Slashdot Mirror
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."
P4 was designed with Rambus ram in mind.
.13 Athlons, hopefully it will work out ok.
They should really use Intel's i850 motherboard to pit against the Athlon.
The p4 platform is simply not designed for DDR in mind, adding DDR in the i84x boards are afterthoughts and IMO I would much rather use Intel boards with Intel processors.
Athlon is doing quite well right now, seems like there might be a delay for the
kawai
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!
Take a look at
d ex .html
http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/02q1/020107/in
They posted the results of their showdown 2weeks ago.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
If RDRAM can get its prices down to closer to DDR, it might actually compete properly. Until then, AMDs lower prices and the lower price of DDR ram is going to wipe Intel's ass on value for money.
I would check the website so I know what I'm talking about when I comment. But since I can't access the site due to the (I assume) brutal slashdotting, I feel almost compelled to comment without any supporting information to base my wildly inaccurate opinions on. If at least the article summary had summarized (probably incorrectly) the article content beyond saying it was "interesting" then at least we could get the debate rolling, at least until the page became accessible again. At which time, everyone else would join the fray complaining that nobody reads the articles.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
... they're not really levelling the playing field because DDR memory is a mature option for AMD whereas it's brand new on the Intel boards, and apparently has some problems.
If you're going to compare just CPU power then use synthetic benchmarks that test just that, otherwise if it's system performance you're going after why not compare AMD DDR to Pentium 4 RDRAM, at least those are two mature configurations.
Even then, I think it is more of a "what you are after" situation. For instance, the chipset itself can dramatically change the performance. As well as ram, etc, etc... so the idea is are you benching the CPUs against each other or the CPU/chipset/RAM system against each other? Even then the question is "how do I verify that the results are not skewed based on the testing methodoligy?"
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
I don't see why hardware sites insist on seeing which chip "is fastest." I'd be more interested in an acceptable price/performance ratio. The Athlon XP 2000+ (which can still hold its own fairly well against a P4 2200) costs LESS THAN HALF of a P4 2200. Why anyone would spend the extra $350 on a P4 for the minimal performance gains (relative to the cost) is beyond me. And for those who want absolute, unforgiving, raw performance.. For the same price as a P4 2200 with a decent motherboard, you can buy a Tyan Tiger MP with a pair of Athlon XP 2000s and a bunch of DDR memory (AMD reccomends you use Athlon MPs but there's no reason the XPs won't work.) Sure, graphs and kernel compile times are pretty and all, but eventually you have to think about what is practical..
Given that the P4 costs more than twice as much as the Athlon ($548 versus $263 on PriceWatch), why would they bother with only DDR? Just by including the P4 they've pretty much thrown price/performance ratios out the window anyway.
A better question to ask of the P4 might be whether it could beat the Athlon with any kind of memory, and if so, by how much?
Just killing time while my program compiles and the site becomes available again.
The XP is the same mask as the MP. The only difference is the AMD MP Seal of Approval(tm).
Just pointing that out.
The enemies of Democracy are
...the Pentium 4 verses Athlon XP war...
'Pentium 4 verses'? Are they anything like Spam Poetry?
It's 'versus', Mr. Editor Sir.
Wrong. The P4 was designed for high memory bandwidth. In fact, that may even be why it performs better on RDRAM chipsets than DDR chipsets. Who wudda thunk it?
Goddamn slashdot moderators. My orignal post gets modded down as a troll for pointing out a valid hardware issue, and this piece of cluelessness gets modded up.
How do the next few months look in terms of the ability of either Intel or AMD to improve upon these products?
While I'm a fan of AMD's price/performance ratios, it looks as if they will be hard pressed to keep increasing the clock on the Athlon, while the Pentium 4 seems to have a lot more potential for higher clock rates.
Then, too, I'm wondering about the news reports that suggest that Athlons won't be paired up with the new DDR 333 MHz memory.
It may mean that the highest performance x86 architecture this summer will be from Intel and will be able to command more of a premium in price than if AMD were breathing down their necks, which has been the case over the past year and a half.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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
A comparison of the two top products from AMD and Intel reveals the astonishing: although the processors are as different from one another as apples and oranges, the difference is much less obvious in the benchmark results, when taken from an absolute standpoint.
In any case, one thing is visible: in the majority of performance tests, the new Pentium 4/2200 is ahead. After all, the top AMD processor has to make do with 1666 MHz, while its archenemy steps in with 2200 MHz. A closer look at the comprehensive benchmarks reveals that in Office performance as well as Linux Kernel compiling, the Athlon XP still takes the lead, despite its 32% clock speed disadvantage!
Hello, the fastest MP processor is 4% slower (1600 compared to 1667MHz), probably due to the extra stability they want there as the server marked will drop anything unstable faster than lightning. Stick with the facts (they're expensive and don't add any real value add-on beyond certification) and don't FUD.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
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.