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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.
Do we have to call into AMD to get a number to have the chip activated?
The good ol' guys at [H]ard|OCP have a review of the Athlon XP as well. It can be found here.
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.
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.
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
Well... The Cyrix chips didn't do well, but it wasn't because of their shady marketing, it was because the Cyrix chips absolutely sucked... (This is MHO, after owning one... I hated the damned thing...)
Donning Asbestos Jumpsuit...
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.
"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.
MhZ ratings mean something to me, because I enjoy tweaking the most from my system.
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.
This isn't trickery, it's consumer educating. Back in the days of Cyrix, MHZ ment a lot more, and Cyrix was a lot less realistic than AMD is being. AMD could safely call their 1.53Ghz chip the 2000+ instead of the 1800+. With a combination of a conservative "ratin" and a very well performing chip, I think AMD will be successful with their new offering.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
> "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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
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.
I worry about my heatsink falling off about as much as I worry about my dink falling off, i.e.: not at all.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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.
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Wow, if my heatsink fell off, it would fall directly on, and likely short out, my video card - which costs as much or more than my processor.
Welcome to FUD.
sig fault
This is AMD marketing trickery countering Intel engineering trickery. Intel doubled the pipeline length in the P4 versus the P3 and Athlon (20 stage versus 10 and 11, respectively) in order to crank the clock speed at the expense of performence (see The Megahertz Myth for an excellent overview on the subject). Thus why a 1.13GHz P3 will outrun a 1.4GHz P4 most of the time, and why the upgraded core of the 1.53GHz Athlon XP outruns the 2GHz P4 most of the time (for half the price).
In other words, in marketing, two wrongs make a right!