Slashdot Mirror
The Register Finds Fault In Turion Benchmark Setup
An anonymous reader submits "From The Register, it appears that AMD has joined Intel, ATI, nVidia, and just about every other hardware manufacturer on the planet in benchmark fiddling. The benchmarks for the Turion appear to have been compared using quite different systems - a 35 watt Turion 64 with an ATI GPU versus a 25 watt Pentium M with an Intel integrated graphics processor. Sadly, it appears the original benchmarks were too good to be true."
Press and hold the shift key as soon as Acrobat begins to launch. It'll skip the initialization process of the mostly-useless plugins. Doing this decreases the load-up time to less than two seconds on my 500mhz Celeron.
Intel shows it's thermal design power (TDP) at 27 watts for the 2Ghz chip, while AMD shows 35 watts. This is, however, an apples to oranges comparison. Intel's Prescott P4 at 2.8Ghz has a TDP of 89 watts, the same as an Athlon64 2800+. But according to this link, the P4 will actually draw 179 watts compared to the Athlon's 115. So, if the "marketing delta" holds true for the mobile line as well, we can expect the AMD solution rated at 35 watts to use roughly 45 watts of power at load, while the "27-watt" Pentium M will take 54 watts.
According to TFA, Turion notebooks might have 1/3 the battery life of Intel's Ultra Low voltage products. Now, Intel has a separate line of ultra-low-voltage Pentium M's, not to be confused with normal Pentium M's. The ultra low voltage Pentium Ms are only available at 1-1.2 Ghz, Turion's bottom out at 1.6 Ghz. So it's not a fair comparison. Regardless, with the power taken from the LCD and hard drives and stuff, I doubt it's even possible for an ultra low voltage Pentium M having 3 times the battery life of a Turion using the same battery.
While the article accuses AMD of comparing "Apples vs. Bananas" (their subtitle, not mine) the author includes a pro-Intel quote containing the same type of flawed comparison they accuse AMD of making. Much of the article was complaining about the lack of battery life benchmarks. Example:
"The answer is that the battery life isn't so good," Reynolds said, adding that Turion-powered systems could have up to one-third less battery life than laptops running on Intel's ultra low voltage products.
Turion is not an ultra low voltage CPU and does not claim to be. Guess why Intel's ultra low voltage products are ultra low voltage products? It's because their clock speed is limited to a mere 1.2GHz so the voltage can be lowered to reduce power consumption and increase battery life. Had AMD compared the 2GHz Turion to a ULV 1.2GHz Pentium M, yes, Turion battery life would be lower, but AMD's benchmarks would have been a legitimate 50+% higher.
Those wattage specifications are usually "thermal dissipation power", the maximum power that the processor can use under full load at full speed (which is the amount of heat that a design must be prepared to deal with, hence the name).
Processors hardly ever actually eat this much power, especially mobile processors that have C-states, underclocking, and undervolting to save power. My laptop has a 62W Athlon 64 in it, but under light load I can run the whole system on 22W or so.
Then there is the whole problem that the AMD chips have onboard memory controllers while the Intels don't, the question of how much performance gets lost when the processor underclocks, etc., etc.
There is the Apple G4 where power consuption is 10W and battery life 6h.
It does contain the memory controller. There does not exist an AMD64 chip without one. It's an integral part of the design.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.