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AMD Athlon XP 3200+ Released
SpinnerBait writes "AMD took the wraps off their next speed bump with the Barton core, the Athlon
XP 3200+. This CPU runs with a 400MHz Front Side Bus at 2.2GHz and is
targeted at competing toe to toe with Intel's latest P4. The
benchmarks and review over at HotHardware, look pretty good but Intel's
3GHz/800MHz FSB P4 variant seems to squeak past it here and there. Regardless, more of that "yin" to compete with Intel's "yang" was released today by AMD and consumers will benefit again from the competition."
than my overclocked 2400 (in gigahertz that is).
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Wouldn't that be great! Damn fast! Come one AMD, drop the marketing and make it run at 3.2G!
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
It's also going to be the LAST speed bump with the Barton core. AMD's next Athlon is going to be 64 bits:
http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-1001106.html?tag =fd_lede1_hed
*This page intentionally left pointless*
eat it GNU/Scum
can it wipe yer bum? me no think so, the iLoo can :-)
and I already had bought a space heater.
Three to go..
Expect articles on tentacle hentai and medivieal festivals.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I'm not just saying this because most of us are out of work right now and barely getting by financially, but I honestly don't see why someone would need a three Gigahertz processor to run today's popular software.
Until we get the next killer application (like VisiCalc back in '79), I recommend that all my clients save money by not upgrading to the latest and greatest hardware.
Unless you use X-Windows or any other bloated (I don't mean this in a harsh way -- just being honest) piece of software, you don't need the extra speed.
...compete with Intel's "yang"...
Poor AMD, releasing a faster proc just because they feel...inadaquate...
I bet they drive SUVs too. A shame, really.
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. -Thackeray, William
Based on what I've read of the 3200+ at Tom's Hardware and Tech Report, the CPU performance is good, just slightly better than the 3000+, but still gets trumped by the P4 3.0 and 3.06 CPUs. Both call into question the validity of AMD's CPU rating system, and judging from their benchmarks, rightly so. The 3200+ is also supposed to be more expensive than the P4s, which combined with the dissapointing performance may limit it's popularity.
It will be interesting to see how the 3200+ performs when overclocked.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
No! They did benchmarks using Quake3 again. Who cares about Quake3 performance?
How about useful benchmarks - can I have a 10 plane dogfight over the front line in a Falcon 4SP campaign at 40fps+ with all the settings maxed out? My guess is no.
Here
-=Bob
Excellent, now I will finally be able to upgrade the chip on my homemade iLoo.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Tom's Hardware isn't so positive in their review. Quote from the conclusion:
Oh well, the old adagium for benchmarks/statistics aplies I guess.
Karma? What's that again?
HEXUS reckons a 200MHz front side bus can't hurt. here. There's a picture of a brown semiconductor, also known as the "brains of a computer".
TOM'S HARDWARE has a controversial conclusion about the 3200+ and describes it as a "spineless paper tiger". It thinks the 3200+ is "much too aggressive" and it should be an XP2800+.
SUDHIAN Some crazy looking geek at Sudhian (hi Joel), reckons that AMD is being a little coy with clock speeds while its PR speeds have rocketed skywards.
FIRING SQUAD says AMD's odyssey for the performance crown has been a little more treacherous than Her Indoors, but welcomes the introduction of the 3200+ and the 400MHz bus.
TECH REPORT says there's not much new to report about the 2.2GHz chip apart from the fact that it runs on a 400MHz front side bus. But it reckons that the release is timely. There's a picture of a brown semiconductor which appears to resemble the brains of a computer.
LOST CIRCUITS contrasts the real brown brains of a computer with the hypothetical 3200+ brains of a computer it previewed a month or two ago.
BIT-TECH reckons that AMD's finally released the processor that the 3000+ should have been, denies the site's too pro-Intel, and puts it through its paces. There's a picture of a brown chip which appears to be the brains of a computer.
I stop whoring now, more to be found at amdzone
There was always this "Well, the AMD doesn't ACTUALLY run that fast, they just label it that way" thing going on.
HOWEVER...
Used to be, when you put an Intel head to head with the Equally-Labeled AMD, normally the AMD was up to or faster than the Intel chip.
So, no problem. If the electric car runs as fast as a 3.2 liter combustion engine, you won't get any protest from me in labeling it as a "3.2 engine"
But they are screwing up here. When you start over selling things, you make it difficult to trust you are being upfront all around.
And when you already have one * built in to you processor name, you don't want to call attention to it.
Before, I have had no problem feeling that I was getting a far comparison from AMD (my current processor is an AMD)
But I now I will be hesitant at buying their hype. Is this chip really as fast as the Intel?
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
One game: Software rendered Doom III. :)
Well, that may not be practical, but consider this: Game interactivity could gain massive boost of any sort of fluid model was used; Watch all the windows in a building get blown out when some idiot throws a grenade. Another example would be mass-spring systems for solids. Ever want to take out a load-bearing wall in a building map? Or cause a cave-in?
What's this Submit thingy do?
I think people are starting to find out that multimedia applications such as still-image processing, audio editing and video editing does require serious amounts of CPU power if you want anything done reasonably quickly.
Take for example Adobe Photoshop. The Photoshop LE edition that comes with some software CD-ROM discs included with your new digital camera may not have all the doodads of the full version of the program, but it still uses a lot of CPU power to do things like creating special effects for your pictures or to correct things like removing red eye, removing power lines, sharpening the clarity of background objects, etc.
Video editing is another program that really uses a lot of CPU power. After downloading your home videos from your MiniDV and MicroDV cameras, the editing process is quite complex and takes a lot of CPU power to create a final edited home video that you can burn onto a recordable CD or DVD disc.
this rating system of amd's is becoming more fraud than true marketing tactic.
I think you're mistaking peak throughput with average throughput. Let me know the first time you read enough physically consecutive data to reach the peak throughput of IDE or any SCSI variant.
Solid-state mass storage would all but eliminate latency, but it's just not cheap enough for consumer use yet.
What's this Submit thingy do?
The AMD Athlon(TM) XP processor with performance-enhancing cache memory features 64K instruction and 64K data caches for a total of 128K L1 cache and 512K of integrated, on-chip L2 cache for a total of 640K of full-speed, on-chip cache.
;D
So... will I be able to run MS-DOS programs directly from the processor cache?
\m/
For a couple of looks at benchmarking, read these two articles:
Did AMD's Athlon XP 3000+ earn its rating?
AMD XP 3200+ benchmarks disable Intel hyperthreading
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist
Software-mode Mesa, baby! :P
What's this Submit thingy do?
Wouldn't having a processor referred to as a speed bump be a 'bad thing'?
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
Often you'll get a better performance boost out of doubling your RAM than getting a bigger CPU or other hardware. The cost is a lot less aswell so you can buy your self some beer to celebrate your cleverness.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
AMD released a marketing schedule back just before they changed their labeling system. AFAIK, they haven't had any slips in their release dates. They may just be sacrificing performance for market presence, which is a Really Good Idea.
If you lose market presence, you lose the game. Permanently. The only way back in is to come up with something so revolutionary, you'd attract VC in this economy.
What's this Submit thingy do?
I've just been reading this: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=9445 Very interesting claims about the validity of certain benchmarks. According to the inquirer the PC World bencharks are the only ones to be trusted. Also quite interesting what they are saying about how consumers have been ripped off for buying Celerons.
This guy has a serious case of it!
... some of us do more with our hardware then play solitare. I have a 2.6GHz Xeon Beowulf, and my model still takes a couple days to run. (GA based optimization of astrodynamics problems)
6% unemployment != "most of us are out of work right now"
Maybe it's higher in some tech sectors, but many of us are doing quite well.
As to why somebody needs faster processors
Everytime there is an AMD vs Intel debate the inevitable car analogy is made. There is absolutely no parallel between car engine performance and CPUs.
"This CPU runs with a 400MHz Front Side Bus at 2.2GHz ..."
Now -that's- overclocking.
will the seat be heated to the point that you can't sit down anymore? Or will you use "flush cooling"? :)
Inquiring minds want to know
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
I agree that AI is somewhat neglected. However, anything more automated than state machines and fuzzy logic is notoriously difficult to write properly.
If you have the (human) time, use a state machine. You can put all the intelligence and complexity of human behaviour you want into it.
What's this Submit thingy do?
nt
AMD is a cheap knockoff. Nothing more. How else can you explain having to add a bunch of options to the FreeBSD kernel just to get it to recompile? Gee... I didn't have to do that with Intel. Poor reverse engineering is all it is. And it helps that hardware sites like Toms and ARS habitually lie about the performance, and oh, did I mention AMD pays them off constantly? We tried a roll-out of AMD at work last year with 6 AMD-based name brand computers (I'll spare that particular manufacturer the agony of this article as their Intel products are solid). Less than a year later none of the AMDs are functioning. Every single one of them died. Not the motherboard. Not the hard drive. The processor. They're K-mart quality! Wal-Mart! Ghetto silicon!
"Your CPU came with a keyboard? What kind of ghetto deal is that?" -McSuede
I'm sorry but I'm calling bullshit. I am sick and tired of some marketing dept. deciding that today they're going to re-write what commonly accepted words/comparisons mean.
It's called deceptive advertising.
Plain & simple. Intel makes processors. Their competitor is AMD. A reasonable person would expect that as they are competitiors any "marketing friendly" term used to describe speed is comparing apples to apples. The layman is not a computing expert. It is reasonable for them to assume that a AMD XP 3200+ would be comparable to an Intel 3.2 GHz machine. This is clearly not the case. I would encourage AMD to re-consider it's naming scheme if it is not offering a valid comparison. Anything less brings squalor to their company.
And for the record, I am a HUGE AMD fanboy. All of my PC's run Athlon chips and I only build systems with AMD chips as the cost/performance has been there. If AMD is unable to keep it's worth, I have no qualms with switching sides.
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
You know, I can't help but think AMD is shooting themselves in the toe by not making the labeling numbers not as close to their P4 counterparts as possible. If they were truely representative, you might hear people purchase them based on their marketing label, ie "Give me a 2800+" for a system that is to be about as fast as a P4 2.8GHz processor.
Since the number don't really seem to match their true performance, people will discount them as innacurate and simple ask, "How many GHz is it?" (ie, "Should I buy the 2.2GHz Athlon or the 2.8GHz Intel?")
I am not a big fan of AMD processors, but I value the competition and it's a shame the MHz myth cannot be shed so easily.
... that they're LYING about it's true speed by a full GIGAHERTZ now, calling it a "3200" and misleading the public, when it only runs at 2200MHz.
Everything that is present in each of the L1 caches is also present in the L2 cache.
;)
Then again, as long as you run a "small" program you could run it all from 512Kb of cache with DOS.
This is an old philosophy that I'm sure is running out of steam.
Myth: Doubling your RAM leads to significant benefits.
Fact: RAM has been cheap for quite a long time. In fact, it is not uncommon to find machines with 512M or more of system memory - not only that, but extremely fast memory as well. It would not be surprising to find that most individuals have at least 256M of RAM. And for 90% of the regular consumer - 256M is more than sufficient (as of current).
In yester-years - most people struggled with large bloated applications with very little memory. We all remember the days of 8M to 32M (wow!) and 64M to 128M (big wow!). Windows 95 did one thing for the industry that was absolutely positive: it forced people to stop struggling along with 16M or 32M of RAM and move up to the big top - 64 to 128M. (Unfortunately, Microsoft never stopped - 256M seems to be a nice sweet spot for Windows 2000 - will we be seeing a 1G sweet spot anytime soon?)
But this is a new era of computing: software still runs well on hardware that is a few years old. Prices for computer components have drastically fallen in the last decade. Components are now extremely modular and flexible - and can accomodate new and improved hardware. You can still find the ubiquitous i440BX chipset (introduced in the early P2 era) hosting P3-500+ processors.
Since people have been able to stock their computers with more memory (more than enough for mundane tasks; good enough for large behemoth games), RAM doubling may not help that much. Sure, an OS's page cache can always benefit from "wasted" memory by loading everything under the sun into memory. I have three computers that I regularly use: one with 768M, one with 384M, and one with... 32M (a paltry laptop).
Granted, the laptop would see a huge performance benefit with another 64M module. But the 384M machine always has free memory, and the 768M workstation (although loaded down pretty well) will manages to avoid swap without a problem.
My 768M stocked workstation is what I call ideal for me: a 10000RPM 80G hard drive, P4-2.4GHz, and with an ATI Radeon 7500. It's for browsing, compiling, and editing - no gaming.
My 384M stocked workstation is what I call the bare minimum: 5 hard drives (for a total of 145G), a dual P2-400MHz, and with an nVidia GeForce 2. It's for moderate gaming, browsing, and compiling.
My 32M stocked laptop is what I call "Jurassic": 1 hard drive (for a total of 1.6G), a P-166MHz/MMX, and a I-don't-know-what-the-hell-it-is video chipset. It's for board games, card games, and light browsing.
I'll focus on my 384M stocked box. I could get rid of the 5 drives and invest in 2 80G or 120G 7200/10000RPM drives. Hard drives are the biggest bottleneck in a system. The higher the density and the faster the spindle speed is a theoretical higher output from the drive. Other factors weigh in considerably - but this is a mere example!
I could also upgrade my processors to the maximum limit of the motherboard. If I flash the BIOS, I'm supposedly able to move to dual P3-800M. According to Pricewatch, I can get two of these bad boys at a small price of $156 (total).
Since gaming is not really a big focus for me, I can deal with this aged video board. But ideally, I would probably go with a relatively cheap dual-Athlon board, get a couple Duron 1.3GHz processors, move my 384M RAM over and be done with it.
Ayup
And there you hit the nail on the head. The MHz myth is what hurting the cpu market more than anything else. This myth, much to the detriment of PPC, Sparc, hell even the venerable alpha keeps on having a bigger impact than anything on competition.
The only solution seems to be to find a better way to compare apples and oranges in the processor world. Unfortunatly, great minds have tried and failed so unless somebody comes up with a 'eureka' moment it'll be bussiness as usual for the foreseeable future.
Disclaimer: I happen to be a big fan of AMD, but that's more to do with the fact that they seem to screw up less than performance.
Karma? What's that again?
There is absolutely no parallel between car engine performance and CPUs.
Yes, there is and the analogy that the original poster made is a good one. A high-performance engine design can have greater horsepower with a lower displacement. Much as an AMD Athlon can have greater computing horsepower with a lower clock speed.
Not on the AMD, which has an exclusive cache.
So it's the MS-DOS and application executing completely on chip. Someone post benchmarks please. ;-)
Stefan Axelsson
I would highly recommend an XP2500+ rather than the XP2000+. $125 gets you a Barton core with twice the cache, and a 333MHz FSB rather than the 266 the 2000+ has. It's the only Barton that's not up at the high-price end of the AMD scale.
Of course, that's the route I'd take. I'm a bit hesitant to overclock to the degree the parent poster has.
why they don't use MIPS/bogomips for chip benchmarks???
I realize that this is an aside, but, HotHardware's article is a mess and should never been cited here. The raw Sandra benchmarks are all screwed up (the P4 3.0Mhz MM B/M has an AMD memory B/M in its stead; the numbers in the CPU section for P4 3.0/200 vs. P4 3.06/133 look wrong unless one has HT turned off). This is just sloppy. Go to some of the other hardware sites that have been posted above.
if you're willing to switch sides if intel had the better price/performance ratio and faster chips overall. A real fanboy would stick with AMD chips even if they got half the frames on Doom 3 and blamed it on Carmack optimizing for intel instead of 3-d now! ;)
I agree with you but real fanboys stick with their horse long after it has lost the race. Just look at anyone in the Apple camp who says the Altivec is the bomb.
In my original post I was referring more to the markings on cars.
People do look at engine sizes when really they need to be looking at power to weight ratio.
So, the logic behind AMD's naming structure was that, while their cores ran slower, their names gave you an idea of what speed a comparable Intel chip would run at. That meant a 2000+, while running significantly slower, produced about the same output as a 2GHz Pentium, etc.
Now they have the 3200+ which runs... well a bit slower than the 3Ghz Pentium. It also runs at a 2.2Ghz core. So nowhere in any of its design does it really justify a 3200+ moniker. 3000+ is closer with 2950+ possibly being the most accurate, according to the benchmarks.
If the n+ meaning has nothing to do with real world speeds, core speeds, relative speeds or any other kind of speed anymore, why don't they stop worry and just get on with calling it the "Bajillion Ultra Hertz!" model (note the important exclamation marks)?
You know, I need to get myself a V8+ sticker for a Pinto.
...at least get it right!
MHz = operational speed, aka RPM. Not CC
Since Intel's P4 is does less work per cycle, it's like a small displacement engine working at high rpm. AMD's Barton is like a large engine working at lazier, lower revs.
Does Intel seem to be losing the number game (big numbers in front of MHz or GHz = more sales)? Or is AMD beating Intel at their own game?
There are a couple of instances where new hardware is a good idea:
1. Multimedia processing. Image-editing programs and video-editing programs are MAJOR hogs of CPU power, and you definitely want a decently fast CPU to edit pictures downloaded from your digital still camera or videos downloaded from your MiniDV/MicroDV camcorder. In my opinion, you probably want at least a Pentium 4 2.0 GHz (Northwood-core version) or an Athlon XP 1900+ CPU if you want to do multimedia processing decently fast.
2. The latest games. Let's face it: by the end of 2003 we'll be seeing plethora of games that will require the use of DirectX 9.0/9.0a features. You want to get a graphics card that supports DX9 features in hardware; cards that use ATI's R300/R350 GPU and nVidia's NV30/NV35 GPU do this and will allow the latest games to run smoothly even on highly-complex backgrounds (e.g., Doom III).
How exactly is AMD "yin" to Intel's "yang" ?
Yin and yang can mean a variety of things, for instance,
Yang:
light
male/masculine
aggressive
forceful
powerful
Yin:
dark/shadowed
female/feminine
passive
yielding
So, in light of this definition, how would AMD fit as yin anything? The popular notion of yin and yang is simply that of opposites, which loosely gets applied to any competitors, which is incorrect.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
How much does the XP 3200 and the P4 3000 cost?
You know what would help PPC and SPARC even more than getting rid of the MHz Myth? Actually releasing processors that outperformed highly-clocked P4's in real benchmarks. MHz myth is one thing, but if your processors aren't keeping up in SPEC, that's something else.
PS> I'm not comparing a SPARC *machine* to a P4, you Sun fanboys! High end SPARC's have systems architectures that blow away most PC's. But the CPU itself is a rather weak performer.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
AMD is going downhill according to this article at TOMS.
There really should be a "-1 wrong" moderation.
There's no way an Athlon XP 1533MHz (model number 1800+) is supposed to be 30% faster than an Athlon 1400... a simple look at the benchmarks shows that's not the case. The whole reason they introducted the model number is the Thunderbird 1400 kicked a Pentium 4 1700's ass completely.
AMD, of course, doesn't officially say what the model numbers mean other than some vague stuff about "relative performance of Athlon *XP* processors" so they won't get sued. But the model numbers are obviously way closer the Pentium 4 MHz speeds than to the relative performance vs. THunderbird - if they tried to claim a 1533MHz Athlon XP 1800+ was supposed to be as fast as a 1800MHz Thunderbird, they would've gotten sued as a simple overclocking of the Thunderbird would show how wrong they are.
Oops, I accidentially mismoderated your post down. Hopefully this will back out my moderation.
What about using a CVT with such an engine?
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
This is a bad example in relation to CPU's.
GM's LS1 V8 is 5.7 litres, has 8 cylinders, one camshaft and 16 overhead valves.
Nissan's VQ engine is 3.5 litres, 6 cylinders, 4 camshafts and 24 valves.
The LS1 engine produces 345 HP, the VQ 260. For arguments sake, lets stick a supercharger on the VQ, and it should match output.
Are you saying the VQ will be a better solution, because it has less cubic inches, so it does more? Its all relative. Its smaller in terms of cubic inches only. In terms of physical size, the LS1 is actually smaller/lighter. You think those extra moving parts, like the 3 extra camshafts and 8 extra valves, etc etc have no mass or take up no space? (or the blower?) How much low-end torque is on that VQ again?
I remember reading an article a long time ago, stating that GM's 3800-Series II V6, had something like 100 less parts than Toyota's 3.0 Litre DOHC V6.
While the VQ engine is a really fine engine, (one of wards ten best), with a blower on it, there is really not much else you can do. Turning this motor into a reliable 600+hp engine will be difficult. Turning the LS1 V8 into a reliable 600hp engine is actually considerably easier.
These things may/may not be true of the Intel/AMD race, so this is why the car anology does not apply here. There is more to an engine than just cubic inches.
Example: my L67 gets better fuel economy AND blows the doors off the wife's 3.2 litre VTEC V6.
You probably missed that the FSB was increased by 20%.
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
Get an EpOX ep-8kha+, it's only DDR266, but it's PLENTY fast for pretty much anything.
/home on the IDE drive.
Put 1GB PC-2xxx or better RAM into it. I suggest Kingmax TinyBGA parts because they've never caused me ANY trouble. Only pay for PC3200 RAM if you intend to move it into your next machine. This board maxes out at PC2100, but 2700 and above work fine.
Then put a Barton core in it and UNDERCLOCK. The mobo won't do 333MHz, it will underclock your CPU for you a bit, but you'll generate MUCH less heat and you'll get the faster 512K barton cache. Your chip will run at 80% the 'native' clock speed if you build this system.
For a hard drive you should get something with ATA-100 or better and 8MB cache. I suggest a Maxtor MaxLine II Plus or a WD Special Edition. Don't get top-of-the-line capacity unless you like to overspend.
Get an ATI card from the RADEON family. Spend more if you game. Get a 32MB DDR Radeon 7500 if you don't game much, it's good enough to game occasionally but not at all pricey. ATI has native linux drivers in xfree86.
Get a SoundBlaster Live 5.1 card. They're cheap and the digital out is kewl if you are into hi-fi audio. Don't spend more than $50 on a sound card, please.
[OPTIONAL] Get an adaptec-2940u2w and an ultra2wide 9GB SCSI drive for your / partition if you want to run super-fast. Even though it looks slow on paper, you'll see a MAJOR improvement in launching apps and other intensive random disk activity. Put your
Follow this advice and you will get an incredibly fast machine for very little money. I've had a similar setup for two years and it still kicks butt, feels faster than my friends' 2.4Ghz PIV boxen. The board has onboard sound, but I prefer the SBLive's digital-out. Also, almost ALL onboard LAN chipsets are trash, put an Intel or 3com NIC into the thing for MUCH improved performance when pumping data over ethernet.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
like a freight train? shouldn't that work or is it just too heavy or not effieicnt enough?
The real "killer app" that the industry types keep crying about (the one that will push the need for faster CPU's and start the upgrade cycle all over again) is already here, but most people don't recognize it yet: multi-tasking.
I play Windows games in Linux with Winex, but the sound leaves a bit to be desired, so I like to play MP3 files and turn down the game sound. Combine this with burning an MP3 and IM and even alot of newer PC's start to be stressed. I think the reason this kind of multi-tasking hasn't taken off is that the older PC's and previous versions of MS Windows did a lousy job of it. As the hardware and mainstream software becomes capable of doing it, the demand will start to ramp up.
There's more to real world performance than SPEC. As usual there's also more to performance than a brand. And to top it all off, my comment was about making it easier to compare oranges and apples, which is exactly why I don't mind that you keep on treading the old path. You don't know any better.
You and I have no better way to offer so lets please hold our comments on what out-performs what to ourselfs since they are based on a fiction called a benchmark (as I pointed out before).
Karma? What's that again?
We're not talking about system performance here. We're talking about processor performance. And for measuring processor performance, SPEC is a pretty good indicator.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
If you want to believe in benchmarks, that is your right. I happen to think that synthetic benchmarking has the same value as using games as benchmarks. Actually, I think games are a fairer benchmark sinch they are real-world loads.
As long as there is no straightforward way of determining processor power (and I don't believe in SPEC) that everybody agrees on... though shit.
Karma? What's that again?