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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 ...
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/01q4/011105/index. html
Wait 20 seco....SHUTUP!
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.
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.
Argh!
:/
I had just finished downloading the athlon xp 1800 yesterday.
Great now I have to download the new one over my 28.8k modem
What? You mean it's not a piece of software?
!
^_^
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'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.
...they didn't test it on quack3.exe.
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Back in the days of modems (anyone remember those?), US Robotics was a company that you could always go to when you wanted the fastest modem on the market. In a way, you could say "nobody got fired for adopting US Robotics". An ISP that selected US Robotics as their vendor knew where they were going, and they'd have the best speed. Customers would stick with that ISP because they knew that they'd have the fastest connect rates. (Okay, mind you, locked into a propriatary format and vendor.)
AMD is known for having the lowest cost. Period. Rarely ever are they more expensive than Intel. But I get confused about Athlon's strategy. They're not going to have the fastest CPUs for long periods of times, so for something like computer manufacturers, you're not going to select AMD for performance machines (even though they may currently be "on top") because you know it isn't going to last.
I suppose I'm getting far off on a tangent here, but I think AMD would be far more successful if they could continually be known for creating the best performance processor. Then, hardware vendors would be far more likely to adopt their processor and chipsets.
But I don't have my finger anywhere near the pulse of this market. Am I just plain silly?
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?
Why, oh why, do you people insist on using something like Quake as a measure for how powerful your system is?!
Because it's a benchmark that is *tangible* to most people. One doesn't get excited because a processor can do a 500x500 matrix multiply really fast, but run Q3 at 130fps and people start flipping out. Sort of like saying how fast a car can go 0-60--not that everyone is drag racing, but it's easier to understand than the amount of torque an engine puts out.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
There other reviews of this 1.6GHz processor at AnandTech and at AMD Zone and at VIA Hardware. Check them out.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
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.
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?
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AMD Zone gives this summary at the end of its review: "No architectural or marketing changes with this release ... expect the previous CPUs to decline in price ... expect a bit higher performance and power consumption."
Anandtech agrees, saying the chip will not offer any significant extra performance over the 1800+, so early adopters need not sweat too much about being left behind. The site believes that AMD is currently the performance leader on desktop processors.
VIAHardware.com reckons users could be just as well off picking up the 1800+ at 1.53GHz and simply overclocking it to 1.6GHz. Users already owning a high-speed XP chip are better off waiting for the next upgrade on the platform to significantly increase performance.
Tech Report has some extensive benchmarking, putting the 1900+ slightly ahead of Intel's P4 2.0GHz in most of them, while SimHQ.com gets very excited about the new chip.
Amdmb.com also has a piece showing the expected five to six per cent performance increase.
What on earth did you do with your home computer to make the heat sink fall off your graphics card? (Or was it not attached properly to begin with?) I'm sorry, but it looks to me as though Tom's Hardware was pretty desperate to make any sort of anti-AMD point it could (BTW, it was running Intel ads on its site back when the 2 GHz P4 came out)--rather like Car and Driver running an exposé of what happens to your car if you take the fan and radiator off and then go drag racing. Duh...