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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 ...
We're not talking a couple of MHz, we're talking 130MHz for the AthlonXP 1800+ over the TBird 1.4GHz and 70MHz of the 1900+ over the 1800+. When you consider we're still barely in the GHz range, MHz still matter! If they released on every few 100 KHz that'd be different, but until we get up to say 15GHz or more MHz makes a difference, especially considering AMD's IPC over Intel's. But I'll step off the soapbox before I slip ;)
I guess you do have a point though... for bleeding edge people they won't care, but Intel and AMD are competing businesses in a big market, so they can't afford to slip behind each other, it's a vicious game.
As far as price/performance goes, AMD are beating Intel quite handily, and now they're even beating them on plain performance.
The transmeta thing is hairier; they have a damn fine product, but it doesn't have the performance to compete with even mobile Celerons and Intel have done a fair bit of work on Speedstep to reduce the power consumption of their mobile chips. If nothing else, Transmeta have forced Intel to re-evaluate mobile priorities.
Yep, sortof weird editorial, considering that most benchmarks have even the XP 1400+ beating the P4 2GHz on some tests. The XP 1800+ has already been pretty consistently outperforming the P4 2GHz, so the 1900+ would at most be taking over the lead in the very few benchmarks that Intel has had a small lead in.
:).
Of course, according to the shootout that Tomshardware had, on the most important test of Linux kernel compilation (:)), every AMD from the old Athlon 1400 to the XP 1800+ beat every Intel up to the 2GHz one.
And thats even without factoring in the price difference on CPU, motherboard and RDRAM. Or the ethical considerations of purchasing Rambus ram.
My next computer will be my first AMD without a doubt
Ok, Yet Another Lame/Appropriate Analogy:
Considering the last time a topic such as this compared the Intel's best P4 to AMD's best Athlon.
The Car/Engine analogy was used to no end and many valid points were made, but noboday really put it into a conclusive and easy to understand "package" that the Average Joe User could understand.
Recall, if you will, the movie "The Fast and the Furious" as the analogy of Intel vs AMD saga.
Remember the scene at the end with the race between the souped up Honda and the Toranado?
Intel's P4 is akin to the Honda, as it has a lot of "high-RPM's" and "high-tech" under the hood (i.e. 2.X Ghz and Rambus et al).
The Athlon is like the Toranado(?) and American Muscle car that had the "High Torque" and "lower-tech" that relied on brute force (i.e. 'superior' FPU and Large cache and the blower is similar to DDR-SDRAM in a way).
The end result of the race at the end of the movie was that they (for the most part) tied.
The current Intel/AMD debate is very similar, in that you have all this high RPM/low torque (intel) vs old school High Torque/mid RPM's (AMD).
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
It's not just processor speeds anymore. People are satisfied with most components now.
It's not like the old days, jumping from CGA -> EGA -> VGA -> SVGA, or from monochrome to color. There's not a big need for consumers to go get 19+" monitors when the 17" are nice enough for most people. Likewise with hard drives. It far less likely that a regular consumer will fill up the 30GB drive that's standard now.
The manufacturers have realized this for awhile. Hard drives, video cards, memory, and every other component is now marketed as "making the internet faster".
The sad thing for the industry is not only the current economy, but also that new hardware isn't going to be as revolutionary as it once was.
It all comes down to the "Killer App" syndrome. There's no need for new hardware until new software is available to take advantage of it. And without a need for new hardware, the hardware manufacturers don't have any immediate need to spend lots of time and money on R&D.
New software needs to come first. I tend to see that most programmers are busy enough playing catch-up with all the new stuff available, implementing new communication APIs and what not. I'm sure a lot just haven't had time to do anything revolutionary.
Depends on what you define as "performance". Raw number-crunching speed, MIPS, FLOPS, etc. isn't the only CPU statistic that matters. Transmeta has done a pretty good job of meeting thier stated engineering goals. They didn't set out to make the fastest processor - they set out to make one with much lower power requirements.
Saying that a Transmeta processor "sucks" because it's slower than an Athalon is like saying a Honda Helix sucks because it's slower than a Corvette. You could just as easily say that the Corvette sucks because it takes 4x as much fuel to make the same trip. Or you could say they both suck compared to a 4WD Pickup because they can't haul a trailer, go offroad, or carry a lot of cargo.
I wouldn't expect Transmeta to displace AMD and/or Intel in the desktop market, but I do expect them to be able to compete and excel in the portable and embedded computer market.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?