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Athlon XP1900+ -- Faster Than A 2GHz P4?
doormat writes "AMD releases their AthlonXP 1900+ Processor today, thats 1.6GHz. And it seems like its enough to topple the P4-2.0GHz, even in Quake 3 Arena!! AMDMB has a review of it." Ian Bell points out an AMD press release on the new processor. I love watching my old Athlon get slower every day ...
One thing I've noticed over the last year or so when talking to non-techie friends/family is that many people with relatively little knowledge of IT as a whole are starting to realise that the processor speed, however it's being measured, is far less important than the vendors want them to think.
The end result of Intel and AMDs battle of "my processor's faster than your processor" seems to be that people are saying "I don't care" - as they realise that there 'obsolete' PII is actually perfectly capable of doing all the things they use their PC for and that only graphics people and the hardest of hardcore gamers actually need 1.5 to 2GHz.
I don't doubt that the XP1900 is faster than
the P4 2GHz, but at amdmb there's only a test against it's smaller brother the XP1800.
Wheres some real tests comparing it to the P4 : )
I'd rather they waited a a little in between releases, rather than every couple of megahertz.
I'm not saying that speed is bad, but do we have to have a release for every chip?
-- Don't believe the megahertz myth!
Now, I know have the hype comes from the readership here, but I just keep wondering why AMD and a few other companies like Transmeta get covered here so lovingly. Is it because Slashdot readers don't like frontrunners ? Is there something inherently open-source-dogma-friendly about the corporate philosophies about AMD and Transmeta (though I doubt it, I am sure their lawyers are or would be as agressive about patents and infringements as Intel) ? Surely it can't be just about performance - Transmeta lacks sorely, and I cannot imagine the day when Slashdot posts an article crowing with glee about how the P8 trounces the AMDXP6400 or whatever.
Nice editorial work guys.
I saw a review comparing an Athlon 1800 and a 1900.
I didn't see a single thing in there that mentioned the P4 being outperformed or toppled.
Just unsupported speculation.
We just like things that don't suck. AMD's processors suck far less than Intel's because they go much faster at the same clock speed as Intels do, and they cost a lot less. Transmeta's processors don't suck because they are implemented with some really cool technology with potential that we have barely begun to explore. Intel's rather passe unless you're talking about the Itanium in which case the alpha was at least as cool a 64 bit processor a decade ago.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
But did they really lose credibility ? I don't think anyone's accuing them of dishonesty, or of overstating the numbers. If anything, they've been taken to task for understating them (since the 1800+ beats the P42G on most benchmarks)
VIA released their C3 cool processor video that showed a C3 lasting 24 hours playing Quake with no heatsink or fan on. That was 800MHz. A similar speed Celeron hung after 5 seconds.
Hi.
Large matrix multiplies are in fact used as benchmarks by many sites, and are part of specFP, sysmark, and other benchmark suites, many of which you'll see quoted (though not specifically the mat mult part) in these reviews.
The problem is that matrix multiply only tests your floating point/simd unit and your i/o bandwidth. Not a very comprehensive test, and unless you actually plan to do large matrix multiplies, quite synthetic.
As for your web page serving idea, it's called specweb, and anyone who is catering to or buying in the web server market cares a lot about this benchmark. It is a more comprehensive test than just multiplying matricies, but still only targets certain aspects of the cpu (I/O again, cache size).
Games actually make a good addition to these benchmarks. A modern game engine can tax a cpu a great deal, and will use a mix of integer and floating point applications, plus put pressure on the memory subsystem. If the performance isn't limited by the graphics card, then you can use games quite effectively as CPU benchmarks.
It's funny that you mentioned "real". If you're running sicentific apps that multiply lots of matricies, then matirx multiply is "real". If you're running anandtech.com, web serving is "real". And, if you're a gamer, games are real and the performance you see in them is what is the "real" performance limited.
It almost sounds like you want the "max", as generated through some kind of synthetic test. As in the performance you'd never, ever get in a actual application that you'd want to run once you'd bought the system. Which was how it used to be done, and it sucked, so everyone stopped. Let's not suggest we go back, hm?
The enemies of Democracy are
The MHz race is getting a little rediculous at this point if you ask me. Processors are coming out faster than we can keep up with. Compitetion used to be good for the consumer, now it is abusing the consumer. People will want to stop upgrading at all for fear of missing a newer processor.
Bullshit. They could have just thrown away their superior design and created a shitty CPU like the P4 and made it run at 2+Ghz so that they could compete in the moron space that Intel has a hold on.
Instead, they decided to change the model number and explain to people (an prove it with benchmarks) that their CPUs have model numbers that match the performance of an Intel CPU running at that clock speed.
If that helps AMD market their product and pull in more money that could be used in their R&D department to create an even better product next time. Well, then that would be great. At the end of the day, AMD is a company like Intel, that has to make money. Luckly, the AMD people want to do this by putting out a quality product. Intel is content with winning the marketing war.
--
"What do you want me to do? Whack a guy? Off a guy? Whack off a guy? Cause I'm married."
While Intel has a fab on the ethnically cleansed land of Al Faluja I will never buy a Intel CPU or knowingly buy a product with any Intel parts in it.
Some may go on about the fact that AMD's fab in Texas is built on Indian or Mexican land, but those Indians or Mexicans weren't driven off while the Geneva Convention, Hague Convention, the IDHR or the UN exited.
The fact is that until Israel permits the return of Palestinian refugees (to both Rump Israel & the Occupied Territories) & returns all illegaly expropiated lands its in contravention of the Geneva Convention (A49P6), the Hague Convention (1906C), the IDHR & dozens of UN resolutions.
Now as Intel did not lease or purchase the land its Israeli fab is on, from the people with the internationally recognised legal title deeds to that land (Palestinian refugees mostly living in Egypt) its an illegal fab on ethnically cleansed land. So I'm not ever going with Intel.
BTW a good percentage, if not most P4s are made in that Israeli fab.
No one ever wants to flat out say that the motherboards for AMD chips are a lot less well supported than the motherboards for Intel chips because they're so busy cheering for the underdog.
s p4-15.html)
But if you dig deep into, say, Tom's Hardware Guide: Another factor is the stability and product quality of a system: while all Athlon processors suffered from occasional instability in our tests, the Pentium 4 platform ran without a glitch. (http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q4/011031/xpv
Now, for me and I'm guessing a lot of people, system stability is far more important than a few percent performance increase. Since these machines are so closely matched and overpowered anyway, I'd like to see more emphasis on other factors like stability. More than a single sentence buried in one review, anyway. If these things are crashing during the tests, I want to know about it with a big red X on the graph...
Or just the chance to stop having to download freakin' 4-in-1 drivers for my KT7A...
I guess this means my GPF screens will pop up that much faster, so I will lose less work when my wordprocessor/spreadsheet/morpheus pr0n sessios gets whacked. When they finally reach 10ghz, I wonder if the CPU will tell me "Don't even bother firing up Word, I'm going to crash in 7 seconds".
Seriously, why pump out faster cpu's when they provide nil benefit ? Yes, I do have an Athlon 1000 running anywhere between 1200 and 1466, depending on my mood. I have no idea what to do with it, I actually bought it just to out-clock my buddies (until one smartass bought a water-cooling system - that's cheating). My Geforce2 is still maxxed out, even my previous Celeron was able to push it to the limit. My hard drives are still slow, and I have better things to do than buy more drives to widen my raid-0 stripe. It's already quite clear that the CPU is no longer the most important part of the computer, yet they still bust their asses trying to produce bigger numbers just to bleed us dry of our hard-earned money. We need better memory, better hard drives, better cd-roms, better video cards, better everything, but not CPUs.
I think that AMD and Intel should help out Micron, NVidia, Maxtor, etc. We've reached a point where faster processors just don't yield much more performance, but if they would be wise enough to pitch in and actively work on the other functional parts of a PC, the entire system would become more efficient, not just some over-hyped core that overheats 2 zillion times per second while waiting for an i/o transaction.
-Billco, Fnarg.com