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AMD Athlon MP 1800+ Processor Review
Lars Olsen writes: "Amdmb.com has posted a review of the new AMD Athlon MP 1800+ processor -- a big speed jump for the dual Athlon processor family with the new processor running at 1.53GHz. There are also 1600+ and 1500+ Athlon MPs available as well right away at stores around the World.
Dual AMD Goodness is now running just as fast as its desktop counterpart ! Here's a quote: 'Those of you who want to jump into the dual processing Athlon world will finally be able to do so with the knowledge that your processors are the top speed that the Athlon family has to offer. And for anyone who already has a Tyan Thunder or Tiger MP board and a pair of Athlon MP processors, you may just want to pop a couple of these new Athlon MP 1800+ CPUs in your system to boost performance.'" Some of the comments following yesterday's "dream system" article addressed dual-Athlon complications, so make sure you read before you buy.Update: 10/15 15:14 GMT by T : Check below for LinuxHardware.org's take on this chip, and Athlon MP systems in general as well.
Augustus writes "LinuxHardware.org takes a look at the Athlon MP platform under Linux and the newly released Athlon MP 1800+ is included. Covered in this article is not only the technology and performance of the AMD-760 MP chipset and the Tyan Thunder K7 motherboard but we also look at why anyone would consider a multi-processor system."
Wow, your right.
New, faster technology is being brought out just to make programmers dumber. Its an evil conspiracy against us all!
Seriously, though, what is your definition of "bloatware"? Lets say I'm writing Quake4. I want to use C++ and lotsa nice OOD that's easier to write, easier to read, easier to expand, easier to debug, and easier to maintain.
Is that "bloatware"?
Sure, I coulda used assembly on the whole thing and it woulda been efficent and fast! You wouldn't need the super hardware!
Hope you don't want to mod it, or me to fix any bugs, though.
Maybe us developers like faster systems so we can implement software with better techniques to make technology grow? Sure it requires a little more hardware, but I wouldn't call it some evil conspiracy.
It doesn't matter what technology is out there, there will always be crap (bloatware).
BTW - You might want to buy this shirt.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
A console is a very different environment. You can tune exactly for the hardware because there will be no variances. A PC game has to allow for 30 different graphic cards using APIs that supposedly make the different cards look the same to you but fail miserably. By the time you get done tweaking for the current morass of cards, a new generation of them is present with their own damn bugs. In the console world you deal with 2-3 environments IF you are allowed/it is practical to port given the current state of exclusive games. Also, if you've ever developed for a console, its very different, with a PC you have a lot of freedom to build how you want and what you want, in the console world you pretty much have to build around the hardware. This means you are constrained to build the same kind of engine for most every game you build on that console. If you don't you are just looking for different ways to cull the scene down to fit into the same miniscule space.
.</RANT>
The two environments are very different, and most of that fat can't be trimmed by wishing it away or blaming on programmers
As for bloatware, start modelling cloth, hair, IK, bump maps, and the hardware gets used again. The reason the games aren't doing it now is because they want the comfortable sales window.
Honestly pushing ultra-high-end features that cut your market to 4% of what it could be isn't a big selling point - good luck convincing your publisher to bring the game to market - and trying to build an engine to scale between low and high-end aggravates the bloat of PC vs. console problem even worse.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
I am constantly amazed by people who claim that faster hardware leads to bad code as if we've been living in the Golden Age of quality code for the past few decades.
With current hardware, people are still writing code a lot of code in C and C++ for performance reasons which has lead to buffer overflows, segfaults, core dumps, general protection faults, and blue screens becoming generally accepted aspects of computer programming. Now that the hardware is finally becoming fast enough, maybe we can wean ourselves from C & C++ and move over to writing apps in Java or even C# instead of still dealing with the same issues that were solvable problems 20 years ago. Programmers have shown that it is practically impossible to deliver significantly problem free C/C++ code in a decent timeframe while programming environments like Java have shown the opposite. Once hardware creeps up enough we can rid ourselves of the problems of C & C++ once the performance gains are not worth the amount of bugs one has to deal with, which is already happening in lots of server applications.
Also once, hardware creeps up enough maybe some of the stuff that has been in research labs for the past 20 years can finally see some use. For instance microkernel are generally seen as a superior way to design an OS but have had difficulty taking hold due to performance reasons (although Windows NT is based on a -kernel architecure and MacOS X is also built on the Mach -kernel) which wil change once hardware advances make it possible for the performance difference to become acceptable.
A.I. being built into applications as well as the OS is another place where hardware performance and memory availability would play a big part in helping come to fruition.
How about voice recognition and face recognition being built into the applications you use?
How about bringing virtual reality to masses?
Or do you think that a 1 GHz CPU and 128 MBs of RAM is all the power a computer user will ever need?
As a side note - an Intel motherboard will short out of you let the floppy drive slide onto the board whith the power on. Pouring coffee into a laptop makes interesting smells. Putting a CD-ROM in the microwave for 10 seconds if you want a real show.
Seriously here, you are missing out if this kind of thing actually sways you away. The biggest flaw, IMHO, is the AMD cores chips way too easy. I would really like a coating of nickel or copper like the Intel chips have. As an early adopter of the Chrome Orb (rev 1), the hard part was safely getting the heat sink on.
I've found that an AMD CPU will give you warning signs like lockups, kernel panics, and other goofy things when you loose a fan. My mainboard will shut down 5 sec after the post if the CPU fan is not spinning fast enough! Since they are good up to ~100C, using a motherboard monitor prog will go a long way to making sure it runs safely and shuts down before it gets into deep weeds. A copper heat sink goes a long way to passive heat removal as well in an emgerency situation.
This is like buying a car based on how well it runs without oil in the engine. I suspect my BMW would make for a fantastic video if I tried that too. DON'T DO THAT! I would not pay extra for an engine that would - like using synthetic oil to give an extra two minutes of use.
Buying a CPU that throttles back and paying extra for it -- that might be insurance, but I stopped buying retail boxed CPU's with the three year warr.... It would cost me more to ship an old 400mHz CPU back to Intel than to just replace it these days. I paid $99USD for a 1.4G CPU a couple weeks ago. At that price, these things are practically disposable.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Is the latest Athlon processor overkill for any normal computer user? Yup.
Is there any software currently available that requires this kind of speed? Nope.
Is there any sensible reason to upgrade your CPU? Nope.
Is my rational, analytical mind paying the slightest bit of attention to this argument? Nope.
It's all about the megahertz, baby! In an earlier generation, we were the people tinkering under the hoods of our Fords, trying to get a little more oomph out of a carburetor. Most of us don't need it, most of us have no idea what to do with it, but since when has that ever stopped us? More speed! More storage! More bandwidth! I want more!!!
Good job, AMD. Keep 'em coming.
My id is sneaking up behind my superego with a rock...