AMD Releases Barton: Athlon 3000+

Anandtech link by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:03 · Score: 5, Informative

so post 'em below..

Re:Anandtech link by zerocool^ · 2003-02-10 04:01 · Score: 5, Funny

I can't wait until

Tom's hardware comes out with

A review so that I can swing

By that website and check out all

the new ads they have and see

How many pages they've broken the

review up into. I bet it's like

12.

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sig?
Re:Anandtech link by minkwe · 2003-02-10 04:35 · Score: 3, Interesting

This is much better. http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.html?i=1783

--
If cars were open sourced, there would be at least five steering wheels in the cockpit, each operating differently -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo.

--
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
Re:Anandtech link by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 05:14 · Score: 0

"If cars were open sourced,"

They are, sort of, a little bit. Otherwise only the dealer would be able to fix it when it breaks. The source of the car is the design manual, but still the repair manuals (though often more resembling 'reverse engineering' than source) still open up the 'source' to the car quite a bit. Actually, recently there was a federal mandate to manufacturers to make the ECU computer codes public so that independent garages can be more effective at repairs.

-- If cars were closed-source, you would have to press the 'start' button first if you want to shut it down...
Re:Anandtech link by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 06:31 · Score: 0

If it bothers you so much, why don't you just block the ads? If you can't figure out how, you're not much of a nerd.
Re:Anandtech link by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 08:20 · Score: 0

Think the new WTC plans are lame? Check this out. [wtc2002.com]

What, so after seeing such a lame flash-filled webpage that the new WTC plans don't seem quite so bad?
Re:Anandtech link by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 12:02 · Score: 0

ROFL
Re:Anandtech link by tgrigsby · 2003-02-11 06:55 · Score: 1

off topic: Checked the link in your sig. It actually looked good until I got to the "safety" section. They'll repel attacking planes with sound waves, they'll detect "potential detonations" (using psychic powers?), and they'll use iris scans and 3D body scanning to detect known terrorists.

Yeah. Uh-huh.

--
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***

Quick, to the Order Form!! by BiggestPOS · 2003-02-10 01:03 · Score: 1, Offtopic

This looks like something I could use in my A7N8X, right? Because my discover card is just itching to buy me one of these......

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What, me worry?

640 kb on die cache by fobef · 2003-02-10 01:05 · Score: 5, Funny

"This exclusive 512 KB L2-cache works together with the 128 KB L1-cache (64 KB data, 64 KB instruction) to form one impressive 640 KB on-die cache."

Am I the only one who can see Bill Gates drooling over this?

Re:640 kb on die cache by Skinny+Rav · 2003-02-10 01:50 · Score: 2, Funny

I think that's what he meant in first place. "640 kB of cache should be enough for everyone!"

Raf
Re:640 kb on die cache by Ed+Avis · 2003-02-10 02:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

Is it really 640Kbyte in total? That would happen only if every address in the L1 were not also in the L2. If it's possible for L1 and L2 caches to overlap, then it would be more accurate to say '512Kbyte of cache in total, of which 128Kbyte can run rather quickly'.

I mean, nobody says their system has '128.5 megabytes of memory in total' if they have a single 128 meg memory module and 512Kbyte of cache in the CPU.

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-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Re:640 kb on die cache by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:18 · Score: 1, Informative

It doesn't overlap on Athlons. This is known as an exclusive cache, as opposed to Intel's CPUs, or pretty much any other CPU out there where all data in the level one cache *always* is present in the lever two cache.
Re:640 kb on die cache by CTho9305 · 2003-02-10 03:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

As the AC who replied to you said, on Athlons, the caches are exclusive. The data will be in only one at a given time, so it is really effectively 640k. On the Intel chips, the data in L1 is also in L2, so the total is exactly the same as just the L2 size.

--
My server
Re:640 kb on die cache by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 04:15 · Score: 0

Bah, I say. My 4 year old, beige Power Mac G3 tower has 1MB of L2 cache. 640k ain't squat. Bite me, Billy-boy.
Re:640 kb on die cache by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 05:04 · Score: 0

Yeah, but being a 4 year old, I bet it continuously asks you for candy. and againagainagainagain!
Re:640 kb on die cache by Hammer · 2003-02-10 05:36 · Score: 1

As much as I despise Mr. Gates, I have to correct you. The infamous "640kB should be enough" was not in fact stated by Billy Bub, it was someone at IBM or Panasonic (who actually created the PC). Bill agreed, kinda, but he did not state that 640 was enough.
Re:640 kb on die cache by io333 · 2003-02-10 07:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

A serious question: If I booted up vanilla DOS on this thing, would it pretty much all run inside of cache?

That would be insanely fast.
Re:640 kb on die cache by Fig,+formerly+A.C. · 2003-02-10 08:27 · Score: 2, Funny

How many frames per second do you really need to play "Command Prompt", anyway? *rolls eyes*

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Murphy was an optimist.
Re:640 kb on die cache by Afrosheen · 2003-02-10 09:26 · Score: 1

Come on now, if you're gonna offer a correction, do it right. That's like saying "Boothe didn't shoot Lincoln, it was some other guy!".
Re:640 kb on die cache by Stormie · 2003-02-10 10:01 · Score: 1

Is it really 640Kbyte in total? That would happen only if every address in the L1 were not also in the L2. If it's possible for L1 and L2 caches to overlap, then it would be more accurate to say '512Kbyte of cache in total, of which 128Kbyte can run rather quickly'.

Yes, it really is 640Kbyte in total. Athlon's L1 and L2 caches are exclusive, unlike those of Intel's chips.
Re:640 kb on die cache by NotAnotherReboot · 2003-02-10 12:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

A more important question: would you be able to even notice a performance gain?
Re:640 kb on die cache by alexo · 2003-02-11 03:47 · Score: 1

Is it really 640Kbyte in total?

AnandTech, one of the more reputable review sites, explains the differences between Intel's and AMD'S cache implementations here.

All caches are not created equal and thus you should not expect AMD to benefit as much as Intel did from going to a 512KB L2 cache. Intel follows a much more conventional L1/L2 cache architecture that uses what is known as the inclusive principle; the inclusive principle states that the contents of the L1 cache are also included in the L2 cache. The obvious downside to this is that the L2 cache contains some data that is redundant that the CPU will never use (if it needs it, it will get it from the faster L1 cache). From the CPU's point of view, an inclusive cache just means it has less room to store its much needed data in, but from the standpoint of the rest of the system an inclusive cache does provide one advantage - if data is updated in main memory (e.g. through DMA), the memory controller only has to check the L2 cache to update data, and there is no need to check L1 for coherency. This is a small but important benefit to an inclusive cache architecture.

The opposite, obviously, is a cache subsystem that follows the exclusive principle - such as the Athlon XP's cache. In this case, the contents of the L1 cache are not duplicated in the L2 cache, thus favoring cache size over the added latency of checking for two levels of cache coherency in DMA situations. The exclusive approach makes much more sense for AMD, considering the Athlon XP has an extremely large 128KB L1 cache that would be very costly to duplicate in L2 (compared to Intel's 8KB L1 Data cache that is easily duplicated in L2).
Basically, the Althon does not duplicate the contents of its L1 cache in the L2 cache. So it does have a 640KB cache in total (128K of which is faster than rest...)
Re:640 kb on die cache by Skinny+Rav · 2003-02-12 00:21 · Score: 1

As much as I despise Mr. Gates, I have to correct you. The infamous "640kB should be enough" was not in fact stated by Billy Bub, it was someone at IBM or Panasonic (who actually created the PC). Bill agreed, kinda, but he did not state that 640 was enough.

I know but who cares? My comment was a joke on a popular urban myth. Does the myth have to be correct to laugh at it?

Cheers

Raf

Hurry Up! by Snagle · 2003-02-10 01:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

AMD better get there act together and get the Athlon 64 out in september or sooner. Intel is just kicking there ars right now and AMD has nothing to compete with that 3.06 ghz with multi-threading and whatnot. Dont get me wrong i dislike intel but unless AMD's next big thing is BIG, then they could be in for some trouble

Re:Hurry Up! by FyRE666 · 2003-02-10 01:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

I don't see how not selling a ridiculously overpriced CPU (the fastest P4) is going to damage them at all.

The vast majority of people don't need the P4 3GHZ, and anyone with any sense would find the current "sweet spot" in the CPU vs price tables. AMD have Intel beat all the way up to the AMD max speed, so how is Intel "kicking there ars"?

You could also say that Ferrari are kicking Ford's ass, since they make a faster car - it just doesn't work like that...

--
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Re:Hurry Up! by KDan · 2003-02-10 01:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

There is a fairly large market in corporations and even smaller companies for high-end CPUs for use in servers. In this market, which is certainly not the smallest market, Intel kicks AMD's arse, sadly.

Daniel

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Carpe Diem
Re:Hurry Up! by Lorenz+M. · 2003-02-10 01:40 · Score: 1

Well, the question is if the Athlon 64 would increase sells and processor prices that mutch that switching to an even more expensive die would bring any benefit to AMDs financal position - especially when there is no Windows(tm) 64 available, for sure a great disadvantage for marketing.

I also don't think that the Barton core has the potential to bring AMD back into the black numbers, because it is tecnically clearly behind the Intel P4 - and the increased size of the die should greatly increase production expenses (die size: +20%, transistor count: +44%!).

So let's hope AMD has luck with Microsoft, a good launch into the Opteron/HighEnd market and some advanceses with semiconductor processes, otherwise I fear that we will loose the only real competitor on the x86-CPU-market....
Re:Hurry Up! by BrodieBruce · 2003-02-10 01:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

The key to taking the crown in the microprocessor is to make sure people actually buy your cool, new box of transistors after you get them on the market.
Just putting a 64-bit chip on the market doesn't mean that AMD will be on top. No stockholder cares about a 64-bit processor that no one buys (think itanium).
Even after opterons are plentiful on the market, who do we know that will buy one? Sure, 90% of /. might be drooling over it. But how many of those people are actually in a position to replace their company's old Xeon servers with new 64-bit opteron servers?
I know it's been said before, but cool processors don't always make investors rich. AMD has been worrying more about improving their company's image as a provider of die-hard, dependable chips . And rightly so (see /. article on opterons being used in new cray supercomputer).
I've spent a good amount of time working in more than one IT department. And I've never had a manager make a buying decision based on /. posts. Fact is, when the s@*t goes down (aka server hardware fails), the IT manager doesn't want any chance for that failure to be due to parts that lack industry-wide acceptance.
So despite all the "technobabble" that goes on (and I'm guilty of it too), it's important to think of how your non-technologist boss views a tech company and the products it puts out. I'm glad that AMD realizes this. I just hope AMD's /. fanbase comes to the same conclusion.
Re:Hurry Up! by platipusrc · 2003-02-10 01:44 · Score: 3, Interesting

Wow! I suppose that 4 dollar difference according to pricewatch between the 3000+ and the 3.06 means a lot to you.

--
And the muscular cyborg German dudes dance with sexy French Canadians
Re:Hurry Up! by NeoSkandranon · 2003-02-10 01:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

and anyone with any sense would find the current "sweet spot" in the CPU vs price tables

Problem with that being that most people buying computers dont have any sense, they buy what the salesdrone tells them.

--
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Re:Hurry Up! by amigaluvr · 2003-02-10 02:03 · Score: 1

Agreed. I believe AMD could be spelling their own end reducing speeds to under the 2.2ghz like their other processor.

People don't want slow processors that work 'technically fast' they want pure real performance. Adding 3000+ to the name won't change it and it seems they're banking on their older systems almost keeping up to the name, by then adding in a cheaper dumbed down version that goes nowhere near it

It is a pity as I see AMD as the more Open solution there. Not Intel.
Re:Hurry Up! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 02:26 · Score: 1, Insightful

Actually I choose which servers and desktops the company I work for purchases. I'd like to think that I have a rather large amount of sense (over 10 years in the industry). I do not listen to what any sales people tell me, rather I rely upon experience and what external advisors, such as Gatner Group tell me about the hardware.

Nobody in business is going to buy an AMD chip, which is by definition an emulator, when they can buy an Intel chip, unless they can possibly help it. (actually when was the last time that you saw a proper server - say a Proliant - with an AMD processor? They just don't exist)

Also, many people don't seem to realise that Intel has many advantages over AMD a few that spring to mind are:

Less power consumption (which makes a large difference over 20,000 desktops and 1000 multiprocessor servers)

Self shutdown - if the heatsink falls off an Intel processor, it throttles itself down until it stops, if required, so that it doesn't burn, whereas an AMD chip just burns.

Less heat - this is a major issue in a datacenter

Descent cache levels - 2Mb in the current Forster chip set Xeons.

So don't go about making coments about people who's jobs you clearly don't have the first idea about.
Re:Hurry Up! by ergo98 · 2003-02-10 02:30 · Score: 2, Interesting

With the proliferation of digital video cameras that conveniently download absolutely monstrous videos to your PC, full motion at 720x480, there is definitely a growing need for both more CPU power and more storage than is currently the norm. I have an Athlon XP 2000+ with 512MB of DDR with a pair of 60GB 7200RPM drives, and recently decided to compress a 60 minute video of a baby shower. Total compression time in Windows Media Encoder (compressing to WM9's video codec): Approximately 9 hours. (Actually a first run turned out to have a bad setting, so in real metrics it took about 18 hours) This was taking a direct several GB uncompressed AVI and verbatim compressing it to a 1.5Mbps video (which just fits on a CD-R). Of course doing any sort of processing or effects raises the bar even more if you're going to anything other than postage-stamp videos, so you could triple or quadruple if I were doing any major processing. If the Internet bandwidth were there for full-sized full-motion video again the current codecs are running at around 1:6th real time or less on current PCs.
Re:Hurry Up! by 10Ghz · 2003-02-10 02:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

The vast majority of people don't need the P4 3GHZ

While RIGHT NOW we have limited use for such monster-CPU's, what about tomorrow? When I buy a computer, I don't look at what things I would be doing with it today, I would also think what I would be doing with it in the future. While 3+GHz might be overkill right now, is it overkill few years down the road?

Sure, I could get a slower and cheaper CPU. But it would get obsolete sooner. If I buy faster CPU, it will be fast enough longer period of time (and as a bonus, I will enjoy the increased performance while the slower CPU would just be "fast enough". If I could shave some time off my compile-times or encoding-times, I'm all for it!).

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Re:Hurry Up! by GS11_Pus · 2003-02-10 03:40 · Score: 1

You could also say that Ferrari are kicking Ford's ass, since they make a faster car - it just doesn't work like that...

I thought this was a good analogy, and I agreed with everything else you said. I was pretty surprised to see all of the replies disagree with you.

If you are looking to build a system that is both powerful and inexpensive, then an AMD-based system is the way to go.
Re:Hurry Up! by Waffle+Iron · 2003-02-10 03:41 · Score: 3, Informative

Nobody in business is going to buy an AMD chip, which is by definition an emulator
All X86 CPUs are "emulators", regardless of who manufactures them. The real guts of a P4 look nothing at all like you would expect from the opcodes you feed into it. It's emulating that 25 year old architecture.
Since AMD has been producing X86 CPUs since the days of the 8086, I would argue that they have just about as much experience in emulating X86 CPUs as intel does.
Re:Hurry Up! by Waffle+Iron · 2003-02-10 03:51 · Score: 1

Well, the question is if the Athlon 64 would increase sells and processor prices that mutch that switching to an even more expensive die would bring any benefit to AMDs financal position - especially when there is no Windows(tm) 64 available, for sure a great disadvantage for marketing.
However, we should never underestimate the power of the Spinal Tap marketing message: "But these go to sixty-four!"
Re:Hurry Up! by fault0 · 2003-02-10 03:52 · Score: 1

> Intel is just kicking there ars right now

How so? Most of the reviews see the Barton to be pretty close to the p4 @ 3.06. AMD doesn't need to catch up in ghz/mhz, only in performance, and it looks like if it has done that.

> then they could be in for some trouble

The market for the top rated desktop chips (in this case the p4 3.06 ghz and this new chip) is always pretty small (especially with the p4 3.06 ghz being priced extremely high)
Re:Hurry Up! by karnal · 2003-02-10 03:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

Holy cow! 60 minutes?

I have to admit, that may have something to do with the codec. However, last night I compressed a movie - split into 2 - into Divx 5.02 Pro, using 2 pass encoding, 1 hour of compressing over both passes took 2 hours. Add another 5-10 minutes to transform the audio to 256kbit mp3, and it was complete... well, the first half. The bitrate was equivalent - if I recall, around 1350kbps for the video.....

I've got a similar setup to you - XP2100+, 512mb 333ddr cas2 mushkin, and 2x80gb 7200 8mb WD drives striped. I'm just curious if the WME is what is taking so long.....

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Karnal
Re:Hurry Up! by karnal · 2003-02-10 03:59 · Score: 1

Alright, my post above babbled a little.

Anyways, the file "time" was 1 hour, the compression total time was about 2 hours and 10 minutes.

I was just a little thrown by your "9 hours" statement.....

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Karnal
Re:Hurry Up! by ergo98 · 2003-02-10 04:33 · Score: 2, Informative

I have done some trial runs with the divx codec and admittingly have found it to be quite a bit faster at compressing, however in my own rather unscientific tests [ducking] I found that WM9 did a marginally better job at 1.5Mbps (with a 64Kbps audio stream which was sufficient for the audio that came from a mic on a videocamera). It seems like WM9 does a tremendous amount of analysis of the image to try to eak out every last morsel of compression and it really labours the system.
Re:Hurry Up! by Bedouin+X · 2003-02-10 04:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

Power Consumption and Self Shutdown were both addressed with the Palomino (Athlon XP) core.

Also I find it hard to understand how 1) a CPU that follows a published standard (X86) could be an emulator and 2) how this emulator can outperform a "pure" system at a slower speed? This could be due to my own ignorance though, please educate me.

--
Dissolve... Resolve... Evolve...
Re:Hurry Up! by karnal · 2003-02-10 04:57 · Score: 1

Well, then you have the plus of WM9 being more or less "standard", so that you could give a copy of the cd to your family and have them be able to play it with minimal hassle.

My situation doesn't require that right now, so Divx 5.02 it is :)

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Karnal
Re:Hurry Up! by nolife · 2003-02-10 04:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

While 3+GHz might be overkill right now, is it overkill few years down the road?

Are you serious? Do you actually buy computer products with the full expectation of not needing the power until years down the road? In almost EVERY situation, that is very bad advice to follow and sounds like a sales pitch you'd get from from BestBuy or Compaq. The rate at which the price drops and the performance increases it would not be a good idea to by more then 1 or 2 months in advance of expected need. Upgradability is a good idea in theory but not from a financial standpoint. In 2 years when you "need" that certain level of speed, the components to get it will be about 25% of the price and probably 300% better then the current offerings. If you need the speed now or don't mind spending the extra money to get products above the knee on a price to performance ratio scale, then by all means go for it.

--
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Re:Hurry Up! by bittmann · 2003-02-10 04:58 · Score: 1

Sure, I could get a slower and cheaper CPU. But it would get obsolete sooner...

While this is obviously true, it might be worthwile to look at this another way, however.

Think about "top dollar" versus "mainstream priced". While you may find that you need to replace your "mainstream priced" computer a year or so (bear with me, here) sooner than you would a new "top of the line" model, it does pay to look at the cost of replacing the "mainstream priced" computer (or components) with a newer system.

I've always subscribed to the theory that your best rule-of-thumb value in computer equipment is to buy LAST YEAR'S top-of-the-line. That usually (again, with rule-of-thumb fuzziness) means that you'll get about 3/4 of the "usable" lifetime out of the system, as opposed to the newer box (4-5 year expected lifespan, etc.) This also means that since you're replacing the computer sooner, so you'll actually end up getting a newer computer a year or so sooner than you would if you spent big bucks, and felt like you needed to hold on longer. And if you time it right (and don't replace the computer until you *really* feel you need to), this means you can get yummy new hardware without guilt when you feel the "need for speed." So when UT2003 or DoomIII comes out, you have the cash to replace your machine with another "last year's top-of-the-line model".

Which means, if you're buying today, you may not have hyper-threading, but you'll still be running at comfortably over 2.4 GHz, with DDR3700 CAS2 RAM, on a GeForce Ti 4200 or Radeon 9500...not killer, but then again, nothing to sneeze at. You're getting the same performance for under $1800 that you would have paid over $3000 for last year.

If you take your time, and position yourself favorably for future upgrades (buying this year's mobo, with last year's CPU and video), you can even stretch it further.

Hey, up to you, though. Some folks like having the latest and greatest--that's part of the thrill. What sucks is when someone else comes in 9 months later and buys the same capability for half the price...
Re:Hurry Up! by jazman_777 · 2003-02-10 05:22 · Score: 1

Self shutdown - if the heatsink falls off an Intel processor, it throttles itself down until it stops, if required, so that it doesn't burn, whereas an AMD chip just burns.
How often does this kind of thing happen? Other than at Tom's? I see, you said "if".

--
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Re:Hurry Up! by benzapp · 2003-02-10 06:01 · Score: 2, Informative

The NexGen Nx586 was the first RISC processor with a hardware based decoding unit to translate 386 instructions into its native risc instructions.

This system is still in use today, as AMD purchased NexGen in 1997.

These processors don't really "emulate" a processor, although many people thought the NexGen did since it was always recognized as a 386, even if it was far faster. One of the reasons out of order execution is so important in these processors is the fairly random X86 instructions are reordered into the most efficient RISC instructions possible.

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I don't read or respond to AC posts
Re:Hurry Up! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 06:10 · Score: 0

QUICK Quick !
I need to pay through the nose for the fastest new CPU ... because I'm an IDIOT !

It's a false economy. When you factor in planned obsolesence, you're falling for the oldest marketing ploy in history.

The sweet spot is never the latest generation of processors. Buying one for the "future" is foolish. You don't need that power now. And when you do, it will be *much* cheaper to get that power then. And I mean absolutely cheaper, not relatively. You will be paying less money in equivalent dollars (inflation and all).

It's a waste of cash. Remember, computers halve in price as soon as you take them off the shelf. Never invest in the future buy purchasing a rapidly depreciating asset.
Re:Hurry Up! by Azureflare · 2003-02-10 06:14 · Score: 1

Or you could just buy a really cheap processor, and just use the software you have now. Unless you play games, apps are pretty much done, there's not much more you can do in the closed-source world. How many times can you rewrite a word processor? There does come a point where you don't need processing power, but optimized code and reduced bloat. The only reason for increasing clock speeds is the chip companies realize they will quickly go out of business if they don't hype up their faster clock speeds for the average user. It's really pathetic, because people that buy into it are just wasting money. They would be fine with a 300mhz pentium doing word processing and internet browsing, and don't need much more than that. The only place fast paced computers have are in a work environment, where speed is essential to getting a job done. You have to look at what you get out of the machine...if you keep on going faster and faster in the home industry, but get diminishing returns, what is the point? I feel it is important to advance technology, but you have to look at the practical issues as well, i.e. do most people need goliath to solve little problems.
Re:Hurry Up! by mjh · 2003-02-10 06:21 · Score: 1

Of course, you're right. However, I think that the CPU speeds are getting so rediculously high, and the software to actually take advantage of these speeds is so hideously far behind, that the effective obsolecense of current bottom of the barrel CPUs is much longer than it was say 10 years ago.

I recently upgraded my P3 600Mhz to an Athlon XP 1700+. I had a problem with my Slot 1 mobo, and couldn't find a reliable source for a working slot 1 mobo to replace it. So the only option was to upgrade to the cheapest available mobo/cpu combo that I could find.

I would have *loved* to have stayed with the P3 600. I wasn't anywhere near using up all of the power provided by that CPU. I only upgraded because of externally forced obselesense (no one sells slot 1 mobos anymore) not because the software I'm trying to make use of can no longer function effectively at those speeds... and yes, I do my "apt-get update && apt-get -u upgrade" under debian unstable, so I'm not just sitting on some really old software.

My point is that, except for a minority of applications (3d games, raytracing, et al), I'm having a difficult time figuring out why I need a CPU that measures its clock speed in GHz, much less multiple GHz.

--
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Re:Hurry Up! by WNight · 2003-02-10 06:21 · Score: 1

Are you on crack? What is "technically fast" supposed to mean? If anything, the actual 3Ghz processor that only performs on par with the actual 2.2Ghz CPU is the one playing technicality games.

Ignore the numbers, buy based on performance, which from the FS benchmarks is within 5% either way.

I'd buy a 200Mhz system if it'd play Doom3 faster than a P4-5Ghz. It's all about what it can do, not what the specs are.
Re:Hurry Up! by oconnorcjo · 2003-02-10 06:30 · Score: 1

When I buy a computer, I don't look at what things I would be doing with it today, I would also think what I would be doing with it in the future. While 3+GHz might be overkill right now, is it overkill few years down the road?
That is waisting money. The economical way to buy cpu/motherboards is to buy "low end" CPU's every 12 - 18 months. The the $400 dollar CPU is $50 dollars 12 months later.
If you buy a "low end" CPU every 12 months, you spend $50 dollars a year on a CPU or you spend $400+ dollars every two years (if you want to keep up with the guy who is buying a cpu every year). The "cheapo guy" stays very well up to date at around $50 a year while the luxury guy winds up averaging around $200 a year.
The "Cheapo guy" in the beginning is one generation behind but at the end he is one generation ahead and he never really ever thinks his apps run slow.
The "Luxury guy" sees his performance really slick at first but starts to see his apps really slowing down before he spends alot on a new CPU.
The "Super Luxury guy" buys a $400 CPU every year despite the old one being perfectly fine just so he can say to his friends "1 rulz ju".
The economical choice for price/performance is second generation CPU's updated 12 - 18 months.
It is how I have been upgrading my machine for the last 4 years. I also do that with graphics cards, motherboards, monitors, printers and etc. Second generation incremental upgrades cost me about $300 - $500 dollars a year (depending on how close to high end I want to slide). If I wanted to buy my machine new, with all the extra's I have in it, would cost me $1600 brand new. Instead, I bought my machine in 1999 for $1100 and added/upgraded it at about $400 dollars a year which in total cost me about 2,700 dollars but my machine always chugs along at a fairly good clip (in comparison to everyone else) and I give away spare parts to friends and family such as several sticks of sdr ram when I went over to ddr ram, (motherboards/cpu's and etc. all the time). The parts I give away are still quite usefull for people who are not on as fast an upgrade cycle as I am (such as those people who buy high end systems every two to four years).
Ok I have rambled for long enough. The point is that math and common sense say paying the premium for the latest and greatest does not work out even in the long run.

--
I miss the Karma Whores.
Re:Hurry Up! by dnoyeb · 2003-02-10 06:34 · Score: 1

The task you specified is taxing on the harddrive not the CPU. Not many harddrives can handle an uncompressed video stream...in real time.
Re:Hurry Up! by dnoyeb · 2003-02-10 06:36 · Score: 1

That is flawed.

With CPUs it is cheaper to buy only what you _currently_ need as their value depreciates even faster than an automobile's.

2100+ $100
2800+ $400

Their is absolutely no way you can justify buying a 2800+ based on future needs.
Re:Hurry Up! by ergo98 · 2003-02-10 06:47 · Score: 1

The task you specified is taxing on the harddrive not the CPU.

Err, no, it's taxing on the CPU: I can stream it from one HD to the other in less than 10 minutes, and given that I'm using two hard drives, one purely as a source for the large AVI, it can easily read the data far faster than the processor could ever imagine of processing it.

I'm not sure what sort of hard drives you have, but mine can sequentially read about 40MB/second, which is far faster than the speed that the CPU can process it. Indeed I can actually watch the uncompressed AVI in real time.
Re:Hurry Up! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 07:37 · Score: 0

"You could also say that Ferrari are kicking Ford's ass, since they make a faster car - it just doesn't work like that..."

I thought Ford owns Ferrari (Well ford own Fiat which owns Ferrari). If I'm not mistaken.
Re:Hurry Up! by 10Ghz · 2003-02-10 08:51 · Score: 1

Do you actually buy computer products with the full expectation of not needing the power until years down the road?

That's not what I meant. What I meant was that I could use 3+GHz computer right now. It would make compiling faster, I could run games at higher settings (assuming the vid-card is similar calibre to the CPU), I could make .ogg and mp3-files faster etc. etc. So of course that CPU-power would not be wasted. What I meant was that down the road when software starts to use more CPU-power, my COU is still uo to the task. Had I chosen a slower CPU, I might need to upgrade.

FYI, my current CPU is 700MHz Duron overclocked to 840MHz. I bought it about 2.5 years ago (if I remember correctly). It is starting to show it's age, but I'm holding out as long as I can. When I upgrade (thinking about either Hammer or Prescott right now), I will NOT buy the absolute top-of-the-line CPU, since the price on those is astronomical. But I will not buy a cheap CPU either. My next CPU will be near the top of the performance-charts, but it will not be at the absolute top.

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Re:Hurry Up! by 10Ghz · 2003-02-10 08:54 · Score: 1

That is waisting money. The economical way to buy cpu/motherboards is to buy "low end" CPU's every 12 - 18 months. The the $400 dollar CPU is $50 dollars 12 months later.

While it might be economical, it may not be smart. That low-end CPU might be good at running older software well, but how about newer software? New software demand more and more from CPU's, they might be affected negatively by choosing a slower CPU.

But, like I said in my other reply, I don't buy absolute top-of-the-line CPU's since the price is rally high when compared to the performance they offer. I would rather buy a CPU that is step or two below the current top-model. Performance is still really good, but the price is alot lower.

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Re:Hurry Up! by 10Ghz · 2003-02-10 08:58 · Score: 1

Hey, up to you, though. Some folks like having the latest and greatest--that's part of the thrill. What sucks is when someone else comes in 9 months later and buys the same capability for half the price...

Welcome to the world of computers. That is a fact, learn to live with it.

And I don't buy the absolutely state of the art components. Orice on those is really high. But I don't really go to the low-end either. For example, if I were buying a vid-card right now, I propably would not choose Radeon 9700pro. I would propably get a Radeon 9500pro. Good performance, less price. And I don't upgrade often. My current machine (700MHz Duron @ 840Mhz, GF2 GTS) was bought about 2.5 years ago (if my memory serves me right). After that there hasn't been any upgrades (well, I did get two additional sticks of RAM)

--
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Re:Hurry Up! by dr.badass · 2003-02-10 09:04 · Score: 1

While 3+GHz might be overkill right now, is it overkill few years down the road?

Yes. Hell, for most applications, 1GHz is overkill
now, and it's been how long since we hit
that point? Now, I'm all for making long-term
investments, but it's hard to justify an extra
$600 for just a processor, when I can get a
whole 1GHz+ machine for as much that will last just
as long.

The money saved can be used to buy things in the
meantime, like ice cream. Everybody likes ice cream.

--
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Re:Hurry Up! by oconnorcjo · 2003-02-10 09:43 · Score: 1

While it might be economical, it may not be smart. That low-end CPU might be good at running older software well, but how about newer software? New software demand more and more from CPU's, they might be affected negatively by choosing a slower CPU.
You can buy an Athlon XP 1700+ for $70 including shipping/handling, with Fan and 3 year warenty. There is no App. out there that is not snappy on this little critter. In 12 months buy an Athlon XP 3000 for $70 dollars if you feel anything is a tad bit slow. Is waiting a little while to get reasonable prices for hardware that big a deal to you? If so blow your money on the most expensive CPU you can find. Most benchmarks I look at show nothing to impress me enough to go out and get a $400 CPU which is over 5X the price but less than 2X the performance (especially when next year, I will be able to get that $400 CPU for $70 but of course you will be drooling over the AMD Opteron 5000 which will cost you 500+ dollars). Staying on the bleading edge of hardware is just expensive. It is just not worth it to get 10 or 20 fps more in Jedi Knight or compiling a rediculously big application (and it has to be huge in order for the compile times to be noticable) a few extra seconds quicker. It just doesn't add up to spending 5X-6X the price for something that is LESS than 2X the performance. And if you look at benchmarks of "general use" applications, you often don't even see THAT much of an improvement (more on the order of ~50% faster) because MOST applications are not all that CPU bound (disk I/O, memory bandwith, and peripherals like a graphics card often have a larger factor).

--
I miss the Karma Whores.
Re:Hurry Up! by Anonvmous+Coward · 2003-02-10 11:33 · Score: 1

"Are you serious? Do you actually buy computer products with the full expectation of not needing the power until years down the road?"

Yes. I am a gamer.
Re:Hurry Up! by boskone · 2003-02-10 11:35 · Score: 1

let me make a wild guess. blew the capacitors on the board?

I've seen this a few times. My aunt's p3/500 slot 1 was about 3X what she needed, but when the mobo died, the best idea was an athlon xp2100 with new memory and mobo. all told like $250 and now she can use this until the hardware dies again.
Re:Hurry Up! by mjh · 2003-02-10 16:23 · Score: 1

No actually, it wasn't as obvious as that. I could start the system, get into the bios all day long, like nothing was wrong, start the boot process, but as soon as I got to checking the partition table on the hard drive, hard lock.

At first I thought it was the hard drive. Nope. It worked just fine in another computer. In fact it and the cables and everything are in the new xp1700+. I also thought it might have been the ide bus on the mobo. Nope. Stuck a seperate IDE card in and the exact same thing happened. Then I thought it might have been the power supply. Nope, not that either. Got an entirely new p/s and the exact same problem.

Now, to be truthful, I never found another slot 1 mobo. So I don't know if the problem was w/ the mobo or the cpu. But that combination was the only thing that consitantly broke stuff and in the exact same place everytime: while trying to read the disk's partition table.

But yeah, $250 later (new mobo, cpu, memory and case) it's working again.

--
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Re:Hurry Up! by Deflatamouse! · 2003-02-10 16:27 · Score: 1

I'd like to add that the market mentioned is also the most lucrative market and is one of the reasons Intel's financials stays in the black while AMD's are in the red.

If they keep the red up, they'll soon join Alphas in CPU heaven.
Re:Hurry Up! by Deflatamouse! · 2003-02-10 16:51 · Score: 1

This reminds me of a corollary to Moore's law. (Probably off topic):

If you have a job that takes 10 years to process with current technology, you can wait 18 months, assuming Moore's law holds, and buy a system twice as fast at the same price and complete the job in 5 years + 18 months total - 6.5 years total. And heck, you can wait 18 more months, then purchase a system that is 4X faster, and complete the job in 2.5 years + 36 months of wait time, a total of 5.5 years to complete your job. In the mean time, invest that money for 3 years (so you'd end up purchasing hardware that is more than 4 times faster).

Whether Moore's law will hold is another topic for someone else to ponder. :)
Re:Hurry Up! by Fjord · 2003-02-10 17:19 · Score: 1

I bought this way, and I'd do it again if I had a bigger hardware budget. I didn't buy the top rated chip, though, since it always has an extra bump in the price, maybe for the brag factor. But the second highest chip, that I'd buy. The reason being that the computer would last longer: 6 years later it would still be useable. And since I need two computers, one for me and one for my wife, this means a computer purchase once every 3 years. And I disagree that I could buy a new systems 3 years from now that's 25% the cost of a a second best rated system of today. Used maybe, but there are often... issues with used hardware.

--
-no broken link
Re:Hurry Up! by kesuki · 2003-02-10 20:20 · Score: 1

Apparently you don't play warcraft III: Reign Of Chaos. Warcraft III does not run stable on athlon computer systems period. the only option you have it to turn off numerous graphic options until the crashes go from 'every 45 minutes' down to 'whenever it damn well feels like it, like when you're in a ladder map and about to kick thier butts, but they keep on farm hiding.'
oh and it's not a graphic driver issue. something about the war3 code causes it to forget where certain bits of memory are allocated, and then when they're not there anymore poof it crashes. IT does not effect pentium systems. only athlon CPU systems, even if you've got enough processor speed and the best radeon 9700 graphic card. you have to turn the graphic capabilities below that of the card simply to prevent warcraft from handling as much memory address space, reducing the risk of triggering the bug.
There is no patch, and it's entirely related to the way warcraft (and many other applications) are optomized that causes this bug in the athlon core to loose the address of the memory that the application needed. everything from DivX tools to sound drivers have had similar problems with this same athlon bug.
So the question is, who's fault is it? is it AMDs? the software developers? or could it even be a flaw in the compiler when making source that is athlon optomized?
The poster you replied to is wrong, however, people in buisness already buy AMD products. just because AMD products aren't as well supported, and are harder for developers to program for (very apparent due to the number of athlon related application problems I've seen) doesn't mean buisnesses won't buy them. buisnesses that are on a tight budget might just buy athlon systems, because who cares if warcraft III won't run with particles turned on with it. who cares if yoru workers can't get DivX tools to rip a DVD because it crashes half way through with a memory error. as long as word and ie run fine then it's just as good as any pentium system.

--
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Re:Hurry Up! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 21:36 · Score: 0

Apparently you don't play warcraft III: Reign Of Chaos. Warcraft III does not run stable on athlon computer systems period. the only option you have it to turn off numerous graphic options until the crashes go from 'every 45 minutes' down to 'whenever it damn well feels like it, like when you're in a ladder map and about to kick thier butts, but they keep on farm hiding.'

So, are you inventing things or just generally talking from your ass?

I don't know if he does. I did, for some months on summer, didn't much like the game but I _did_ play the single player campaign trough. Never ever crashed, on Athlon system. My friend plays so much he's almost additec to it, on K7 system, never complains about crashes. Nor do any other programs, nor does google know anything about your war3 bug.

You've got something wrong in your system, of course it's easy to make it some generic bug in all athlons instead of fixing it, but oh well.
Re:Hurry Up! by juhaz · 2003-02-10 21:48 · Score: 1

Actually I choose which servers and desktops the company I work for purchases. I'd like to think that I have a rather large amount of sense (over 10 years in the industry). I do not listen to what any sales people tell me, rather I rely upon experience and what external advisors, such as Gatner Group tell me about the hardware.

<Sarcasm>Oh yeah, well might you tell why are you spewing long dispelled myths then?</Sarcasm>
Might be time to get some real experience and get bit more reliable "advisors"

Also, many people don't seem to realise that Intel has many advantages over AMD a few that spring to mind are:

And good thing that they don't. As most of those "advantages" seem to be in your imagination.

Less power consumption (which makes a large difference over 20,000 desktops and 1000 multiprocessor servers)

Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton) typical/max: 58.4W / 74.3W
Pentium 4 3.06 GHz typical/max: 81W / ~105W

Indeed, with 20k processors, this makes 452kW (avg), 614kW (max) difference. To AMD's advantage, that is.

Self shutdown - if the heatsink falls off an Intel processor, it throttles itself down until it stops, if required, so that it doesn't burn, whereas an AMD chip just burns.

New Athlon systems do shut themselves down if overheating.

Less heat - this is a major issue in a datacenter

Production of heat is directly proportional to power consumption, so AMD wins here as well.

Descent cache levels - 2Mb in the current Forster chip set Xeons.

AMD does not have any chips with huge cache, true, and it may lose some of the server market due to this, but on desktop machines, nobody uses these.
Re:Hurry Up! by Fallen_Knight · 2003-02-10 22:44 · Score: 1

Makeing divx look nice, like really nice, requires tweaking and some skill. Also useing OGG for sound would give even more benifits over WMA. personally i don't ever use WM because i find the quality totaly lacking from well done divx encodes. IIRC look up SBC divx for the good methold.

From what i've experianced the best codecs are first used by movie rippers because they can force people to install new codecs. And i've never seen a ripped movie done with WM, thou maybe thats becauses the rippers hate MS...

3+ months ago a friend was watching bird of prey eps in a OGG container with X-Vid encodeing, 45 min, great qual, so great i was just stunned at the quality. and at a pretty large rez to. Size wasn't all that small, about 400 megs, but hey, it looked damn good and harddrives are getting cheaper=)
Re:Hurry Up! by bittmann · 2003-02-12 02:45 · Score: 1

My current machine (700MHz Duron @ 840Mhz, GF2 GTS)

I'm with ya, bud. Compared to mine, your setup rocks...700MHz Athlon classic, Voodoo 3500.

It's *just now* getting to be a bit of a bother. UT2003 Texture compression needs binary drivers (I'm mainly a Linux guy--can't yet get sourcecode for S3's intellectual property), and the V3500 that *used* to be able to run everything at 1024x768 with all eyecandy on is starting to force me backward in the newer games (Wolfenstein 3d at 800x600 at "medium eyecandy", etc).

With all of the socket/architecture revving that's been happening lately, it's getting harder to do component upgrades -- you pretty much need to replace the motherboard and go up from there. But hey...with prices the way they are today, I'm not complaining! Running a recent-but-still-inexpensive Athlon at a 333 MHz bus (synchronous with DDRam), and talking to a capable video card at 8x AGP sounds a LOT better to me than trying to push more out of an old (PII) BX or (AMD-based) Via *133 mobo. Bang for the buck, etc.

Looking *really* hard at a Barton 2500+ (when it comes out!) or a T'bred 2400+ or better on a NForce2 (with 512MB dual-channel DDR3200 or 3700), and a Radeon 9500 Pro. Still a hair over $600, though. I can wait...Hardware just gets cheaper and faster. And when I jump, it's gonna be *sweet*.
Re:Hurry Up! by dnoyeb · 2003-02-12 09:21 · Score: 1

I dont believe you. 40MB/s? you scsi or some fast drive? Or you have a really small resolution and window on the video you are streaming?

40MB/second is faster than most network cards. How can a moving device perform faster than a non-moving one? Maybe you are looking at the burst speed of your cache. when streaming the cache is really not the speed you want to look at.

on the AnimationMaster mailing list they are always talking about the speed of the drive being the bottle neck, compression/decompression is quite fast.
Re:Hurry Up! by ergo98 · 2003-02-12 14:21 · Score: 1

40MB/second is faster than most network cards. How can a moving device perform faster than a non-moving one?

ATA-133 is 133MB/second per channel. I have two 7200 RPM drives, each on their own 133MB/second channel. Both drives can read and write from 20-40MB/second, depending upon the section of the drive that it is writing and the fragmentation, and if you'd check any review you'd find that 20MB/second is an absolute minimum for current drives, and 40MB is average. Given this, the 11.5GB 60 minute uncompressed AVI takes less than 10 minutes to read. Now, remembering that current systems are busmastered, that means that this is not additive with compression, but rather the weakest link is the most important point (i.e. if the hard drive took 59 minutes and the compression took 60 minutes, then the combination would take about 61 minutes, not 59 minutes + 60 minutes).

The hard drive isn't even remotely, but a factor of about 100:1, the weakest link in this equation, but instead a faster processor means everything.
Re:Hurry Up! by fragged+one · 2003-02-21 09:00 · Score: 0

i'm not sure what crack you're smoking, but warcraft 3 is a chump of a game. played it on my athlon 2000 w/ a geforce 3 ti200, no crashes, ran quite smoothly.

you shouldn't generalize a problem you have as a problem everyone will have. i've never heard of warcraft having problems with athlons, and have never experienced it. the website for warcraft says nothiing about it.

lay off the crack, and learn a bit more about computers.

--
if it wasn't for that horse, i wouldn't have spent that year in college.....

worth it??? by tanveer1979 · 2003-02-10 01:07 · Score: 3, Interesting

According to extremetech...
There is 1.1 fps improvement for Jedi knight,
and this comes at 200$+ Isnt it better to invest this money in a graphics card...

Other benchmarks also dont show marked improvement. I guess this is due to delays introduced by the much larger die size...
AMD's botched it for sure this time. I hope they bring down the pricing to a more sensible level.

--
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Re:worth it??? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:21 · Score: 0

But for us bajillionaires, after we buy the super incredible video card upgrade to get the extra .9fps it provides over the previous, then we must buy the newer cpu. After you have 3 gigs of DDR 3500 memory running on your nforce2 mb, the fastest video card, dual 10,000rpm s-ata raid and a 4 disk 10,000 rpm scsi raid array, the hottest sound card on the market, plus the latest $2000 speakers, what are you going to buy? A new CPU of course. You need something to make the games look good on your 50" plasma screen.
Re:worth it??? by KDan · 2003-02-10 01:40 · Score: 1

Yeah, isn't life tough for today's bajillionaire?

Daniel

--
Carpe Diem
Re:worth it??? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:48 · Score: 0

I don't think Jedi Knight is a good benchmark... I doubt that today's games have their bottelneck in the cpu but in the graphic's chip. In fact, I think that general purpose chips have turned less and less important for desktops... the only processing-intensive applications are games or multimedia aplications, so... let the graphic's chips rock!
Re:worth it??? by grazzy · 2003-02-10 04:05 · Score: 1

who cares about jedi knight? there are people out there using their computers for real work (tm) things - like crunching numbers. cache matters.
Re:worth it??? by Sloppy · 2003-02-10 04:37 · Score: 1

The flagship products are always expensive. There are people out there who think they need to have the #1 fastest chip of the family, so that everyone will know they have the biggest penis on the block. The pricing structure is set up to exploit these people.
Wait a couple of months until the 3100+ or 3200+ is out, and the 3000+ will cost somewhere around $250 total. And then it'll be less than $200 a few months later. It's always like that.

--
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Re:worth it??? by turgid · 2003-02-10 05:45 · Score: 1

It would be worth it to me if I were in the market for a new machine. I have a K6-2/500. It would probably be about a factor of 10 faster. However, I'm waiting for Hammer. 32-bit is so 15-years-ago.

--
Stick Men
Re:worth it??? by Spellbinder · 2003-02-10 08:01 · Score: 1

yeah and of course i have got a banner out of my window stating:
"w4tch m3!!!!!!!! 1 g0t t3h bigg3st p3n1s 0n t3h bl0ck!!!!! 1 g0t a n3w 3000+ cPu"

--

stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!

Fast! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:07 · Score: 2, Funny

I think it's fast. Gigaherz, sure sounds fast.
GIIIIGGGGAAAAAHHHEEEEEEERTTTTZZZZZZ, cool.

Needs more penis though.
2.7GhzPenis now that's fast!

Thx.

Re:Fast! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 09:06 · Score: 0

2.7GPenishz now THAT's fast!

Thx.
Re:Fast! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 12:16 · Score: 0

I never put "2.7" and "penis" in the same sentence..

maybe thats just me ...

Aussie Athlon? by CountZero007 · 2003-02-10 01:08 · Score: 5, Funny

Yay, a processor code-named after our first Prime Minister :)

I'm never buying a 'Keating' or 'Howard' though...

--
-- Shaun "Blessed are the geeks, for they shall Internet the earth"

Re:Aussie Athlon? by TheGratefulNet · 2003-02-10 04:15 · Score: 1

hey, don't have a cow, man, but it was the other Bart they named it after. Ay Caramba!

--

--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Re:Aussie Athlon? by cabraverde · 2003-02-10 04:58 · Score: 2, Funny

Just be glad you're not in the UK. No Brit in their right mind would buy a Prescott - unreliable, bloated, and generates hot air like nothing you've ever seen.

Intel should really do their market research outside of the USA, too.
Re:Aussie Athlon? by smithmc · 2003-02-10 06:27 · Score: 1

Yay, a processor code-named after our first Prime Minister... I'm never buying a 'Keating' or 'Howard' though...

Gee, is this an Aussie joke or an Ayn Rand joke?

--
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Re:Aussie Athlon? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 10:13 · Score: 0

Bah, she is insecure, and has a sook about it. Is this what passes for philosophy now? BAH. Don't put her and Australia in the same sentence!

Mixing the cards... no wait: cores. by Max+Romantschuk · 2003-02-10 01:10 · Score: 4, Informative

We've now got Palomino, Thoroughbread A, Thoroughbread B and Barton under the Athlon XP name. To make things worse, some of the chips are using a 133 MHz FSB (Front Side Bus), and some 166.

Due to this and AMD's PR ratings you have to be real careful of what you buy, if you're aming for a specific core. Expecially since AMD doesn't plan to replace all Athlon XPs with the new core.

Just remember to do your research, and you'll be fine :)

--
.: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/

Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: cores. by Luminous+Coward · 2003-02-10 03:10 · Score: 5, Informative

Just remember to do your research, and you'll be fine.

One can read the AMD Processor Recognition document which explains how to extract the information from the Ordering Part Number (OPN).

AMD Processor Ordering Part Number (OPN) Breakdown

AXDA 2700 D K V 3 D ^^^^ ^^^^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ -1-- -2-- 3 4 5 6 7

(1) Processor Core Architecture/Brand Name
(2) Model Number
(3) Package Type
(4) Operating Voltage(Nominal Core Voltage)
(5) Maximum Die Temperature
(6) Level 2 Cache Size
(7) Maximum System-Bus (Front-Side-Bus) Speed

(1) Processor Core Architecture/Brand Name

(only Thoroughbred and Barton cores are 0.13 m)
AXDA ----- AMD Athlon XP -- 0.13 m AX ------- AMD Athlon XP -- 0.18 m AMSN ----- AMD Athlon MP -- 0.13 m AMP/AHX -- AMD Athlon MP -- 0.18 m K7/A ----- AMD Athlon ----- 0.18 m

(6) Level 2 Cache Size
1 -- 64 KB 2 -- 128 KB 3 -- 256 KB 4 -- 512 KB (only Barton cores have a 512 KB L2 cache)

(7) Maximum System-Bus Speed
B -- 200 MHz C -- 266 MHz D -- 333 MHz
Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: cores. by NomNet · 2003-02-10 21:22 · Score: 2, Informative

We've now got Palomino, Thoroughbread A, Thoroughbread B and Barton under the Athlon XP name. To make things worse, some of the chips are using a 133 MHz FSB (Front Side Bus), and some 166.
Due to this and AMD's PR ratings you have to be real careful of what you buy, if you're aming for a specific core. Expecially since AMD doesn't plan to replace all Athlon XPs with the new core.
You're right. A much better idea is Intel's method, where everytime the CPU is updated, they change the pin-count/function so it becomes incompatible with every existing Motherboard. Er, no. That's rubbish :)
The Athlon's universal compatibility is one of it's great features - buy a brand new Motherboard today, and it will run ANY variation of Athlon, from the early 700MHz jobbies, to the latest 3000+, and all variants in between, and all the Durons. Obviously you can't always run a newer chip in an older board, for obvious reasons :)
Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: cores. by HoboMaster · 2003-02-11 06:43 · Score: 1

Umm... most companies do specify which one you're buying... (I know Fry's certainly does, they have the different ones seperated and labeled as such)
Just pay attention and you shouldn't have a problem

--
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Linux? by Amsterdam+Vallon · 2003-02-10 01:11 · Score: 3, Troll

Why are the real life bench-mark specs always just about very theoreticial things rather than real life software? The software, if they *do* decide to test it, is usally either a MCSFT or Novell application or some other Windows-only piece of code in which the interests of us Linux folks is surely unsatisifed.

Therefore I really encourage these producers like AMD to start benchmarking Linux applications for their new procs. For example, run a %top instance and then run a few different programs: for example 1) a C++ app... 2) a JAVA app... 3) and perhaps a compile of the Linux kernel (2.2x series though, not 3.x).

That would indicate a great deal of things including thruput and FSB calculations as well as hard disk access times in conjunction with a fast CPU.

We want to no what we're getting here so don't give us QUAKE III marks, give us Linux benchmarks that reflect real life computer code!

--

Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.

Re:Linux? by Eivind · 2003-02-10 01:17 · Score: 1

2.2 and not 3.0 series ?
What are you smoking man ? What's wrong with 2.4 ? The current stable kernel, which has been so for over a year... 3.0 would be rather hard to benchmark since it doesn't even exist yet, what *Does* exist is 2.5.* which migth become 2.6 or 3.0 (whatever Linus decides) once it's done.
Re:Linux? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:27 · Score: 0

He was talking about the compiler, I guess.
Re:Linux? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:53 · Score: 0

Do you really think that CPU is that vital to current performance? If you think twice, SPECCPU2000 is a good candidate for performance measurement... in fact, the SPEC INT include gcc as a benchmark, the most cpu-intensive piece of code you will ever use in linux :) And... they already give you SPEC INT numbers! So... why creating a new set?
Re:Linux? by minkwe · 2003-02-10 02:04 · Score: 1

What about engineering and scientific applications. Those are almost always absent from benchmarks. I wonder why. And the SPEC results are not always easy to compare. A few molecular dynamics or quantum chemical calculations should really stress the CPUs. That is where the higher cache will most likely be beneficial. Most of the code is free so there is no reason they can't include one of these: GROMACS, GAMESS-UK

---
If cars were open sourced, there would be at least five steering wheels in the cockpit, each operating differently -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo.

--
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."
Re:Linux? by 4of12 · 2003-02-10 02:49 · Score: 1
give us Linux benchmarks that reflect real life computer code!

You have a good point, although it could be argued that all benchmarks are artificial, never to be seen outside the controlled laboratory environment. That being the case, you'll need to develop the same sense of skepticism and comparison between
- the hardware you're running now, with Linux
- the benchmarks for "similar" software on Windows on the same dated hardware
in order to get an estimate of how well the new hardware will perform on your mix of Linux applications.
But your point is a good one in one sense.

Linux is comparitively dirt cheap relative to buying all those Windows licenses, so that the proportion of your overall IT costs going to hardware is greater. That being the case, Linux users really want to get the best price/performance hardware they can.

OTOH, you could just as well argue that the Windows IT shops are so strapped for case having to shell out for Software Assurance whatnot, that they are particularly starved of funds and really have to find the best deal on hardware they can get.

I'd be curious if there's any correlation between what OS is running on what brand/age of hardware in the big co-lo shops.

Anyone?
--
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Re:Linux? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:28 · Score: 0

troll?

i swear microsoft is seeding slashdot with saboteurs.

the mods here are borderline absurd.

here's to all the moderators who are sympathetic to the troll mod the parent got...

FOAD you microsoft bitches
Re:Linux? by w42w42 · 2003-02-10 04:16 · Score: 1

I'm lost - how can the above possibly be moderated as troll?

I absolutely agree with the parent poster though. I develop server side java apps, and have development servers running on my machine. How will the newest batch of processors serve this? Would Intels hyperthreading give me a significant improvement in desktop response? Would a dual processor AMD setup do the job?

I'll admit that game players drive the performance market, but they are not the only ones that can utilize that capability.

Re:Fakery by joebp · 2003-02-10 01:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

the AMD marketing department should place a call over to Intel and ask to coordinate a marketing campaign explaining the irrelavency of clock speed

Good point, except this will never happen. Intel have based their marketing around the clockspeed, and to go back on that would be distasterous for them.

AMD have to pander to the 'OMG 3.2 Gigawats is better than 2.3Googawits!' idiocy.

Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: dough by CountZero007 · 2003-02-10 01:15 · Score: 2, Funny

"Thoroughbread"?

mmm, freshly baked Athlon

--
-- Shaun "Blessed are the geeks, for they shall Internet the earth"

Re:Fakery by meringuoid · 2003-02-10 01:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

This type of fakery only serves to deceive the consumer, instead of informing then. Instead of lying to the very people who pay their salary, the AMD marketing department should place a call over to Intel and ask to coordinate a marketing campaign explaining the irrelavency of clock speed and deciding a more appropriate way to base the performance of their chips.

The people who care about the difference between AMDese and real megahertz, already know. Joe Public doesn't honestly care; an Athlon 2000 is a match for a Pentium IV 2000, and that's all that really matters. AMD aren't on the fiddle; they've been entirely fair with the ratings at which they market their chips (and the temptation to inflate a little would be considerable...)

As for asking Intel nicely to help out AMD's marketing department, what colour is the sky where you live? The Pentium IV is designed to get big megahertz at the expense of actual performance; why would Intel throw away their chip's advantage like that?

--
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.

AMD may be too late for Hammer in Sept. by dethl · 2003-02-10 01:18 · Score: 3, Interesting

IBM should have their Power970's out at least a month ahead...I don't remember where, but I heard they were going to release it in the 3rd Quarter of this year, presumably along with Apple's new release of a new (G5?) Power Macintosh, or XServe (just a rumor, don't flame me), although it may not go into full production until the end of the year. What about the Itanium 2? I haven't heard anything about that. Unless its not for desktops and only for servers. If that is the case, what is Intel coming out with to join the 64-bit desktop wars?

--
"Some fight for law. Some fight for justice. What will you fight for? One day, you will see."

Re:AMD may be too late for Hammer in Sept. by ultrabot · 2003-02-10 01:27 · Score: 1

Remember that Opteron, AMD's 64 bit server chip, will ship before Athlon 64. Shipping Athlon 64 before MS ships x86-64 windows wouldn't make much sense, considering how small the market for such a powerfull linux desktop is at the moment - while Linux will Ki11 on Opteron.

--
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak

Comparing to the P4 3.06... by Junior+J.+Junior+III · 2003-02-10 01:19 · Score: 5, Funny

however, it doesn't unilaterally stand up to the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4.

Well, of course not... if it did, they'd be calling it the Athlon XP 3060, wouldn't they? ;)

--
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!

Re:Comparing to the P4 3.06... by MrEd · 2003-02-10 03:33 · Score: 1

I'm don't know about you, but I'm saving my money for the Athlon XP 3030+, codename 'Deltron'.

--
Wah!

Re:Fakery by HoneyBunchesOfGoats · 2003-02-10 01:24 · Score: 2, Informative

I concur, but I doubt this will happen, as such a spec for direct performace comparison (1) is difficult to do, as performance can be quite different depending on the intended application; and (2) would hamper each company's marketing efforts.

For an quick read on some of the issues associated with different benchmarks, you could look here.

Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: dough by Max+Romantschuk · 2003-02-10 01:25 · Score: 0, Redundant

"Thoroughbread"?

Yup... mispelled there... such is life :)

--
.: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/

overkill by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:27 · Score: 1, Insightful

I'm still using a pentium 3 on my workstations, but I recently upgraded a server to XP 2ghz and it does help for CPU intensive stuff like parsing text or XML. Other than doing benchmarks or running heavy weight apps, anything over 1ghz is pointless for average user. You're better off getting a 1ghz with 1gig of ram.

Re:overkill by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 06:37 · Score: 0

hmmmm...that's the same thing you were saying about the Pentium III a couple of years ago
Re:overkill by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 12:11 · Score: 0

1 G of ram is overkill for an average user!
256MB is enough for XP and average computer usage, not 1 G!

Out of curiosity by Timesprout · 2003-02-10 01:28 · Score: 5, Interesting

From the article on Ace Harware

This exclusive 512 KB L2-cache works together with the 128 KB L1-cache (64 KB data, 64 KB instruction) to form one impressive 640 KB on-die cache. According to AMD, the extra 256 KB cache boosts, an 2170 MHz Athlon XP from a 2700+ level to a 3000+ one.

If this is the case why do AMD, and Intel for that matter not put ever larger amounts of cache on their existing chips to achieve better performance ? Does the cost implications completely prohibit this or do the performance benefits tail off too quickly. SUN seem to able to achieve impressive performance with lower far lower Mhz (I know its different architecture) but I get the impression the large amounts of cache (2-4 MB) they use contributes significantly to performance.

--
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe

Re:Out of curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:31 · Score: 1, Informative

The cache memory has to run VERY VERY fast, and VERY VERY fast memory is very expensive, so yes, there is a cost consideration. In an earlier example, the AMD's K6-3 was significantly faster than the K6-2 because it had a large cache.
Re:Out of curiosity by eddy · 2003-02-10 01:37 · Score: 3, Informative

Too expensive, especially in terms of yields. The cache use a _large_ area of the die. Larger core, more room for defects.

--
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Re:Out of curiosity by AeternitasXIII · 2003-02-10 01:57 · Score: 5, Informative

Does the cost implications completely prohibit this or do the performance benefits tail off too quickly. SUN seem to able to achieve impressive performance with lower far lower Mhz (I know its different architecture) but I get the impression the large amounts of cache (2-4 MB) they use contributes significantly to performance.

Yes, cache is terribly expensive to place on chips in large amounts. It tends to be much harder to shrink than the rest of the transistors on the chip, and the design work necessary to scale the cache to meet the ever shrinking die size is complex and harsh. Overall, with consumer chips that need to be under a certain price threshold to be purchased, Intel and AMD have both found its far cheaper to keep increasing clock speed while decreasing die size than it is to increase cache.

My guess is that this latest move by AMD is an update to that mentality. It proceeds along their realization that they might be unable to compete solely on the grounds of clockspeed. However, with the decreasing performance returns for clockspeed increases, this is less of an issue for AMD than one would think. This new core seems to indicate its becoming cheaper for their engineers to spend more time on chip design as well as use the limited die space for cache rather than other components.
Re:Out of curiosity by foobar3149 · 2003-02-10 02:00 · Score: 5, Informative

The yield drops roughly quadratically with area of the chip. So, if the L2 cache occupies 50% of the chip and we want to double the cache size, the yield would drop to roughly 44% of the original yield. To make up for this the price would have to more than double and I do not believe that most people buying desktops are willing to accept that.
Re:Out of curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 02:33 · Score: 2, Informative

To give you an idea of the costs involved for the cache difference (from the Sun parts list):
US2-400Mhz - 2Mb cache = $3895
US2-400Mhz - 4Mb cache = $4795
US2-450Mhz - 8Mb cache = $6695

I can't seem to find any price for the "US2-400Mhz - 8 Mb" in their list, but from memory it was around $6500.

I think you would find the same kind of price difference between Intel Xeon cpus with different levels of cache.

Sun also had some very bad PR way back in 2000-2001 with the Ecache errors on the 8Mb series (the cache was not ECC ram). Those CPUs caused the systems to panic randomly and the problem was only totally fixed by shipping a new revision with mirrored caches (they first tried fixing it with an OS patch)
Re:Out of curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 02:43 · Score: 0

Does anyone remember the AMD K6-3?

It was the same as the AMD K6-2 except it had twice the cache. While the K6-2 almost matched the Intel Peniutm 2 MHz for MHz, the AMD K6-3 almost matched the Intel Pentium 3.

You would have thought that is would be the AMD K6-2 that would fade from people's memories. But, alas, it was the AMD K6-3 that is now a fuzzy memory.

Will history repeat itself? Is this the death knoll for AMD CPUs?

Or is this the lull before the storm? After all, when the AMD Athlon arrived on the scene everyone sat up and noticed. This happened not too long after it was clear that the AMD K6-3 was not earth shattering.

Shall we expect the same from the next generation AMD CPU? Could this latest CPU be testing the waters to see if it is time for change or to soak up the remaining market for this level of CPU before releasing their bad boy?

I hope so. I am looking forward to getting 200FPS (1024x768 32 bit colour) in Quake 3 using software rendering mode :-)
Re:Out of curiosity by Ed+Avis · 2003-02-10 02:52 · Score: 1

So a large area of cache means more chance of defects: defects in the cache. But if some part of the cache is bad, it ought to be possible to just use half of it and sell the chip as having 256Kbyte of cache.

It seems to me (knowing nothing about chip design) that there should be some way to specify which parts of the cache are bad. Perhaps the cache could operate as normal, but if an address being fetched turns out to be in a bad part of the cache, it counts as a cache miss and is fetched from main memory as normal. A few dozen bad spots in a 512Kbyte cache shouldn't affect performance that much. The yield should be greatly increased.

There must be some good reason why this doesn't work, else the chip manufacturers would be doing it already. What is that?

--
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Re:Out of curiosity by turgid · 2003-02-10 02:54 · Score: 1

I hope so. I am looking forward to getting 200FPS (1024x768 32 bit colour) in Quake 3 using software rendering mode :-)

I'm still using a K6-2 500 for my main box. It has 512MB of ECC RAM at 100MHz and the level 2 cache on the board is 2MB. The CPU has 64k of level 1 cache (that's 8 times that of the Pentium IV, which only has 8k!). I used to have an NVidia TNT2 Ultra (the AGP is only 2x) and got about 30fps on quake 3 at 1027x768, 32-bit colour. I upgraded to a GeForce4 MX440 and now I get around 45fps at the same resolution, and ~35fps at 1600x1200, 32-bit colour. I've found that cache size and hard disk performace are very important in terms of overall system performance. A fast hard disk is a great performance boost. Linux kernels (2.4.20) take around 12 minutes to build on this machine on a 7200rpm Western Digital hard disk on an ATA100 interface. So, the whole thing's quite useable still and it's in its fourth year of operation (it started out with 64MB RAM, 2.2 kernel and a 400MHz K6-2).

--
Stick Men
Re:Out of curiosity by TeknoHog · 2003-02-10 03:27 · Score: 1

The price of the chip is not simply due to manufacturing, it's also to do with fixed costs like R&D. So the effect of lower yield is not that drastic.

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Re:Out of curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:43 · Score: 0

A "few bad spots" in a 512kb cache would probably be slower than a 256kb cache a lot of the time. Programs currently are optimized to fit into the smaller cache sizes and you'd be allowing defects that cause extraordinarily expensive cache misses even when the cache wasn't particularly stressed by the program.
Re:Out of curiosity by Ed+Avis · 2003-02-10 04:13 · Score: 1

Suppose the cache holds 128k words and of those a dozen or so are bad. That means one in ten thousand accesses which would normally hit the cache have to go to main memory instead. If main memory is ten times slower than L2 cache, that's roughly a 0.1% slowdown. You could get unlucky and have a particular frequently-accessed address get assigned one of the cache bad spots, but in that case the address would be in L1 anyway.

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-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Re:Out of curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 04:16 · Score: 0

That would slow the chip down hugely, as it would need to check whether the address is 'good' or 'bad' on EVERY memory read.

No point selling an Athlon XP 3000 with 256kb of cache when it's going to run at 1/10 of that.
Re:Out of curiosity by workindev · 2003-02-10 04:16 · Score: 1

While yield may drop with a larger die size, a more important factor is the die size itself. If your wafer costs are $3000 per wafer, and a smaller chip can fit 400 die on each wafer but the larger chip can only fit 150, you are getting 62% less die for the same amount of money.
Re:Out of curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 04:20 · Score: 0

Small correction, before anyone nitpicks it:
"EVERY memory read/write"
Re:Out of curiosity by Sebastopol · 2003-02-10 04:50 · Score: 3, Interesting

A-yup.

That's one of the reasons AMD is losing hundreds of millions each quarter. They may have a 5% boost in perf from a fat cache, but they can only play that card once per architecture and it costs BUCKS to make it work. It's a stopgap measure AMD had to pull otherwise they'd have no product until spring, which would have been even more bad news for them. It's a sign AMD is flailing. Hopefully their new core will alleviate their suffering.

--
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Re:Out of curiosity by akuma(x86) · 2003-02-10 04:58 · Score: 1

When designing CPUs there is a constant re-evaluation of the costs and benefits of adding more cache. Adding more cache comes at the expense of spending that additional area on parts of the core processor which could have been used to improve performance (adding more execution units, more buffers, more registers, more decoders etc...)

The reason Sun has larger caches is because they want to optimize multiprocessor performance. In that scenario, the memory bus is an extremely valuable resource and reducing the amount of traffic to the bus by having a larger cache is more benficial than would be the case in a uniprocessor desktop. Their uniprocessor performance sucks. The UltraSPARC III is still an in-order processor (as opposed to the vastly superior out-of-order Pentiums and Athlons). Just check out their SPEC2000 scores.
Re:Out of curiosity by aes12 · 2003-02-10 05:03 · Score: 1

IIRC

In addition to the added cost, CISC processors are not as well suited to large amounts of cache as RISC chips. Of course, it helps, but the added performance is much smaller than the boost that a Sparc gets for doubling the cache. AMD is just trying to squeeze a few more months out of the Athlon architecture while waiting for Hammer.

IMHO, this chip looks to be a flop. The added cache didn't really help enough, and the PR numbers seem too high for the benchmark scores. If I were in the market for a state-of-the-art PC, I'd either wait for Hammer or just get Intel.
Re:Out of curiosity by jelle · 2003-02-10 05:08 · Score: 1

You'd still have only 2/3rd of the number of chips per wafer.

--
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Re:Out of curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 05:28 · Score: 0

I wouldn't bet on that with the volumes that you're talking about with Athlon processors.
Re:Out of curiosity by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 06:28 · Score: 0

Sun didn't even have to fix the Ecache errors my machines. They fought me so hard on support I finally gave up and never bought another Sun again. We're migrating over to Linux as our Suns die.
Re:Out of curiosity by HoboMaster · 2003-02-11 06:49 · Score: 1

That's one of the reasons AMD is losing hundreds of millions each quarter. Actually, the reason AMD is losing so much money is that they're losing business to Intel's damn effective marketing team (and slightly due to the fact that Intel pulled ahead with the 3.06, but that processor is such a small piece of the market share it hardly makes a difference)
The common person associates Pentium with all processors, jsut as they associate Windows with all OS's... It's called good marketing; they got people to know their name, and that led to (almost) all computer companies selling (almost) solely Intel processors...
Damn you AMD... learn how to market your processor...

--
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
Re:Out of curiosity by Ed+Avis · 2003-02-14 11:47 · Score: 1

It ought to be possible to have some fast checking of a small number of cache locations: if you can hardcode the defect list on the chip then a small number of gates can say 'yea' or 'nay' to any cache location given to it. It's not like doing some expensive lookup.

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-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com

How can you keep up with this crap? by MasterOfDisaster · 2003-02-10 01:36 · Score: 2, Funny

I just bought a 2000+, and I thought I was cool. Looks like I'll have to upgrade again. Can anyone lend me some LOX to cool this thing down?

--
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.

Re:How can you keep up with this crap? by meringuoid · 2003-02-10 01:59 · Score: 1

I just bought a 2000+, and I thought I was cool.

Yup, AOL to that. Except that there's nothing cool about Athlon 2000s, as I discovered the hard way when my heatsink catch went 'pwong!', the fan went 'fwip-fwip-FWIPFWIPFWIP' and the system as a whole went 'foom...'

Still, it was cheap enough. I'd have to pay through the nose to get seriously better performance; it represents the cash / power sweet spot for my budget. Still needs a decent video card, though; my Voodoo 4 is looking a little weedy in this beast:-)

--
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Re:How can you keep up with this crap? by dynoman7 · 2003-02-10 02:16 · Score: 1

You don't. You can't (unless you are independently wealthy or something).

Besides, you don't need to keep up with the Jones' anyway. I'm still running a Pent 133 for email and burning CD's. My main system is a PIII 733 that I didn't even pay for. I get *new to me* hardware from people who upgrade every year because they can't understand the difference between a slow computer and one that is heavily burdend with crap software.

Don't get me wrong...I keep up with the bleeding edge and boy oh boy would I like to play UT2003 on a system that yields more than 4fps. The bottom line is that I have better things to do (e.g. identify next girlfriend) and better things to spend my money on (e.g. again girlfriend).

--
Blarf.
Re:How can you keep up with this crap? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 07:21 · Score: 0

Yup, AOL to that. Except that there's nothing cool about Athlon 2000s, as I discovered the hard way when my heatsink catch went 'pwong!', the fan went 'fwip-fwip-FWIPFWIPFWIP' and the system as a whole went 'foom...'
Did you lose a REALLY GOOD PAPER?

Benchmarking... by ponos · 2003-02-10 01:36 · Score: 5, Interesting

Well it is quite clear that the Athlon
architecture is at the end of its useful life.
However,the performance difference is somewhat
"exaggerated" in favour of the P4. Most of the
"content creation" applications and games
are SSE2 enhanced while, on the other hand
3dnow is propably less popular. The hard fact,
of course, is that P4 needs less time in these
applications so it is faster (whatever the
reason).

However, for general purpose usage, I firmly
believe that the Athlon is faster, mostly
because everyday applications do not need
huge memory bandwidth and cannot be made to
run with SSE.

I'm thinking that someone should start doing
some "Open Source" benchmarks where the source
is available. A good idea would be to run
a set of:
a) Kernel compile (or gcc compile or something
like that) and perhaps even "make check"
gdb or gcc or some other application (libc!).
b) MP3 compression with lame
c) Video compression with xvid or ffmpeg
d) Linpack/POVray for fpu
e) Ecasound/LADSPA for sound processing
f) Maybe a perl/high-level bechmark for some
standard system tasks.
g) Cachegrind some of the above (have a look
at valgrind/cachegrind!!)

Anyway, if someone has anything above XP 2600+
let's gather some results.

P.

Re:Benchmarking... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:46 · Score: 0

LAME is a fairly popular benchmark on the windows side, as is video compression. I wouldn't think there'd be dramatic differences from OS to OS for those (in partiulcar LAME).
Re:Benchmarking... by fitten · 2003-02-10 02:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

There could be significant compiler differences. For instance, how well does gcc use SSE2/HT? 3DNow!? etc. If you don't use good compilers, then you will get criticism like "You are favoring AMD because you aren't using the advanced features of the P4 - SSE2/HT" (or vice versa).

Benchmarking is tough to do "fairly".
Re:Benchmarking... by Dagowolf · 2003-02-10 02:06 · Score: 1

I find the combination of AMD's price and decent performace to be perfect for my needs. As a recent college grad I'm lucky to afford peanut butter much less a P4 chip. Due to my need for Windows (little sister) I've not run Linuz on any of my first string machines. It runs great on a P200 though ;-) I've not been able to properly benchmark my new machine however. I recently put together a 2600+, however my mobo has fried itself twice in less than 3 months. Waiting on Albatron to issue me another return authorization.
Re:Benchmarking... by GGarand · 2003-02-10 02:12 · Score: 3, Informative

You can find a thorough test of the Athlon XP 2700+, made with Linux software,
here
Re:Benchmarking... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 02:21 · Score: 0

What about an OpenGL version of 3DMark?

Two great items for this:

1) Does the system work - gives a good workout of 3D accelleration
2) More credible as a Game platform

Plus also, it's nice to have something to show off the new kit to friends.
Re:Benchmarking... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 04:18 · Score: 0

What compiler(s) was used for those? What compile options were used?
Re:Benchmarking... by Sloppy · 2003-02-10 05:14 · Score: 1

LAME is a fairly popular benchmark on the windows side, as is video compression. I wouldn't think there'd be dramatic differences from OS to OS for those (in partiulcar LAME).
The problem with MS Windows benchmarks, is that I think most of the users of that platform don't compile their own stuff; all the users use the same binaries, regardless of their processor.
Although there are certainly exceptions, many Linux users do compile their multimedia apps themselves, optimized for their specific processor. It would be nice to see benchmarks involving apps specificially compiled for the processor being benchmarked. (e.g. gcc --march=whatever)
Windows binaries just aren't a realistic test, unless there are different binaries available for different processors. (Maybe there are? I just don't know.)

--
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Re:Benchmarking... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 09:10 · Score: 0

b) MP3 compression with lame

BLASPHEMY!

Ogg Vorbis r0x0rz!
Re:Benchmarking... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 09:53 · Score: 0

if most users are using windows, then doesn't that mean that benchmarking using windows software is more accurate than using linux?

Similarly, if more there are more sse apps in existance than 3dnow, doesn't it make sense to benchmark using sse apps??

granted, these it shouldn't be done at the exclusion of all others.
Re:Benchmarking... by Stormie · 2003-02-10 10:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

Most of the "content creation" applications and games are SSE2 enhanced while, on the other hand 3dnow is propably less popular.

No, almost no games are SSE2 enhanced because almost no games are using any significant amount of double-precision maths. For SIMD single-precision calculations, you use SSE, which AthlonXP also has.

SSE2 enchancements do certainly explain the huge lead the P4 has in rendering benchmarks.. damn, look at the difference in 3DS MAX, that must hurt AMD to see. Luckily Hammer is supposed to support the SSE2 instruction set.
Re:Benchmarking... by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 11:08 · Score: 0

I'd always assumed part of the reason they use common Windows apps in benchmarking is that they reflect what an average user is likely to be doing with their shiny new box. It would be interesting, though, to see benchmarks of a "generic 686" vs Athlon vs p4 optimised binary, though.

Re:It's time for the Athlon XP to retire. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

The first Athlon's came out in the summer of 1999 at 500-650 speeds. By my count, that was about 3.5 years ago. Athlon is obviously prepping the Athlon 64 for launch within the year, so they are moving on to a new design, but the Windows world doesn't seem ready to make that big jump quite yet, so they've done a good job of extending the line of the 32 bit CPUs. They've redesigned the core a couple times, and increased the bus speed from 100/200 to 166/333, and it's quite possible they'll make it to 200/400 by the time they're done.

Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: dough by TheOrquithVagrant · 2003-02-10 01:43 · Score: 3, Funny

> mmm, freshly baked Athlon

I baked an Athlon MP last spring. I can assure you the reaction to the smell is not "mmmm...."

Oh wait. Actually, I guess that was because I _fried_ it. Oh yea. Thats it.

In any case, it was the most _expensive_ bad smell I've ever smelled. :)

Crack-smoking Moderators Again by turgid · 2003-02-10 01:43 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'd say that was informative and maybe insightful. Someone needs to get their finger out and develop a comprehensive, relevant and useful set of Linux (and UNIX in general) benchmarks for these platforms, especially since Linux is gaining so much market share. Just how does a SQL server benchmark on Windows 2k relate to what I do on my AMD Slackware box? How does a Windows game using Direct X have any relevance to OpenGL applications? So, come on, who's going to do it? Who's going to give us some Free (GPL preferably) benchmarking software for Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems? I can write C. I'd gladly contribute a few hundred lines of code.

--
Stick Men

Re:Crack-smoking Moderators Again by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 12:53 · Score: 0

Please read some AV posts from the past. When you are finished laughing you will understand the mod.
Re:Crack-smoking Moderators Again by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 22:53 · Score: 0

Thanks. I had a good laugh. I am enlightened.

Excellent review at... by Sepherus · 2003-02-10 01:46 · Score: 2, Informative

Theres an excellent review at Bit-Tech.net. Its interesting how the P4 wins easily on the benchmarks, but in games things are much closer. The Athlon even wins several games tests.

MP's? by ACNiel · 2003-02-10 01:47 · Score: 1

Can I use the XP chips in my MP motherboard or not?

They had claimed that you shouldn't/couldn't when they first released the XP chips, and charged a little more for the MP chip, but is there a difference?

Re:MP's? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 01:51 · Score: 0

The MPs are certified to operate in the dual MB's, and that's what you're paying for. Many people have, however, had no problem running regular XP's in dual setups.
Re:MP's? by damiam · 2003-02-10 02:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

You can, but if you want to use two of them, you need to alter them.
What I've heard is that the MP chips are the "cream of the crop" of the XPs - AMD manufactures a batch, and then picks out the best to be MPs. So you do get something for what you pay for.

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.

Re:Fakery by Hortensia+Patel · 2003-02-10 01:48 · Score: 1

> The Pentium IV is designed to get big megahertz
> at the expense of actual performance; why would
> Intel throw away their chip's advantage like that?

Maybe because their upcoming Banias chips will follow AMD's lower-MHz/higher-perf approach. So Intel marketing will *have* to start downplaying MHz to sell the things, no?

PR values by minkwe · 2003-02-10 01:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

The Anandtech Benchmarks really show that the PR ratings have always been in comparison to previous AMD CPUs rather than Intel's. The CPU scaling plots show a steady increase in performance with respect to PR number for AMD, but you get bumps in the plot of performance vs MHz for the Pentium 4.

It's pretty clear which one is a better measure of relative performance. Although Toms' Hardware would not admit it for some reason.

--
If cars were open sourced, there would be at least five steering wheels in the cockpit, each operating differently -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo.

--
"Fighting terrorists with millitary might is like killing a mosquitor on your Dad's forehead with a rifle."

Re:Fakery by cc_pirate · 2003-02-10 01:53 · Score: 0, Troll

Entirely fair? This chip gets BITCHSLAPPED by the Pentium 4 3.06 GHz chip.

When AMD started off this stupid arse made up numbers, they were slightly better than a similar P4, but now they are way worse, so they are starting to look stupid.

Here's to hoping AMD drops this false advertising and goes back to clock speed. At least then they aren't pretending the chip is something it's not.

--

"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur

Opportunity knocks. by dynoman7 · 2003-02-10 01:57 · Score: 1

...is usally either a MCSFT or Novell application or some other Windows-only piece of code in which the interests of us Linux folks is surely unsatisifed

Why not create our own set of benchmarks (not just kernel) for Linux then? Build them into every distro or something. Tom, Anand, Ars and TR will use them for sure. Stop bitching and start writing code!

--
Blarf.

Why does this not excite me? by Zog+The+Undeniable · 2003-02-10 01:57 · Score: 0

Listen up, chip manufacturers: why not release new chips when you have a MEANINGFUL speed increase (twice as fast as the last one would be nice). All these insignificant clock increases, and the number of reviews dedicated to them, are boring. It's getting like the automobile industry in the 1950s - the 1955 model is the 1954 model with 5 extra cubic inches and another 2lbs of chrome.

--
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.

Re:Why does this not excite me? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 02:03 · Score: 0

They release them to maximize profits, by offering multiple price points, accessible to different level of consumers. They'll find some people will to pay $600 for a cpu, some willing to pay $200, some $100, and some $50, and for all of these, they have different speed chips available. What you're suggesting would dramatically lower consumer choices and probably result in higher prices for many.
Re:Why does this not excite me? by Junta · 2003-02-10 02:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Wow, a great idea, I can see it now...

Intel has a faster processor than us, and we can catch up or even beat us, but that would only be an small percentage increase.... I say we just sit on our asses until we can double our speed. We'll be bankrupt by then, but users don't care about the releases.

If you are saying they should be doubling the speed at the same intervals as current incremental changes, you are being ridiculous. They are moving as fast as they can. This is what a competitive market does. They try to move any slower than they possibly can and competition leaves them behind. This is why the x86 platform is becoming much faster much more quickly than other platforms, the fierce competition.

If you don't like the small speed increase releases, just ignore them and pretend they never happen. For example, if you have an Athlon XP1500+, pretend that every successive release until now never happend. Then you'll be happy.

These are not meaningless speed increases. If you have the 2700+ processor, the 3000+ is faster, but not worth an upgrade (not yet anyway). If you have a 1500+ processor, this release is bound to make the 2700+ more reasonable, or even 3000+. Manufacturers do not expect a consumer to buy into every release cycle, but they expect different consumers to be ready to buy into different cycles at different intervals.

--
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Re:Why does this not excite me? by avandesande · 2003-02-10 03:55 · Score: 1

Hmm, maybe one of these days will update my dual 433 celeron bp6. It seems plenty fast though, do I have too?

--
love is just extroverted narcissism
Re:Why does this not excite me? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 05:27 · Score: 0

Your real problem is with the media (including Slashdot) making a big deal out of each release. There isn't any reason for the manufacturers to delay releases, just to keep you excited. Bitch at the reviewers and the story-linkers, for trying to pretend that you should be excited about each release. Bitch at /. not AMD or Intel.

really nice when the others get the upgrade by AssFace · 2003-02-10 02:11 · Score: 2, Interesting

If it is like this with the 2.17, then it will be sweet when the faster cores get the increased cache.

Although I'm not really sure why I care other than when these things come out the slower ones go down in cost and that makes building clusters cheaper.
Right now I feel that the 2000+ chips are the best bang for the buck (I can make a single node in a cluster with one of those and 256M ram for under $300) - but perhaps with this thing coming out the pricing structure will shift and I can get me something faster.
hot damn.

--

There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.

Posting links below. by amembrane · 2003-02-10 02:24 · Score: 4, Informative

Hers's the [H]'s take on it, , and here's Sudhian's.

--
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

The real "P4 killer" coming later in spring? by MtViewGuy · 2003-02-10 02:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think right now the Athlon XP 3000+ based on the Barton CPU core is the right first step, but I think the CPU that will REALLY worry Intel will likely come later this spring when we see Barton core Athlon XP's that take full advantage of DDR400 DDR-SDRAM.

Remember, under pure-CPU tests the Athlon XP 3000+ has almost the same performance as the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU with HyperThreading; what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory?

Re:The real "P4 killer" coming later in spring? by Glonk · 2003-02-10 03:51 · Score: 4, Informative

I think right now the Athlon XP 3000+ based on the Barton CPU core is the right first step, but I think the CPU that will REALLY worry Intel will likely come later this spring when we see Barton core Athlon XP's that take full advantage of DDR400 DDR-SDRAM.

Remember, under pure-CPU tests the Athlon XP 3000+ has almost the same performance as the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU with HyperThreading; what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory?
Not much I'd imagine, the bump to a 333MHz system bus did next to nothing. The P4 is far more sensitive to memory bandwidth than the Athlon.

And in April P4s at 3.2GHz with an 800MHz system bus come out...
Re:The real "P4 killer" coming later in spring? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 09:22 · Score: 0

what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory?

Something will something...and nobody will care.

640kb on die cache by wiredog · 2003-02-10 02:37 · Score: 1, Interesting

That could be useful in embedded applications. Running the entire app in the cache, at higher speed than in main memory, could be a Very Good Thing.

--

Best Slashdot Co

Re:640kb on die cache by Jerf · 2003-02-10 03:02 · Score: 1

Are there (m)any embedded applications that A: are so starved for speed that running in the cache could make a difference and B: fit in 640Kb, including data?

Honest question; it's a nifty idea. Thinking inside the (CPU) box.
Re:640kb on die cache by TeknoHog · 2003-02-10 03:20 · Score: 2, Funny

That amount of cache should be enough for everyone!
On another geeky note, I wonder if you could somehow use this without any external RAM to run DOS...

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Re:640kb on die cache by mrm677 · 2003-02-10 03:24 · Score: 2

That could be useful in embedded applications. Running the entire app in the cache, at higher speed than in main memory, could be a Very Good Thing.

Sorry dude. Embedded apps usually aren't starved for CPU time. They are often real-time and have to be very predictable. Caches actually make things less predictable because the execution time of a high-priority task can substantially differ depending on the cache hit rate at a given execution.

And any embedded application that needs an Athlon, and can afford to dissipate 64 watts of power, will surely be larger than 640kb in footprint.
Re:640kb on die cache by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:28 · Score: 0

Sorry, you will never see an Embedded design that uses an Athlon. Yes, the cache size is very large, but don't forget that the cache has to be loaded somehow, so you'd still need an off-chip memory. Also, in most applications, there isn't too much performance gain to be had increasing the cache size from say 256K to 512K. Look at the new benchmarks, AMD doubled the size of the cache for what, a five percent performance increase over the old chips at the same clock speed??

But the real reasons no one uses Athlons in embedded are power consumption and price. 60+ watts is just too much for batteries. And the cheapest Athlon chip, the XP 1500, sells for $45. If I am selling a decent volume of my product it will be far cheaper to just make an ASIC. Otherwise I'll buy a DSP for a dollar or two in volume. The Athlon may make sense if I'm building a highly specialized product that absolutely has to have the best performance AND I only plan on selling maybe a dozen or less of them.
Re:640kb on die cache by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 04:07 · Score: 0

The entire AmigaOS (a multitasking GUI OS) fitted, usably, into 512K. Imagine how blisteringly fast it would be.

Well, $4 can buy a lot by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 02:44 · Score: 0

Like... 80 minutes with 10-10-220, or 4 things on the McDonalds $1 value menu.

For sale? by supabeast! · 2003-02-10 02:45 · Score: 1

This chip looks great, but will people be able to buy one? The 2800+ has been hard to find via internet/mail order, and almost impossible to find in stores. Perhaps the lower clock speed of the 3000+ will make for more successful fabs....

Toms Hardware Review by TJ6581 · 2003-02-10 02:49 · Score: 4, Informative

Here's the Link http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030210/index.htm l

It's seems like they say that AMD'S 3000+ rating is extremely aggressive and they do not seem to think it should have had that rating. They also have a good point in there about price gouging essentially eliminating the comeptitive price difference. Since the chip is so hard to get the price skyrockets. It's kind of disturbing that AMD recommends testing this chip with DirectX 7 that definitely does not speak well of AMD's confidence in competing with Intel's stengths.

--
"Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"
-Suck

Re:Toms Hardware Review by fault0 · 2003-02-10 04:09 · Score: 1

And in Anandtech's article, they said that the PR rating was about just right. Looking at their benchmarks, I tend to agree.. they tied in some places, the Athlon was strong where it traditionally has been strong and beat the p4 in things like general usage, and new FPS games (like unreal2k3), and the p4 beat the athlon in things like content creation (video/3d stuff), as well as quake3-based games (like q3 and jk2)
Re:Toms Hardware Review by akuma(x86) · 2003-02-10 05:10 · Score: 1

The whole PR rating thing seems kind of bogus.

What happens if Intel increases the IPC of their processor? Then their PR system doesn't scale with P4 frequency anymore. So when Intel introduces a faster bus (such as the 800MHz bus coming in the spring) and larger caches (like the 1MB cache on Prescott), the descrepancy between PR-rating and P4 frequency will grow.

Of course, by that time AMD will probably introduce another set of arbitrary PR ratings to scale with the higher IPC P4s.
Re:Toms Hardware Review by joediga · 2003-02-10 10:33 · Score: 1

Tom's Hardware puts out some of the most amature benchmarks available. Really. Try comparing their methods to almost any other site out there (One of my favorites being anandtech.com.) and you may find that Tom's is hardly scientific.

--
-- ignoring AC's since... well, always --

X-bit labs review by Lowrider1982 · 2003-02-10 02:53 · Score: 3, Informative

X-bit labs has also got some info on the new Barton procs http://www.xbitlabs.com/cpu/athlonxp-3000/

Oh come one.... by Jerf · 2003-02-10 02:55 · Score: 4, Interesting

Oh come on... haven't you figured out by now that all new chips start expensive, and in a year are the bottom of the barrel, bargain basement, can't buy anything slower deals? And that all top-of-the-line chips are a marginal improvement for way too much money?

Do you know what bottom-of-the-barrel is right now? It's like an Athlon 1800+ depending on where you shop. (Gee, I was just in there last week and they were still selling 1.2GHz Durons...) Do you know how much an Athlon 1800+ cost when it came out? Do you really think this price is permenent?

What's the alternative? Never introduct a chip until it's cheap? Doesn't work that way, for a whole lotta reasons.

Re:Oh come one.... by HoboMaster · 2003-02-11 06:39 · Score: 1

What's the alternative? Never introduct a chip until it's cheap? Doesn't work that way, for a whole lotta reasons. Mainly being that the price drops due to: 1)Reduced costs, caused by being produced in larger numbers (which is caused by people buying, allowing them to produce in larger numbers) 2)Superior competition, caused by other companies releasing better products (which are absurdly expensive) Couple other things, just can't think of em offhand... The best product on the market will be the most expensive, and as it becomes no longer the best, the price drops, welcome to economics

--
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.

The hype, the grave and the jaja's. by El+Jynx · 2003-02-10 03:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

Processors that can move at such speeds - and, incidentally, keep requiring larger and larger heatsinks - only have practical applications on high-performance server (clusters). The average desktop user simply doesn't need all that, even for gaming; if you go to the store it's rare that you'll find a game that also requires you to have a computer with over a Ghz of computing power. Unless you're toying with some seriously heavy graphic or music manipulation software, it's next to useless.

So why is the hype aimed at so many desktop users? Simple: it's the largest market. Do we, the endusers, need it? No. Are we going to buy it, with the economy in the tight spot it's in? Nope. We're going to upgrade their memory sticks and leave it at that. I've got a trusty P3 600 which works fine with my GeForce 4 to run NWN at awe-inspiring resolutions and graphics, it's got 512mb so it's smoother than a narwhal, and I for one see no need to buy a new one anytime soon. The net result is that the intel/amd power struggle has been so intense that there's no point to it anymore. My system is still configured for gaming, but a lot of people - in companies as well as at home - only use their computers to email and write letters and maybe listen to some music. Like as not they'd much rather save for a 19" TFT than another tower. I own my own little IT company and generally advise my clients to stick to their 450mhz machines and upgrade a few choice parts.

The only thing I'm wondering is how big is the group that seriously uses such powerful machines? I can understand major websites or software companies will have clusters, but that can't be much more than a few percent can it? Anyone have an idea?

- Jynx

--
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.

Re:The hype, the grave and the jaja's. by chammel · 2003-02-10 03:13 · Score: 1

Good Ideas

--
Neutrons are slippery little rascals, they can fool you. They can bounce and show up around corners you don't expect.
Re:The hype, the grave and the jaja's. by tchapin · 2003-02-10 03:32 · Score: 1

the topic of games and min specs has been here before
Perhaps they do need it... The minimum specs listed for a game might not be accurate. Of course, perhaps these people have issues with their computers other than processor speed, but who knows?
Todd

--
-- !todd erases a red dot! I steal music on the internet.
Re:The hype, the grave and the jaja's. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:33 · Score: 0

You are totally off if you are claiming that there isn't a need for faster CPUs in gaming. Try playing eight player Warcraft 3 at 1024x768 with the highest detail settings on your P3 600. I guarantee your framerate will go to hell as soon as a large battle gets going.
Re:The hype, the grave and the jaja's. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:44 · Score: 0

The average desktop user simply doesn't need all that, even for gaming; if you go to the store it's rare that you'll find a game that also requires you to have a computer with over a Ghz of computing power.

Have you ever played Everquest? Kunark "moving" trees are a bastard, and don't get me started on Luclin. Try that on your P3 600.
Re:The hype, the grave and the jaja's. by El+Jynx · 2003-02-10 05:00 · Score: 1

Not really. You can compensate this rather easily with - you guessed it - a brutal gfx card. I play NWN on 1280x1024 with all the graphics set to ridiculous, but it only shudders if a large battle is fought near water; then I'm forced to turn down the detail. I've plugged the GeForce 4 into an AMD 1300 with almost the same results. Granted, it helps a bit, but not by enough to justify the price as far as I'm concerned. I'm curious, however, if the memory pipe improvement could/would be a bigger gain.

Jynx

--
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
Re:The hype, the grave and the jaja's. by NerveGas · 2003-02-10 05:36 · Score: 1

Yeah, sure, we don't need it, even for gaming. I remember back when I didn't even need a Pentium, my AMD 486 knock-off running at 120 MHz played all of my games just fine! Why, we shouldn't even THINK of anything higher than, say, a Pentium Pro.

steve

--
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Re:The hype, the grave and the jaja's. by addaon · 2003-02-10 12:33 · Score: 1

smoother than a narwhal

Smoother than a narwhal!? I take it you've never gotten one of those stuck in your eye! The buggers are sharp!

--

I've had this sig for three days.

Winxp doesn't take advantage of L2 cache anyway by Anonymous+Rockstar · 2003-02-10 03:08 · Score: 3, Informative

You have to tweak a memory management setting in the registry to take advantage of your L2 cache anyway. Look here... http://www.tweaktown.com/document.php?dType=guide& dId=145&dPage=6

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Re:Winxp doesn't take advantage of L2 cache anyway by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:29 · Score: 1, Informative

Not necessary on XP, and generally not necessary on 2000, and it was only for some older Pentiums.
Re:Winxp doesn't take advantage of L2 cache anyway by BenjyD · 2003-02-10 03:44 · Score: 1

configuring windows seems to be devolving to the level of witchcraft. Nobody has actually benchmarked the effect of making that change, people just think "it must help". What about the number of ways of associative caches?

I seriously doubt that the OS affects the use of the L2 cache any more than it affects the processor's frequency. The way data is moved into the cache is a purely CPU/chipset controlled process.

great scott! by siliconwafer · 2003-02-10 03:10 · Score: 2, Funny

Finally a chip that can generate the 1.21 gigawatts (pronounced jigawatts) needed to replace the flux capacitor!

Over clocked! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:13 · Score: 0

A review with some over clocking can be found at FiringSquad.

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/amd_athlo n_ xp_3000_review/default.asp

Re:Over clocked! Corrected URL! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:15 · Score: 0

http://firingsquad.gamers.com/hardware/amd_athlon_ xp_3000_review/default.asp

Obviously you haven't played SimCity 4 by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:16 · Score: 2, Funny

otherwise you'd realize that a P4 3.06 oc'd to 4.4GHz and at least 2GB of RAM are a minimum!

If you used LOX to cool it, by SeanMac · 2003-02-10 03:20 · Score: 1

you wouldn't have much of a computer left.. Powerful oxidizer and electricity and juicy capacitors.. Come on...

Re:If you used LOX to cool it, by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 04:12 · Score: 0

Besides, liquid helium is cooler for lots of reasons anyway.

Re:Fakery by gl4ss · 2003-02-10 03:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

depends on which review you read and with whose devils eye you read it with.

you do realise that p4 3.06 is supposed to be better/faster than p4 2.8 would be at 3.06 speeds too? does that make calling p4 2.8 a p4 2.8 wrong, or calling 3.06 a 3.06 wrong? you can't compare even intel products just by the number they're sold with.

it certainly doesnt get 'bitchslapped'.

intel is far worse. they sell celerons and p4's with essentially same 'horsepower' numbers(to the consumer). not to mention their ht tech they're trying to make look far more better than it is. if you think the common joe can identify the differences then you're really wrong and haven't do enough mandatory helpdesking for your relatives.

intel is like a car dealer selling cars by just telling consumers how high they can rev, amd is telling a performance number(though, mostly just comparable to other amd cpu's, and thats alright, why should they change their rating system according to what their competitors do.)

i'd prefer to know the actual kw rating of the engine rather than just it's displacement and how high it can rev.

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world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.

Not so sure about the name by Chocolate+Teapot · 2003-02-10 03:41 · Score: 1

As soon as I read the article, this image came to mind.

"When it's over, "Barton Fink" feels like a sophisticated joke you didn't get but laughed at anyway for fear of looking stupid."

--
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare

Re:Fakery by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 03:46 · Score: 0

Fer God's sake, man! If you're going to quote somebody, at least spell their name correctly! It's "Nicholson".

Oh, and regarding your post: You're smoking something. The P4 doesn't bitchslap the AMD chip. Go check up on some facts before you read bullshit sites that wouldn't know a capacitor from a resistor like "Thresh's Firing Squad".

Re:Fakery by fault0 · 2003-02-10 03:49 · Score: 1

> This chip gets BITCHSLAPPED by the Pentium 4 3.06 GHz chip.

Where the fuck are you getting this from?

From Anandtech's review:

AMD's first CPU of the year and it's still not the elusive Hammer, but as the benchmarks show, it doesn't need to be. In many cases the Athlon XP 3000+ outperforms the 3.06GHz Pentium 4, while in others it manages to tie with Intel's flagship and yet in others it falls behind just as much. The overall performance is close enough to warrant the 3000+ rating in some cases, but there's no question that it is a very close call between the two top performing CPUs.

And anandtech pretty much tells it like it is. They're known for pretty much unbiased reporting unlike TomsHardware^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H some other hardware sites.

Now I can see nerds telling to girls by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 04:02 · Score: 0

"Mine is 35cm+ long".

Seriously, this odd-naming scheme should be stop somehow. Could it be considered deceiving?

THG by MasTRE · 2003-02-10 04:10 · Score: 0, Flamebait

The only site that had the guts to say what's sad but true: "More Cash for Cache - Model Rating Unjustified"

Hmm, let's see - leave the core untouched, double the cache and play the marketing trick of upping the multiplier of the lame performance rating - since the layman doesn't know any better anyway, why not milk it for all you can?

Anyone in their right mind willing to pay $600+ for a slow POS 2.167GHz part as opposed to a P4 3.06 w/HT?

On the other hand, prices for the chip I want have dropped under $150, right in the sweet-spot. Yay!

--
Must-not-watch TV!

Not so! by wiredog · 2003-02-10 04:14 · Score: 1

I used to do motion control applications, controlled hoists, x/y tables, etc. They weren't real time, but did need every bit of calculating power they could get. Calculating what position to move to next, determining the resonant frequency of a part being scanned, various other calculations.

Yes, a real time app wouldn't benefit, but other embedded/industrial apps would.

--

Best Slashdot Co

Re:Not so! by mrm677 · 2003-02-10 04:53 · Score: 1

Ok. Good point. I guess when I think "embedded", I think either "small" or "real-time". Why didn't your motion control applications just use an industrial PC? If they did, did you consider that an embedded system?

NEW AMD Chip by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 04:23 · Score: 0

I use to use AMD and switched back to Intel because the K6 and Athlon both ran very hot. And at least at the time had no mechanism for shutting itself down and could possibly run until the processor was jelly. I do not keep up with AMD much anymore. Can someone tell me if AMD has gotten their temperature problems under control to run cool like the Intel's or is this still an issue?

Re:NEW AMD Chip by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 04:48 · Score: 1, Informative

Well, the Thoroughbred's seem to run pretty cool... my Athlon 1700+ is running at 35C (95F) right now under full load with air cooling. On hotter days, it makes up to 40C or so. I never had many heat issues with my K6-3 (although it did run hotter than this). Many of the newer motherboards also have emergency temperature shutdowns if the temp gets too high.

Re:3000+... Plus Means What...? by Glasswire · 2003-02-10 04:26 · Score: 1

I guess the plus means that on a good day it's faster, or that like a fine wine, the cpus gets quicker in your box with age...
PR ratings are a marketing vehicle...

GHz isn't everything, but it's SOMETHING and... by Glasswire · 2003-02-10 04:31 · Score: 1

... ENOUGH of something can make it everything. Once we start getting 1+GHz deltas between AMD and P4 in actual clock rates, that HAS to have an effect.

Hopefully not vaporware this time by edxwelch · 2003-02-10 04:44 · Score: 1

Do you think they will actually make them available to the general public this time? I think they made a sum total of seven 2800+ chips: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7193

A Proposal by turgid · 2003-02-10 04:46 · Score: 1

Here's what I propose. A general set of benchmarks for UNIX-like systems (Linux, *BSD, OS X, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX) that is GPL'd and tests the functionality common to all platforms. It would comprise a core set of microbenchmarks written in C that would test integer performance, floating-point performance, memory bandwidth, cache performance, etc. Next would be processes and threads, disk I/O and caching, TCP/IP networking. On top of that would be applications such as databases, webserving, number-crunching (image and sound processing, streaming), Java VM performace, X11, some high-level interpreted languages such as PERL and Python, shell performance etc. Each area would have a score, and I reckon we should normalise each score to a low-end reference platform, e.g. a PIII-1000, 512MB RAM, IDE 5400 RPM disk etc. It'll be a huge project but I can donate a few lines of code here and there. Forget Windows. It's going away soon.

--
Stick Men

Tom's Hardware summary by dietlein · 2003-02-10 04:56 · Score: 1

Our benchmarks showed that the Athlon XP 3000+ at standard clock speed (13 x 166 MHz = 2166 MHz) can't hold a candle to the P4 3.06 MHz together with the latest applications.

Once the Athlon with the Barton core is overclocked to 2500 MHz (15 x 166 MHz), it can hold its own or even beat the P4. Another factor weighing down the Athlon is the fact that more software is optimized for the P4's HyperThreading capabilities. In its testing information, AMD recommends running old DirectX 7 games. Some have been around for two years or more and are really over the hill. Anyone for a benchmark under MS DOS 3.1?

Performance vs Intel doesnt matter by mnmn · 2003-02-10 05:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

I've assembled many systems for value-conscious people around, most being Duron 700-950. Nowadays the Duron 1200-1600 are nice bets since any higher clock would push the price by a bigger margin.

The vast majority of customers, both OEM and custom-assembled, really couldnt care about the psychological 1GHz or 2GHz bump, or getting the very latest processor. The real competition is the number of processors sold, and everyone can see the Athlon has always outperformed the Pentium4 in price/performance competitions. Give the new power ratings, with the Athlon chugging lesser watts while pushing the cache for a more reasonable performance figure, I'd say AMD will come out the winner.

Most customers quite simply dont want a $3000 system with the latest and greatest parts. Sure such a market exists, but theyre a loud minority. There are parents buying systems for their kids, their offices and college guys for their collegework. There are ordiniary people who want ordiniary computers that just do the job reliably, you know, use MS Word, browse the net, maybe watch a DVD. You dont even need a processor clocked over 1GHz for this, a Duron 800 with 256MB RAM and a Geforce2MX card can hold its own even in todays market. Remember very few are really buying Windows XP right now.

In planning for the future, AMD should not ignore the FSB for the Hammer, nor should they ignore the power ratings. The price has always been their edge, but having the only 32/64-bit processor, they could even afford to jack it up a little assuming Intels 64-bit doesnt do too well with 32-bit code. What bothers Intel and Microsoft right now is that people are perfectly happy with a low-end machine, and will continue to be for a while. The whole North Amerian market is coming closer to saturation, and poorer countries would have a bell curve centered much closer to the very low end of America's computer buying bell curve. All this points to the next boom in extreme value systems, where AMD again has kept their edge over Intel, only to compete with transmeta and the C3.

--
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky

Re:Performance vs Intel doesnt matter by mjh · 2003-02-10 06:41 · Score: 1

In practical terms, I think you're probably right. However, AMD is where they are entirely because at one point in their history, they actually beat intel on performance. That was the single thing that brought them to the competition table with intel. Prior to that they were fleabites on chipmunks scurrying around intel's elephant feet.

You can't forget that. They *MUST* remain at least somewhat competitive with intel on performance or they're going to be perpetually seen as offering the "Yugo" of processors: cheaper but requiring a performance compromise. And that will impact the effectiveness of their marketing - no matter what they say, customers won't believe them. They'll perpetually see them as the bargain hut. And that will influence sales.

--
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
Re:Performance vs Intel doesnt matter by mAriuZ · 2003-02-10 09:00 · Score: 1

Amen bro' !
In my country people buy more amd (60%) than intel(40%) because they are cheaper and offer a
better ratio price/performance. My next upgrade will
be an Barton (2500++) because it screams at
overclocking (2.4ghz is piece of pie..) and yes it
have greater cache good for compiling and databases
Who cares about the magical number 3.0 ghz or 3000++
The same apply to video cards too .Yeah Radeon 9700 pro
does 300+ fps in q3 and it's better than GeForceFx .But who cares .I can't play q3 on a duron @900
and LeeForce2MX400 because it's too fast !!!
but who needs .
C3 are cool (real cool) wonder if can build a
cluster of them for my linux projects heheh
They are real cheap and my God they will release
the next version with multiprocessor suport .
At the end of the year axp64 will do the difference in the world of cpus .
Maybe i'll buy one or 2 next year when they are cheaper and tell my friends : look i got a 64 bits
processor yours is only 32 :)
Barton it's not the best processor out there but
is good enough (middle class) the same apply to
nv 30 aka GeForceFx .

--
developer http://flamerobin.org

Re:Over clocked! Corrected URL! by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 05:19 · Score: 1, Informative

Okay, seriously. I'll do it for you.

LINK.

HTML is easy! Kids, try it at home!

You missed the point by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 05:22 · Score: 0

His point is that the $4 diff is irrelevant, because it's on the $600+ processors, which only morons would be looking at in the first place. Most people should be buying processors that cost around $200 to $250, and AMD slays Intel in performance at those costs.

Named to honor Robert Barton by Jim.McGinness · 2003-02-10 05:26 · Score: 1

I know that AMD didn't, but I like to think that the code name for this chip honors Robert Barton. He was the chief designer of a whole line of Burroughs computers, including the 5500 through the 6800. Of all the commercial systems I've ever laid hands on, these were the most innovative.

Re:Named to honor Robert Barton by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 08:44 · Score: 0

"Barton" most likely comes from AMD copying Intel's codename convention based upon rivers -- "Barton Springs" is an Austin landmark.

However, how about P4 on DDR400 memory? by MtViewGuy · 2003-02-10 05:30 · Score: 1

I think people are forgetting that the vast majority of Pentium 4 systems nowadays running above 2.0 GHz use DDR-SDRAM, NOT RDRAM.

The problem with the Anandtech and Tom's Hardware tests is that they're using i850 chipset motherboards with PC1066 RDRAM, which are starting to go out of favor in the market.

It'll be very interesting to do a comparison later this spring of a Pentium 4 3.06 GHz system running on a motherboard that supports DDR400 RAM versus a faster Barton-core Athlon XP rated at 3000+ also using DDR400 RAM.

Best review I have read on Barton by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 05:33 · Score: 0

Is probably Sudhian's review.

Great write-up.

Their chip also seemed to overclock the highest.

Re:Fakery by cc_pirate · 2003-02-10 05:35 · Score: 1

Pretty much unbiased? Certainly in their summary verbiage, but THEIR testing shows just how much of an a$$kicking the AMD part took. The P4 3.06GHz was faster than the AMD part in 77% of the tests Anandtech did, and in many of those tests (especially the lightwave, media content generation,etc.), the Barton chip isn't even CLOSE! Heck, the 2800+ beats it in a lot of those cases.

The ONLY cases that the Barton wins in are office apps (whoo hoo!) and it has a couple of frames per second faster in UT2003. But, I guess if you are AMD, winning in even a couple of bench marks means your part is 3000 PLUS....

What a load of horseshit. This performance number is already laughable and it will get even worse with the next generation parts.

AMD is running scared as indicated by this Tom's Hardware quote: "In its testing information, AMD recommends running old DirectX 7 games. Some have been around for two years or more and are really over the hill. Anyone for a benchmark under MS DOS 3.1?" Pathetic.

To quote Tom "On the negative side, the model numbering of AMD's new top-shelf model seems pretty aggressive for the Athlon XP 3000+. Even in comparison to the "old" Athlon XP 2800+, based on the T-Bred core, the new high-end processor is often left in the dust (10 out of 18 tests). "

--

"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur

AMD's reliability by Wolfrider · 2003-02-10 05:39 · Score: 2, Informative

>>Self shutdown - if the heatsink falls off an Intel processor, it throttles itself down until it stops, if required, so that it doesn't burn, whereas an AMD chip just burns. >>Less heat - this is a major issue in a datacenter

--My AMD Duron 900MHz had its cooling fan STOP once. I continued using the PC for about an hour, then smelled something funny. Shutdown, reactivated the cooling fan, and I'm still using the PC right now for this post.

--However, if it had been 1GHz or better, I think the chip would have fried...

--
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??

Re:AMD's reliability by The_K4 · 2003-02-10 07:56 · Score: 1

If you hadn't "smelled something funny" what whould have happened? I'm kinda leaning towards a REALLY hot REALLY dead processor.
Re:AMD's reliability by styrotech · 2003-02-10 08:50 · Score: 1

If you hadn't "smelled something funny" what whould have happened?

I'm guessing it would've locked up/rebooted like other Athlons I've seen when the fan dies. They work fine again once the fan is replaced.

To even have the possibility of frying a cpu, the heatsink itself would have to fall off.
Re:AMD's reliability by Wolfrider · 2003-02-10 11:03 · Score: 1

--Also keep in mind that I used the PC for about AN HOUR after it started overheating, before noticing the problem; the diff may be the fact that it's a Duron. Faster, more "modern" AMD Athlons would have fried in about 2 SECONDS with no cooling.

--
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Re:AMD's reliability by HoboMaster · 2003-02-11 06:34 · Score: 1

Except that the newer ones do shutdown if they overheat. Problem solved.

--
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
Re:AMD's reliability by fragged+one · 2003-02-21 09:32 · Score: 0

my motherboard handles it for older athlons. it'll shutdown my ahtlon 2000 if it gets above 85

--
if it wasn't for that horse, i wouldn't have spent that year in college.....

Voodoo Math by bstadil · 2003-02-10 05:40 · Score: 1

The yield of most AMD processors is in the high 90%, some even at 98%. If you double the reject it only makes the yeas go down a few percentage points, and may add a few dollars to the cost.

Remember that 70% of cost is depreciation of Front end that takes place regardless of slice start.

Key for AMD and any other SC makes is to keep the FE loaded, Yield is a distant second.

--
Help fight continental drift.

Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: dough by orpheus2000 · 2003-02-10 05:46 · Score: 1

>mmm, freshly baked Athlon

Bet it doesn't taste as good as a freshly baked Apple!

Available Now by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 06:12 · Score: 0

These CPUs shipped to retailers before the official release date, but were not allowed to be sold until today. Most retailers should have them in stock, allowing you to go buy one TODAY. Order one with overnight shipping, it'll be in your hands tomorrow.

cost effectiveness of bleeding edge by David+Jao · 2003-02-10 06:19 · Score: 2, Informative

While 3+GHz might be overkill right now, is it overkill few years down the road?

In most cases, it is far more cost effective to buy what you need for the moment, and upgrade later after

prices have dropped,
you actually need the upgrade.

Here's one example: in 1998 I bought a Pentium II 350 at about the same time my friend bought a Xeon 450. Four years later, I upgraded to a Pentium III 1.2GHz, while his Xeon slot doesn't support any cpu upgrade options. Today my system smokes his system for way less money.

Of course, if you actually need the Xeon right now then you should get it, but buying in anticipation of future needs makes no sense to me when prices are falling so fast.

And its name is Athlon. by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 06:21 · Score: 0

Obviously, this is all a plot to drop AMD stock on the Earth.

*sigh* Only the Gundams can save us!

Other new AMD processors by drstock · 2003-02-10 06:24 · Score: 1

Barton is not the only new processor from AMD. Here are a few others:

Homeron
Margeon
Maggieon
Snowballon (and Snowballon 2)
Santa's Little Helperon
Pattyon and Selmaon

--
My other comment is funny

ALRIGHT BUT I'M NOT KISSING YOU by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 06:28 · Score: 0

or giving you a reach-around.

Actually by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 06:31 · Score: 0

2) how this emulator can outperform a "pure" system at a slower speed? This could be due to my own ignorance though, please educate me.

No, it's due to to fact that the grandparent post/poster was a very obvious troll.

Re:Fakery by fault0 · 2003-02-10 06:41 · Score: 1

> The P4 3.06GHz was faster than the AMD part in 77% of the tests Anandtech did

That's because most of these tests are things that the p4 were made to do, and are almost always dominating in (uh, things like content creation, 3d and video rendering)

> This performance number is already laughable

Both you and tom don't realized that this PR number was based on the Athlon T-bird.. ignorance != good.

BBQ Time? by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 06:47 · Score: 0

Don't mod this down... It's a proper question!

Has AMD finally put a thermal cut-out system on the new XP chips, or do they still catch fire if the CPU fan fails???

old wine in new bottle by charmer · 2003-02-10 07:17 · Score: 1

640 KB (of on-chip cache) ought to be enough for everybody.

oh mannnnnnnn by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 08:11 · Score: 0

The world is using 2Ghz+ machine, and I'm at work crunching code on this 400Mhz machine, and my boss doesnt want to upgrade.

Re:Fakery by kingOFgEEEks · 2003-02-10 08:35 · Score: 1

i think you're failing to see that 'tests the p4 were made to do' means the same as 'the p4 does the things that people want to do best, and worries about other things later'

it's a fair oversight. all i am saying is that the p4 was designed to best at things that require the most processor-intensive labor, forsaking some minor things that could be better handled by memory utilization improvements. (in that field, intel could stand to do some work)

--
mechanicos ergo cogito

FreeBSD benchmarks by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 09:01 · Score: 0

How fast does it run the venerable FreeBSD 'make world' benchmark?

Re:FreeBSD benchmarks by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 12:00 · Score: 0

About the same as the time it takes 20 AC trolls to post the venerable "It's Official: *BSD Is Dying" article on a new story about it on Slashdot.

Re:Fakery by cc_pirate · 2003-02-10 09:41 · Score: 1

>That's because most of these tests are things that >the p4 were made to do, and are almost always >dominating in (uh, things like content creation, 3d >and video rendering)

So what was the Barton made to do? Office apps and 3 year old games?

>Both you and tom don't realized that this PR >number was based on the Athlon T-bird.. ignorance >!= good.

That may be what AMD says it is for, but Tom knows , as I do as well that AMD wants and hopes that people will compare the Barton 3000+ chip to the equivalent Pentium4. To think otherwise is just kidding yourself. This whole PR thing is nothing but marketing and when you are the second tier guy marketing is all about making yourself look better than the number one.

Neither Tom nor I are ignorant on this one. We just aren't as naive as you.

--

"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur

Re: I can use the power by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-10 10:01 · Score: 0

Try doing j2ee development. Takes close to a minute to recompile a JSP on relatively modern hardware (gig of ram, RAID array, P4 1.8), and 5+ minutes to restart the app server. 100% cpu time for minutes on end.

I can use a *30* ghz cpu today, never mind just 3. And still peg the bad boy.

Actually it's all about horses... by marm · 2003-02-10 10:42 · Score: 1

All the Athlon codenames are named after horses or breeds of horses. Duron, Morgan, Palomino, Thoroughbred and indeed Athlon itself are all types of horse.

Barton appears to be named after Sir Barton, the first horse to win the Triple Crown - get the cunning inside joke?

More info on Sir Barton here.

finally! by downrodeo · 2003-02-10 12:42 · Score: 1

amazing! wonderful! simply the best thing on the planet! what is even better is that by the time that the damn chip is available to the consumer without buying a 2000 dollar computer with it, The new AMD will be out.

Semi-embedded by wiredog · 2003-02-10 14:28 · Score: 1

Industrial PC, but programmed embedded style. That is, lots of assembly, and C. Lots of homebrew device drivers. Trying to get everything to load into RAM to save time, thus trying to squeeze bytes out of the code and data size.

--

Best Slashdot Co

Re:Hurry Up (and smarten up) by frovingslosh · 2003-02-10 16:08 · Score: 1

Ok, interesting comment, but your expertise is brought into serious question by the fact that you are electing to use Windows Media Encoder (compressing to WM9's video codec). Use a much better quality codec like Divx and you'll see some differences, better quality, better speed, better compatability. For example, I can make an extremely high quality 2 pass Divx encode on my non-XP Athlon 1000 mhz system and compress two hours of video in about 10 hours. Perhaps more that the fastest CPU on the market, you need to take the time to get the right tools.

--
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.

But you end up paying too much. by frovingslosh · 2003-02-10 16:17 · Score: 1

Sure, that slightly faster CPU will perform slightly faster for it's whole life, but it costs way too much for the little gain in speed. In most cases you can buy a little slower CPU for a lot less, and then buy that now top-of-the-line CPU (or one even faster than it) six months to a year from now, pop it in the same mb, and have as fast or faster system for a lot less cash, even though you bought two CPU's rather than one overpriced one. So if you can't justify paying insane prices for what you're doing on the computer right now, don't try to justify paying too much by talking about tomorrow. Tomorrow the $600 CPU will cost $99, but you'll still be out $600 for it.

--
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.

Modderation messed up by Anonymous Coward · 2003-02-11 00:38 · Score: 0

What was wrong with that post? It wasn't a troll, it is 100% factually correct. I've seen whitebox makers and geeks buy Pentiums en-masse because they've misunderstand AMD's PR ratings as being in relation to Pentiums, which is not so.

Re:Hurry Up (and smarten up) by ergo98 · 2003-02-11 01:06 · Score: 1

Ok, interesting comment, but your expertise is brought into serious question by the fact that you are electing to use Windows Media Encoder

Well I'm certainly not trying to portray myself as an expert video ripper. However another poster hit exactly on the point why I opted to use WM9: It is more of less standard in that Windows users have or can easily (using Windows Update) have it. In this case I had to give a copy of the video to my sister-in-law as well so it just made sense.

Having said that, let me also say that preceding all of this I did do fairly extensive comparative testing between divx and WM9, ripping scenes from the Simpsons, Fight Club, among others (because if divx truly shone I would have opted for it). My personal conclusion was that at an equally low bitrate (1.5Mbps) WM9 was superior to divx.

British Athlon? by r33per · 2003-02-11 01:48 · Score: 1

Or the AMD Churchill

"We shall superscale on the beaches..."

"It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of instructions can only be decoded one bit at a time..."

"I now declare a brief period of pipeline flushes..."

Stu

-1 Misinformed by alexo · 2003-02-11 03:27 · Score: 1

You have to tweak a memory management setting in the registry to take advantage of your L2 cache anyway. Look here...

Straight from the horse's mouth (regarding Win2K & up):

Do not change the SecondLevelDataCache entry

Some third-party sources have erroneously reported that modifying the SecondLevelDataCache registry entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \System \CurrentControlSet \Control \Session Manager\Memory Management can enhance system performance. The second level (L2) cache is recognized by the operating system and is fully utilized regardless of the setting of this parameter.

Only if you're running an older WinNT system, they recommend:

Getting the Most from Your Cache

By default, the NT HAL tries to recognize the amount of L2 cache on your motherboard. Sometimes it succeeds, and sometimes it fails. You can make sure that the HAL knows how much cache you have installed by checking the value of the SecondLevelDataCache REG_DWORD value under the HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management key.

When this value is 0, that tells the HAL that you have 256Kb of L2 cache. If you have a different amount installed, set SecondLevelDataCache to the amount, in Kb, of cache you've actually got. For example, if you have a 512Kb cache, set the value to be a decimal value of 512 or a hex value of 0x200. If you get this wrong, your machine may be unstable, so make sure to enter the right value in the right base.

Last Post! by alpg · 2003-02-24 18:46 · Score: 0

Software suppliers are trying to make their software packages more
"user-friendly". ... Their best approach, so far, has been to take all
the old brochures, and stamp the words, "user-friendly" on the cover.
-- Bill Gates, Microsoft, Inc.
[Pot. Kettle. Black.]

- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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AMD Releases Barton: Athlon 3000+

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