "High Torque" and "lower-tech" that relied on brute force (i.e. 'superior' FPU and Large cache and the blower is similar to DDR-SDRAM in a way).
The end result of the race at the end of the movie was that they (for the most part) tied.
The current Intel/AMD debate is very similar, in that you have all this high RPM/low torque (intel) vs old school High Torque/mid RPM's (AMD).
Re:Public perception of processor speeds (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not like the old days, jumping from CGA -> EGA -> VGA -> SVGA, or from monochrome to color. There's not a big need for consumers to go get 19+" monitors when the 17" are nice enough for most people. Likewise with hard drives. It far less likely that a regular consumer will fill up the 30GB drive that's standard now.
The manufacturers have realized this for awhile. Hard drives, video cards, memory, and every other component is now marketed as "making the internet faster".
The sad thing for the industry is not only the current economy, but also that new hardware isn't going to be as revolutionary as it once was.
It all comes down to the "Killer App" syndrome. There's no need for new hardware until new software is available to take advantage of it. And without a need for new hardware, the hardware manufacturers don't have any immediate need to spend lots of time and money on R&D.
New software needs to come first. I tend to see that most programmers are busy enough playing catch-up with all the new stuff available, implementing new communication APIs and what not. I'm sure a lot just haven't had time to do anything revolutionary.
Re:Look at this article (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, I don't know. I work at a PC Spezialist store in Germany, not the tech dept., though. We've been selling Athlon XPs from the day they were out. Before that, we've mostly been selling the TB 1000-1400 and some Durons. I've noticed that AthlonXPs are actually cooler than the TBs. You know, when you use the really cheap ones, the passive cooling part below the fan will get hot. Not with the XPs, with those it just gets a little wormer than room temperature.
About customers feeling tricked I can only say the following: Not our customers. There's generally two categories, Type A looks at the numbers and it makes perfect sense to him: 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800... You can't make it easier for him. Type B knows about the whole trick but generally also reads Tom's Hardware Guide/c't magazine/$YOUR_FAVORITE_SOURCE_OF_DECENT_INFORMAT
Kernel compile times (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No... (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on what you define as "performance". Raw number-crunching speed, MIPS, FLOPS, etc. isn't the only CPU statistic that matters. Transmeta has done a pretty good job of meeting thier stated engineering goals. They didn't set out to make the fastest processor - they set out to make one with much lower power requirements.
Saying that a Transmeta processor "sucks" because it's slower than an Athalon is like saying a Honda Helix sucks because it's slower than a Corvette. You could just as easily say that the Corvette sucks because it takes 4x as much fuel to make the same trip. Or you could say they both suck compared to a 4WD Pickup because they can't haul a trailer, go offroad, or carry a lot of cargo.
I wouldn't expect Transmeta to displace AMD and/or Intel in the desktop market, but I do expect them to be able to compete and excel in the portable and embedded computer market.