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Intel "Northwood" vs. Athlon XP 2000+
Augustus writes: "LinuxHardware.org has just published their results in the Pentium 4 verses Athlon XP war. In this review, the new Pentium 4 'Northwood' 2.2GHz is pitted against the Athlon XP 2000+. To level the playing field, both platforms use DDR memory which make for some interesting results."
We need better testing. You can not (really)
expect the same test to give you a good judgement, and then on the other hand, having different test for each CPU would obviously not give you a good judgement... Hmm, perhaps some speed testing on regular apps. I know they do that on quake and the like, but then that was written for a specific architecture also. Just a thought.
Wouldn't it be more of a level playing field if both processors were allowed to use their optimum RAM types? Sure, keep the rest of the system honest, but don't handicap one processor by forcing it to use a RAM type it wasn't initially designed for.
The reason DDR was used is because there have been COUNTLESS tests done with RAMBUS.
The whole goal was to see how well it'd do with DDR now that it supports it.
In Soviet Russia, the television watches YOU!
The P4 wasn't designed for any particular memory - but the initial chipsets designed for it were. Newer chipsets now existt hat are designed for DDR rather than RDRAM, and that's what matters for memory format (besides, try to switch the two and THEN see what happens!).
SIG: HUP
That's a good idea if you are comparing the options for the general user looking to buy a computer. In this case, they are reviewing the top-of-the-line processors (which people on a budget won't be buying anyway.) Only those with a large budget will be buying a machine with one of these processors anyway, so price shouldn't be an issue.
Also, their decision to use DDR RAM for both platforms is misguided. Those who pay the big bucks for the fastest processors won't skimp on the rest of the PC, so the comparison really should be done using the RD RAM the Pentium 4 is designed for. Instead of trying to artificially force the platforms to be as similar as possible, they should compare real-world hardware configurations.
Perhaps /. can warn sites that they're gonna link to them?
/. effect on 09-11-01 with no problem. Yet a fairly major web site can't handle it. Hmm...
The funny part is that the "Augustus" that submitted the article is from linuxhardware.org . Which leads me to believe that they knew what was coming...
It's amazing that my little K62-350 stood up to the
Ender
Nothing to see here
Actually, you are right. However, Tyan now manufactures a motherboard that is "approved" (not necessariyl by AMD) to work with Athlon XP Processors (not just XPs masquerading as MPs).
The board is the Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466)
~.Evanrude
That would turn out really ugly for the Intel products involved. The amazing thing is that one can build a damn fine, complete AthlonXP 2000+ system (sans monitor/keybd/mouse) for about $1000. With Intel, that same $1000 gets you a 2.2GHz P4, nice mobo, 512 MB RDRAM, and case/PS. Save those pennies, and you can eventually get your video card, sound card, CD-RW, and HDD. And you'll still only see performance on par with your friend's XP2000+ system.
Intel certainly seems capable of producing some really nice products, and they aren't even pushing the 0.13u chips yet, from what I've read. You'd think that if they wanted to show AMD up, they'd just clock them at > 2.5GHz now and keep going. I'm puzzled.
One of the reasons that I became a lawyer was to avoid ever having to hire one. -SPYvSPY
You KNEW the site would get slashdotted, so there was NO reason to post a quick summary in the followup about the test results. Instead we've got people sitting here wondering whats up, and probably a lot of angry people over at linuxworld.com or where ever. Very POOR judgement.
I agree with you one hundred percent. I'm currently trying to build myself a new system and constantly weighing options. However, from what I can tell from the story on slashdot (linuxhardware.com is *still* inaccessible) the testers were simply comparing the processors. You can always add more bells and whistles, but plugging high-end scsi drives into both systems *shouldn't* produce a larger performance gap on the test systems. The point I was originally making is that this test isn't to see if you get more performance out of AMD or Intel based on the same budget - it's to see which company's top of the line processor performs better on relatively similar hardware. We could put an 80Gb, 15,000 rpm scsi harddrive on both. Hell, we could add a dvd burner and a twelve foot flat screen monitor, but it won't change the system performance of one system relative to the other (or at least it shouldn't).
do not read this line twice.
Well, to a first order you are right, except that those decisions involving hardware (eg DDR being cheaper than RDRAM, so the AMD system gets more ram, or a faster HD) will always be open to dispute, and then the results invalid. The question of which platform is better becomes obfuscated.
Another point is that while most everyone has a budget, those budgets are not entirely fixed. As in, you might want to only spend $1200, but if by spending $1300 you get something noticeable for your money, you might do it. Similarly, if you can get pretty much what you want for $1100, you might save the $100 for the beer fund.
I think the best thing to do is to compare a wide range of systems, and include the system price as one of the "benchmarks". I do -not- think that major changes to the hardware configuration should be made to account for more available cash. Things like the disks, the video cards, etc should remain constant or otherwise the relevant comparisons start to become meaningless. However, this would still give you a way to see how the motherboard, chipset, ram, and processor (the things that substantially vary between an Intel vs AMD setup) affects the price/performance, and let you make a reasonable decision as to what you want to do with your computer/beer money.
But at the same time, I still want to see who is the fastest, and that means throwing more or less equivalent systems together, but not throttling either based on price.
The enemies of Democracy are
While reading through the results an idea came to me. Is it possible that the reason the P4 generally does better on 'one algorithm type of tasks is because its long pipeline wouldn't get busted as much, meaning that the branch prediction worked, which is based of past branch statistics (right?).
This makes since to me actually, in speaking with my friend about this last night I was asked 'well, what do you need a fast CPU for, when does it matter?', I replied 'Well, games, anything to do with multimedia, like Photoshop effects, ray tracing, mpeg encoding, but ya for general use, the CPU doesn't as much'.
but wait, lets look at that list in how it relates to the pipeline idea:
games: probably a good deal is going on here, AI, 3d pipelines, IO, networking probably not something a branch predictor would excel at
Photoshop effects ray tracing, mpeg encoding: all relatively contained algorithm that (if I'm right) would work well with the brand prediction.
So actually maybe having such long pipelines isn't that bad of a thing, because the majority of your day to day would doesn't care that much anyway, and most of the time when you need something as fast as possible its a small repetitive algorithm that could be predicted.
no?
this is my sig.
Gee, you get one less node in your P4 cluster and still spend $900 dollars more... I'd say that shows savings right there.
Ten nodes with $300 Athlon 2000+ and $1500 Gb NIC = $18,000.
Ten nodes with $600 P4 2.2 GHz and $1500 Gb NIC = $21,000.
Not to trusting of Tom's Hardware? Have another set of benchmarks.
Stop spreading FUD about DDR chipsets and do a bit of research first. Any set of benchmarks I've seen has shown Intel's i850 w/ RDRAM and SiS 645 chipset in a dead heat - and most of the time SiS comes out on top.
------ 24.5% slashdot pure
It's a stupid attempt to remove a variable in order to isolate the CPU performance. The problem is that the benchmark community seems to think that CPU comparisons are relevant to normal buyers. They're not. The only thing relevant to 99% of buyers is overall system performace at a given price. Yet I've never seen one attempt to compare systems that way.
I've used both the fast Athlon XP's and the new Northwood P4's. They're both plenty fast.
The reason I *did* pay double for the P4 northwood is that the support chipset is not a piece of garbage like many of the Athlon support chips.
I really *like* the price / performance of the Athlon chips I've had, but the VIA support chips suck really bad. Hard drive corruption, PCI bus noise, miscellaneous other PCI bus problems. Just not worth the half-price savings IMHO.
I've not read the article because it's still /.'ed, but...
I was wondering about the stability of P4 vs. Athlon platforms. The awsome overclock-ability of the P4's has gotten me very interested in them, so I've been reading up on the recent reviews. Reading them carefully, I've caught a few interesting lines about the Athlon systems locking up some when running benchmarks, but the P4 system running like a rock. Makes me wonder if a P4 wouldn't be a better choice when you want performance and stability, with the Athlon being a better choice when you want performance and low cost. While this doesn't sound like a big deal, it is if you're like me and like to leave your computer running 24/7.
Just wondering if anyone had any comments on this as it's not something that I've seen anybody mention anyplace and it seems very relevent.
There are reasons that you might want to consider spending the extra on a really hot processor. The main one I can think of is if there's something else very expensive as part of the setup. The biggest, most obvious one I can think of is software licenses. I've encountered software with licenses of as much as $8000 per processor, which obviously places a very large premium on having the fastest possible processor running it. I'm sure that there are other applications with even more outrageous prices, too. When you're forking out that much for your software, hardware costs start looking pretty tame.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
You'd think that if they wanted to show AMD up, they'd just clock them at > 2.5GHz now and keep going. I'm puzzled.
You're confusing sports with business. Intel's job is to make money, not to show up its competition. Don't assume that Intel's profits would be boosted by having the fastest part around. Indeed, in 2000, Intel made $10 billion in profit which is more than any other tech company has made -- before or since -- in a single year, but for at least half of the year, their fastest part was appreciably slower than AMD's (AMD, meanwhile, who is highly interested in showmanship, is losing money every quarter).