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AMD To Hide MHz Rating From Consumers
pezpunk writes: "Tom's Hardware is reporting here that AMD's next-generation Athlons will be identified by model number rather than Mhz rating. This means that an Athlon will be designated an "Athlon 1600" even though it's only a 1.4Ghz part. The true clock speed of the chip will NOT be shown either on the chip itself or even in the BIOS. Apparently, they're desperate to compete with higher-clocked Pentiums in the minds of consumers -- proof that even the underdog can pull dirty marketing tricks =("
This isn't really a dirty marketing trick, so much as an approach to weening the consumer from their reliance on clock speeds as a measure of performance. Granted it would be better handled by insuring that reliable and impartial benchmarks such as perdormed by AnandTech or Tom'sHardware got the appropriate amount of press, rather than being pushed out of the spotlight by clock speeds. They could have tried to get the consumer to rely of FOPS or some other measure of performance, but if they completely refuse to disclose the clock speeds of their chips, that is entirely another problem. The trick will be to insure that there are a sufficient number of impartial benchmarks out there for consumers to feel confident about the numbers they provide.
--CTH
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On the one hand, as has been pointed out a dozen times, MHz is a pointless number. It's like talking about engines in terms of liters. Higher numbers are not always better than lower numbers.
More importantly, CPU speed has stopped being an issue for most people. I know, I know, there are always some people who love to claim to be the exception to the rule, people who insist they need to solve systems of fifty million linear equations or that they do aircraft design at home, but for most people, even professional programmers, speed has gone beyond what we know what to do with. When the 333MHz Pentium II rolled around, I started coding in the highest level language I could find, be it Lisp or Smalltalk, because what I then saw as excessive performance afforded me the luxury. Now we have processors that are five times faster, and I don't think about speed at the hardware level.
Slowness is usually something that's outside of the realm of hundreds of millions of operations per second. For example, Internet Explorer takes too long to start up on my machine. Lots of people apparently think that a faster processor would fix that. And other people complain that a game is stuttery, and think they need more CPU performance, when half of the time it comes down to a buggy video driver.
...consumers can't get it through their heads that clock speed is not even close to being everything.
How about cycles per instruction?
I mean, really. AMD and Cyrix already won one battle, if you think about, by calling attention to MHz in the first place. Before that, it was "increasing intel product numbers mean better processors." But then some clones came about and said, "Wait. This newfangled 486 does basically what the 386 does, but at 66MHz instead of 25. Well, WE make a chip that does the same thing at 100MHz!"
Now, let's do the same thing with CPI. Instead of "Megahertz GOOD!", let's all stomp our feet and say, "CPI BAD!" I'm thinking of that metallica parody here. Anyway, people understand golf scores, where lower is better -- they can be made to understand that lower CPI is better. So why doesn't AMD come out with an ad campaign saying, "The pentium 4's average CPI is 97, and ours is just 2. Therefore, our chip is FIVE TIMES as fast as a p4 at the same clock rate!!"
I mean, that's a bit hyperbolic, but it's just as valid as saying "Megahertz GOOD!" like everyone's doing now. And it's not a lot more complicated. They could even start pitching it as an efficiency thing, since you know we hate waste: "Intel is simply offering you a bigger and bigger gastank, while we're offering to improve your mileage."
Why don't chips compete on power consumption and battery life?
I think we can all agree that the latest and greatest chips are grossly overpowered for the average consumer, even the average gamer.
So in this age of power crises in California, why not sell laptops or desktops that are smaller and consume less power? I personally want a laptop that will run eight to ten hours on a battery.
Right now, I have a ThinkPad 570 that has every feature I want. It has a Pentium II Mobile at 366 Mhz. I can watch DVDs (granted, I have a hardware decoder PCMCIA card), browse the web, check email, even play games (Fallout Tactics) and I have no complaints at all. Battery life is two to three hours, depending on what I'm doing.
Meanwhile, Intel and AMD are releasing gigahertz processors for laptops. Why? Laptops are not gaming machines. Laptops are for a portable office. Most usage is email, word processing and internet access. By designing what is now a Pentium III 1.13 Ghz to instead be 500 Mhz, you could save money and power (while still making use of the SpeedStep features to further reduce clock cycles while on battery).
Truly "on the go" laptops could be smaller and lighter with longer run times. High end "desktop replacement" laptops could still use the full speed processors and the powerhouse video cards which spank my Voodoo 3.
Desktops could likewise be smaller, using the same features. Most desktops are available with build-in everything, so expansion bays/slots could be kept to a minimum.
Another advantage of this is that one could create silent computers, similar to the Apple G4 Cube. Less heat generation means less fans and that means silence.
Those who want to overclock are going to buy the high end processors anyways. But those building an MP3 server/player to integrate with their TV/stereo are not going to need a 2 Ghz processor. A 500 Mhz Pentium III (0.13 micron process) would simply need a heatsink and some airflow.
I welcome the day when megahertz is something you need to look to the "technical specs" page (and I mean technical).