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AMD Introduces the Athlon XP 2200+
NevDull writes "AMD introduces the Thoroughbred core in the Athlon XP 2200+. Tom's Hardware Guide has a review of the new CPU based on the 0.13 micron core, and subsequently declares the current CPU war to have been won by Intel." Update: 06/10 12:48 GMT by T : DavoHH writes "To add to the list of reviews and benchmarks around the net for the new Athlon XP 2200+,
HotHardware.com has one and also
and also Anand's
and AMDMB." Update: 06/10 13:45 GMT by T : One more: Johan contributes a link to an Ace's Hardware review which tries to answer the question "Does the 0.13 Athlon XP run well an on older motherboard, and does it provide good value as an upgrade?"
Intel may have the higher MHz, and they may be leaving x86 behind soon, but I think that the Hammer series will really hurt Intel if they can't pull people away from x86.
AMD seems to be betting on the difficulty that leaving x86 would cause for many companies, and I can't blame them.
If we all go with Intel's new architecture, we'll soon be needing emulators to run programs from all the under-funded software companies.
And if we lose x86, they'll have to just start calling it XFree. ;)
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
From Tom's Hardware
Simultaneous to the launch of the new Athlon with the T-bred core, AMD has given the following guideline to the motherboard makers: starting June 10, all motherboards must have integrated thermal protection in order to receive certification from AMD. The costs per board for this thermal protection logic runs at approximately less than $1.
Even though it's just $1 per board, that can really add up. I wonder how companies feel about being more or less pushed into this...
-Tolerate my intolerance
to see that Intel has viable competition.
In spite of AMD "losing" the so-called CPU wars, they're still a winner in my eyes.
Geek life would be much different if we had only one viable CPU vendor (shades of Micro$oft, Batman!!!).
I've been using AMD chips in my x86 boxes since early days of the K6-2 and I've been very satisfied. The only reason that CPU prices are anywhere CLOSE to reasonable is that Intel has real competition.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Compackqard advertises with: " Compaq Pressario 6095EA met Intel ® Pentium ® 4 processor 2.2 GHz. Echte GHz voor echte snelheid "
In english: " Compaq Pressario 6095EA with Intel ® Pentium ® 4 processor 2.2 GHz. Real GHz for real performance "
See the Flashy pop up yourself
Guess they don't know about Tom's ?
Ceci n'est pas un sig
Now, maybe this is just me, but is this really the right solution?? I personally don't think so. I mean, sure, it's much better than the processor catching on fire and melting onto your motherboard, but I still think the processor should instead slow down until it reaches a safe temperature. Hell, the Pentium IV does this, why don't the new AMD chips??
If my heatsink fell off on a server, I would not want the system turning off, I would want it staying on. I mean, it won't do too much good being on in that state, but at least there is no data loss in that situation.
Honestly, I think lack of core speed slowdown in the case of an overheat is the only thing keeping me from buying an AMD. I was really hoping their new chips would have that ability; I guess I'll have to keep waiting. If anyone knows if AMD is planning on implementing this, please let me know!
Smaller memories are always faster (when comparing similar technologies). Registers, being the smallest memory, are the fastest. Followed by the L1, then L2, then main memory, and then disk.
AMD's huge L1 cache probably contributes to the difficulty in ramping up the clock rate. An L1 cache must be able to respond to a data access within usually 1-2 clock cycles. Many computer architectects believe that the size of the L1 cache should be less than 10% the size of the on-chip L2 cache. AMD's chips have L1 caches on the order of 25% the size of the L2. Such a large L1 probably cannot keep up with increasing clock frequencies.
Intel chips have very small L1 caches as compared with AMD. T
We often laugh about the upgrade craze, but I think we all feel the upgrade urge, especially when running games at high resolutions and also simply using several of the latest and greatest desktop apps and diversions. The slowest machine still in use in our home is my wife's ancient 1 GHz PIII overclocked to 1.33 GHz. A hellofa machine in it's day, but even with 512 MB of PC133, Internet Explorer will chug pretty hard when loading a page using one or more newer plugins. A fresh reinstall of XP and installation of the latest revs of her apps and plugins speeds things up a good deal, but still nowhere near as fast as our faster machines... and it just goes downhill from there with the 5 month cycle of "Windows Rot".
And me... well, as I keep upgrading, I get spoiled and used to things happening faster and faster with each new machine. I'm sure someday I'll look back and laugh about the days when a kernel compile took more than a few seconds!
I spend more of my time trying to make my computers quiet than worrying about performance. To be able to upgrade from my 1GHz thunderbird to a 1700+ thoroughbred and see a 9% decrease in heat dissipation is good news.
The only time I am soley conserned with performance is when upgrading my server, and for that I will be waiting for the hammers. A recent hammer review at THG showed an 800MHz hammer out-perform a 1600Mhz pentium 4, and that was just for 32 bit tasks.
As soon as the hammer is available at a decent frequency (AMD might start with a ~1500 model) the race for performance will be on again, so for now I am not too surprised that AMD arn't doing that much to keep the XP on the bleeding edge (more cache will help, but it is hardly revolutionary).
Right now VIA are winning more of my CPU money for their excellent C3, but that is purely a heat thing. Unfortunately they aren't suitable for my server or games box.
Still, with all these companies comming to market with different viewpoints the choices have never been so good, I think these are interesting times for CPUs and as much as I like AMD, I am glad that neither they nor any other company is at the top for too long because complacency always puts a damper on things.
If people think Intel has won the CPU war, they've kind of deluding themselves.
Remember, the AthlonXP 2200+ is essentially a shrunk-down CPU core based on the current Palimino core design. That means it still has the same 256 KB of L2 cache. What happens when AMD's new Barton CPU core with the 512 KB L2 cache arrives later this year? I think AMD CPU performance will take a major jump once that happens, and will become competitive with the Intel Northwood-core Pentium 4's with their 512 KB L2 cache.
Is it small wonder why Intel is spending large amounts of money to develop the Prescott core Pentium 4 on the 0.09-micron process and 1024 KB L2 cache? At 1024 KB L2 cache, that's reaching Xeon-class server CPU territory.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
But if that's how you really feel, then the whole Intel-vs-AMD thing is irrelevant, and you've been supporting IBM/Motorola/Apple.
To even consider Intel at all, requires major compromise. Compromising even more and supporting AMD, is relatively no change to that position.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
THG may have declared Intel's P4 the winner, but I have a different criteria. I am looking at performance I can AFFORD. And this is exactly where the Athlon comes in. I also realize, that I do not need the fastest CPU in order to have a good performing system. My machines run Duron/900, Athlon/1.2GHz, Dual P2/266, PentiumPro200 and K6-233's. I play games on the faster machines and get real work done on the slower ones. And, with the right hard drive subsystem (SCSI), you can tell the difference between the faster and the slower machines, but it is not unbearable.
As for value, I just built a system for a friend of mine and he did not want to spend too much. So we settled on an AMD 1800+ and that machine just rocks. Anything is almost instantenous. Another friend bought a Sony 1.8GHz P4 box and when I helped him set it up for networking, I was staring at the hour glass quite a lot. I am sure it WAS fast, but it FELT slow.
Anyway, the bottom line is, I like Athlons, I like their performance and I like especially their price. If it was not for AMD, we'd still be using P3's at 700MHz at $600 per CPU. Think about it.
It depends on what your simulation code is doing. (Surprise !)
If you look at the SPEC CPU2000[1] scores for AMD vs. Intel you'll see that for, say, an XP2000 vs a 2G P4, the AMD is faster at integer work and the Intel is faster for floating point. Note though, that the Intel scores are with the Intel Reference Compiler, which will probably be generating SSE code. If you're running non-SSE code, then Intel stuff is considerably weaker for floating point work.
The second thing to consider is how the pipeline length affects the execution of your code. The longer pipeline in the P4 means that, roughly speaking, the P4 is faster in a straight line, but Athlons corner better.
For the simulation stuff I'm doing, which involves huge amounts of conditional integer and bit-twiddling operations and next-to-no floating point, I use a dual MP1800 box[2]. Getting the equivalent performance - for my code - would have cost a huge amount more with a P4-based solution and may not even be possible with the current P4 range.
[1] If you're doing real computing rather than fragging folks, SPEC is probably a better place to get your information from than Tom's Hardware.
[2] One SETI work unit every 80 minutes. Yummy.
What would Lemmy do?