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AMD Duron vs. Intel Celeron
DeadBugs writes: "With all the hype surrounding the new Athlon XP and P4 2.2 GHz, the more affordable processors have been ignored. Tech-Report has a great article comparing the new AMD Duron and Intel Celeron. Both are now running at 1.2 GHz and have upgraded cache. The new Duron contains XP technology, while the Celeron is a PIII Tulatin with a 100MHz bus and built on the .13 micron process."
Celeron is a PIII Tulatin with a 100MHz bus and built on the .13 micron process
By the way, that's "0.13 microns."
As my Nobel-Laureate physics lab professor used to say, "ALWAYS use leading zeros with decimal points; that way your readers can tell the difference between a fraction and fly shit."
Go ahead and mod me down, but I'm not a grammar nazi, I'm a math nazi!
My word processor was written by Stanford Professor Donald Knuth. Who wrote yours?
SIS has restored my faith in AMD. The ECS K75SA motherboard is only $64 after shipping and works with any Socketed Athlon/Duron cpu. It is fast and stable, accepts DDR and SDR, built in networking and sound(ok, AC'97 isn't that great), a real winner. You can build a 1GHz system and only pay $120 for the cpu, heatsink/fan, and mobo.
The Duron is actually the middle processor of the "Moron" line of precessors, designed specifically for XP. If you look in the start menu on XP and you're running a Duron you'll see the My Moron icon. The "Freon" is the fasted at 3.2 GHz but requires a gallon of coolant every 100 web pages. The "Peon" is the entry level processor. You can read the whole article here
That really impresses me. I mean, they could shrink the die size, or use SOI, or even borrow a cue from the Alpha and use SMT. But no, they went way beyond all the rumours and used XP Technology. I wonder if they had to license it from Microsoft?
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
"(save for the cache)"
I'm sacrificing my ability to mod on this thread to reply to you, so I hope you're happy. You are doing a great misdeed to discount the importance of cache so greatly.
Duron: L1 Cache: 128kbytes L2 Cache: 64kbytes
Athlon: L1 Cache: 128kbytes L2 Cache: 256kbytes
A difference in cache sizes of this magnitude will ensure (insure?) the Athlon a victory if it is running at a clock speed the same as a Duron. Don't just assume that they're both as fast as one another simply based on bus speed.
Actually, this brings up an important issue-- compiler technology, and the run-time libraries (RTL's) they use (in the case of C/C++, the standard libraries, in the case of Pascal/Delphi, the RTL and possibly parts of Borland's VCL/CLX). The problem, it seems to me, is that compiler authors don't seem to take advantage of architecture specific improvements like they used to (and as they should). Sure, some libraries/RTL's take advantage of it (and the compiler may have switches to emit optimized code), but if the standard libraries/RTL's are re-compiled (or even re-written) to take advantage of it, then it's all for nothing.
It seems to me that Intel has the right idea (the FPU is really useless if you know HOW to use SSE and SSE2 properly), and that if anything, it's poor software authors and poor compiler writers that are to blame for the lackluster performance of code on Intel's CPUs. It's saddening to me to see the optimization skills software engineers *used* to have back in the day diminishing year by year as the ability to right crappy code is justified by ever-faster CPU's. (Why spend the weeks or months needed to engineer everything to run properly now, when Intel/AMD will have a 'fix' for our sloppy code out in a few months?)
I wish authors such as Michael Abrash still released optimization guides for assembly language (or even just updated versions for C/C++ and assembler).. his 'Zen of Code Optimization' (ISBN: 1-883577-03-9 *or* FatBrain.com's description (out of print)) was probably the best investment *I* ever made.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
Athlons may be only $5 more for the same speed, but Athlon XPs are not. The older T-Bird Athlons are slower than the new Durons. And the new Athlons run MUCH cooler. So you can pay $5 more for a 1.2ghz T-bird and get a slower CPU that runs a lot hotter.