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AthlonXP Released
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.
Why the marketoids have to ruin a good thing. "XP". Sheesh.
"Population 1,656"
"True to form, AMD has released the new Athalon XP today"
I really hate when it gets spelled that way for some reason.
Do we have to call into AMD to get a number to have the chip activated?
What the hell is a Athalon? hmmm
The question, though, is will their tricky ways work? Cyrix tried the exact same thing a few years back (marking a chip with a model number that represented the 'approximate intel performance' rather than the chip speed itself. Is AMD going to be able to pull this one off, or is it destined to go the same way as the Cyrix chip?
http://www.WinWithRealEstate.com/
The good ol' guys at [H]ard|OCP have a review of the Athlon XP as well. It can be found here.
I downloaded the new Detonator XP drivers for my video card the other day, after I upgraded to Windows XP. Now I'm going to go out and buy a nice AMD XP processor. Why is everyone calling their new crap "XP?" Does this suffix indicate a quality product?
XP... Not a blatant Microsoft rip-off as some may say, but rather a bright future crystallised, a vision of something better, a god given choice name! Give AMD the Nobel Prize in Literature!!! Excellent! Bravissimo!!!
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.
I think in spite of AMD's awkward marketing plan for the Athlon XP CPU's, you have to admit they are impressively fast.
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.
Why,do they often launch processors on the 9th of October 2001?
From reading the various reviews, the Athlon XP doesn't seem to have SMP capability.
Are the Athlon XP and Athlon MP essentially two lines now? It sucks to see AMD succumb to marketing in order to combat Intel.
.. would still run as sweet.
:)
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?
Erm, this is getting frightening. First we had nice, normal products. 80286. Windows 3.0. DOS 6.2. Simple to note differences, no? Then we had products which were easier to copyright the names of. Pentium. K6. Windows 95 (OK, that wasn't really for copyright; that was just for misleading people). Now we're seeing a return to the old days, except without the clarity. Office XP. Windows XP. Athlon XP. See, now companies appear to be marching in lockstep. Have the same name, and confuse the customer. I can hardly wait for the "Pentium XP" . . .
Since X-( is listed in the smiley guide as: User just died I nominate the new XP smiley to be listed as User just died of confusion (with tongue sticking out) after trying to figure out if Windows XP would run better on a machine with an Athlon XP CPU or a faster(?) Intel cpu (NOTE: Trademarks above are owned by respective companies blahblahblah)
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
This site is all about the processor - it was made by a friend's company and he'd love to see how it does against the /. effect. ;)
BlackNova Traders
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Am I dreaming or a story appeared on the front page and had disappeared a few seconds later when I reloaded ?
Ok... so, now I apparently have to stop using AMD processors after my athlon 1.4, because I won't be able to determine the true mHz that my processor is running. I don't necessarily see the reasons why this rating is masked on the XP processors... its probably ok for the average home user, but I'm not average. MhZ ratings mean something to me, because I enjoy tweaking the most from my system.
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, 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.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
The most irritating thing about AMD switching to a PR rating is most folks miss the fact that mhz vs mhz, the Pentium III blows the Pentium 4 out of the water. It all comes down to what gets used as a normal - using a P3 as the mHz reference point, you get the AMD chip wiping the P3, and the P3 owning the P4. The P4 could use a PR rating as well...
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.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Its very sad but AMD is essentially admitting through their marketing ploy that the average consumer is incapable of realizing that the speed of a processor and indeed a system is more than a clock frequency.
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.
Maybe what we need is an independant system (developed by an objective standards body) that rates processors based on their overall performance. Theirs would be the task of developing a sort of 'general benchmark' of processor quality (speed, power usage, etc) and then assigning a rating to each processor - An Athlon XP 1800+ would get, say, 3 Foobars, and the P4 2.2Ghz would get 5 Foobars. Different rating scales (for different classes of processor - RISC, 64-bit, etc) would help to differenciate (sp?). Sort of like an IEEE standards body, but for CPU's.
It'd at least be better and fairer for the consumer...
---
"how can the same street intersect with itself? i must be at the nexus of the universe!" - cosmo kramer
"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.
"1. Motherboards will not pass AMD validation or be posted on the AMD recommended motherboard Web site, if the frequency is displayed by the BIOS during bootup for AMD Athlon Model 6 decktop and multiproccesng processors."
It's one thing to sell it as an 1800+ but I'd still like to know what the MHz is.
Has anyone heard whether or not AMD's heat problem has been solved? Reading Tom's article on what happens if your heat sink falls off really put a kink in my AMD-buying choice. I mean, it wasn't even like you had time to hit your power button - you went from 'snap' to 'smoke coming from case' in less than a second.
No matter how much faster and cheaper they are then Intel, that's a HUGE risk to take on your system.
http://kered.org
You'll still know what speed your CPU runs at. It's not like it'll be a huge secret. Go in to the CPU setup on your Abit board and it'll tell you, they just hide it during boot so normal users don't see it.
I seem to have double pasted in my comment above. If I didn't know any better, I'd say this were Monday.
Cyrix used to sell their processors with a PR-rating. PR150 which tried to compete with a Pentium 150, was actually a lower MHz.
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.
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but the 'XP' that is supposed to hype the new 'experience' you might have with WindowsXP, is supposed to suggest the 'extended performance' of AthlonXP.
Wouldn't that be 'EP' then?
I guess I don't know anything about marketing.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
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"
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Whats the deal?!?! AMD will not support or endorse a mother board that displays the ACTUAL clock speed for the chip instead of some stupid model number. Look at TomsHardWare.com
"The BIOS of a motherboard that is supposed to get approval from AMD is not allowed to display the actual clock frequency, but only the model number!"
The only other company that tried this underhanded tactic was cyrix who sold their PR(Performance Rated Chips), they sold
166s as Cyrix PR200s. AMD is trying the same thing now. Cyrix died. Please don't tell me AMD is to lazy to come up with a real CPU core that can hit 2GHZ like the P4. I've always routed for AMD but i can not endorse these shady tactics.
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I guess you meant the Sledgehammer. The T-bird is the "Athlon 3" and was released about a year ago.
What does M$ think about athlon's new name? I wonder if they will want to sue or something? Although I doubt it since it will prolly help sell a few copies of XP
home user says:" I've got WindowsXP and the new XP precessor, therefor my computer is the best" LOL
Just a marketing ploy.
Snoozer.
My comment: (-1, Offtopic)
But I'll say it anyway...
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.
Actually, pedaling with a higher cadence (turns of the pedals per minute) is more efficient. When Lance Armstrong came back from his cancer recovery to win the Tour d'France one of the main improvements he said he made was increasing his cadence about 20 revolutions per minute.
That, however, has no bearing on computer processors, the cycling analogy is simply misused.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
Could this be used to show just how much influence microsoft has on the market in the anti-trust case?
Im waiting for the MP version of the AMDXP chipset. After they come out with thier 2000+ procs, im upgrading from my dual P3-800. SMP is the only boxes I want to use now, going from 1ghz to a dual 800, my system doesnt hang when an application use all the cpu resources.
/. had a nice article on the Power4 cpu with 2 processor cores.
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
An Athlon 1800 (aka 1.53GHz) can compete with the P4 2.0 GHz so the proper car analogy would be that the Accord 150 may only have 125 hp, but it weighs several hundred pounds less, giving it roughly the same 0-60 and quarter mile times as the Audi.
It's also worth noting that this is only a temporary solution. I believe AMD is working on a completely new rating system to be adopted in 2002. It should completely abandon MHz measurements and evaluate performance more effectively. Whether or not the industry will cooperate is yet to be seen.
I hope you are right. One of the problems that I see with the XP model number scheme is that it tries to show the performance in relation to an Intel CPU. This strikes me as a backward step for AMD. I don't think it's a good move [long term] to base your marketing/model numbers on a competitors performance.
Maybe a model numbering scheme based on a standardized suite of benchmarks would be more accurate, as well as something that Intel could possibly decide to use as well, since it would give more of an absolute performance rating instead of a somewhat useless Mhz rating or a rating that's dependant on a competitors performance.
It could even be set up so that the model numbers give an idea of the kind of work the CPU is geared toward [ie, G4 for 3d/video, Athlon for gaming, Sparc Ultra3 for IO/serverm, Intel for...well whatever the heck Intel is good for]
Then again, maybe people would just be too confused by all this and go back to using 486's...
Nothing to see here
What is the difference between whetstone and dhrystone benchmarks?
As a *consumer*, I'd prefer AMD (and every other company) to be "nice and really honest".
www.be.com -- Beos may be dead corporately, but it's already a decent OS with all the tools a user needs, and the developer base doesn't seem to want to move. There is even a downloadable version for free, but windows is required to install it (DOS is fine to run it though).
www.redhat.com -- RedHat 7.1 seems to be a decent piece of software, despite my own personal bias against linux. It comes with some decent stuff out of the box and the price is right, so why not give it a shot?
www.microsoft.com -- Windows 98SE is fine (for a windows release, that is), and there's no real reason to upgrade when it comes to functionallity (ie. 32 bit apps don't run under windows 3.1)... It's certainly an alternative to XP...at home. I've heard that windows 2000 is a decent performer in the network arena, but I have to admit that nimda/code red (all of them)/sircam prove that they aren't infallable. While I wouldn't use any version of windows for a network node, it is an option.(and an alternative to XP)
And, if the latest and greatest aren't needed:
DOS(not nessesarily MS DOS):Has a variety of apps for networking, gaming, programming, productivity, and other stuff. One of my favourite operating systems because it lets programs interface directly with hardware very easily.
OS/2 Warp: Another decent OS, it has a lot of apps for it, and a decent developer community. If I owned warp 4 (I am looking for a copy), it'd have a place on my hard drive. Unfortunately, OS/2 Warp 3.0 is all I have, and can't run most newer apps.
If you don't feel too bad about using a non-x86 platform:
Commodore 64:Has word processing software, and can surf the internet via shell accounts and a slowass modem. plenty of games for it, and CP/M is available for it.
TRS 80:A variety of Operating Systems are available for these (ancient) computers, including OS/9, CP/M, TRSDOS, NEWDOS, and even more I don't know about.
...And if this whole computer thing is a craze to you:
Typewriter: The oldskool typewriter has excellent word processing software built in, and a decent sound effect is played every time you press a key. There is a very loyal user base, simply because of the decent 'look and feel' aspect.
Really...There are always useable alternatives, on the other hand, some aren't very new, and a lot have no real profit margin, but they do exist.
It's been a long time.
Those "1000 unit" prices are always more expensive than the 1 unit prices that one finds on www.pricewatch.com after a chip is really available in quantity. So they don't mean much. And it turns out that the actual selling prices of AMD chips are always a much smaller fraction of the quoted price than the selling prices of Intel chips.
Thank you for that refreshing display of intelligence and maturity. What would we do without the likes of you here at Slashdot?
Gee, at my first quick look the topic read, ANTHRAX released.
I guess that would have been a plague on BOTH of their houses...
The only problem is, Joe's geek friend doesn't know that the Athlon XP 1800+ is actually faster than a P4 2ghz. I think this is also where Cyrix fell apart (yeah, and they froze up). By saying it's better then the MHZ they are actually getting off. This thing is a good processor though, and if it ever comes down from the stratosphere in price, it might be a steal. It's really not that much better than a Athlon 1.4ghz, which is currently $100 less... ($99). The only thing I don't understand about this is why aren't they just crushing intel with a 2.4ghz processor? AMD announced they would release 1.6ghz in October LAST year. I can't help but think that this isn't a desperate move, but more marketing. They gotta have that kind of technology.
In the mean time get a dual Athlon MP system. You can beat intel with megahertz, and also have a system that runs twice as fast. You can get 2 1.2ghz mp's, and a TigerMP motherboard for about $500, $50 less than a single P4 2ghz, and it doesn't come with a motherboard.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Lately the letter 'X' has been the 'in' thing to use. There are zillions of products out there that use the 'X' tagging to promote itself.
Personally, I think it has been overused already and am waiting for someone to move on. Maybe they'll move onto the letter Y.
I think Microsoft is hurting itself by using letters instead of numbers.
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.
The city is being overrun by a herd of Lucy Liu's.
You bastards!
You're using her as bait, Master!
If you really think about it, it's Intel commiting fraud for selling a processor whose sole purpose seems to be high clock speeds at the cost of performance. Ever tried to convince someone that a Athlon is faster than a P4 at a much higher clock rate? It's a tough sell. Let them do this. At least it levels the playing field between fast processors and high MHZ processors.
It's been a long time.
how come on this page it says © 1999 on the chip?
We know that marketing your product based on MHZ alone will kill it. This was seen right from the early days of the 386's. People looked at the generation of chip and the equivalent clock speed. Teck people would ignore this ask they knew real benchmarket would tell the truth.
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.
Wow, another new CPU that current RAM and bus architectures cannot keep up with. Is it just me, or does it seem we would be better off if they just got RAM, data storage and bus speeds up to snuff so that data is able to pass between the system compotents at full blast?
Uh, I think that's the point. The focus of the campaign is misguided.
Maybe AMD hired the Microsoft PR team after stealing their ideas!
No kidding.
People seem to be ignoring the real possibility of a heatsink and fan coming off.
Chips run so hot these days (especially Athlons) that motherboards are quite literally bending under the strain of heatsink retaining clips.
I hope AMD does help establish a performance rating system that isn't determined by AMD alone.
It would be far too easy for AMD to say "We need this chip to do well, so play it up a bit."
AMD is a company above all else and they're here to make money.
Let's face it, the people tend to buy the machine with a bigger number when both machines cost the same. Even though Athlon is faster, which one sounds better, 2Ghz or 1.4Ghz??? And which one would average joe get if they both cost the same???
kawai
Does the diode turn off the CPU if it gets to hot? Tomshardware did a review on that before but i want to see it with the athlonXP now
They seem to call it Extended Performance (isn't that AthlonEP then?)
If Extended Performance was EP, then Extensible Markup Language would be EML. XML sounds better because the "X" is pronounced "Ex", which is the first sound in "Extensible". "E" is pronounced "Ee", which is not the first sound in Extensible". For the same reason, XP sounds better than EP.
I do imagine a cluster - of about 20 machines. As they get replaced in future years, they would serve as Windows workstations for the masses.
Would anyone have a tip as to a PC manufacturer who would like to sell me some high-powered reliable Athlon XP workstations?
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
The only reason I may ever still go for Intel, is for the Flask encoding speeds
I like to encode my flask manually, usually Jack Daniels or Johnny Walker...
Who did what now?
AthlonRH or AthlonMandrake to come out to make sure my CPU is compatible with my OS.
Did Microsoft pay AMD to name the new processor?
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They are comparing XP with Tbird not P4, like they say in HardOCP "The core logic here (pun intended) is that if they had built an 1.8GHz TBird chip, the AthlonXP at 1.533GHz would be equal in performance."
When you buid a new compaq computer on their website they post the speed in Mhz of the new XP chips next to the chip model.
For those of you who dont know the break down is like this:
Model 1700 - 1.47GHz / 266MHz FSB
Model 1500 - 1.33GHz / 266MHz FSB
Model 1600 - 1.4 GHz / 266MHz FSB
Model 1800 - 1.53GHz / 266MHz FSB
Well, just because the SPEC tests are awful for CPU performance measurement, doesn't mean there's any single test that's good. :)
:)
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.
I'm pretty sure that the ideal cadence isn't exactly the same for each rider. You'll recall that Armstrong lost a lot of weight after he recovered from cancer. That made him a less powerful rider, but it also meant that he didn't have to haul as much weight uphill. Those riders do some very specific studies to figure out what their ideal cadence for maximum output is. It's really very interesting.
"It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom. Keep that in mind at all times." Bill Hicks
XP? So the new Athlon needs a 1GHz Pentium IV to run? :)
It's nice to have a SPEC2001 test to look at and compare, but the SPECINT and SPECFP aren't the only results of this test. If you look at the whole reports for the P4 2GHz and the Athlon 1.4GHz, you'll see that the score is based on the 12 programs. If you're looking for performance in only one type of application (as I am), you can see how the two processors compare:
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, and the floating point tests here
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 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.
FYI - the difference between peak and base - from the the spec run rules:
"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.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Why? Because it's all about how much the compilers can be optimized for it. Even worse, compiliers highly optimized for SPEC often produce poor code for realworld applicatios. The fact is, very little software is optimized for SSE2 anyway. Especially consumer software, which for the most part is written to the least common denominator. Without the special optimizations, Pentium 4's just don't compete well with Athlons.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
Alright Assfuck, I'll bite! :)
How about for the people who have 2 or more AMD computers and they just want to know which fucking one is faster or slower than the other? Is that too much to ask? Or will the computer respond with a "MHz Myth" lecture which would then inform the consumer that since he/she lacks a EE and CS degree that they are too "stupid" to know the answer and that since without such a degree the knowledge of the exact CPU speed would be useless to them?
Is that what you want PoopyAss? Eh?
How about I put a blindfold on you, and take your wife/girlfriend away from you. Then I introduce you to "Woman XP" Now "Woman XP" may or may not be fugly or fine as a fox but YOU'LL NEVER KNOW EVEN WHEN YOU ARE BALLS DEEP IN HER because of some marketdroid's decision that you're just "too stupid" to be told her "Actual Pussy Ratings (PHz or PussyHertz)"
You have a good day now!
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Clarification:
The numbers I listed were run times (ie. lower==better); for the stanard SPECINT/FP scores, higher==better. For my two applications, the P4 beats the athlon, but no dual p4 nor p3 could touch the price/performance of my dual athlon. I'm not really biased; I also considered a sparc before settling on the athlon.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Although I kinda welcome AMD stepping up to the PR rating system, they're gonna have a lot of confused consumers when they see that the XP is based on a PR system, and the MP is just given a mhz rating.
The troll with karma.
Then I can advance to level 10!!
I would think that AMD wouldn't fall into the XP hype thing... You gain customers with great products, not with hype.
As if you care...
Seattle, Houston, Philadelphia, and Chicago are listed on the site with just question marks in place of the date.
Based on this quote from the contest rules:
"For the locations, dates and times of Events, check www.xppcentral.com on the following dates: 10/8/01; 10/9/01; 10/11/01; 10/14/01; 10/15/01; 10/16/01"
It looks like the dates for each city are as follows:
San Francisco 10/09/01
Boston 10/10/01
Seattle 10/12/01
Philadelphia 10/15/01
Houston 10/16/01
Chicago 10/17/01
oooh.
lyd
If you read the website for the giveaway, they mention it's been expanded to 20 cities from the original 6.
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!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Spec benchmarks provide a good tool for evaluating performance in scientific and specialized applications, but to the average consumer it does not accurately reflect the performance in the kind of applications the average consumer will encounter.
Does your mother need a 1ghz+ processor? Probably not. Most people only:
surf the web, write letters, do homework, and research school projects, etc.
Basic chores that you can do on most 3 year old system (and some older ones too, depending on OS)
The average upgrade cycle seems to be 2-3 years, depending on finances. People who bought a computer 2 or 3 years ago had a Pentium with 16 or 32 megabytes of RAM with all they need to get onto the Net, type their letters etc.
The only reason average consumers had to upgrade their computers was because of the Internet. Few people watch DVD's on their computers (how many of you have larger TV's than monitors), few average consumers do video editing on their computers. Yes people burn audio cd's, but any P200 with atleast 32 megs of RAM can do that easily.
There is no reason for people today to buy a new computer. The reason Intel decided to make their processors so scalable was to make it seem, Gee that P4 is 10 times faster than your lowly P200, you obviously need a new one.
MHZ itself is the biggest marketing scam of all, not the PR rating.
This is my new proposal to incorporate all the factors of a microprocessor into its product name, thus giving a more accurate and precise measure of its speed.
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).
Got friends?
Instead, AthlonXP1800+ == theoretical 1.8 GHz Athlon Thunderbird
(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).
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.)
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!
Which will go something like "Pentium HM 2/3" (HM for "honest marketing.") for all P4 line.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Cyrix fan boy or whatever you want to call it.
The Cyrix chips _WERE_ faster than the Pentiums on the benchmarks everyone was using when the PR system was released. The problem is that everyone started using quake (and some other benchmarks) as a benchmark which the Cyrix sucked on because they were marginally slower than the equivilant clocked pentium with some floating point operations used a lot in quake (important parts of quake were also hand optimized for the pentium U-V pipline arch, which didn't help the cyrix or the amd much). Basically, you purchased a PR166 Cyrix that ran roughtly the same as a Pentium 166 running Winstone and a couple other similar bencharks, yet it was clocked at 133Mhz. When quake came out the Cyrix got its butt kicked because it ran about the speed of a pentium 100. I still have a IBM 6x86 PR166 machine that is running linux. Keep the CPU fan running and its stable as a rock, oh, and it compiles kernels faster than my 233Mhz MMX pentium. Just don't try playing quake. A sweet machine at the time considering It cost about as much as a Pentium 75.
Dang. I guess I have to build my own systems or get servers. Any tips on what motherboard?
Everyone and their mom is comparing this to the old PR performance ratings employed by Cyrix et. al. and what a big ripoff they were, and how everyone caught on and Cyrix went out of business and so on. There are two problems with this:
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.)
copying from the promotion agreement:
6. Publicity: Except where prohibited, attending an Event or participating in the Sweepstakes constitutes participant's consent to Sponsor (and its agents') for use of participant's name, hometown, biographical information, likeness, voice and comments about Sponsor, its products and the Sweepstakes, for promotional purposes in any media, worldwide, without notice or further compensation.
Note that they own not just you, but anything you say about the sweepstakes--and the product and the vendor. Note also they own your voice and likeness. That's not worth a $300 toy to me. Doesn't anyone else find this kind of agreement insulting and an incredibly bad trend? I know, we aren't supposed to read their agreements, but really, isn't there some way to make companies back off?
tshak,
I think the thing that really hurt Cyrix was the fact while the 6x86 CPU's looked good in performance on standard business office applications, they were downright horrible on any application that required heavy FPU use such as illustration and CAD programs and many games.
Fortunately, this is NOT the case for AMD's new Athlon XP CPU's. Note what I said in another posting on this message thread: the Athlon XP's superb FPU unit allows the 1800+ version to easily out-perform the Pentium 4 on most benchmark tests with the exception of those that a biased towards the memory access method used on the Pentium 4 and also apps that take full advantage of SSE2 instructions (those are still not yet very common).
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With judicious use of the RDTSC instruction, or "cat /proc/cpuinfo" will tell you all you need to know.
From the article ... 1800+ = 1500MHZ.
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Now officially armed with the news of the AthlonXP, I decided to play my favorite game: "Dumb Shopper at Circuit City." This is how it works. I walk into Circuit City, and, well, pretend I am a dumb computer shopper. Here is what transpired:
Walk up to "Kevin," say my greetings.
"So, Kevin (Who, by the way, must have gotten some information in advance about the AthlonXP), I hear AMD is coming out with a 1.8GHz processor!"
Kevin
"Naw, that is a lie. It is really only like a 1.4GHz (notice, he is wrong already, it is a 1533MHz processor), but they call it a 'Model 1800' to try to get you to buy it. It isn't really 1.8GHz"
Me
"Then they are lying to us?"
Kevin
"Well, kinda. Even so, AMD is so far behind Intel (points to a brand new HP, with a 2GHz P4). Look, Intel has a 2GHz chip out now."
Me
"No kidding... Wow... But, it is a lot more expensive than that one (I point to a Compaq with a 1.4GHz Athlon, similarly configured). Would I really notice the differece, besides the one in my wallet?"
Kevin
"Of course. What kind of computer do you have now?"
Me
"Uh... A P3 733 (a lie, of course, I never owned an Intel chip....), It was top of the line at the time."
Kevin
"Yeah, well think of it this way, When you got it, it was pretty fast at the time ('uh-huh,' I reply). The difference in performance between the two chips is almost the speed of your entire computer!"
Me
"No kidding... really? And the cost difference between the Intel and the AMD is less than I paid for my system too!"
Kevin
"So, if you use your Circuit City card, you can stretch payments of this HP over 2 years.... "
Of course, I had no intention of buying a computer that day. I just love to see how the sales staff operates. The first thing AMD has to do is go in there and teach the "Kevins" of the major retail chains that they do in fact have a superior product (in terms of performance and cost). Then, and only then, can AMD succeed in places like circuit city. I think tomarrow I will go up there with charts from Tom's Hardware, but this time play "'I know more about computers than you do' shopper,'" and set Kevin in his place.
By the way, my real system is a K6-III 428 (yes, 428, O/C'd) with 768MB RAM. A real man's system [two years ago].
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
The thing about the XP is the new core yes, but why do people benchmark GAMES and SYSoft sandra and only stuff like that, most people that are going to go for XP instead of standard (cheap) athlon running at 1.4ghz, are Workstation users, 3d animators, video encoding application, dual cpu setups and all... Tom always aims for games games games, god... like if there was only games in life.... I agree, a lot of gamers go to that site, but he wants to be THE hardware place, he has to cover a bit more than that. He used to do 3dsmax rendering tests for example... why not now? with not single processor vs dual processor, why not dual Xeon vs dual athlonXP, why not Lightwave7.0b rendering (optimized for SSE2 so you could really see something here), etc etc etc...
There's the fact that you want to be the first online source of information for the tech-savyy people, but there's also a difference between tasting a strawberry, and a strawberry pie.
Kudos to anandtech who pushes the enveloppe a bit more than Tom.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
I was wondering if anyone has attended the promotional giveaways mentioned on the update to the article. I would dearly love to get my hands on a new motherboard and cpu for free 'cause I was going to upgrade anyway, but the 6:00 am time that AMD posted on their site puts a bit of a cramp in my styles.
Anybody go to the one in SF or whatever is next? (seattle?) Just wanted to see what the procedure was like, how many people showed up, what time the actual giveaway was, and whether it would be worth my time.
hahahaha!!
you, sir are a true genius. This was an immaculate flame!
I like #3. Boat is sinking but neither try to row?
well.. XP is the coolest buzzword these days..
like eXtreme Programming
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(i apologise for this post. i've been up since 5 am) Yeah, the cops kept crabbin' and that lame security guard actually started threatening people if they didn't leave, but I was in the back of the line and I got a mobo/chip/cooler. in the end they started just handing tickets out to everyone without any paperwork. My friend was the fourth number called. I had to wait another hour and a half before my number came up. but two of the four of us scored, so we're pretty happy. For those who are thinking about attending one of the events, I'd say go for it. amd knows that everyone there wants a chance and they're doing their best to accomodate. just ignore anyone who says they know what's goin on (*cough*cops*cough*) and stick with it. now...what memory, hard drive, and power supply do i purchase so i can get this baby running over the weekend? btw, the boxes include the 1800 chip! i was expecting the 1500. and an msi k7t266 pro-ru (that's with raid).
I hate you all. I knew about this little givaway before slashdot announced it. There were only so many free chip/mobos and there were waaay too many people in Cambridge, MA pushing (literally) to get one. I arrived to wait in line at 4:30AM this morning only to find that there was no line; I actually got the LAST ticket due to people pushing the line up and past me and others who refused to push.
...and then there's the whole "starts at 6:00AM" thing; I've gone to sleep past 6AM more often than woken up before then in the past months...
What did I get? Nothing. A complete waste of time especially considering how I almost threw up riding my bike there and then was hit by a car on the way back (I am okay, but the car...). Now I am working the day away on no sleep and a stinging wrist (where the car and I made contact). Why, oh why, was this posted on slashdot?!
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I guess Intel knew that its customers were such dumb-fucks, that they would be taking the HSF off the chip while it was running. So they had to put the thermal diode and clock limiter in the chips to protect em! LOL!
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