AthlonXP Released 372
ldopa1 writes "True to form, AMD has released the new Athlon XP today. This article on Tom's Hardware has the full technical specs for the chip as well as a look at the new packaging. Tom's also has a full set of benchmarks for the chip." michael : See also reviews on LinuxHardware.org,
Newsforge,
AnandTech and AMDMB. Update: 10/09 20:29 GMT by T : gregfortune points out that AMD is giving away quite a few of these in a six-city promotion as well, so if you live in one of the six, perhaps you can snag one.
Question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Question (Score:4, Funny)
Try running in with a heatsink; your results might improve.
will the trickery work? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:will the trickery work? (Score:4, Interesting)
Donning Asbestos Jumpsuit...
Re:will the trickery work? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:will the trickery work? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:will the trickery work? (Score:3, Interesting)
You have 2 competetors, really. The underdawg is going to try to make a new rating system that they hope to get everyone to use to bring back "fairness" to the processor rating game, but when your only real competetor is the one who is going to loose bigtime by using this new system (and therefore they will not), then how do you expect this new rating system to work?
I think what would be better is for now to drop this silly "we're as good as that P4, swear it!" scheme and just call it something else. Call it the AthlonXP G+ or 6P+ or something. That way there is no realative comparison, and when you go to the store to ask "hey, which is better here?" the guy can just tell you "Go with the AMD such and such, because it's as good as this P4 over here", not only does it stay up to date with comparisons, but you also don't get accused of trickery.
Re:will the trickery work? (Score:2)
Re:will the trickery work? (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, in marketing, two wrongs make a right!
Re:will the trickery work? (Score:2)
Re:will the trickery work? (Score:2)
The fact was that for a while there Intel did have the fastest chip out on the market, and AMD is constantly playing the catchup game. In another month Intel will release their newest chip, and they will have the lead as the "fastest chip" on the market.
So whilst all of the AMD affectionatos are trying to proove that "MHz aren't everything! (It's not the size that counts!...)" that door swings both ways there... AMD is still playing catchup for fastest chip, and Intel is still in the lead. (Yes yes the newest AMDs are faster than the P4 2.0, but not for long).
HOWEVER, AMD does have one huge advantage : price. That one is a little hard to dispute, and is why my last PC purchase was a nice TBird 1.4 rather than an Intel at significantly more price. However if I was going for a once you factor in the cost of the motherboards. If you go for good motherboards, the Intel ones are cheaper and thus offset the price difference between chips. But as soon as you leave the Celerys behind then AMD is a clear winner, if not having the fastest chip (which doesn't really mean much since who really buys the fastest chip out anyways?) then all of their chip/mobo solutions are 2/3rds of the price for about the same performace.
Oh well. Too bad Intel got gipped with the Rambus scandal. Mind you, it's not the RDRAM technology that's inherently bad, but more of the company. Interesting parallels between the RDRAM technology and Intel vs AMD and SDRAM if you ask me =)
Re:will the trickery work? (Score:2)
Is there any doubt that FPU-intensive apps (games) shipping in 2002 won't be compiled for the P4?
[H]ard|OCP Review (Score:4, Informative)
Re:[H]ard|OCP Review (Score:2)
While I realize that it was a show of patriotism or something of that sort (at least I HOPE there's a reason like that behind it), what is with the colours on that site? Jesus my eyes are bugging out in pain.
Model Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite the fact that there is a new core which yields 3-7% more performance per clock, Tom's points out the Model Number scheme is the most interesting thing. AMD is now not selling thier processors as 1500MHz, but instead as 'equivilant to a P4 at 1800MHz' -> an AthlonXP 1800+. Is this a fair thing to do? It seems to me that it is trying to trick customers into evaluating the processors more fairly. While most slashdotters know MHz != speed, the average joe does not. I am comforted that the AthlonXP 1800+ is able to run with the P4 2GHz. AMD doesn't seem to have overhyped their processors at all.
The next topic for discussion: AMD is trying to bring together a third party instituation to rate processor speeds in some fair way. I'm sure Apple would be thrilled to jump on this bandwagon and our dear friends at Microsoft already have their hands in it.
Re:Model Numbers (Score:2, Redundant)
The switch from MHz to product codes was a Slashdot story last month, with plenty of the usual heated discussion. This story isn't about that, though. It's about the introduction of a new processor.
Re:Model Numbers (Score:5, Funny)
Sure it's fair, I just think it's a bad idea. This ties AMD's entire branding effort to whatever Intel does. In other words, if Intel were to take the same tack, in five years we could end up with the "Intel Plentidum XXP++ 1800+++ Equiv4" and all of a sudden, the Cyrus Logic 2.5 GHz chip will look great despite the fact that the latest P7 (or whatever) is running in the 15 GHz range.
If we were to do this with political candidates, our ballot would look like:
George W. Bush (Equivalent to A. Gore)
Al Gore (Equivalent to G. W. Bush)
John McCain (G.W. Bush+)
Ralph Nader (iMac)
Re:Model Numbers (Score:2)
> Sure it's fair, I just think it's a bad idea.
Agreed. Many people will think AMD is being deceitful in order to hide some shortcoming in their chips. This will probably do more harm than good.
Also, it makes me worry that the marketroids have taken over the reins at AMD (like they have at Intel).
Microsoft Does it.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's one thing to sell it as an 1800+ but I'd still like to know what the MHz is.
Re:Model Numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
Integer: 495 base, 554 peak
FP: 426 base, 458 peak
For P4
Integer: 640 base, 656 peak
FP: 704 base, 714 peak
The athlon was Advanced Micro Devic Gigabyte GA-7DX Motherboard, 1.4GHz 1 cpu
The P4 was Intel Corporation Intel D850GB motherboard (2.0 GHz, Pentium 4 processor) 1 cpu
Obviously, this isn't a totally fair match (this is the most recent numbers I could find from both on this page http://www.spec.org/osg/cpu2000/results/cpu2000.h
Anyway, there you go
Re:Model Numbers (Score:5, Interesting)
So, that test proves to NOT be a test of CPU, but of the CPU/chipset/RAM/motherboard combination, which is hardly the same thing.
Re:Model Numbers (Score:2, Insightful)
If AMD doesn't like the numbers, they're going to have to bite the bullet and publish some numbers using a nonAMD motherboard. The fact of the matter is that SPEC is still the most widely industry recognized and accepted benchmark suite.
The reason I thing SPEC is a good measure (even allowing for the issue you raised) is because the vendor has complete control over the numbers he publishes--he gets to use his choice of hardware, his compiler etc. We don't have any of these complaints that Oh quake 3 wasn't fairly optimized etc.
Just my opinion I suppose, and I do acknowledge the large number of data streaming floating point benchmarks is going to give a processor using RDRAM and advantage, but that's just life.
rating the performance of processors (Score:3, Informative)
I think the only _real_ test of performance is a comprehensive set of real-world (read here: real applications!) tests. That, too, is not a test of _just_ the CPU's performance. I don't know how you'd be able to accomplish that, aside from spouting off some simulated results.
Unfortunately for the consumer, it's not possible to translate real-world performance results into a magic number that they can quickly or easily read to see how fast a system is. That's just life. People need to do research on things. Most people wouldn't be able to tell the speed difference between a 1gHz Athlon and a 2gHz Pentium IV system, anyway, so the point is moot for most people. Those of us who care about such things know where to go and what to look for when researching a computer purchase.
For full systems, a SPEC score might make a small amount of sense - then Dell could advertise their SPEC scores for each system, Gateway could for theirs, etc. But for those of us who buy on a component level, it makes no sense at all. The KT266A motherboard speed improvements over the AMD 760 chipset will probably offset those SPEC scores and let them Athlon XP 1800+ come out on top of the Pentium IV 2gHz CPU. (at least until Northwood comes out).
I guess my main gripe is that SPEC is being bandied about (even by the CPU manufacturers) as a measurement of pure CPU performance, when clearly, it is not. It's unfortunate AMD chose to publish their scores on a platform that's not the fastest. *shrug*
I'm such a nerd in that I even care about this stuff!
I'm really waiting for a DDR333 Athlon platform to come out next year. Hopefully there'll be a VIA KT333 chipset and also hopefully the Athlon 'Barton' (0.13micron Athlon platform) will have a 333mHz DDR FSB to mate to it. I've got other purchases in mind until then, assuming I ever get enough money to make them in the firstp lace.
Re:Model Numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
For tech-savvy users that might actually notice the speed difference, this means we have to browse the benchmarks at Anandtech, etc., and it's usually pretty easy to find a benchmark for an app identical or similar to what you spend most of your time doing (i.e. Tribes 2).
Of course, it's likely that none of us would notice the speed difference between a P4 2.0GHz or AMD 1800+ in whatever app we're using; and it's certain that a non-power user wouldn't. Which is fine, because the non-geek isn't going to read all the benchmarks.
So what's a computer buyer to do? Simple-- buy from whoever's cheaper. Save yourself $200, and try not to worry too much about remembering if your box is 2% faster or 2% slower than the other one as you surf the web.
Re:Model Numbers (Score:2)
Spec scores - more detail is available! (Score:2)
Timberwolf (300.twolf) is closest to what I do:
Athlon=703, Intel=683 --> a 3% difference - it's fairly even.
GCC (164.gcc) is something else I use a lot:
Athlon=254, Intel=197 --> a 29% difference - bigger difference
To select what test matches what you do best, you can get more info on the individual integer tests here [spec.org], and the floating point tests here [spec.org]
Still, these two applications show that the variantions from the composite 18% SPECINT and 56% SPECFP advantage the P4 has can be great.
Also, these pages detail the hardware setup used to reproduce these tests. We can see the Athlon was tested with 256MB and an ATA66/7200 rpm drive. The Intel was tested with the same amount of RAM and the faster ATA100/7200 rpm infamous 75GXP [slashdot.org] drive. That may explain some of the gcc differences. Also included are the compilers to build these test programs - If you're not (or your software vendor isn't) using the Intel 5.0 compiler, then these results probably aren't as applicable to you. Still, you've got to wonder why AMD is using the intel compiler... (it has K7 optimizations, but how much work is intel going to put into then?)
Lots more info on SPEC2001 here. [spec.org]
FYI - the difference between peak and base - from the the spec run rules [spec.org]:
"Peak" metrics are produced by building each benchmark in the suite with a set of optimizations individually tailored for that benchmark. The optimizations selected must adhere to the set of general benchmark optimization rules described in section 2.1 below. This may also be referred to as "aggressive compilation".
"Base" metrics are produced by building all the benchmarks in the suite with a common set of optimizations. In addition to the general benchmark optimization rules (section 2.1), base optimizations must adhere to a stricter set of rules described in section 2.2. These additional rules serve to form a "baseline" of recommended performance optimizations for a given system.
Re:Model Numbers (Score:2)
No, the SPEC benchmarks are a pretty awful way of comparing processor performance. Those synthetic benchmarks are often not equivalent to real-world performance.
The "proper" way to compare CPU's is to be an educated consumer and check out real-world benchmarks the accurately reflect the kind of software you use.
I don't mind AMD using the "XP" equivalent rating, as long as they stay realistic/humble and use the XP-rating to EDUCATE, not OVERHYPE. So far, they're calling their 1.53ghz model an 1800. I'd say that's pretty humble/realistic, since it beats the P4 2.0ghz in the majority of benchmarks.
Re:Model Numbers (Score:2)
Check out the Anandtech review of the new Athlons referenced in the Slashdot article, or the HardOCP review [hardocp.com], or the Tom's Hardware [tomshardware.com] review.
There you'll see the AthlonXP1800 beating or matching the P4 2GHZ in the majority of real-world benchmarks. When I say "real-world" benchmarks, I mean games, office applications, and graphics apps that are what the majority of people use 99%. As seen in SPEC's own FAQ [spec.org], "Typically, the best measure of a system is your own application with your own workload".
SPEC benchmarks are designed to be purely CPU intensive, although I'm sure they stress the memory subsystem somewhat as well. Unlike "real-world benchmarks", they're designed specifically to stress the rest of the system as little as possible. This makes SPEC benchmarks valuable in the sense that you can compare one CPU to another more-or-less directly, but this has the downside of not making SPEC results directly relevant to day-to-day computing tasks.
Talking about SPEC benchmarks is sort of like talking about the "potential" that athletes had before they entered the big leagues. It's interesting, but doesn't really matter. What matters is how they actually perform in real situations.
Re:Model Numbers (Score:2)
"Real world" computing emcompasses many many aspects beside pure, isolated CPU performance. That's why I don't consider SPEC a "real world" benchmark. Unless you do nothing but run Prime95 all day.
If you look at benchmarks that more accurately model real-world applications such as graphics applications, games, and office applications, you'll see the AthlonXP 1800 beating the P4 2ghz in the majority of them.
But, hey, if you do nothing but compile kernals all day, then by all means use SPEC and SPEC alone, and pay special attention to the GCC portion of the SPEC suite... looks like a P4 might be right for you, if you can afford the huge price premium of a P4 system over an Athlon system.
I guess the root problem here is the term "real world". Not everyone's "real world" is the same....
SPEC isn't a good benchmark for consumer CPU's (Score:2)
Re:Model Numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite right. AMD is labeling a 1500MHz processor as equivilant to how a Pentium 1800MHz based on the coming Northwood core should perform. The Northwood core will be more efficient than the P4 architecture so an AMD AthlonXP 1800 will easily outperform a P4 1800MHz but should be roughly equivilent (better still but not by as much) to an 1800MHz Northwood.
Good CPU in spite of AMD marketing (Score:5, Interesting)
Both Anandtech and Tom's Hardware show the Athlon XP 1800+ to have pure-CPU performance that exceeds that for the Pentium 4 2,000 MHz CPU (with the exception of any program that takes full advantage of SSE2 instructions, which are still quite rare). This is a tribute to the fact that the Athlon CPU core itself is very fast, particularly the FPU unit.
Once people realize the Athlon XP's excellent performance I think the new CPU will be a good seller.
1900+ still tomorrow? (Score:2)
I have $5k burning a hole in my boss's pocket waiting to order my workstation. mmm, dual athlons, 4 15krpm scsi drives, 2g of ddr, and a 21" screen. \end{\drool}
hawk
Re:1900+ still tomorrow? (Score:2)
> always be happy to do so.
maybe not always
hawk
MP? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are the Athlon XP and Athlon MP essentially two lines now? It sucks to see AMD succumb to marketing in order to combat Intel.
Re:MP? (Score:2)
At least it's smart marketing. Average Joe doesn't know of or care about SMP capabilities. Slashdorks like us know that the rating system's a sham. All I see is a divided marketing tactic for a divided market. Simple for the simple, special for the special.
Re:MP? (Score:4, Funny)
Which will from now on be known as Smarketing.
Re:MP? (Score:2)
Re:MP? (Score:5, Informative)
For that matter you can use an Athlon tbird in an MP configuration, but the Palominos have AMD's blessing. The HardOCP article talks about this somewhat.
Re:MP? (Score:2)
Can someone explain to me (I guess in words of one syllable
Re:MP? (Score:2)
Re:MP? (Score:2)
Question. Why couldn't someone take a MP Alpha motherboard and plug a bunch of Athlons into it?
Re:MP? (Score:2)
Someone did. The old slot Athlons fit in the Alpha boards and work fine. The current socket ones do not. Question is why would you want to do it? If you have an Alpha board you might as well stick Alpha CPUs in it...
Re:MP? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:MP? (Score:2)
If you check out comp.periphs.mainboard.tyan (I think), theres many people discussing this, and many are quite happy with their dual-T-Bird Tiger and Thunder setups.
Personally, I use the 1.2Ghz MP processors, because I would hope that they're "absolutely" stable, as required for the server sector (where they're aimed). For home use, I'm sure the non-MP processors are fine.
MadCow.
A chip by any other name... (Score:3, Interesting)
Aparently that are following suit, with NVidia and their DetonatorXP drivers, everyone seems to be trying to get onto the WinXP hype.
They seem to call it Extended Performance (isn't that AthlonEP then?), and sure it has 3-7% more bang for clock than the TB line.
My only question is this, since AMDs are so popular in the linux comunity, what will the change in name do to that support? I for one don't care...
Any thoughts on the name's impact?
Anyone know what happened to UserFriendly?
Re:A chip by any other name... (Score:2)
They are trying to trick people into evaluating the chip fairly. Bad,.. BAD AMD!
Even so... since this chip is equivalent to the 2.0 GHz Intel, they are not really lying.
It's a bad thing, yes, but it will have good repurcussions.
It will make people start looking at benchmarks rather than Hz rating.
(The only reason I may ever still go for Intel, is for the Flask encoding speeds... but then it's still pricy)
Re:A chip by any other name... (Score:2)
According to Anandtech the new Athlon 1800+ beats the Intel in Flask encoding.
Re:A chip by any other name... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A chip by any other name... (Score:2)
Would you consider it to be similarly lame and wrong for a company to release a new CPU with a higher MHz rating, but without a corrosponding overall performance increase?
They are disallowing anyone from displaying the MHz - they are suprressing it on the hardware level - forbidding people to speak about it!
Oh, c'mon. We're able to talk about it. Tom's Hardware's reviews will always have the MHz listed, it's not like you won't be able to find the information if you want to.
It's similar to various private tidbits about yourself. Some of them, if spread far and wide publicly, could probably be interpretted incorrectly if a good explanation didn't accompany them. As such, you probably choose to keep those facts private, and only tell those people whom you think will more thoroughly understand the meaning behind those facts. That's all AMD is doing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A chip by any other name... (Score:2)
This is where you are missing the fundamental point. Mhz ratings confuse and obfuscate the issue - which is the whole reason they are looking for a new rating system. AMD's not trying to "hide" the mhz, they're forcing companies to NOT market by a confusing number that misleads customers.
Re:A chip by any other name... (Score:2)
And that is where you are missing the whole point!
If AMD instead called their chips the AMD AthlonXP 6XG+ then and only then would that argument hold water.
But they are intentionally using numbers that sound like the very numbers that they are trying to discredit.
It's the subtle difference between lying and not telling the-whole-truth. "A half truth is worse than a lie"... It's like me trying to say:
If AMD was truly trying to wein people off the MHz system, then they wouldn't be using a system that's basically mimicking the system. They're saying "Hey, X AMD MHz are just as good as Y Intel MHz, and therefore we'll call our chip the AMD AthlonXP X+"
That's not nice marketing. That's close to the same ploys that Microsoft is doing that everybody condemns. Funny that...
Re:A chip by any other name... (Score:2)
I agree with you.
So when the Big Evil Corporation decides to put in marketing hooks saying that you cant disparage them using their own software, it's part of The Great Conspiracy and BG's Evil Ploy To Take Over The World.
But When AMD puts in marketing hooks saying that you're not allowed to show the real numbers of the chip, and instead to use very misleading numbers that resemble the numbers that you're trying to tell people aren't important, hey that's just a good move by them to get more market share.
I got one word for y'all out there!
HYPOCRITE!
Re:A chip by any other name... (Score:2)
People want to believe that a number means speed.
Neither AMD or Intel's number tells the whole story-- no single number is able to do that.
If you're naive and want to boycott AMD because they're twisting meaningless numbers, go ahead.
Re: (Score:2)
Athlon "XP"? (Score:3, Interesting)
XP hype (Score:5, Funny)
Athalon XP site (Score:2)
Re:Athalon XP site (Score:2)
Andrew
Re:Athalon XP site (Score:2)
Re:Athalon XP site (Score:2)
Happens all the time...
Subliminal story (Score:2, Interesting)
Now what? (Score:3, Interesting)
I stopped using Intel processors a while ago, after learning that AMD's chip architecture was superior to Intel's, the choice was obvious. If you haven't read this document [emulators.com], please do. It'll give you a good technical understanding of performance issues with Pentium processors compared to AMD processors.
So, now what? I guess I'm forced into some hard choices over the specs of my next machine. It may be time to consider Intel again... I just don't know. AMD's new CPU scheme sounds really sketchy to me.
Re:Now what? (Score:4, Insightful)
MHz ratings _shouldn't_ mean something to you in that case. You'd really pick a 2GHz CPU over a 1.8GHz model, even if the latter were 20% faster?
Consumers in general will be fine with this change, but geeks are going to implode. Too many have made a hobby out of tracking MHz and transistor count and other meaningless numbers. Unfortunately, it's about the same as horsepower in cars. More is not necessarily better. And no one who buys a car fixates on horsepower above all else.
It's not the end of the world. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Now what? (Score:2, Interesting)
AMD Motherboards will not pass AMD validation or be posted on the AMD recommended motherboard website if the frequency is displayed by the BIOS during bootup for AMD Athlon(tm) Model 6 desktop and multiprocessing processors.
It'll be interesting to see how many companies release "un-approved" motherboards for the processors, and how many computer geeks buy them. I know I would.
I don't agree with the arguement that the MhZ rating is arbitrary. Its not... there is a direct correlation between mHz and clock cycles. Clock cycles mean something to some talented computer users. By masking the mHz rating, it only obfuscates the technical aspect of the chip. Their silly rating does NOT take that away, because the chip still runs on a clock.
Re:Now what? (Score:3, Informative)
No, clock cycles do not mean anything about performance to "some talented computer users." Here's why, using CPUs other than AthlonXP and Pentium4 so as not to inflame anyone:
The old Intel 8-bit CPU used in PC/XT machines ran at 4.77 MHz (4,770,000 clock cycles per second) but this does *not* mean that it could do 4,770,000 *things* per second, because each time it needed to execute an instruction, it took several (i.e. more than one) clock cycles to do so. Furthermore, the largest numbers it could operate on natively were generally 8-bits long -- a 32-bit calculation, for example, required user code to complete, which of course meant many, many more cycles.
The Hitachi 6309 CPU of the same time period, by comparison, ran at 2.0 MHz (2,000,000 cycles per second), but was **MUCH** faster for the same types of tasks than the Intel 8-bit CPU because it could *often* finish a complete instruction in only one clock cycle and because it had 16-bit registers and a 32-bit register and could thus do MANY types of math *natively*, in just one or several cycles, that the Intel CPU needed user code (and thus, hundreds or thousands of cycles) to complete.
Because of these types of _architectural_ differences, clock cycles have little or nothing to do with the real speeds of different chips performing real-world tasks (which, for gamers, includes things like Quake 3). In fact, clock cycles and MHz are *the same thing*, as MHz on a CPU simply means "number, in millions, of cycles per second."
You will find no statistical correlation between the *actual* clock speed on an AthlonXP and each of the benchmarks vs., say, a Pentium4 at 1800 MHz. Yes, one is running at ~1,500,000,000 cycles/second and one is running at ~1,800,000,000 cycles per second, but that doesn't tell you how many cycles each one is spending doing different types of tasks or (as is often the case) sitting around waiting for data from the rest of the system or from the bus.
The P4 needs a PR rating... (Score:4, Interesting)
Intel can't make it faster, but we can increase the number of cycles... can marketing do anything with that? Intel killed the PIII because the last thing they wanted was for someone to take a 1.5gHz chip and put the P3 & P4 side by side.
Depending on how you tweak the benching and load things up, you will see strengths and weaknesses in each CPU. Priced the same, the AMD chips are a better deal for my development and gaming needs.
Marketing capitulation (Score:4, Insightful)
Although virtually every reviewer pans the confusing processor labelling, I believe that it was a good business decision. With the success of the Athlon processor, AMD went a long way towards minimizing the marketing impact of "Intel Inside". Now they find themselves "burdened" with a processor which out performs its competitors significantly at a given clock speed. If they label the chip with its clock frequency they invite price comparisons to similarly clocked (but underperforming) Intel products.
I think the new labelling scheme is actually a win for AMD. Smart consumers will buy the chips because of their superior performance, regardless of the name. "Joe 6 pack" will buy it because he can buy the AMD 1700+ system for less than the Intel 1600.
No cheaper than Intel (Score:4, Insightful)
"In 1,000-unit quantities, the Athlon XP 1800 is priced at $252. The most recent list price for a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 was $256. The Athlon XP 1700 will sell for $190, compared with $193 for a 1.7 GHz Pentium 4. The Athlon 1600 lists for $160, compared with $163 for Intel's 1.6 GHz Pentium 4. The list price for the Athlon 1500 is $130, compared with $133 for a 1.5 GHz Pentium 4."
So AMD doesn't have a significant price edge on this round. That's bad for AMD; they need a price edge to win over vendors.
Without competition from AMD, Intel CPU chips would cost around $1000. We know this because they used to cost that much. Remember when Pentium Pro CPUs cost around $1000? AMD didn't have a high-end offering back then, and Intel could get away with huge markups. That's the difference between a monopoly and competition.
The real test will come when AMD starts shipping the Thunderbird, which is not instruction-compatible with the Intel Itanium.
Re:No cheaper than Intel (Score:3, Informative)
Re:No cheaper than Intel (Score:2)
The Athlon XP 1800+ (according to all the reviews) is actually faster than the 2.0 GHz Pentium 4, which in turn is considerably more expensive.
Of course, because of AMDs new marketing, people will think that the Athlon XP 1800+ is really comparable to the P4 1.8GHz, because they know that marketing ploys seldom are entirely accurate.
AMD's heatsink problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter how much faster and cheaper they are then Intel, that's a HUGE risk to take on your system.
Re:AMD's heatsink problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:AMD's heatsink problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
You're and idiot and installed it wrong in the first place.
You're system vendor is an idiot and installed it worng in the first place.
You're motherboard is made of cheap materals
You forced something didn't you (see 1)
There is no good reason for your heat sink to just fall off.
Re:AMD's heatsink problem? (Score:2)
AMD CPU's, for the most part, kick mule all over Intel's offerings at the same rated speed. If you follow normal precautions with your CPU (i.e. fasten the heatsink properly) the likelihood of the heatsink "falling off" is next to nil.
Re:AMD's heatsink problem? (Score:2)
Your car's engine won't burn up in a couple of seconds like an AMD processor will.
With a car, you have time to pull over and shut down the engine. With an AMD, even the fastest temperature sensing system won't be able to detect it and remove power in time. Even if you knew instantly when your heat sink failed, the combination your reaction time and the delay between pressing the power button and dropping of the power supply voltage to zero would be enough time for your CPU to burn.
As for a motherboard temperature monitor, most can only poll every 1.5 seconds or so (HW limitation). That doesn't leave enough time between when the cooling fails and when the power gets cut off. Remember also, that monitoring software and the power off BIOS calls take time, and there is also a delay between the power off bit on the MB being toggled and the power from the power supply dropping to zero.
Re:AMD's heatsink problem? (Score:2)
My motherboard will shut off if the fan dies(far more likely then your heatsink falls off) and I run soft ware that alerts me if the CPU reaches a certian temperature. It can also close down my system if I want it to.
these two precautions need to be taken with any modern system regardless of manufacturer>
FYI. My athlon 1.4 runs at 40c with the heat sinkan fan, and is rated above 90c.
Re:AMD's heatsink problem? (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to FUD.
Re:AMD's heatsink problem? (Score:2)
Comparison with the old Cyrix-scheme (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference in the policy is that the Cyrix PR150 was only in _some_ applications the equal of a Pentium 150, at others (gaming) it was truly pathetic.
The AMD Athlon XP 1800+ is in almost every regard better than Pentium IV.
The conclusion is that, even though I wish AMD would market their processors on MHz, they are actually not overhyping their processors when stating in this marketing, like Cyrix did.
Analagies of the XP processor... (FUNNY!) (Score:2, Funny)
http://athlonxp.amd.com/includes/content/whitePap
AMD Athlon" XP processor with QuantiSpeed" Architecture Analogies
1. Adult and Child Walking
If a child and an adult are walking together, the child needs to take more steps to keep up with the adult. Since the adult has a longer stride than the child and travels further with each step. The child has to work harder by moving faster to try and keep up.
2. Automobile Engines
Two cars are in a race. The Blue Car has a 6-cylinder engine while the Green Car has a 9-cylinder engine. While the Blue Car s engine works hard in terms of high RPMs, it doesn't actually go all that fast down the road. In contrast, the Green Car s more powerful engine doesn't have to run at high RPMs. Yet on the road, the Green Car blows the doors off the Blue Car. The more powerful Green Car engine is designed to run efficiently and to deliver a faster, more powerful driving experience.
3. Bucket and Cup
You and a friend are out on the lake in a rowboat. At some point, you both notice that the boat is taking on water. Your friend starts bailing water with a cup while you start bailing water with a bucket. In a panic, your friend bails faster than you, but since your container is larger, you end up bailing more water in the same amount of time.
4. Cycling
Two cyclists ride together on 10-speed bikes. One cyclist uses the 10th gear, pedaling slower but moving faster down the road and covering more distance with each stroke. The other cyclist uses 1st gear and has to pedal like a lunatic to achieve even close to the same speed on the road and cover the same ground.
This is what one finds by going to athlonxp.amd.com and clicking on any links that say "technical"
SMP (Score:2)
I just wish I could pick up a cheap powerpc atx motherboard, and through a couple power4's in it. But for some reason IBM/Motorola doesnt want to compete against Intel in the desktop market, im denied the joy of a smp box. I have been toying with the idea of picking up an SMP Mac now that OSX is patched and running smoothly.
Speaking of PowerPC chips, Recently
Re:SMP (Score:3, Informative)
The Athlon4 notebook CPUs are also equivalent to the Athlon XP desktop CPUs (with the addition of PowerNOW! power management, natch). As notebook and MP-certified CPUs are higher margin parts than uniprocessor desktop CPUs and AMD had no previous MP or notebook Athlon offerings, AMD directed their new Palamino-core fabrication lines to those markets first.
whetstone/dhrystone (Score:2)
Customers prefer numbers to letters (Score:2, Insightful)
If I has Windows 7 and I saw that Windows 8 is out I would feel behind the times. If I had Windows ME and I saw Windows XP is out I would not notice so much.
Customers are used to numbers. Sequels to movies have numbers. I think they will want to upgrade more with the old version scheme.
Problem with marketing based on mhz (Score:3, Interesting)
Look at recient times, you have a bigger gap in this problem. The G3's and G4's are clocked between 400mhz and 800mhz, but people are put off buying one cause they can get a PC with 1.2Ghz for cheaper. The G4 can be a faster chip with lower clockspeeds but people won't buy it cause all they see is 800mhz vs 1.2ghz. The bigger number in compters means it's better, everyone knows that!
If AMD doesn't start PR rating their chips people won't buy them. They are slower and cheaper (in the mind of Joe Sixpack) so they must not be as good as an Intel.
bfd. (Score:2, Insightful)
20 cities, not 6 (Score:2)
While this is cool, especially since I've got shares in AMD, one wonders how many of us are really just overexcited due to the name.
I mean, XP, that is just the hottest thing since buttered toast!
new proposal (Score:2)
Multiply all the frequencies together you can think of, i.e. 133mhz ram * 2x(ddr) * 6x clock multiplier * 266mhz FSB = Athlon 371868. If more marketing is desired, use pretend scientific notation. 37186800000000 * 10^(-8).
AthlonXP 1800+ != 1.8 GHz P4 (Score:2)
(As measured by some suite of benchmarks AMD has put together, although it's not exactly clear what because they keep fouling it up and talking about the P4 in their so-called whitepaper [amd.com]).
Thus, while this may be a misguided marketing ploy destined to backfire, it is nonetheless a fundamentally fair one, strictly meant to compare Athlons to Athlons, not Athlon's to P4s!
"Model numbers are designed to communicate the relative application performance among the various AMD Athlon XP processors, as well as communicate the architectural superiority over existing AMD Athlon processors." (From the FAQ [amd.com].)
Thus an AthlonXP 1800+ is (supposed to be) just as much better than a 1.8 GHz P4 as a 1.4 GHz Athlon Thunderbird was better than a 1.4 GHz P4.
(In reality this is not always so much the case, the main reason being that at higher processor speeds the chipset comes into play more, and the dual-channel RDRAM i850 for the P4 delivers more bandwidth than a single-channel PC266 chipset for the AthlonXP (eg. VIA KT266A). This advantage will be all-but-gone once PC333 chipsets hit in a few months...)
Please get it right!
One more thing (Score:2)
1. PR was a terrible benchmark. It was proprietary, synthetic, had little to do with real-world applications. Moreover, it was integer-only, and thus rather neatly covered up the fact that while the Cyrix CPUs were indeed faster clock-for-clock than a Pentium on integer programs, their floating point seriously sucked. In contrast, the suite of benchmarking suites AMD is using is well chosen, all based on "real-world" application benchmarks, and covers most problem domains pretty well.
The only missing component which might be interesting to have included is SPEC, but the only new data that would really provide is how well cutting-edge, mainly-experimental compilers support each processor. On the one hand, this exclusion does tend to disadvantage the P4, since modern compilation techniques are important to top P4 performance, and eventually these techniques will make their way to mainstream precompiled applications. On the other hand, for the next couple years or so 99% of the programs consumers run will still be compiled with not-so-modern compilers (i.e. MSVC++), and as Intel now owns every single important compiler research team in the world, they may have a slightly unfair advantage here.
In any case, this doesn't really matter because the AthlonXP rating system is comparing AthlonXPs to Athlon Thunderbirds, not P4s.
2. PR meant "Pentium Rating", even while Intel was selling "Pentium-II"s. This is the big thing people tend to forget about the whole PR thing: it was more or less accurate (integer only, of course), but the problem was that Cyrix was trying to position a "PR250" chip against, say, a PII-266. Great, except that the PII was significantly faster clock-for-clock than the Pentium was, especially running 32-bit apps (eg. the then-newly-standard Win95). The PR thing *was* a scam, not because performance ratings are innately a scam, but because the "P" in PR confused the fact that the comparison was to an obsolete processor and not to the current competition.
In any case, this doesn't really matter because the AthlonXP rating system is comparing AthlonXPs to Athlon Thunderbirds, not P4s.
(sorry to reply to self, etc.)
Re:Athlon or Athalon? (Score:2)
Whenever someone wants to seriously bash AMD, without actually knowing about the product, they seem to use the spelling "Athalon".
Re:Athlon or Athalon? (Score:4, Funny)
> "True to form, AMD has released the new Athalon XP today"
> I really hate when it gets spelled that way for some reason.
That's the athaletic spelling. Athaletes need computers too, you know.
Re:I just gotta know... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I just gotta know... (Score:2)
And you seriously believe this? Do you really think that this wasn't a concious decisions to ride M$'s coat-tails?
Re:I just gotta know... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Total independant standard for benchmarking? (Score:2)
The CPU industry would not accept this (including AMD, I think). The fact is that benchmark numbers almost never scale linearly with CPU speed. Instead of shipping a chip that looks 10% faster than the previous model, they'd be advertising their product as only 4% faster. If you boil down to "5 Foobars", the new chip would round down to the speed of the previous chip. Ungood for them.
(Furthermore, I don't think that the market as a whole is as Mhz sensitive as everyone, including AMD, seems to think it is. This move really only makes a difference at retail.)