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Intel Funds AMD-bashing Report
Jim Norton writes "The Inqwell and ZDNet are reporting that the Aberdeen group, who recently published a report attacking the Athlon XP's processor rating system, was funded by Intel to produce the report. The articles also mention that AMD claims they were never contacted for information regarding this issue." From the benchmarks that various outfits have done on the new AMD chips, their model number is actually pretty conservative.
When AMD released the Athlon XP 1800+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications, the XP 1800+ not only beat the P4 1800 MHz, but also the P4 2000 MHz.
When AMD released the Athlon XP 1900+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications, the XP 1900+ not only beat the P4 1900 MHz, but also the P4 2000 MHz.
When Intel released the Northwood 2000 and 2200 MHz P4s and AMD released the XP 2000+, every reviewer on the planet ran a battery of benchmarks and concluded that for most applications the XP 2000+ beat the P4 2.0A but could not quite beat the P4 2.2A
Then when AMD released the XP 2100+, many reviewers concluded that it tied or beat the P4 2.2A, although I really think that the 2.2A has the edge.
Based on this data, what really happened, what is really happening, and what disinterested parties seem to believe, I would conclude that the AMD PR Rating system provides a very nice comparison of Athlon performance relative to P4 performance at the clockspeed of the PR rating. Even though AMD says the rating is to compare the Athlon XP to other AMD products, it is incredible how well it scales athlon performance to the P4 performance at the clockspeed of the rating.
Therefore, if I wished to buy a machine, as a general purpose user, I think the best way to compare prices would be to match the AMD PR Rating against the Intel P4 clockspeed.
OTOH, comparing raw clockspeeds would give a false conclusion that an Athlon XP 2000+ would not outperform a P4 1.7 GHz. Sure, this is true if you plan on using Newtek Lightwave (where all P4s beat all Athlons), but for most tasks you would be horribly in error.
It would seem fairly obvious, that for this point in time, and with the current set of processors available, for the user who uses a variety of applications, the consumer would be better informed by using the AMD rating system than by just about any other comparison (other than carefully studying a battery of 30 different benchmarks)
However, there has been a flurry of criticism of the PR rating.
As much as I hate to cheerlead corporations, I just have to yell...
FUD!
...and anyone who disagrees with me is invited to study any of the following review sites:
Tom's Hardware
Anandtech
XBitLabs
Sharky Extreme
Lost Circuits
etc... etc... etc...
Everyone who tried an Athlon can confirm it's superiority to Intel's model line (even with AMD's stupid numbering), but the point is, the chipsets for Athlons are mainly crap. All AMD Athlon chipsets were fine, but most boards out there are sold with VIA chipsets which lead to lots of problems. Lots of people tell me they have problems and don't want any more Athlons, and don't realize at first that their problems were all related to the chipset. The same goes for notebooks. Intel has a good chipset solution, Amd doesn't.
So if anyone at AMD reads this: PLEASE MAKE SOME CHIPSETS, and I promise you, you'll sell more Athlons.
That said, a well written benchmark can give a guide to relative performance, and it's hard to argue that a quake 3 benchmark isn't measuring "real world" performance in 3D gaming (although the incident with ATi was a bit of an embarressment).
Intel :
:
:
:) )
:
Pros
Stability - Rip out the CPU fan, these would still run till kingdom come.
Heat Dissipation - As explained above, its above par than AMD cpus
Research - Constantly comes up with new technology. For e.g. AGP Pro and improvements to Chipset comes to mind.
Cons
FUD - Like to propogate FUD about competitors. Hence I have no sympathy towards them when they cry wolf at Microsoft.
Speed - If you look beyond the constant Mhz bumping is what they all been doing..
AMD - The Underdogs (Obviously a Slashdot fave because of the same fact
Pros :
Speed - Raw RAW SPEED!!!.. Enough said. Whoops Intels ass on a wide range of benchmarks.
Cons
Stability - Needs improvement. But then again, if you have a decent CPU fan and if you are not too keen on Overclocking, then you are good.
Chipset Issues - Quite obvious. AMD needs to improve on this.
Heat Dissipation - Stories about guys making scrambled egg on the CPU are not exaggerated.
Rapid Nirvana
SPEC
see the 1st quarter 2002 results for CPU2000
We use dual processor machines to run simulations (particle physics). We have 3 dual 1.7gig Xeon/RDRAM setups and several 1800+ MP/DDR setups. The 1800+ setups will complete the same amount of work as the xeons in 75% of the time! I thought they were better, but I didn't think they were that much better. That is a 1.53gig machine completeing the same work as a 1.7 gig machine (with faster memmory) in 75% of the time.
Our application, as you can imagine, is very floating point intensive.
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
I wouldn't really say that AMDs core is "vastly more modern". BOTH are very modern. In fact, architecture-wise, Intel's is more modern. It has trace caches, better branch prediction, etc. AMD on the other hand has continued just making bigger as better. They show that this is working though.
The two processors are built on a different (micro)instruction set. AMD's micro-ops lead to a lower CPI (cycles per instruction) than Intel's. This is why they introduced this whole rating system.
In order to read this document, you must be registered with Aberdeen.com. By accessing this publication, you agree to let Aberdeen share registration details with sponsors of the document. This enables Aberdeen to bring you this research at no charge.
Not only does Intel spread FUD, they also want to know who read it...
this might get you the report without signing in...
Why do Slashdot moderators label any message describing a problem with an AMD Athlon as a "Troll"?
This website is not inpartial.
I feel the same way about Athlons and so do most businesses I work with.
I own 2 machines. One is a 900 MHz Athlon with a K7S5A Motherboard. The other is a PIII 866MHz. They both run Linux. The PIII has *never* crashed on me. The Athlon hard-freezes every month or so. I've got a quality power supply in both machines.
Furthermore, any price difference I paid between the PIII and Athlon will be made up for 3 years from the extra electricity that the Athlon draws (75 watts compared to 30 watts).
The exciting sequel to MySQL Myths Debunked is AMD Myths Debunked! Laugh, cry, maybe share your experiences?
All of the people that shared their experiences with MySQL helped turn that document into a very useful weapon against nuisance naysayers. I'm hoping the same will happen for AMD.
Actually ESC K7S5A is a pretty lousy board.
Decent K7 board like Epox 8KHA+ is going to cost you about a 100$.
And don't buy motherboards without warranty. If you get a motherboard from the web and it brakes, don't expect manufecturer to replace it. Most of motherboard manufacturers have warranty agreements with recellers not users.
But I digressed.
So you buy 100$ mobo for K7 and 100$ mobo for P4. You buy 120$ XP1700+ and 135$ P4 1.6A.
You clock your XP1700+ to XP2000+ (which doesn't always work), and you clock 1.6A to 2.2A (which almoust always works).
Now the price of the systems is almoust identical but 1.6A clocked to 2.2A runs cooler and faster.
Who do you choose?
It used to be that K7 systems have an edge against P4s but not anymore. The only thing that's left in K7s favour is mature DDR chipset IMHO, but Intel will catch up soon. But then, there's Hammer coming down the road. Very interesting time.
Intel is very competitive, do not forget it. They wouldn't be in this business otherwise
Via HardOCP: Aberdeen seems clueless that the basis for AMD's model numbering system is a comparison to their own TBird core CPUs and the speed they would have to run to be equivalent to a Palomino core CPU in performance. Seems as though Aberdeen did not even contact AMD in order to better understand the exact subject they were commenting on.
You think AMD would say "we put out that number to show how fast this is in relation to Intel's chips"? Of course not. This is a MARKETING GIMMICK, plain and simple, and if it refers to AMD's own internal numbers on their own chips, or directly toward Intel's offerings, it really makes no difference. The numbers aren't that far off, Intel advertises *clock speed* (too bad the Intel chips don't execute a full instruction per clock), AMD advertises some performance number based on a benchmark, what's the difference? They're both full of shit.
I say they publish MIPS/MFLOPS, but that's probably more technical than most people would be interested in. Some of the benchmarks actually show this, I think the AMD has about the same MIPS/MFLOPS scores in core x86, the Intel MIPS score is a little higher but its MFLOPS score is a little lower and I think that's where the balance comes out (although both of these CPU's would probably advertise MIPS/MFLOPS using their proprietary instruction sets instead of core x86 instructions).
Big bad Intel for paying for this report, we should be happy to have a choice between CPU vendors. MS uses much more active methods to beat their competition (not that this crowd loves MS) but I don't see the masses whining their way into writing a check at the local CompUSA for a boxed Linux distro (the XP/2K hating crowd around here is a small group I'd bet). So if you think the masses don't give a shit about this little Intel/AMD debacle, cha-ching you're right. Dell and Gateway will still keep selling cheap Intel systems and up-charging for AMD's from guys interested enough to request one but who don't have the balls to build one themselves, Intel will maintain their market share and AMD price cuts will still keep Intel chips a hell of a lot cheaper than they were when Cyrix was around.
1. the amd rating is a ploy. period. neccessary...but still a ploy.
2. intel's mhz strategy is a ploy too.
3. amd's chips currently, dollar for dollar, mhz for mhz perform better then intels. period.
4. the comments about lightwave are all fucked up. toms hardware does not know shit about lightwave. they run a render of ONE SCENE THAT USES RADIOSITY (used less then 1% of the time in ANIMATION BECAUSE IT'S TOO SLOW)...and oh radiosity has been optimized for P4. I've used p4's from Dell, and Athlon's from XI...for 90% of day to day use in Lightwave, the Athlon's are faster. period.
Anyone looking for a nice workstation and is uninformed will see Tom's benchmarks and think
"ohhhh Intel is the way to go!!!"
soooo wrong. go with a P4...and you spend more and get less.
I might as well find the one photoshop plugin that flies with a P4...base my entire Image Editing review on that one plugin...and proclaim that the P4 "has the edge".
not.
While you and I may believe that, evidently others do not.
We allow corporations to donate soft money, thereby influencing the political process, probably more so than the votes. We even allow them to give favors to candidates and politicians. They have property rights, can invent, can author creative works, can be exempted from laws, can buy other laws, can be sued, and can even sue for wrongs done to it! In the meantime, we also award companies for being "good corporate citizens"!
For something that only exists on paper, and that has no morals, ethics, conscience, spirit or life...corporations sure do have a lot of corporate rights. As if a they were "...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights...".