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."

Comments

fp!

[puhtime2go]

Time to say I love you to me!

Re:fp!

[Dead Fart Warrior]

I LOVE YOU!

Propz on FP you logged in bastard!

Re:fp!

[TrollMan 5000]

Sam's Cola all around, brutha!

Re:fp!

[Dead Fart Warrior]

I'm gonna ask you a question, and be honest:
How many times have you been kicked out of walmart for masterbating near the Sam's Cola?

Re:fp!

[Sunken Kursk]

They kick you out for that?

Re:fp!

[puhtime2go]

I haven't been caught yet. And, it's not the cola I lust after, but the 300lb women in mu-mus riding those scooters around the store. You know what I mean. The ones that cause the benches placed throughtout the store to sag in the middle because of their crushing weight. Mmmmm... crushing weight...

Why do the suck so much

[Deijpimp]

Micro bytes suck ass more then Bin Laden

New AMD Processor

[TrollMan 5000]

Now my boss has enough heat to warm up his big house in the winter!

fingers...

[apathy21]

Well at least I can still count on my fingers how many GHz we have achieved. I suppose when/if these quantum-based computers come about (on a large scale), I'll have to have an infinite number of fingers all representing the possible states of the processer :)

Re:fingers...

[Figaro]

Dude....it's not worth it.

Please stop chopping off your fingers for the decimal points.

Thanks.

Re:fingers...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are probably better off reading from the site AMDMB copied, AMDZone. They have a review here with more benchmarks and less fluff.

FP

[Anonymous Coward]

FP

FUCK PAtience lower case!

:D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[MosesJones]

I'm running at home on a PII 400Mhz and it runs everything I possibly need. My Mother and Father in Law are on a P166 and wondered if they should upgrade. I said no as it really doesn't need it, they just do basic database, spreadsheet and word.

All too often developers use the increased memory and processor speed to write worse implementations, or to create pointless bloatware. I know this will continue no matter what I say but at the end of the day who really needs this much power, QuakeIV players ? QuakeV ? QuakeIII runs fine with my upgraded graphics card, and top of the line sound card, the processor does bugger all.

Moore's law is great, it means computers can do more and more, but for the home market its just silly, 90% of people would be fine not changing their machine for 4 years, but they are forced to upgrade by market perception.

Faster this, faster that.... but never ever actually "better", "more reliable" or "stable".

Hardware is the excuse for bloatware, its not H/W engineers fault but it isn't an excuse to use....

(and yes this is partly a dig at the huge swap requirements on the 2.4 kernel)

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[cfriesen]

A few points:

Have you ever
a) done audio editing
b) done video editing
c) applied a filter to a 50MB+ image
d) compiled X
e) done any ray-tracing
etc, etc.

Any of these things can suck up vast amounts of horsepower and beg for more.

Also, 2.4 is getting somewhat more sane in recent releases.

Chris

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[MikeBabcock]

I missed the part in this article that said everyone should have one in their home.

High-speed CPUs are very useful to our clients who run large database implementations with voice-recognition data-entry systems, FYI.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Rob.Mathers]

Yes, those things do beg for this kind of horsepower, but the problem is that cpus like these (although not MP) are being marketed at the average user, how doesn't know better. Microsoft, in turn, is seeing this, and adds more and more useless, cycle-eating functions to Word, and perpetuates the cycle.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[FortKnox]

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.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Junks Jerzey]

You forgot "solving systems of 50,000 equations." People always bring that one up, as unrealistic as it.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[hughk]

This lets traders value financial products faster so they can decide whether to act or not on a price.

OTOH, if the traders bothered to get their option pricing models written in a decent computer language rather than VBA, then yes, maybe they could run on a 256MHz P2.

Unfortunately, the banks are firing a lot of their IT staff because, frankly, throwing hardware at the problem is cheaper than writing the stuff properly.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[MosesJones]

Things like SOAP are a classic example. CORBA is a perfect way to get computers communicating, it uses IDL to describe the services, it works on any platform and works using a binary protocol which can be tunneled via HTTP if required.

SOAP is an ASCII based RPC mechanism, when was that a good idea ? So you can _read_ computer to computer transactions ? This is possible because we have cycles to burn and so doing two sets (or more) of textual conversion isn't seen as a bad thing(tm).

Outlook, Netscape 6, .Net all manage to turn computers that previously did useful work into slow chugging behemoths. As another example consider this....

XEmacs used to be considered the worlds largest piece of bloatware... its 4.2meg, its got email, news, web-browser, editor, mayan calendar and the kitchen sink in there....

Mozilla appears to be 16Meg at least (IE was 100Meg when I installed everything!) Is it 4 times as functional, 4 times as reliable... nope.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[MosesJones]

a) Yup... the soundcard does large parts of this, the disk is fast

b) see a) lots of this after snowboarding holidays. Mostly done directly from the video camera over the firewire connection

c) Yup... now that is slow, but I've got lots of memory so not that bad... in fact given that I've got 3/4Gb of RAM its probably as fast as memory limited machines with a fast CPU...

d) Yup... hell done that on _much_ slower machines.

e) Yup...

The basic one here is that I don't work 100% of the time on a single task. Waiting for renders is fine (I've always tended to do them as overnight jobs anyway).

All of the above are very very possible on a PII400Mhz, just ensure its got a good soundcard, a good graphics card, fast disk, and lots of memory.

Most of those things suck up memory rather than CPU and its the huge amounts of swapping that cause them to slow down.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[FortKnox]

Assembly was a perfectly good way to program, why did anyone need C??

C was fast and efficient, why did anyone need C++?

They just burn extra clock cycles!

Ugh, under your rules, innovation would be in a standstill.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[shut_up_man]

Well, a pair of spanky new Athlon MP 1800+s might help www.amdmb.com when it gets slashdotted, right?

shut up man

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[MosesJones]

These steps are nothing to do with _now_ yes we needed to have machines that went from 1Hz to 400Mhz or so, otherwise it was a pain in the arse, but the last 3 years has seen insanely powerful machines, and not seen the sort of increases in quality that could be expected.

And no-one EVER needed C++, its a HORRIBLE language :)

LISP, Smalltalk now you're talking :)

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[FortKnox]

I think we're seeing each others points, so I'm not butting heads anymore.

I, personally, have an Athlon 800, I'm a big gamer, and I'm perfectly happy with the machine, not upgrading it for at least a year...

But I'm also a developer that believes in good design and good design and good desi.... etc... and good coding techniques. Even if it sacrifices memory and horsepower.

And C++ has its ups and downs, as does any other language ;-P

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[garcia]

This is just IMHO.

If Quake4 is released w/any bugs, runs slow on decent hardware (I consider a 400mhz computer decent), and is fucking HUGE (minimum req is ridiculously high) then I will be sorely disappointed.

If you need to assemble the god damn thing to make it run fast, do it. I am sick and tired of "great" games being released that are frickin' huge and slow and require a dual athlon to run.

I don't care if I can mod it, I don't care if you can debug it (there shouldn't be that many in the first place for how much it costs), and I certainly don't care if you think it should be easy for you to program.

Freeware is one thing. A seriously high-end game should run fast and not need a dual athlon.

If Quake4 is released it better play like Q1, or there will be yet another version that I won't play ;)

Just my worthless .02

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[CropCircles]

Hardware is the excuse for bloatware, its not H/W engineers fault but it isn't an excuse to use....

No. Good hardware is never an "excuse" for writing bloatware. Most times you refer to programs as bloatware, it's not the programmers who intentionally write "bad code" but the development enviorment and it's assosciated overheads that cause bloatware. Besides, most bloatwares have lots of features that you may not need, but others do.

All said and done, I don't think we are doing too badly as far as bloat is concerned...and any bloat that exists is more a reflection on programming methodologies being used and their limitation as we scale.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't change the facts, though. If you do have enough memory, you will benefit from a faster CPU. And I don't know what type of video/audio editing you've done, maybe it's just assembling clips. But when you do much more than that, the processor needs to render new output froms from the inputs for stuff like transitions, color adjustments, and overlays and combinations. Ideally, you would want to be able to do this in faster than real-time, and be able to have the full power of digital computerized video editing for use on-the-air at reasonable costs. Similarly, the sound card doesn't do much other than just playing back the digitally encoded streams you have. If you want to change their contents, it's again a CPU job.

I don't see why people disparage using faster processors for legitimate applications. I've done video editing, and no matter what CPU I do it on, I wish I had more. And no, it wasn't disk I/O bound, because I had no trouble playing the input and output videos at full-speed.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[snarkh]

You forgot "solving systems of 50,000 equations." People always bring that one up, as unrealistic as it.

What is so unrealistic about it? Have you ever tried solving an eigenvalue problem for 10000x10000 matrix in MATLAB? It takes about an hour on a dual PIII, 800mhz with 1Gig RAM.

Things like that come up a lot more often that one would expect.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[reflective recursion]

Isn't this _always_ the case though? I remember trying out Doom on a 386 or so. Forget this! Then I used a Pentium 75. A world of difference. I thought "how could software ever need more than this?" Then Quake came out. I could only play at 320x200 with my slow P75 and ATI Mach64 card. Once I got a K6-300 Quake ran awesome (even if a tad outdated). I missed the boat on Q2, but once I got Quake3 it happened again. I had purchased an nVidia TNT card which was too slow for Q3. Now I have a GeForce GTS 2 which is great (plus a AMD Athlon 650). All I can say is w/ Quake4, Doom3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein coming out.. be prepared (not to mention whatever Valve software or Epic Games comes out with).

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Rift]

but do you care when you get it? If they can use OOD tools to release the game in a year instead of in 10 (write it all in assembly, tune it for all possible hardware it may run on), then I'd rather they do that, and I'll upgrade my machine to run it.

"But quake ran fine on my PII!" - then run Quake.

"They should make this new game run fast on my 4 year old computer." No, you should buy (or write) games that run fast on your 4 year old computer (try 4 year old games). I want games that are released in my lifetime with lots of features and visual effects - so I get hardware that can run them.

And if Quake4 played like Quake1, why would they make Quake4? Especially if it ran the same on the same hardware? I think you're a sales demographic ID can afford to lose.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[rabidcow]

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.

In theory, you should be able to write such classes so you can define one flag and the debug stuff will compile away to nothing. (or just a few extra pointers)

So the developers need good machines, everyone else doesn't.

Except some companies are shipping debug builds as their final product. I'm not sure why. (Black & White, for example, includes the debug mfc & msvcrt dlls.)

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

>(and yes this is partly a dig at the huge swap requirements on the 2.4 kernel)

Linux 2.4.10 doesn't have the huge swap requirements of the older kernels. I went from using 500MB of swap per node in my cluster to using 50MB of swap running a cfd code by upgrading the kernels to 2.4.10 (512MB of memory per node).

-asb

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Anonymous Coward]

b/c Quake4 would take advantage of whatever but it needs to play like Q1. Gameplay for Q2, Q3 blows.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[jmv]

You forgot "solving systems of 50,000 equations." People always bring that one up, as unrealistic as it.

(Note: I'm not talkig about home use here) Actually, 50,000 equations is a rather small system. Any idea what weather prediction looks like? Something like 10 equations per grid point, with a grid that's something like 200x200x50=2,000,000. So you end up with a 20 million equation system. Also, many CAD software (eg finite element simulations) also need to solve *huge* systems. The faster the computer, the more precise the simulation (because you can afford more grid points).

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Grab]

In short, no, nor will 99.99% of the world's serious computer users, ie. those for whom a computer is a tool to be used rather than an end in itself. The 0.01% who do will likely not be doing it on a regular basis (eg. a couple of semesters of maths lectures). The 0.01% of those who do it on a regular basis (eg. maths professors/postgrads) can go out and get a multi-processor mobo and umpty-GHz CPUs - or more likely, will get their uni department or company to buy it.

In other words, no-one needs this unless they (a) need to compile mega-programs or (b) do heavy maths work. So no home user and most business users have no need.

I speak as someone who switched from a P233 to a Duron 800 only bcos the mobo broke - I refused to spend £80 on a new Pentium mobo when £200 would get a complete new system!

Grab.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[WNight]

Quake is about the only program I'll excuse for requiring a fast CPU and a ton of RAM. In every game there have been two to three times the number of polygons on-screen at once. How do you expect to do that much more without requiring a faster CPU?

Currently video cards only draw the scene you describe, until recently they couldn't even transform the light (T&L) the scene so the CPU had to do it all. (Transform means taking the level, clipping out bit syou can't see, bits that are occluded, and then transforming what's left to fit the screen in the proper perspective. Lighting then takes that and a list of all the lights and calculates which walls are being lit.)

If you want to do a few hundred thousand floating point calculations to draw the scene you're going to need a very fast CPU to do it many times in a second.

Quake is a graphical game, it's doing exactly what it says on the box. Now, MS Office, that's bloat.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Moses came from the promised land. He's God-like and with only a P2-400! How easy it is to say "yup... yup... I did all of that" - and yet how hard it is to sound like you're telling the truth. Of course, if Moses says computers are too powerful, he's right. Don't question him, he's just reading off the stone tablet he was given.

I don't know why this Moses guy needs to feel like he's better than everyone else because HE would rather use a P2-400 and prove his "geekhood" by doing things in overnight batches. I'll bet he would really prefer to use a mainframe at home, then come on Slashdot and brag about how it has 8 Gig of RAM. Oh and a fast hard disk.

Of course, the reason Moses is so bent out of shape is because he's a great coder and must ridicule all coders who don't "have what it takes" to write code that runs on legacy CPUs. It must be so difficult for him to write code, knowing that he is the last bastion of good code in the universe. What pressure, knowing the entire world relies on your performance. I think the original Moses must have felt similarly.

Glad I'm atheist...

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[zpengo]

A few points:

The fellow's point was that 99.98% of Joe Sixpacks out there *don't* need all the power that's being hyped. Just because you like running Emboss on your hi-res porn images doesn't mean that some college student in Albuquerque, a secretary in Toledo, or your Grandma needs to do it.

If you need 2GHz, get 2GHz. If not, don't do it just because the salesman told you you need it.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[SETY]

It is in the best interestes for science to have fast processors marketed to joe 6-pack even if he doesn't need it. This causes fast processors to be cheaper sooner. This allows scientists to run better simulations.

my bias:
I keep 16 1 GHz PIII's going all the time at 100% running sims.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[SETY]

The damn things are only $216 - Athlon XP 1800 according to pricewatch.com.

Is the majority of PC's bought in the world for home or business? I would guess about 50/50. So if I work for a company and they have a choice between an Athlon 800 for $50 and the 1800 which is 4x times the price it is probably in the companies best interest to pay the extra $150 because it causes Excel to draw graphs 3 seconds quicker (or whatever). If you pay your Dilbert 30$/hour; 3 seconds can add up. Plus it helps morale.

It might encourage more bloated software, but companies don't have the source to fix Excel, they can spend a few extra $$$ and make it run quicker though.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[SETY]

Yes, and the Athlon MP and XP aren't the same. NO?

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Weh]

uhh, I'm an engineer and do numerical stuff that does require a lot of processing power. Thanks to cheaper faster pcs we can now do stuff that would have been really expensive before. I'm sure there's a lot of engineers like me besides the scientists already mentioned.
Granted that I also sometimes wonder what someone needs a dual GHz system for to run excel.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Weh]

Yeah, it's basically about solving partial differential equations defined over large areas. Finite element method is basically a method for solving PDEs. All the following areas use numerical methods for solving the PDEs and thus benefit from cheaper faster computers.

Aerodynamics

Fluid Mechanics

Oceanography

Meteorology

Stress Analysis

Well, that's the ones I know about but there must be a lot more. And not just scientists use these, there must be thousands of engineers working in these fields daily.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Anonymous Coward]

Just name the sound card that does the job of
Sound Forge, for instance. MP3 encoding needs processor power as well. I _have_ used a P200 for
editing purposes but I can assure you it is no great fun.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[ryanr]

If I ever have to wait for my machine to do something, it's too slow. I don't care if it's idle the majority of the time, I want it to be insanely responsive when I'm in front of it.

But your point is valid, if the current software weren't using all the new speed, we might already be there. (Well, for most things. Crypto cracking will still use an infinite amount of CPU...)

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[cooperj72]

I hear you.

My grandmother was compiling X the other day on her P166 and she's like, "Goddammit! Git me one of those Amdy Altheron processors!"

-J

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Tuzanor]

SO what are you saying? that we should just drop all reaseach and development and settle on what we have becasue its good enough? If we did that then we'd probably still be stuck with 486s because then, everybody thought "what the hell else can we put in a computer? why would we need anything else? 640K aghta be enought for anybody...

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Anonymous Coward]

If Quake4 is released w/any bugs, runs slow on decent hardware (I consider a 400mhz computer decent), and is fucking HUGE (minimum req is ridiculously high) then I will be sorely disappointed.

Thanks. Now go play Quake 1 by yourself in the corner, forever, while the rest of us move on and see the next great game!

If Quake4 is released it better play like Q1, or there will be yet another version that I won't play ;)

I'm sure Carmack has now scrapped his Doom3 plans and is now editing more levels for that Commander Keen expansion he's been planning.

Just my worthless .02 (+1, Insightful)

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Explo]

XEmacs used to be considered the worlds largest piece of bloatware... its 4.2meg, its got email, news, web-browser, editor, mayan calendar and the kitchen sink in there....

Mozilla appears to be 16Meg at least (IE was 100Meg when I installed everything!) Is it 4 times as functional, 4 times as reliable... nope.

Actually, I think you're wrong; as a browser, Mozilla certainly does more than the Emacs web browser. Additionally, AFAIK Mozilla can be used as a programming enviroment with XUL, just like Emacs.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[m_evanchik]

I'm running a celeron 400 (66 mhz bus) w/12 gig hd , 192 SDRAM and integrated standard graphics and sound card. I have the settings tweaked (running 98) and it's fast enough for most tasks, including large image work.

The fact is nowadays that all the other components, like ram, hd, graphics and especially network connection are the bottleneck.

Sure I think about upgrading, but I don't really need to, and with computers, the longer you wait, the better your final system will be.

What I really would like is some optic fiber coming into my apartment and unlimited bandwidth. Then I could really cause some dameag. :)

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[snarkh]

You are mistaken - plenty of statisticians and engineers have to do things like that on a routine basis.

In a lot of statistical application, for example, 10000 or 1000000 data points is not unusual.

Of course your typical office worker will probably never have any use for applications like these.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I use my higher end processor and system to do heavy math in a casual way that the average user can relate to.

I have a Dazzle DVCII board and capture episodes of The Simpsons to MPEG and then burn them to Video CD format. Three episodes per CD is pretty cheap relatively permanent storage.

The process of edting out commercials, encoding/decoding and such is pretty damn processo (and I/O) intensive.

Of course, I do this on an Intel Pentium III system since the DVCII is specifically documented as having problems with some Athlon processors (like most good video capture hardware I am aware of). Pentium III- don't leave home without it.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Trepidity]

Uh, you seem to have no idea what numerical matrix operations are useful for. Maths professors rarely need to do such work, as they're more interested in theoretical aspects of maths (there are some exceptions where large numerical simulations are useful in getting an idea of how systems should behave). The vast majority of such problems are done by people who use the computer as a tool - meteorologists, engineers, etc.

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Eunuchswear]

Also, 2.4 is getting somewhat more sane in recent releases.

Bullshit, if anything it's getting worse. When Linus retires to the 2.5 never-never land things might get sorted out. Or do you mean that 2.4.10+ will nead a 2x1800+ Athalon?

Re:Why bother ? its an excuse to write bad code

[Strog]

I just installed Counter Strike on my computer(better late than never). I tried classic deathmatch and it looks and plays like an updated Quake1. My brother-in-law and I were both new to CS and evenly matched. I just blew him into the ground in classic mode because it felt just like Q1 to me and I jumped right in.

Give it a try if you are looking for Q1-like gameplay.

This matters, How?

[Brew Bird]

Look in the Mirror

Ok, ok, so these clowns think they can make diffrence... does it really matter, while we watch all the start up telcos in the US start to go belly up, taking a lot of the infrastructure support companies with them? I mean REALLY! who cares !

Truth in labeling

[Bud Dwyer]

I refuse to buy AMD products as long as they use this gimmicky, false labeling. If you think the MHz is no longer a good measure of performance, stop using MHz in the product name. Don't tack on an inflated "Model Number" the most consumers will mistake for a MHz rating.

With AMD's new naming process, they just bought Intel one new customer for the indefinite future.

Re:Truth in labeling

[Anonymous Coward]

The DID stop using Mhz in the product name. If the processor runs better than the competition, why care what it's called? I'd happily buy the "Omega-Ultra-MegaEnhanced 10Bil GigaDorks" processor if it ran my codes faster than something called, simply, "Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz"

Re:Truth in labeling

[perlyking]

Spite yourself if you want, buy a slower Intel chip and play the same game that you are complaining about.
Intel are making faster (Mhz) chips rather than faster (actual processing) chips.

The simple fact is that the 1800+ is FASTER than a p4 at 1800mhz would be, rather than being a gimmick they are erring on the side of caution.

You are right, most customers would mistake it for a mhz rating, just as if they called it an athlon 1533 no retarded customer would buy it because it has less "Mhz". It works both ways and AMD have to deal with the customers.

Re:Truth in labeling

[baptiste]

I refuse to buy AMD products as long as they use this gimmicky, false labeling. If you think the MHz is no longer a good measure of performance, stop using MHz in the product name. Don't tack on an inflated "Model Number" the most consumers will mistake for a MHz rating.

From your tone I'd expect you woudln't buy AMD anyway. However, if you did any research, you'd find the AMD's new numbering plan is actually conservative. Independant benchmark reviews have shown that the AMD 1800+ is actually more of an equivalent to the Pent 4 2GHz chip. But AMD chose a conservative threshold. Granted, the new Intel cores will boost performance a bit, but even then the AMD numbering plan is expected to be on target. Honestly - who cares what they call the chip - anyone with half a brain can find out the MHz value. But to what end? Me? I want to buy teh system which gives me the most performance for the least $$$ and right now that is an AMD chip hands down when you account for other CPU specific system costs and impacts (chipset, memory type needed, etc)

I honestly think AMD did what it HAD to do - their chips are faster at slower clock speeds and Intel managed to get folks thinking MHz was king. Now AMD has ot try and chance that thinking.

Re:Truth in labeling

[Sunken Kursk]

Dude, how can you be talking so much when you blew out your hard/soft palatte with a .357 magnum. Last I saw you there was a steady stream of blood pouring down your forehead.

Other than that, how was the press conference?

Re:Truth in labeling

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think the MHz is no longer a good measure of performance, stop using MHz in the product name.

That's what they did.

Re:Truth in labeling

[iforgotmyfirstlogon]

Even if it was the Athlon "Bill Gates Special Edition?"

- Freed

Re:Truth in labeling

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha! Thanks for the memories. My favorite part of that whole suicide / press conference was the voice in the background shouting "Someone call an ambulance!" after he gave himself the lead lobotomy.

Sad part is he really was innocent--and there was exonerable proof!

Re:Truth in labeling

[Sunken Kursk]

Yeah, that was great, "Alright, nobody panic. Somebody call an ambulance and the police."

I didn't know he was innocent. That definitely makes it Must See TV (TM)

Re:Truth in labeling

[Anonymous Coward]

This "equivalent" argument is pure crap. A Suzuki motorcycle has about 115 horsepower, while a Porsche 911 Turbo has 300 more. And yet the Suzuki could easily beat the 911 off the line, so therefore Suzuki should market its motorcycles as "GT 415HP" because it has the equivalent acceleration of a 911, right?

Re:Truth in labeling

[denzo]

This "equivalent" argument is pure crap. A Suzuki motorcycle has about 115 horsepower, while a Porsche 911 Turbo has 300 more. And yet the Suzuki could easily beat the 911 off the line, so therefore Suzuki should market its motorcycles as "GT 415HP" because it has the equivalent acceleration of a 911, right?

To me, this is an apples vs. oranges analogy. On one hand, we have the apples, who are the auto and motorcycle enthusiasts. On the other hand, we have the oranges, or the vast uninformed PC-buying public walking into CompUSA and Circuit City stores. Two completely different species.

Intel's ability to con the public into buying into the MHz game is obhorrent, at best. They manufactured an inferior processor, the P4, basically to outmatch AMD in numbers. Intel knew that AMD wouldn't be able to ramp up their Athlons to the same level within a reasonable amount of time. The P4's inferiority is backed up by the fact that P3s outperform P4s MHz-per-MHz.

I feel that AMD's new effective/relative performance ratings are justified in this case, especially since the numbers are realistic (as opposed to their 486/K5 series or Cyrix's CPUs). If Intel wants to bloat numbers, AMD has to catch up in the marketing game in order to survive in this industry. People are walking into the major retail stores and being convinced by salespeople that the P4 systems are better and just as cheap (only because they bundle inferior components such as nVidia TNT2 graphics cards and generic sound cards to reduce the price) as an Athlon-based system. The regular Joe Blow will see a bigger MHz number and an affordable price, which is the killer combination.

The Linux/hardware enthusiasts are by far a minority in the PC market. Thus, the battlegrounds look ugly to those who are more informed, but I'm sure they look even worse within the buildings of Intel and AMD. It's a dog-eat-dog world.

Re:Truth in labeling

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget it dude.
If you don't sing the praises of Athlon like all the good little sheep they will flame and mod you into oblivion.

Personally, I don't buy AMD because I want a processor that is stable and doesn't run so hot as to burn the paint off the outside of my case.

It's just another piece of shit from a second rate CPU maker.

Firingsquad reviews dual durons vs thunderbird

[[amorphis]]

Firingsquad has an excellent review comparing dual Durons to dual Thunderbirds using both Palamino and non- versions of both chips. They conclude that the Palamino Duron is the best bang for the buck.

Yes!

[motherfuckin_spork]

I've been waiting for this my whole life! My life has been incomplete without dual-proc AMD! Oh, yeah! Life in the fast lane!

Now I'll be able to have so much excessive computing power that it'll be even more of a complete and total waste than my current system!

Yeah!

w00t!

Wow

[Andorion]

A 1.5 GHz athlon based on old 0.18 micon technology.... That thing must REALLY cook.

Just don't let the heatsink get loose, we know what happens then...

-Berj

Ouch, Looks Like We Broke Their Website

[Kletus Cassidy]

Warning: Too many connections in /home/amdmb/www/templates/mysql_header.inc on line 19

Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in /home/amdmb/www/templates/mysql_header.inc on line 19

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Re:Ouch, Looks Like We Broke Their Website

[Anonymous Coward]

No, MySQL broke their website.

You get what you pay for.

Re:Ouch, Looks Like We Broke Their Website

[Anonymous Coward]

hrm.. and they paid nothing for mysql... so let's see...

Assume they have gotten some value out of it (even a little bit), and they paid $0. value/$ comes out to (a little)/0 = infinity... hrmm.. imagine that

Re:Ouch, Looks Like We Broke Their Website

[Edward Kmett]

That is assuming of course that their time has no value.

Re:Ouch, Looks Like We Broke Their Website

[Sunken Kursk]

I thought time, like information, wants to be free

Re:Ouch, Looks Like We Broke Their Website

[Dead Fart Warrior]

If not, I'd like to buy 1 day of my life back, please.

Can you imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

... a Beowulf cluster of these?

Thank you.

--Patrick Bateman, Esq.

Re:Can you imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, just like a blast furnace

Re:Why bother ? FOR THE GAMES, SILLY

[Andorion]

Computer games are the ONLY applications that tax a home-users cutting-edge machine... At the moment, systems are a little ahead of gaming technology, but in a few months that won't be the case. Just because your parents don't play Dark Age of Camelot or AquaNox, don't assume Joe User doesn't want to.

-Berj

Damn! Slashdotted!

[Arethan]

Note to web programmers, MySQL doesn't like it when it runs out of connections. Try increasing the connection pool size. Also, instead of having the page try to open the connection just once, and fall all over itself if the connection fails, try putting the connection request in a timed loop with a timeout of around 5 minutes, and a sleep(5) in the middle to help throttle a little. Your MySQL server will thank you, and your web page viewers will thank you.

Re:Damn! Slashdotted!

[Ryan_Amdmb]

Thanks for the helpful hint. Actually, there was a small bug with the ad serving software we use that caused the MySQL server to spawn about 400 processes at the same time. Took that out and we seem to he holding steady now. :)

Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Kozz]

If you read Tom's Hardware, you may have seen this fantastic article and brilliant video, which shockingly demonstrates how AMD vs Pentium chips cope with heat emergencies. Considering the disastrous results with so many of the AMD chips, I'd be hesitant to buy anything OTHER than a Pentium until AMD can conclusively show that their chips are "smart" when faced with heat emergencies (heatsink fan stops, heatsink falls off?)

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[pointym5]

Losing the fan but not the heatsink is not going to cause flame-out. And losing the heatsink is really only an issue for people in earthquake zones and LAN partiers.

If you're really really scared, get one of the heatsinks that bolts onto the motherboard instead of clipping onto the socket.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[isdnip]

While it's true that AMD CPUs are, uh, sensitive to cooling, I don't see that as a show-stopper. When you buy the parts to build your own Athlon system, as I did recently, you get plenty of warning to NOT TURN THIS ON WITHOUT A HEATSINK (yes, they shout, as they should).

Other CPUs are also very sensitive. What's rather surprising is how well Intel's P4 thermal shutdown works. I suspect AMD will get around to doing something similar. But in the meantime, I've attached a nice quiet (3800 RPM, not the 7200 RPM version) ThermoEngine to my Thunderbird, and it cruises at around 100 degrees F. Some newer/bigger heatsinks bolt to the motherboard, rather than clip on to the socket, which I suppose helps if you're really paranoid about its falling off. I use Motherboard Monitor to keep track of the temp via the Win98 system tray, and wish Linux distros would include similar capability out of the box (yeah, I know there's a way to build it in yourself...).

But then I do admit to using a 1 GHz Tbird rather than a faster one because I don't want that excess heat or power consumption.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[baptiste]

The new Palimino chips (which these are) have the thermal diodes in them. I'm not 100% sure if the CPUs will auto shut down based on teh diodes reading or if it requires a BIOS intervention, but I doubt it would matter.

Yes AMDs will incinerate themselves if the heatsink alls off - but funny, you don't see many people saying this has happened - yes it has to a few, but honestly - I'd rather get the higher performance for my dollar and risk having to replace the CPU if the heatsink fell off - something very unlikely. But if it did, the replacement CPU would be pretty cheap given how prices on processors fall over just a few months! And total cost would STILL probably be chaeper than an equivalent Pent 4 system (not CPU, system) Hell my 1GHz Athlon has been chugging along for months and the heatsink is still on solid!

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[(H)elix1]

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.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go click that link back there. One of the chips that fried itself was a Palamino. The thermal should protect the processor if the fan fails, but can't react fast enough when the entire heatsink is abducted by aliens.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[gaspyy]

Most (if not all) motherboards let you specify a temperature above which your pc will shutdown... or you can use a mb monitor to do the same thing withing windows/linux/whatever and give you a warning if the temperature exceeds xx degrees.

So, where's the problem?

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[jdh28]

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.

IIRC, the main problem with the AMD processors was that they would burn out in around 3 seconds in the (unlikely I know) event that the heatsink fell off. Another point was that the plastic tabs which the heatsink was clipped to, weren't particular strong, so it perhaps wasn't as unlikely as one might think.

john

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Follow the link -- the burnout time is far quicker than your motherboard monitor can react.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the plastic tabs broke it would either happen when you first attach the heatsink, or after moving the box a lot (like taking it to a LAN party or something).

In the first case you'd probably notice the small explosion of plastic and the heavy heatsink falling to the bottom of the case (or smashing into your video card) when you reassemble the computer. In the second you should already be checking your cards in case they slipped out (happens with some larger cards sometimes), so the heatsink is just another thing to check.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[ruiner5000]

Is Intel paying you directly or thur alternative sources? ;) Yeah, it was fantastic at E3 when they couldn't show me a Black and White demo on the P4 when it kept blue screening. That was fantastic! Anyway, go ahead, pay twice as much, get 2/3 of the performance in a server. I'll happily serve a million plus sessions a month on my little Athlon 900.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Pengo]

I have an Dual CPU 800 (Intel).. the CPU's won't shut the system down if the heat gets to hot, but the motherboard will.

the case fan died on my box , and because I run dual-seti at night, the machine heated up and started beeping.. woke up me up, but found that the box shut itself off .. later discovered that the motherboard was sinking ship after 75deg celc. from either CPU.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Brandon Bray]

Don't forget that you could buy many more AMD chips for the price of just one Intel chip. Factoring in the probability of a heat emergency actually occurring for say two or three consecutive chips, you're still way better off with AMD. The only consideration left is whether you need fault tolerance or a grandiose uptime of four nines.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right.

It's just The Man out to rip us off.

Don't buy anything from Intel. In fact, steal ashtrays whenever possible. Pay your bills at the last possible moment. Steal that pen at the gas station.

It's the only way to get ahead.

Re: Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Inthewire]

Like the AC said...the temp was increasing by hundreds of degrees per second...evidently, most software solutions only poll the board every 5 seconds...no time to react.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Snowfox]

Other CPUs are also very sensitive. What's rather surprising is how well Intel's P4 thermal shutdown works. I suspect AMD will get around to doing something similar.

The new Athlons (XP and MP) have thermal sensors on board according to AMD's site. I still can't find any information indicating whether/how they actually use these though.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[TheRevenant]

My understanding is that most motherboards don't yet have support for the in-chip thermal diodes - once they do, the issue will be worth a relook

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah those are the ones who are supposed to warn you and shutdown the system but aren't able to deal with the temperature growing rate that happens when the fan dies..

AMD rocks, but I think we'll have to wait for them to catch up on this.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[jareds]

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.

No it isn't. A car engine will only be running when you're there using it, so you'll notice right away if something goes wrong. In the unlikely event a heatsink fell off when nobody's using the computer, it looks like an AMD processor would become a fire hazard. The car analogy would be having a risk that your car will start smoldering while it's sitting in your garage.

Re:Twice the burned-out CPUs?

[13Echo]

Ya know. They have motherboards that do that now.

Word is an excellent example...

[Rob.Mathers]

Take a look at MS Word from 4 or 5 years ago. It ran perfectly well with all the formatting options, spell checker, inline clip art -- all on a P100 or even less. Now what do we have? Everything above, but with bloat like the Paperclip, menus that go 5 layers deep for commands that nobody wants or needs, functions that are duplicated in 3 different places, and a GUI that gobbles up as much RAM as my system throws at it, and doesn't let go.

Interesting, this.

[dave-fu]

I like how the little guys are going to benchmarks to indicate how their product actually performs while the big boys (Oracle, I'm looking at you) are recusing themselves from it.
Too bad that IT managers go with what they know (everyone else is using) and what's worked for them in the past.
It may be confusing for Jane Consumer, but it's nice to see that AMD's finally gotten a marketroid with a clue as to what works. Now if only their stock would start working, too...

Slashdot Premium Service?

[mshiltonj]

Damn. I'm trying to read the article just ten minutes after it's posted on /., and the target site is already not responding. #$@#!

Idea for Slashdot Premium Service: Sell access to an "advance-edition" of the home page. Stories posted to slashdot go to the advance edition first, then surface on the home page an hour later. People who subscribe to the advance edition get email alerts. These subsribers could read the article while site is still responding, and have a better chance at getting the first post (and modded down).

Of course, this wouldn't work if all 250k /. readers signed up, but you get the idea.

Re:Slashdot Premium Service?

[Ryan_Amdmb]

Sorry about the server down time there guys. It turns out one of the ad serving softwares I used was not playing nicely with a busy server. :)

Its up now and I welcome any comments or questions!

Man, and I just built a dual 1.2ghz....

[MadCow42]

It always happens... you jump in and build your dream system, and immediately it's out of date. Oh well, a duallie 1.2ghzMP isn't anything to laugh at! Glad to hear that the TigerMP supports the new chip speeds out of the box, anyone know how high it will go?

A few notes on the TigerMP though: VERY picky on RAM, very picky on how it's seated (read: install memory before board is in your case, so you can wedge it in on a flat surface!), but since getting past that, it's been ROCK solid! Beautiful system I must say!

MadCow... always 500mhz behind the curve.

Re:Man, and I just built a dual 1.2ghz....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry about it, dude. Just enjoy your new machine. It's not like it's "slow" or something.

Re:Man, and I just built a dual 1.2ghz....

[LordNimon]

I, too, am building a dual 1.2G system. If these 1800's run at 1.53 GHz, then each CPU is only 27.5% faster, so it's not like you're really missing out.

Thanks for the tip on the Tiger MP. I bought high-quality memory, so it should work (when it arrives).

Re:Man, and I just built a dual 1.2ghz....

[RelliK]

Unlike Intel, AMD does not like to screw you over by constantly changing sockets. AMD has stated that the *all* the new CPUs they release should work even the oldest SocketA boards provided that the power requirements are met. And they will keep the same socket for all the future CPUs. So in a year or two you'll be able to upgrade to something like 2x 2.0GHz or more. (Upgrading it right now to 1800XP makes no sense though. The performance increase is too small). Also, AMD has stated that they'll try to keep the same socket for the ClawHammer/SledgeHammer series -- they'll change it only if neccessary.

Compare that to Intel. Over the past 3 years we've had Socket 7 (pentium), Socket 8 (pentium pro), Slot 1 (p2/p3/celeron), Slot 2 (xeon), Socket 370 (p3/celeron), Socket 423 (p4), Socket 478 (p4)...

Re:Man, and I just built a dual 1.2ghz....

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be dumb.

A motherboard/CPU should be mated once and never separated. When it's upgrade time you sell off the old motherboard/CPU pair to a friend or college student.

It's idiotic to expect the processor's socket footprint to stay the same for years. If that were the case we'd be cramming our Pentium III processors into a damn 386 socket.

I know, I know. I have one of those Cyrix 4/386 chips where that's exactly what they do. If I remember correctly it wouldn't compile a kernel...

Re:Man, and I just built a dual 1.2ghz....

[MadCow42]

Thanks for the info... however I'm still interested how "high" of a clock speed the motherboard itself will support (multipliers, etc).

All Tyan lists is "supports two Athlon MP processors"... no frequency range, like most other motherboards out there. It'd be great if I can drop in two 4ghz processors next year when the next bloatware OS slows my system to a crawl!

However, back in the real world, I'm now ripping MP3's (at 12x speed+), running Seti@home at full speed (realtime priority, just for fun), surfing the web, and running Komodo/Mozilla, and still only running at 70% CPU usage... it's not like I need more power right now! q:]

MadCow.

Re:Man, and I just built a dual 1.2ghz....

[at_18]

However, back in the real world, I'm now ripping MP3's (at 12x speed+), running Seti@home at full speed (realtime priority, just for fun), surfing the web, and running Komodo/Mozilla, and still only running at 70% CPU usage... it's not like I need more power right now! q:]

Something is wrong, here: Seti@home should take ALL processor cycles not used by other applications. My CPU is at 99.5% since months (the .5% less must be the Windows scheduler not-so-state-of-the-art, on Linux it's more like 99.9%)

Re:Man, and I just built a dual 1.2ghz....

[MadCow42]

You're correct... on a single-processor machine. Seti@home is not multi-threaded (unless you're running the screen saver graphics too, which are on a separate thread).

It is using basically all of one processor's time, but none of the others. When my computer is "idling" with just Seti running, it's at exactly 50% CPU usage.

MadCow.

Roadmap

[nilstar]

Why don't you take a look at the AMD Processor Roadmap to see more on their processors.... http://www.threecom.de/artikel/amdround1/ ... though the site is in german.... translate it with babelfish: http://babelfish.altavista.com

About the naming

[TheMMaster]

I've been an AMD fan ever since, erm well always actually even my 486 was an AMD ;-)
I really think AMD will have te expect some problems with this. Back in the good old days (r) of the pentium and the cyrix 6x86 I worked in a computer store and we also sold cyrix computers to customers that didn't want too spend too much money (so sue me)
Very often people came back because they saw that their Cyrix PR200+ wasn't actually running on 200Mhz and demanded a refund (which they didn't get ofcourse) we had to explain the whole thing and it costed us a lot of time
That's why we stopped selling them back then
Another thing is that the semi-geeks (the dudes that THINK they are geek but basically know nothing) won't buy them because "they are already overclocked"

Re:About the naming

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're really saying is you've never used an Intel processor, even back in the Pentium 1 era when there were significant performance differences and the Intel chip was tops.

And you're a big AMD fan and know they're superior, right?

I have an AMD 286 processor if you're interested.... Probably an 8088 if you've got time to wait while I dig around in back...

Re:About the naming

[TheMMaster]

I dislike Intel for the (one) of the reasons I dislike microsoft: Their marketing campaign "intel inside" People thhought (or think) that "intel" isn't a brand of processors but some kind of quality insurance.
There's nothing wrong with a good campaign (hey Macdonalds got big that way ;-) ) but I HATE campaigns where people are lead to believe something about computers that is generally not true. They thrive on the un-knowingness of the average user (not that that is the user's fault)
ow yeah BTW I put that remark in because I thought it was funny, nut because I feel "superiour" and it was defenetly not the point I was trying to make...
my 2 cents

Expensive heat death?

[hughk]

A couple of the 1800's would be real nice here on a Tyan Thunder board, however, doesn't AMD have a record of potential heat death vulnerability? I believe that article was even mentioned here, but I can't dig out the link.

Tom's Hardware notes that the AMDs can cook really fast and beyond the ability of the motherboard sensor to flag. I guess these have on-die sensors but these were noted as being fairly ropey as well.

Intel's P4 seemed to do quite well out of the test as the clock slows automatically as the die temperature increases (in effect the processor ignores the clocks until the temperature goes reasonable). This means that it will even run without a heatsink (but very slowly).

I just get very nervous about having high-end silicon that is vulnerable to a SPOF. It a heatsink detaches or the processor fan fails - blam. If the chassis fan fails, at least there is some chance of a shutdown, but those processor heatsinks make me uncomfortable. Yes, I know I can buy quality, but MTBF is just that, a fan can still fail early.

So I wait for AMD to get a bit more serious about thermal protection and stick with using cheaper processors as thermal fuses.

Re:Expensive heat death?

[Haeleth]

If you're seriously worried about a heatsink falling off, you could always try positioning your case so that your motherboard is horizontal.

Frankly I think people are being just a little too paranoid about this whole issue. It's like monitor implosion. Possible != likely.

Re:Expensive heat death?

[Jeffrey Baker]

Why do you kiddies keep beating this particular drum. Your heat sink should never fall off! Why is it falling off? Because you don't know how to properly build a computer? Than buy a Dell and don't sweat it.

For your convenience, here is a list of other things you should avoid buying because they have "fatal flaws":

• Internal combustion engines (can seize if their oil pan suddnely falls off)
• Airplanes (can crash if their engines suddenly fall off)
• Nuclear power plants (may malfunction if all coolant pumps fail)

Re:Expensive heat death?

[JerryKnight]

This probably is not comparable to the new athlons, but my duron ran for a while (perhaps an hour or so) without the heatsink fan, and it's fine. Of course the heatsink was scalding, and I let it cool for a long time, but it's still running strong.

At nearly twice the clock speed, those athlons could still run quite a bit hotter than my lowly duron, I suppose. I would still expect that a hardware monitor set for fan RPMs or processor temp would catch a failure in time. Don't set it on 149 deg. F. If it's above 125, something is wrong.

BTW, exactly what do you do to your computer that could detach the heatsink? Most heatsinks (unless you buy quality) can be a pain in the butt to detach even when you want to detach them.

Re:Expensive heat death?

[hughk]

BTW, exactly what do you do to your computer that could detach the heatsink? Most heatsinks (unless you buy quality) can be a pain in the butt to detach even when you want to detach them.

In a word, moving house. Usually a heatsink doesn't shift if the clips are on properly, but sometimes they look like they are, but they aren't. The better motherboards carry mounting holes, but in any case my worry is more about the larger heatsinks these things use (heavier).

I am very encouraged though by your report that fan death will not cause rapid death of processor.

Re:Expensive heat death?

[nusuth]

Most nuclear power plants that don't fail when their coolant pumps fail, most airplanes can land with majority (or all) of their engines shut down. The important keyword is "most", which means that these solutions are prefered to their alternatives. Doesn't sound too illogical to me. I've never seen an heatsink fall of, but I have seen thermal probes, or mobo logic monitoring thermal probes fail occasionally. I also have seen each and every fan - PS, vid card, HSF - I use fail in about 2 years (might be related to my chain smoking) which might be fatal when combined with temp reading failure. If P4 was not such an horrible chip, I would have bought one instead of athlon even if that meant a few more bucks or a bit less performance.

Re:Expensive heat death?

[LordNimon]

When a nuclear plant or an airplane fail, people usually die. I've never heard of that happening when an AMD CPU fails.

Yes, the P4's thermal throttle is very nice, but is it worth dancing with the Devil? Not to me. That's why I'm building a dual Athlon system now (as an upgrade from my 233MHz Pentium Pro!)

Re:Expensive heat death?

[ruiner5000]

Yeah, heatsinks fall off in servers all the time. Not. It is a non issue.

Re:Expensive heat death?

[Anonymous Coward]

AMD parts aren't used in servers.

Get a clue. No, your Linux box with a static IP doesn't count.

Re:Expensive heat death?

[13Echo]

Well it proves it. A hotter CPU is probably likely to be faster.

By the way. If you PROPERLY build a machine, then you won't have problems with the temperature. And yes, even a $10 Coolermaster Heatsink/fan will suffice.

Re:Expensive heat death?

[chinakow]

Yea!! This is an Excellent excuse to build a rack and buy some rack mount chassis all of the boards in those machines are gennerally horizontal and then you have and e4xcuse to buy the hot swap bay and a bunch of 80 pin SCA hard drives, if you are concened this sounds like a good time to blow your yearly salary getting new toys ;)

Re:Expensive heat death?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a wild idea that most of you AMD bashers out there refuse to accept when you start talking about heatsinks falling off...

Why not build that AMD system with one of the now numerous heatsinks that mount THROUGH the motherboard????? You know, like the Swiftech MC462.

Does it cost a couple extra dollars? Yes. But the chances of it coming loose are right up there with you guys not bashing something if you don't like it.

What happens if the fan still fails? Well, read this post here:
http://www.swiftnets.com/nearhorror.htm

Quit making up new things to bitch about. If you don't like AMD's stuff, good for you. But quit yer bitching. All of you are starting to sound like broken records now.

Alot of you keep saying that you'd never use and AMD chip because it doesn't have this, or doesn't do that. You people have little to no right to bitch, in my opinion.

So shut up already!!!

Ian.

Re:Expensive heat death?

[posmon]

reports at www.ash.org suggest that chain smoking might be fatal anyway score -1 : noone likes a smartarse

Re:Why bother ? FOR THE GAMES, SILLY

[Junks Jerzey]

Computer games are the ONLY applications that tax a home-users cutting-edge machine... At the moment, systems are a little ahead of gaming technology, but in a few months that won't be the case. Just because your parents don't play Dark Age of Camelot or AquaNox, don't assume Joe User doesn't want to.

But the kicker is that these games really don't need such horsepower. I'm willing to bet that if there were any pressure to get any of these games running on a more resource constrained system, like a game console, then lots of unnecessary internal fat would be trimmed right away. But there's no pressure to do so otherwise. And even if a game that could run just fine on a PII 400 requires a 1GHz processor, certain people seem to _like_ the justification for upgrading.

Processor Idea

[LazyDawg]

Hey all you /. people with a fab, here's a fun idea to piss off intel and AMD. Make the clock/speed irrelationship totally obvious.

Imagine an x86 compatible processor that runs at a clock speed of 50ghz? That's right, fifty BILLION hertz! Now, that clock only ever hits a counter that lets the 8086-compatible processor cycle once every half to full second. You could get a whopping 1-2 IPS :)

You'd be able to make millions selling 8086's that use the first 640k of a bunch of 128 meg chips, and the first 40 megs of a 400 gig hard drive. Think of the possibilities!

Shower Curtains

[hughk]

Don't you need something like this to work out what shower curtains do?

Re:Shower Curtains

[Anonymous Coward]

That's totally unnecessary. Geeks don't take showers.

this one is slashdotted

[trollin4jesus]

AMDZone also reviewed it here

Why NOT to use amd..

[api backslash]

Heres some interesting video of a heat test between intel chips and AMD chips. The amd chip failed. My Advice: Don't use amd. http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q3/010917/heatvi deo-05.html Somone once told me, "AMD chips: They melt in your socket, not in your hand."

Re:Why NOT to use amd..

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you ever stop to think that if you're not sure you can attach a heatsink properly to a CPU, that maybe you shouldn't be allowed into the case in the first place?

I have some advice for you the next time you need a new machine: 1 800 DELL 4 ME

Re:Why NOT to use amd..

[BitwizeGHC]

I have some advice for you the next time you need a new machine: 1 800 DELL 4 ME

Duuuude, it's got an Intel Pentium IV processor (which is soooo nice!).

Re:Why NOT to use amd..

[Anonymous Coward]

I manage a LARGE number of AMD boxes for AT&T and have NEVER - EVER - experienced an Athlon melt down. I haven't heard of any serious problems - anywhere - reporting melt downs! Why not? Try answering that - Tom surely didn't!

Since Tom (of Tom's HArdware) has started accepting bucks from Intel, his reviews have certainly taken on a pro-Intel flavor!

Re:Why NOT to use amd..

[andy_from_nc]

I've had more problems with intel chips burning up. I've had wonderful experiences with AMD chips. AMD chips are typically faster and for the money simply can't be beat.

Keep it cool

[manon]

I hope they ship the processors with water cooling AND a backup cooler.
Don't want this baby to get without any fresh air... not if I don't want it to be a smoke generator ;)

Horrifying fact about X-Files actor

[Anonymous Coward]

The actor David Duchovny, aka Fox Mulder of X-Files fame, has an unknown, very dark past. This photo [feldgrau.com] proves that he was, during WWII, a member of the Croatian Waffen-SS legion 'Waffen-Gebrigs-Division der SS "Handschar"' (he is the second from the left). Probably it was fears that this dark fact would become known that prompted his dismissal from the TV-series.

Re:Why bother ? FOR THE GAMES, SILLY

[Edward Kmett]

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.

The two environments are very different, and most of that fat can't be trimmed by wishing it away or blaming on programmers .</RANT&gt

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.

Re:Why bother ? FOR THE GAMES, SILLY

[jmauro]

Except that the high-end game curve has not been keeping up with the processor speed curve. Back in the day, the top of the line processor was need to run the game. You needed a 386/25 or a 386/33 to run games that came out within a month or so of the shipping date of the processor. Now the specs require a PII 233 or a PII 400 or equivelent. I've yet to see a game that on the box requires a PIII/1G. Have you? They do require some sort of 3d graphics card, but technology wise, the games try to aim for the greatest penetration of market share, which is about at the 300MHZ-600MHz. That is unlikely to change, since most of these people won't even think about upgrading any time soon, even if the newer computers make the internet "go faster!"

to MP or not to MP?

[captaineo]

I've heard lots of reports from reputable sources that cheaper Athlon XP's do work in multi-CPU systems. (Even the original Thunderbird supposedly works, although not at top speed due to some cache interactions). I've heard that the Athlon XP uses the same Palomino core as the Athlon MP, so there is really no difference at the hardware level.

Can anyone confirm this? Is this new, higher-priced series of Athlon MP's simply a marketing gimmick, a la NVIDIA's Quadro cards? (which are the same as a Geforce hardware-wise - save one tiny resistor that tells the driver to un-cripple certain optimizations - but cost 2-3 times as much a Geforce)

Re:to MP or not to MP?

[Anonymous Coward]

The only difference between Athlon XP and Athlon MP is that the MP is tested to be sure it works in a multiprocessor system. There is no physical difference between the chips.

The chance of a dual XP or dual Duron setup not working is infinitesimally small.

Re:to MP or not to MP?

[whovian]

The gist according to firingsquad.gamers.com is that there was a initial batch of XP's that were
SMP-enabled and mistakenly shipped. AMD supposedly will be disabling SMP in the XPs very soon.

Re:to MP or not to MP?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this possible? AMD chips use the EV6 bus which inherently allows SMP.

Re:to MP or not to MP?

[RelliK]

Every single AMD CPU from Duron to Athlon MP supports SMP. There are reports that AMD will simply try to disable SMP on the XP line. But the core architecture is SMP-capable.

Imagine this!

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Another preview on Tech Report

[shut_up_man]

http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/2994

They only compare against the 1.2Ghz Athlon MP though... although they intend to do an expanded article soon.

shut up man

So what is good code?

[Carnage4Life]

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?

Re:So what is good code?

[Grab]

This is a problem unrelated to language. It's surely possible to write good code in C, or C++, or Java, or C#. The problem is that ppl don't, and won't regardless of the language.

Read any software QA textbook, and you'll find they all agree (and experience tells you the same). How do you learn to code? It's not by being taught, it's by hacking away in a dark room somewhere. Individual coders/engineers may being incredibly skilled, but the experience doesn't get passed on, so the next generation of engineers make the same mistakes as the last one! Personally, I split up software developers into "hackers" and "engineers".

The "hacker", when given a vague problem to solve, sits down on his own and bashes out a piece of code without reference to requirements clarification, design documents, etc. It may even work - but it will be an unmaintainable nightmare, and if it doesn't work first time (or if it works sporadically) then it's over to printf and the debugger for months. Documentation, where it exists, will be written post-facto, and you'll be lucky if it explains the code properly. No-one else will be able to rework the code, and the hacker himself may not remember how it worked 6 months later!

An "engineer", OTOH, spends most of their time working in Word and a CASE package working out what they want to do and how they're going to achieve it, and runs his ideas past someone else to see whether a fresh pair of eyes can spot anything wrong. By the time the engineer goes for his favourite text editor, the problem's most of the way solved, and any bugs can be found by comparing design against code (ie. peer review). Any future changes are simple to include, as the design explains how everything works in sufficient clarity that anyone can pick it up and rework it.

A really good engineer (and I'm not one, yet :-) can distance himself from his own work enough to review it himself to make sure that a new reader can follow it easily. This differs from a hacker in the same way that a solo round-the-world sailor differs from the nutter who sets off across the Atlantic on a boat he bought at a garage sale: the former starts off knowing that there are risks, but has the experience to avoid or minimise them; the latter sets off not knowing that there are any risks, and only finds out when he hits the rocks. :-) An engineer doing RAD may well have a few trial hacks at the problem to see what works - but the difference is that the final result will not be constrained by these, ie. the experiments will likely be thrown away so that the final version is not cluttered with legacy crap from when the problem wasn't understood properly.

I've not run Netscape 6 for more than a few hours total, and it's already crashed on me more than once. Java is no magic bullet. Sure, there's some ways C will let you kill things which Java doesn't let you do. But coding standards such as MISRA define "safe" subsets of C, and by following them you will minimise the risks. Is it better to be coding in C, knowing how to avoid the problems, or coding in Java without knowing about any pitfalls? And as for timescales, Netscape are hardly a shining example, are they? :-) I'm not saying that Java is bad and C is the one true way, I'm just saying that more layers of indirection and "slower" code do not necessarily make it more reliable. What makes it more reliable is good design, and that is something you have to learn, not something you're born with.

For a typical user running typical productivity software, a 300MHz CPU and 128MB of RAM is all they'll ever need. More power will only be required for a new "breed" of programmes - maybe the Metaverse, maybe not. But your typical home computer user will not require any more processing power until a new killer app comes along. OfficeXP is not that killer app.

Grab.

Athlon MP restricted by AMD760 mobo

[shut_up_man]

Before AMDMB went splat, I read enough to see that in some tests (most notably memory), the Athlon XP (yes, SINGLE) beat the dual Athlon MP setup soundly. This is because the XP tested in a VIA KT266A motherboard, which has the edge in performance over the standard AMD760MP.

I think the Athlon MPs are awesome, but having a much cheaper, single-processor setup beat out a dually in some tests throws a bit of cold water on my upgrade lust.

shut up man

Re:Athlon MP restricted by AMD760 mobo

[Brian Stretch]

Umm, because memory bandwidth is independent of the number of CPUs you have?

If you're running tasks/benchmarks that aren't CPU bound, multiple CPUs won't do you any good. If you're running multithreaded apps or multiple single-thread apps, multiple CPUs are a Good Thing, and two AthlonMP 1800+ CPUs will outrun a single AthlonXP 1800+ on a KT266A motherboard. Linux kernel compiles, fr'instance.

Re:Athlon MP restricted by AMD760 mobo

[pkesel]

If you read the articles you'll find out why MP pays. Single is great if all you're doing is playing a game. But if you're burning CDs, coding, and working online, that CD burn is going to stop all the rest in its tracks.

I for one am jumping on the new dual boards. I've got too much to do to sit and wait.

Re:Athlon MP restricted by AMD760 mobo

[Ice_Hole]

Actually, this is somthing that is slowly but surely changeing. We are seeing new mobo chipsts which actually have 2 seperate busses for each processor. But only thing that is combined would the the bus that the RAM runs on. But this also is somthing that is in the works, and may not be a bottle neck for too much longer.

The problem is, their will ALWAY's be a bottle neck. No matter what you are dealing with. Wether it be the internet, the computer memory sub system, or the traffic on the way to work. Once we make one thing faster, it shows that another isn't quite up to par. So, that is th next thing that needs to be worked on. Wether it be the mobo manufactures, processor manufacturers, the wonderful people that lay that precious fiber optic cable, or the road crews that interupt my morning commute to work.

Things like the nVidia nForce shipset are (At least IMHO) going to advance computer technology even more than a newer, slightly faster processor. Why? Because of battle necks such as this memory issue we are seeing with the AthlonMP SMP systems.

Granted we have to give them some credit. When the Via chipsets were first released their memeory bandwith was HORRIBLE. Even to the point that it was better to stay with the BX chipset over upgradeing to the newer Via133 chipset. But, that has been fixed for the most part through things as simple as BIOS updates.

Their is a lot to a computer system, and their is a lot that makes it function properly. And if I had time I would get into the bandwith limitations between the northbridge, and the southbridge, the interactions with a SMP systems and the different cache's available to that processor, and their bandwith/ latencies, etc.

/pointless blabbering

- Ice_Hole

Re:Athlon MP restricted by AMD760 mobo

[Ryan_Amdmb]

Correct. But you have to take into consideration the tests that the KT266A board came out on top. Leaving out the ZDNet tests (the SMP capability I am now investigating) the rest of them were only single processor and single threaded applications.

If you are a high-end developer, say working with Adobe software, you can see the large difference that the dual-Athlon setup gives you.

Bad Post! but a good link...

[CropCircles]

Sigh! That post is sort-of redundantish considering most people have already echoed their thoughts an hour ago!

Anyway, here is a rather illuminating article on "bloatware". Cheers.

Re:Why bother ? FOR THE GAMES, SILLY

[drinkypoo]

But the kicker is that these games really don't need such horsepower.

You're right, they could cut their polygon count down to a quarter of what it is now, precache almost everything (quadrupling the amount of hard disk space used) and probably use 50% of the CPU they use now. Game developers really are into severely optimizing their code, especially those programmers dealing with graphics; They're usually trying to find ways to optimize every single action.

On the other hand, as others have pointed out, the only way to really optimize the hell out of something is to write it in assembler. That makes any large codebase pretty much unusable.

The biggest thing game developers could do right now to improve game performance is to use really excellent multi-res in a game. Multi-res is a process where, when used to its fullest, lets you start with very high polygon models for everything, and the game engine will reduce the polygon count one vertex at a time, in some cases all the way down to a single polygon. When done right this will let you draw amazingly complex scenes without slowdown; The computer can tell more or less what you're looking at and decide what needs lots of polys.

Unfortunately, even those games which are using multires are using a low-rent version where they pre-reduce the vertex count, so you still "pop" from model to model. It's getting better, though.

The best thing about multires of course is that you don't have to precompute things, like BSP-based schemes, and that it will make the best use of your graphics hardware, while still running well and looking good on lower-end hardware. On the other hand, your graphics card had better handle lighting pretty damned well. Since you can get a GEForce MX400 card for less than $100 (Or a GF2 for about $150) that's really not much of an issue these days.

What Quantaspeed is really about:

[pacc]

Noone seem to have noticed AMD's real incentive behind the new numbering scheme:

While they always kept ahead in speed somehow they had to sell the next fastest processor too cheap while moving from 1.1 GHz to 1.2 GHz and from there to 1.33 GHz. Noone wants to pay as much for the next best.

Enter Quantaspeed: Instead of moving from 1.4 GHz to 1.5 GHz AMD can now move from 1.43 GHz to 1.47 GHz and from there to 1.53 GHz, but instead of one step up from the budget choice there are now two steps and AMD can put the higher price at a higher level.

66 MHz isn't much and considering that 100 MHz at 1.5 GHz is 50% less than the 100 MHz speed step we saw at 1 GHz its plain lousy.

Were you drooling over 210 MHz when you only had 200 MHz in your box?

Re:What Quantaspeed is really about:

[Ryan_Amdmb]

That theory isn't quite right, but its on the correct track. Here is the full explanation behind why AMD is offering "Quantispeed" architecture:

http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID =124&PageID=6

Re:Why bother ? FOR THE GAMES, SILLY

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely off topic, but do you have websites/books of the multires technique?

AMD

[andy_from_nc]

I have to say, I'm quite pleased with AMD's processors. For the price to performance ratio, you usually get about 10-20% more performance for about 1/2 the cost of a comparable Intel processor.

I do think they should provide a more accurate "instructions per second" rating rather than relying on Intel as the benchmark for their rating.

P4 2ghz runs at 4ghz

[mrm677]

Gee, the ALU of a 2GHz Intel PIV is double-pumped meaning it runs at 4Ghz!! They should call it the Pentium 4000!!

What about Dual Durons?

[Brento]

Thresh's Firing Squad has a review of the Tyan Tiger with dual AMD Duron MPs, which is probably of equal or more interest to us geeks. For those of you who weren't aware, AMD Durons work in multiprocessor mode as well, and they're very, very close to Athlons in terms of performance (and obviously cheaper.)

Re:What about Dual Durons?

[smyle]

AMD Durons work in multiprocessor mode as well, and they're very, very close to Athlons in terms of performance (and obviously cheaper.)

Not so obviously. I upgraded my brother's PC two weeks ago, buying parts from my favorite online vendor. He's not a power user by any stretch (and in fact only upgraded from his K6-200 because it died on him). I spec'd a 900 MHz Duron (for the good price/performance) for $61. Before I finalized the order, I thought I'd check on what the T-Birds were going for. 900 MHz T-Bird: $59. I thought it was screwy, but I didn't complain.

Re:What about Dual Durons?

[Brento]

Before I finalized the order, I thought I'd check on what the T-Birds were going for. 900 MHz T-Bird: $59. I thought it was screwy, but I didn't complain.

Not as screwy as you might think. The 900mhz Durons are based on the newer core, which works much better with multiprocessing. The 900mhz Athlons are based on the older core, and the Duron part actually smokes them. If you read the article I posted, it explains that as well.

Re:What about Dual Durons?

[Ryan_Amdmb]

That is very true. I have a similar article soon on http://www.amdmb.com/ soon, but it will focus on all the currently available processors: Thunderbird, Duron (Spitfire), XP, Duron (Morgan), and MP. In prelim findings, running two Morgan Duron processors should offer a good value since they are so much less expensive, but the lack of L2 cache is very noticeable in certain tests. I'll let you know more when the article is posted.

Re:Why bother ? FOR THE GAMES, SILLY

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

>Computer games are the ONLY applications that tax a home-users cutting-edge machine...

Wrong. Video editing. To convert a 20 minutes of video to mpeg2 takes 82 minutes with a 450 mhz celery, and 49 minutes with a 850 celery. I still have to convert some 50 8mm video tapes to mpeg2.

-asp

Get it? Get it!

[bill.sheehan]

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...

Things You Need To Know About Dual Athlons

[ruiner5000]

Here's the low down on the dual Athlon. It is incredibly fast for any server or workstation application. Of course the app has to be SMP capable which is why your seeing the new KT266A chipset single CPU system beat it out in some apps, but those are only non SMP capable apps. It is apples and oranges. Yes, I would like to see some chipset improvements to the 760MP. The latency is too high. Perhaps the 760MPX will address some of this. I would very much like VIA to commit to their dual Athlon chipset, but they have not as of yet. Another issue is heat. While they do use the cooler running Palomino core, they are still quite hot for say a 1-2U rack. The shrink to .13 micron early next year will eliminate that issue and should hasten adoption by larger computer makers. For the time being though it is a relatively cheap solution for those who need it, and is a blazingly faster web server for those who know how to set it up. Check out my review for more, my site is still up, and we didn't copy anyones site idea.

Re:Things You Need To Know About Dual Athlons

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha! You are funny!

C Tom is jealous!!!

Big speed boost?

[wholesomegrits]

I didn't realize that people took press releases as gospel. What's all this crap about a "big speed boost?"

We're talking about mhz increase of less than 10% -- in how many months? It's been over a year since the T-birds were introduced.

Yeah, they have a new core. Whoopee. It's not a dramatically new improvement, and apparently AMD has decided that if its chips, in name, are as fast as P4s, they should cost as much too.

I like AMD stuff, but the Mhz Myth shit hasn't worked for apple, ever, and it won't work for AMD. Apple tried the Mhz Myth stuff back when the ppc601 came out, and despite 6 or 7 years of PR bunko, it's not caught on.

Re:Big speed boost?

[iserlohn]

Actually it is quite a big improvement. Have you actually tried one?

Re:Big speed boost?

[Ryan_Amdmb]

You may be correct that other companies have had problems with the MHz Myth in the past, so do you think AMD shouldn't try? Should they instead simply let Intel roll over them in the reatil market because most consumers are "dumb" and only see the number of MHz instead of listening to the sales people about performance?

The point is, AMD has to do something and whether or not this was their best choice has yet to be seen. But at least they are acting.

Re:Big speed boost?

[Decimal]

Well I for one found the MHz Myth to be a myth in itself. I agree that MHz are NOT an accurate representation of what a processor can do, but what Apple did was mislead it's target audience by using only Photoshop for all of it's benchmarks and only comparing them to Intel chips.

Personally I think Apple failed because people just don't like one-button mice.

(Uh-oh, I ragged on the almighty Apple. Metamoderators, avenge my Karma!)

Re:Big speed boost?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that Intel was using the same core for like 8 years until the Pee4 don't you?

Re:Big speed boost?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the only reason AMD could even begin making chips was because Intel licensed the design of the x86?

XP won't remain MP

[Rothfuss]

From over at Firing Squad...

"The initial batch of Athlon XP chips shipped out to distribution were unlocked and this was not suppose to happen. Within a week or two, these unlocked CPUs will be phased out, or recalled. I'm not sure what will happen but AMD has confirmed that the Athlon XPs will be locked very, very soon.

Some of you are lucky, to have snagged a few Athlon XPs that were unlocked."

-Rothfuss

Anandtech's review

[acm]

Anandtech has a good review that compares all the latest p4's and athlon xp's. Check it out here.

And yeah,

[Anonymous Coward]

I should have used the "Preview" button. /. is always right.

Hammer time!

[Barbarian]

Hammer is going to be unveiled today as well.

Re:Get it? Get it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any software currently available that requires this kind of speed?

Windows.

Athlon XPs HAVE THERMAL DIODES

[Michael K. Johnson]

So I wait for AMD to get a bit more serious about thermal protection and stick with using cheaper processors as thermal fuses.

So I wait for slashdot posters to actually do a little research and discover that AMD has listened to their customers and put thermal diodes in the Athlon XP line...

Re:Why bother ? FOR THE GAMES, SILLY

[Junks Jerzey]

A console is a very different environment. You can tune exactly for the hardware because there will be no variances.

I agree in principle, but that's not it. It isn't polycount either, as someone else said. At the moment, the average PS2 game has more polygons than the average PC game (that's because if you assume hardware T&L on the PC then you have a severely limited market; lots and lots of mass market PCs still ship with the equivalent of a Voodoo 1 or worse, go to Dell's site if you don't believe me).

I'm talking about much larger issues. For example, on the PC you come up with a file format for something, then just keep using it because it works. With a little work, it often turns out that a 20MB file of world geometry can be knocked down to 5MB, just because there's so much garbage in there and no one ever thought about remove it. Or maybe there are thousands of keyframes of animation that make no visual difference and can be removed. Or some trifling module allocates 8M at load time and keeps it around, even though it isn't actually used. Or maybe there's poor collision detection code that does way too much work and could be made to run 4x faster. These kinds of things are _common_. I'm a game developer; I've been there.

slihglty offtopic...quake & SMP

[linuxlover]

I have a dual bp6+celeron (500mhz) setup and I play QUake III arena often. I thought it always used 2 cpus. Do Ineed to set a 'r_smp 1' flag to explicitly enable this? (just picked from the anandtech review).

thanks
LinuxLover

Re:slihglty offtopic...quake & SMP

[ruiner5000]

you have to go to the console and type r_smp 1 to enable it, r_smp will tell you whether it is enabled or not. After enabling it you will have to restart the game.

Good point!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll never buy a nuclear power plant again!

Re:Get it? Get it!

[Mr. Piccolo]

Return to Castle Wolfenstein Test.

Chip Speed and Bus Speed

[WillSeattle]

The only thing that matters is as follows (in rank order):

1. Bandwidth - face it, email and the web are king. Unless you're a gamer.

2. Video Card - if you're a gamer, you're better off spending your money on this and making sure it has tons of cache.

3. Sound Card - if you're a gamer, you're better off spending the rest of your money on this. The rest of us don't care, so skip this.

4. Memory - more, more, more. Yes, even more.

5. Bus speed - more channel so those CPUs can actually send more data.

6. Hard disk - you really should have more RAM, but once that's crammed, get better seek and access times here.

6. Chip speed - WAY DOWN HERE! - yes, if you maxed on all the above, then you MIGHT notice the difference between a 1GHz and 1.8GHz system. Otherwise, unless you're a graphics artist, YOU SHOULDN'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!

Naturally, when people review systems, they compare older systems with slower bus speed, less RAM, slower HD, and cheaper cards to new systems with faster H/W. Buy the motherboard and cards yourself and pop in a slower chip and spend the extra money on RAM - you will get way more bang for your buck that way.

Aside - I own AMD shares, so sure, go buy these speed demons! But don't do it because you have to, do it because you know you just like BIG NUMBERS.

Re:Chip Speed and Bus Speed

[robi2106]

Mod up parent...

Good summary of hardware importance.

robi

Re:Chip Speed and Bus Speed

[Ryan_Amdmb]

Keep in mind that not everyone is a gamer. I myself find it rare that I have time to sit down and play anything for more than a few minutes.

As a programmer and producivity user, how does your list change to offer suggestions to them? I think you will find CPU speed and SMP support to be much higher.

Re:Chip Speed and Bus Speed

[WillSeattle]

Keep in mind that not everyone is a gamer. I myself find it rare that I have time to sit down and play anything for more than a few minutes.

As a programmer and producivity user, how does your list change to offer suggestions to them? I think you will find CPU speed and SMP support to be much higher.

Nope. I think only #2 and #3 were affected (video card and sound card) by not being a gamer.

As a programmer, that still puts CPU speed above 1GHz at #5, way way down on the list. You really need a wider Net connection, faster bus speed, faster disk access and memory way more than you need the teeny tiny gain from a faster CPU.

Note this does not apply to graphics designers or people who spend 80 percent of their time compiling. But most of us spend 90 percent or more time coding, not compiling. And even then, RAM will pay off way more than chip speed.

So, best advice is to save the bucks. And this goes double for Intel.

Caveat: I own AMD stock so I'm biased. Which means you should buy the fastest, most expensive AMD chips you can ...

Re:Chip Speed and Bus Speed

[bigbadwlf]

Personally I'd rank memory above sound.
The less swapping the better.

solving systems of 50,000 equations...

[porkrind2]

Engineers do this all the time. I am a mechanical engineer, and the analysis software packages I use to assist in design and analysis of my creations does just this: solve massive systems of equations.

This is very common and very useful.

Also, if I had a PC with 100 times the memory and speed, I could still bring it to its knees. As it is, I have to simplify and granulate my models to make them fit the computing power I have.

How do you think they predict the weather? Design cars and planes? Do thermal analysis? Do vibration analysis? Do electromagnetic analysis? Do displacement/stress analysis? Do computational fluid dynamics? Do transient analysis of all the above?

Re:Get it? Get it!

[smyle]

Is there any software currently available that requires this kind of speed?

Yes

A much better review can be found at anandtech.com

[Anonymous Coward]

A much better review is available over at AnandTech.

Do the Tyan's have the AMD Irongate Chipset?

[vandan]

I have one of the first Irongate chipsets, and my system locks hard about 75% of the time I try to start X. And don't even dream about trying to get into X a second time. (By the way even though my MB - a Gigabyte - has an early Irongate, apparently ALL Irongates are affected.) I have made repeated bug-reports to AMD over the past 9 months, and they always email back with the EXACT same BS saying they are "...working on the issue with distibutions and hope to have a fix soon...". I have now promised AMD that I will take advantage of every oportunity to bitch about their shitty products until they FIX it, which I know they never will.
Buy a Pentium 4 system. Maybe it's more expensive, but at least it works....

Beware: AMD motherboards have a serious AGP flaw

[Anonymous Coward]

To test, type:
startx
Now watch the system lock up hard. Don't worry, you can fix the problem by pressing 'reset'.
Or you can email AMD support and get no repsonse at all...

Are the lockups fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought a new 1.2 Ghz system with a Gigabyte MB, which has the Irongate chipset. Little did I know that the Irongate chipset doesn't like starting X. After a polite email to AMD, I receive confirmation that this is a known issue, and that AMD are working on the problem. I did some checking around on google, and found that AMD have been sending out the same email for at least the past YEAR to everyone who complains.
So to all those Pentium owners thinking of upgrading: don't bother - save a little more money and buy a Pentium 4.

Re:Are the lockups fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I keep getting this response from AMD:

Hello,
Currently AMD is working with Linux to resolve the AGP driver related issue
and our 761 Northbridge. This issue is currently being hashed out with
various distributions of Linux. Unfortunately, the fix has not been posted
yet, and we apologize for the inconvenience. Please stay posted to our
website for the latest details.

Regards,

Ryan Gardner
CPU specialist
AMD
TSC

Other things you need to know about Athlons...

[Anonymous Coward]

They fucking crash every time you try to 'startx'. Here's what AMD have had to say on the matter for the past year:

Hello,
Currently AMD is working with Linux to resolve the AGP driver related issue
and our 761 Northbridge. This issue is currently being hashed out with
various distributions of Linux. Unfortunately, the fix has not been posted
yet, and we apologize for the inconvenience. Please stay posted to our
website for the latest details.

Regards

Re:Other things you need to know about Athlons...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you get for buying a cheap system. Try http://www.intel.com

liars

[Anonymous Coward]

amd lies

Is it still about the MHz?

[Otto-matic]

I was under the impression that AMD changed to this new naming scheme to avoid the public's concentration on MHz. Why, then, do I read an article on Slashdot in which AMD's new naming scheme is broken down into MHz equivalents?

Seriously, I think we all agree here that AMD is making a bold and necessary move to diminish the importance of MHz. Unless we follow suit and stop using MHz as our measure of performance, the public will never catch on. I think the importance of attaching a "model number" to a chip name is that we will eventually forget about MHz altogether and focus on pure chip performance. Let's start that now.

The Mhz equivalents for each of these new processors had no place in this article.

Otto-matic

Re:Is it still about the MHz?

[TheRevenant]

The AMD Model numbers are designed to roughly equate with the performance of an Intel CPU in Mhz (the Athlon 1800 canes the P4-2000, but AMD rated in anticipation of an improvement in the P4). Yes, ideally, Megahertz would be totally thrown out the window, but Intel are unlikely to play ball while they're in the lead Mhz-wise. So AMD have come up with a performance measurement system that allows them to rate their CPUs on other than Mhz, while simultaneously retaining easy performace comparison to Intel CPUs. It strikes me as a well thought approach...

Re:Is it still about the MHz?

[dsb3]

Frankly, I'm not sure how you can describe this as a bold and necessary move

What have they done? They stopped marking their own clockspeed on the chip case (along with the obligatory strongarming of motherboard manufacturers to try to discourage them from printing it). Instead, they decided to start marking an approximation of someone else's clockspeed.

The MHz equivalent that you clain had no place in the article IS the important element that you congratulate AMD for using.

I don't see Sun shying away from putting a $6000 price tag on their UltraSparc III processor that runs at 750MHz. Why not? Because the people who buy them already know that clock isn't everything.

Likewise, I don't see how anything OTHER can clockspeed can be marked on a chip since actual performance (even if you want to look at SPECint or SPECfp figures) depends on an awfully large number of components that aren't IN the chip.

Re:Get it? Get it!

[Skuld-Chan]

Oh come on - I use a thunderbird and my games need it - not to mention it is absolutely brutally fast.

Re:Athlon XPs HAVE THERMAL DIODES

[Anonymous Coward]

So I wait for Michael to DO A LITTLE RESEARCH and discover that AMD'S THERMAL DIODES DON'T WORK.

Re:Get it? Get it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have any idea how much power it takes to run a Mersenne primality test on an exponent greater than 10000000?

d'oh!

[posmon]

especially one who forgets his p's and q's. or just p's even.