1.3GHz Duron Arrives

zebadee writes: "Tom's Hardware has the news that AMD have released a 1.3GHz Duron to the "mainstream PC market" that has been optimised for use with WindowsXP. The article also asks 'why haven't AMD gone with the MHz doesn't equal performance as they have done with the new XP/MP chips, as it would be assumed the market for these will be consumers who don't generally look at benchmark figures?' More information can be found at the AMD website."

Comments

What?!

[ender-iii]

Shouldn't the OS be optimised for the hardware? Not the hardware comprimised for the OS?

they went with mhz speed,

[Stone Rhino]

probably because it is meant to compete with the celeron and the PIII, neither of which have the artificially inflated clock speeds of the P4.

I *like* MHz

[foo fighter]

Hopefully this is a sign that AMD realizes the 1600+ crap was a mistake. All the "Intel Equivalent" numbers do is make AMD look like an Intel wannabe.

And as an enthusiast, I like knowing the actual MHz. It's not like the MHz information isn't widespread on the Internet anyway. AMD might as well tell it like it is.

Re:I *like* MHz

[SirSlud]

And as an enthusiast, I like knowing the actual MHz

As an enthusiast, you should be able to find the MHz rating of your chip. Hrm, lets see .. on the 'net, on the box, in your BIOS. As an enthusiast, you arn't losing anything in their naming scheme. Are car enthusiasts fsck'd because the horse power rating of engines isn't included in the name of the model of the car?

As an enthusiast, you should know how little the MHz rating has to do with the actual performance of the chip with respect to cross-brand comparisons. Joe Consumer still clings to Intel's carrot (Mhz = performance), so AMD is just trying to give everyone a dose of reality. I think it's funny how people feel that they're being mislead, when really, the clock stat is just being moved to 'specs' page of the chip .. it's removal from the name is simply so that Joe Consumer can't keep saying, "The latest P4 runs at Y Ghz, and the latest AMD runs at (Y - X) Ghz, so I'd better buy the Intel." Whether the strategy pays off in the long run (and I think it will, as the clock rating becomes more and more meaningless when discussing home/office computing) is not clear yet, but they are doing you and your friends more of a favour than a disservice.

The question answers itself...

[EggplantMan]

if AMD switched to its new "MHz doesn't equal performance" naming scheme for its higher end Athlons (where one would assume that the users probably look at benchmarks) why is it sticking with GHz for "mainstream PC" chips (where you would imagine that users are less likely to look at benchmarks)?

Doesn't this answer itself? Obviously the computer 'savvy' individuals that follow benchmarks are able to properly judge for themselves which computer is the best, or the best for them, and understand that Hz is not necessarily the yardstick to measure all computers against.

However, any individual with rudimentary computer knowledge (say, one who watches ads on television, or has taken an 'intro to computing' course at highschool or college level)has been taught about Hz and that it does roughly determine how fast a computer operates, and gives them a basis for comparison (however weak).

A good friend next door came over and asked me about Hz or MHz which they were teaching her about in her intro to computing class. Of course I told her that it's the speed at which the computer operates. She doesn't know anything about computers, so how am I supposed to educate her about all the other factors that affect performance such as bottlenecks, pipelining, cache, bus, etc.

As soon as you get into a discussion such as that the computer jargon goes flying. AMD is left with the exact same problem to contend with. How are they supposed to claim that their computers are magically better than the competition's when the supposed benchmark for computers is their clock? Would the consumer even understand or care? They need a way to comparison shop, that's what consumers do, and MHz (now GHz) has become the basis for that comparison.

Problem with getting away from MHZ system

[ImaLamer]

Yes another one of these posts, it has nothing to do with the hardware!

But does anyone here but me want to question 'Benchmarks' instead of Mhz? I mean the CPU does run at said Mhz, that hasn't changed.

The problem is, when I see a chart comparing two companies chips, I can't believe it. I want to look for the footnote that says their system was tested with 93749234 GB of RAM, while the other companies was only tested with 1 MB of RAM.

That is why they should just give the CPU a name, or number, or whatever and let use read these reviews. Although sometimes reviews can also be biased, I can't trust anything that comes right from the company.

I used to have a chart showing how an AMD chip was like 50% faster than a Pentium of the same clock speed. This bothered me to no end. [it could be the other way around, that isn't important. What is: I didn't trust it.]

It's like a detergent commercial by 'Tide' which shows you two shirts and it cleans the whole stain while 'Era' doesn't. Just seems faked.

No one will ever understand...

[Freija Crescent]

Marketing.

Most of the complex questions us slashdotters face is the result of poor marketing decisions, or decisions that make little sense.

I'm sure AMD has their reasons for not sticking with the 'Performance Rating' crockery they gave birth to last year. I personally don't understand why there was a need to change.. and NOW...

If the average user is too dense-headed to understand that MHz != Performance, then why are they keeping the MHz rating for their LOW end chips? Especially since using the performance rating on the Duron would net more sales. What sounds better? $118 AMD Duron 1.3GHz or $118 AMD Duron 1500+ ?

That brings up another point, maybe AMD is losing money on these lower end chips, and they don't want someone to look at a 'MegaBargain' Duron instead of shelling out a bit more for an Athlon. In the consumer mind, Duron 1.3GHz or Athlon 1500+ isn't a hard question to answer, most people will go with the Athlon 1500 even though they are both probably the same clock speed.

-fc

The cynical answer:

[Christopher Thomas]

why haven't AMD gone with the MHz doesn't equal performance as they have done with the new XP/MP chips, as it would be assumed the market for these will be consumers who don't generally look at benchmark figures?

My guess: Because they don't want to compete with *themselves*.

If a consumer sees a Duron rated to "1.3 GHz" (1300 MHz), and an Athlon XYZ rated to "1600 FooUnits", which will they want?

Right.

The fact that Celeron clock numbers are no better than Duron numbers is icing on the cake.

Re:The Con

[ergo98]

Often I think perceptions of speed are very different than the reality of the speed (which is why the oft stated claim that processors are "faster than anyone needs" is false: Use a faster processor for a while and suddenly your P3 1.1Ghz seems "slow"): I think fondly back to my Atari ST running at a blistering 8Mhz (0.86Mhz faster than the Amiga which ran at a lowly 7.14Mhz) and I recall it being easily fast enough, but then I remember running command line utilities to uncompress JPEGs (and you actually sat there watching the progress bar move for a massive 20KB JPEG)...

Re:Duron will eventually use Marketing Ploy

[90XDoubleSide]

Apple's "Photoshop tests" are getting a lot more relevant now that all the power-hungry apps are optimized, however. Maya, FCP3, Photoshop, Filemaker, CodeWarrior, and iTunes are AltiVec, and Quake3 is getting more and more optimized code every day. Those are all the apps you are likely to have using 100% of your CPU anyway. With all these apps optimized and a $1299 Mac running at almost 4 GigaFlops, I don't think you can downplay AltiVec anymore.