AMD Releases Barton: Athlon 3000+

Harle writes "Today AMD has introduced a new version of the Athlon, codenamed "Barton," that features twice as much L2 cache as previous chips. Along with the increase in L2 cache comes an increase in the Athlon's performance rating -- specifically the new 2.17 GHz chip is rated at 3000+. The clockrate is actually slighly lower than the Athlon XP 2800+'s 2.25 GHz speed, so the question becomes "Does the cache improve performance enough to counter the loss in clockspeed?" For the most part, the answer seems to be "yes," however, it doesn't unilaterally stand up to the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4. With the recent delay of the Athlon 64 to September, this is AMD's top desktop chip for some time to come. The reviews are starting to pop up at Ace's Hardware and Extremetech." There's also reviews on The Tech Report, SimHQ, HotHardware, EarthV, in Norwegian on Hardware.no, and last but not least AMD's press release. I'm sure there's many many more links, but I'm tired of pasting them all in here, so post 'em below. *grin*

Comments

Hurry Up!

[Snagle]

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!

[FyRE666]

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...

Re:Hurry Up!

[10Ghz]

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!).

Re:Fakery

[meringuoid]

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?

Re:Why does this not excite me?

[Junta]

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.

The hype, the grave and the jaja's.

[El Jynx]

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