Slashdot Mirror
Reviews Of AMD Duron 'Morgan' 1GHz
Anonymouse writes: "AMD today released their 1GHz Duron, based on the morgan core, which was mentioned briefly in your earlier Athlon article. It adds hardware pre-fetch, an internal thermal diode for accurate temperature sensing on boards that can read it, and SSE instructions. It is also the same core that will become the DuronMP for ultra cheap low-end SMP system. NewsForge has a review of it under Linux, and FiringSquad and Hexus.net have reviews for it under Windows." Nice complement to the new Athlons. 1GHz in a low end processor -- sheesh!
AMD does not offer the performance of intel. They cost less because they are inferior. The company that produces them is no more warm-hearted and morally upright than intel, unless you think exploiting mexican workers is morally supportable. Why is AMD the hackers choice?
AMD have been trailing for years in the chip wars, always a year or so behind intel with advancements and extensions to the architecture. It's always been clear that intel does the hacking, while AMD runs to keep up. Intel's new chips offer a drastic alteration in the way caching is used to improve execution speed. AMD's chips offer what intel's offered last year.
If slashdotters were really interested in performance, they would have placed more support behind the now-defunct alpha architecture. Even Sun's chips offer more bang per mhz. I've seen many derisive statements made on this site about pushing mhz over performance, but if people really believed these claims, they would abandon the x86 architecture in droves. If linux runs on any processor, why are we still running it on the bottom of the barrel?
x86 is a hacked together, patched up, overextended, overheated, underdesigned chip that should have been put out to pasture in '89. That it has persisted for 10 years past it's obseletion is a credit to intel's PR. AMD has reaped the benefits of this as well.
AMD have never made a move to befriend the hacker community, despite the levels of support they gain here. Indeed, their recent advertising stresses their compatibility with Windows XP. No mention whatsoever is made of linux. Yet they are still considered the geeks chip of choice!
AMD is a faceless multinational company, as globalist as Nike and as ruthless as intel. Their product is an obselete chip that is a consistent runner-up in it's division. Why, if we be geeks, do we choose the worse performer?
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