Slashdot Mirror
K7 vs. Pentium III benchmarks
The Register has published some benchmarks which they got
from an engineer who works at ACER. Personally I would not count on
those numbers because: 1. the motherboard is just a sample and not a final
product, and 2. The OS is Win2K Beta 3 WinHEC APR 99 release. What do you think?
Did you see that.. PIII 600 Mhz with 256kb ON DIE L2 cache .. isn't that a XEON ?
anonymous cause i keep forgetting my pwd.
gsaraber@spamless-glasscity.net
Divide those benchmarks by the dollar cost of the CPUs and I'm sure it would show that K7 is better bang/buck and one could purchase a K7 with a higher clock rate than a similarly prices PIII.
Based on all the hype i heard about the K7, i'd expect it to be ATLEAST 25% faster.
:)
:)).
Well, its not, and this is the same thing they pulled with the K6-2.
AMD makes damn fine chips, and intel may not be worth the price, but I don't like being played with.
Honestly, in a real world application with not-so-beta hardware, the k7 isn't going to outperform an p3... it'l rank side by side on everything, and it will just be a matter of KNI or 3dnow! is better.
I'm pretty much tired of the x86 world, thats why im leaning tward those nice Blue PowerPCs, some of the more afordable UltraSPARCs, or an Alpha
My dual celeron 366 (clocked at 458mhz) is holding up fine tho, and I'm very happy with it. So its not like ill upgrade anytime soon anyway.
If I where any of you, i'd wait until the k7 is on the market for a month, and take a look at the reviews. Alot of people bought k6-2s then when the cached celerons came out they felt high and dry (like me
Oh well, just my 2.7 cents
I'm sorry, but these numbers won't be right.
Win2k is a spectacularly bad OS, and the AMD K7 stuff isn't really finished.
The Pentium 3 isn't that much better than a k6-3,
let lone the K7
Maybe Intel's FUD's just starting up...
I meant K7, not K6
Care to comment where you can get the chip and motherboard from? I've been looking all over for an inexpensive alpha + motherboard.
Motorola can't buy AMD even if it wants to.
Motorola cannot buy anything... its stock is
WAAAY undervalued compared to its competitors
in the biz, so its purchasing power is zip, zilch,
nada.
Uh, both tests were done by Acer labs.
:).
Acer sells those "crappy" computers because cheap computers sell better then expensive ones. They are in the business of making money, not making our nerdy asses happy
Also, Acer favors AMD way over intel. So for all we know the tests could be innacurate to make INTEL look bad.
Ummm, okay so you look at one single benchmark done by an UNAMED source and believe every word? Oh, and Intel doesn't screw around with there customer's heads? Can you say Pentium III? Personally I am reserving judgement until I see some reasonable tests from reputable sources.
I think he is refering to the x86 line only (Pentium and P w/MMX both being 586 and PPro/PII/PIII being 686) which is still silly because it is just generations of x86 processors. It ends up amount to just marketing words. However, the main point being that the K7 incorporates some architectural designs that will be common in all "7th generation era" CPUs. Architecturally it should be a significant improvement over anything Intel will have until Merced (assuming their CPU presentations, etc are accurate). However the real improvement should be with the fact that they are using the EV6 bus, not how fast the CPU can go all on it's own. You can go out and buy the faster CPU if you want, I'd rather spend the money on getting a faster HD and better/faster memory.... besides if you *really* wanted pure CPU power you'd get an Alpha anyways...
Given that the current generation of AMD chips outperforms the current PIII, I sincerely doubt the next generation AMD chip would be any slower.
Do any PII/PIII mobos even support RDRAM? I thought Intel was working enough just to have PC133 SDRAM working for coppermine...
The 600MHz PIII features 256k of on chip cache, different than previous PIIIs, so the benchmarks are believable.
Better sell all your Intel stock while the going is good man.
Sucker...
Dude, Acer-Open is not Acer, it's A-Open.
Functionally, an independent company that just happens to be a part of Acer. I'm surprised they don't just get spun off to better compete with ALi (Apollo boards) and FIC (of the venerable VIA-based boards, rated by Tom as the HIGHEST PERFORMANCE Super Socket7 board). At least they wouldn't have to report to the rest of Acer and risk sharing their reputation.
Well this was a really usefull contribution! Good thing you were there for us, to set the record straight.
Thanx a lot and why don't you open your own eyes, instead of taking other people's opinion for it, for a change?
www.intel.com and www.microsoft.com are really nice sites for you where every one agrees with you! Give it a try why don't you? (instead of bugging the people that do know what they are talking about)
not AMD. Let's face it. The Register was always full of crap and still is and always will be. After that Apple incident (and I was burned by it sooo bad) I will spit on the face of anyone who takes anything from that rag seriously.
Oh, shit...
In NO WAY 8080 is an x86 chip!
We now know that you are able to write, but did they forget to teach you to read or what?
why should anyone believe that these benchmarks are incorrect?
Maybe one of the dozens of reasons mentioned by others above???
it sounds like the K7 and the P3 are about the same
It sounds like you are a complete idiot! The PIII is allready beeing outperformed by the K6-III
Nobody will round 9.1 up to 10.0 or 18.2 down to 10.0 and IBM doesn't make any other drives in between. See storage.ibm.com.
And have a look at the data sheets of their best 9.1GB drives: None of them comes with an Ultra-3 interface!
Makes me think of the stupid mistakes the makers of the Rosswell "Alien-video" have done...
also IBM should consider buying AMD.
Yes, a better plan than building IDTs or Rises or other bottom-feeder x86 cloners and a fine idea if the Transmeta stuff doesn't pan out or isn't what I think it is. And would fit with their heavily rumoured 21264 manufacturing plans - they'd be a pure EV6/Slot-A company outside of the Power stuff.
come to think about the FABs that AMD have alone are worth more then their current market cap.
Apparently their fabs and other fixed assets are worth about $14 per share, and with the shares at $16 7/16 it's a pretty safe buy. Sorry I had a URL (http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/bs/story.htm l?s=v/nm/19990408/bs/computers_ amd_3.html) but it's no longer there. I am not an investment advisor. Don't listen to me, and don't think you can sue me if you do.
Erik Corry again without his cookies
Is is SCSI?
We all know that you can get IDE drives in
10Gb, but none of us have seen a SCSI drive
in 10Gb.
Go look at their web site. They're introducing them this fall. But they don't exist yet; even if they did, why would Acer [a competitor] be able to get one?
I'm also not aware of any Ultra3 controllers on the market, and the specs don't say what kind of controller is being used.
This benchmark makes absolutely no sense.
Even if the hardware does exist, it's clear that the hardware configuration used is not exactly mainline. Benchmarking people know that the way to get the results you want is to tweak the exact combination of hardware components that you have until the chip you want to be faster starts looking that way. (I should know. I did K5 benchmarks at AMD a few summers ago.)
I get your drift. This bogus benchmark has triggered a lot of fits. I think it is better to disregard benchmarks for stuff that isn't released yet, rather than speculate on the future. BUT, a lot of folks tend to believe that the future couldn't be any other way. faith, right? ;)
Well, I'll wait and see. Still looking forward to K7s, no matter what.
well for those of you who don't know
Aopen is a subsidiary of Acer
So when is Intel going to show ther new SuperG p4 then? BTW. price was not the issue here but the *FAKE* benchmarks! Noone here claimed the K7 to be cheap, or did they? And *YES* would be rather far fetched that the K7 would be outperformed by something that can barely keep up with the K6-III
Hardcore PCs? Isn't that a contradiction?
Check their message forum someone posted the *REAL* bechmarks for the PIII at 600 mHz.
I hope AMD sues the crap out of "The Registry" for publishing this unconfirmed piece of FUD!
hmm, that would mean they have a 4.48 terabyte/sec on a 64bit memory bus (64x700mhz)
wow.... i just hope this comes at near-PC100 prices
I've seen AMD people mention that the K7 can work with as many other K7s as the motherboard supports, so we may even be seeing quadruple or octuple systems before long.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
You need to investigate RDRAM further :) It is an 8 bit memory bus, not like other DRAM solutions.
:) Simply that 4.48 TBps is WAY off...
This isn't to say that the benchmarks ARE real
The benchmarks are fake. 200Mhz FSB? It took about 5 years to go from 66Mhz to 100. All of a sudden we get to 200mhz? Haha... those who beleive this have no understanding of the difficulties of creating fast buses. There are many other problems with the stats too. Anyway... no use posting anymore comments, these are total bullshit.
Some kind of whacked-out numerology from drones who think whole industries move in lockstep. Like the dweebs who talk about stylesheets for "version four browsers" forgetting that Opera came closest to getting them right so far, and they just shipped a beta of 3.6.
Well, Sun anyone??
:)
I've run linux on a 14 CPU Sun enterprise 4000.
(SMP machine) (3,5 GB RAM)
Now that RH6.0 (sparc) has come out, maybe I'll try it again!
This time I'll maybe start of a dozen of povrays or something to see how it measures..
PPC looks good, but without PREP/CHRP or something like it I'm not biting. No way am I *ever* shackling myself with Apple-only hardware.
What kind of deal does IBM have to fab MediaGX or M2 or whatever they call those? Would buying AMD annoy Cyrix, and does IBM have real reason to care?
All the components they claim to use that don't exist supporting standards that aren't finished might have somehow hurt their credibility. . . .
Can't comment on the rest, but RDRAM @ 600MHz is nothing special. This is the stopgap slow-speed RDRAM introduced because the 800 MHz parts had relatively poor yields.
If you're trying to compare RDRAM speeds with SDRAM speeds, don't do that. The SDRAM is for a wider (64-bit) part: the RDRAM is an 8-bit-wide channel.
what it takes to make a cpu of this type of performance. It takes extraordinary resources to simply cut a CPU let alone the overwhelming engineering effort it takes to develop one. Even the microprocessor giant Intel couldn't take on the task of developing a next-generation CPU alone. They had to recruit the help of veteran processor company HP.
Now if you think the AMD can just pull a next-generation CPU that can beat Intel's top of the line out of thier asses, you've got another thing coming. Sure they've done some clever things to stay competitive, and it's even impressive that they can compete at the larger micron cuts their older CMOS factories force them to stay at. But the sad fact is that it's a simple matter of resources, and AMD just doesn't have enough to take over the bleeding-edge, top-of-the-line CPU crown.
Their CD-ROM drives and systems certainly do blow. I had one of their drives chew up a CD on me. Another drive (from a different batch and model, too!) did the same to an AOL CD when I tried it on it. Needless to say, I didn't keep either for more than 24 hours.
A friend of mine had an Acer PC (P100). The heat-sink was glued to the CPU, and fell off (tower enclosure $\Rightarrow$ motherboard mounted vertically) when it heated up! It also had poor performance, and was incompatible with one of those Sierra Gabriel Knight games, which was one of the things he wanted to play on it (the old 386 was too slow).
For lack of a better word, these benchmarks are utter crap.
This guy would have had to have some serious clout to get his hands on a K-7, and especially to get his hands on a 'coppermine' P-III (notice the 256K on-die cache running at full core speed). I have not seen any of the big, respectable hardware sites on the 'net post anything about getting their hands on a coppermine.. and if any of them DO have one, you can bet they are under heavy NDA's.
Furthermore, it is a given that the select few who DO get their hands on the first K-7's and coppermines first will be the most well-known and respected reviewers... and anyone worth their weight in salt will tell you that benchmarks are done with standardized, proven equipment. The only variable or 'question mark' should be the component being tested. Anyone see a G400 video card on the shelves yet? Nope. Would any respectable reviewer do benchmarks on a beta version of an unreleased operating system? Not on your life. Due to necessity of use I have no problem with the RDRAM. I can understand using prototype motherboards, since no slot-A motherboards are commercially available, and neither are there any intel chipsets currently available that can to 133 MHz bus (I believe 'camino' will be the first, when it comes out). However, even if they are prototypes, referring to them simply as 'sample' with absolutely NO additional info just doesn't cut it.
Take the benchmarks with a large grain of salt, if you must take them at all.
Joe
I was about to pick up some AMD stock but now i dont think its super smart, this article just confirms rumblings of problems i have heard alluded too, still rember how much cheaper the AMD will probably be...+3dnow
...this is the same thing they pulled with the K6-2
Look, I read plenty of K6-2 hype (online previews, etc), and I don't think it was less than what they promised. What I recall reading is:
1. A K6-2 is a K6 with new instructions for 3D graphics and other floating-point intensive apps.
2. Running software with those instructions, you get performance better than an euivalently-clocked PII. Without those instructions, it's a K6 with a longer name.
Now, of course the only problem with this turned out to be the lack of 3DNow! apps, but on the technical side the K6-2 is what they promised.
Now the same sources are saying the K7 will do well with or without those instructions. If the K7 is the kind of "disappointment" the K6-2 was, Intel will be in big trouble.
I would like to explain how a faster CPU will make the internet go faster .
...
but I can't .
K7 slower than PIII ? eh , I don't know
Besides do I care how fast they are under win 2000
? Did I plan on ever buying Win 2000 ?
Damnit , let's see some independent benches running under Linux , first . Hold off on your purchases of new intels until we get something alittle more objective out there .
Do you need to have a new motherboard to use an Alpha chip ? Do you need a new motherboard to get the advantages of a motherboard ? Where can I go to learn more about this ?
Squireson
Subject says it all. AMD licensed their chip siet from compaq.
I'd be warry of DCG INC, if you go bare bones with them, they won't do much for support down the road. I bought a bare bones 533LX system, it's on it's second mobo, and this one's got problems, but well, DCG doesn't want to respond to phone or e-mail...
KingNothing
jcoomb61@maine.maine.edu
I hate to say this guys, but Acer INC makes about 70% of the hardware out there, under one name or annother. As far as AOpen brand, it's the most reliable out of the box stuff a tech can get, easily having the least DOA rate and the least call back rate of any brand out there.
get a MSDN subscription and M$ will send you the latestt build of all current OSs! i should hope that acer would fork over the money for a full MSDN sub :)
Theregister.co.uk has made me think it's just another tabloid of the computer industry. Here are some of the winbench99(v1.1) marks for various Intel cpus : :))
:)
:)
:) That Acer research engineer is a liar liar liar.
CELERON A 500 Mhz (5x100 overclocked) CPUMark 99 = 39.6
Pentium III (3) 504 Mhz (4.5 x 112 o/c) CPUMark99 = 38.2 -- (slower than CEL A 500
Pentium III (3) 598.5 (~600) Mhz (4.5 x 133 o/c) CPUMark99 = 46
And here's what on theregister.co.uk
WinBench99 Version 1.1 (5 times measure) CPUMark99
- K7@600MHz 68.4 Mark
- Pentium III@600MHz 70.1
My conclusion is that the benchmarks of K7 600 Mhz and PIII 600 Mhz at theregister.co.uk are fake. By the way, that PIII 598.5 (4.5x133 o/c) is a sample Intel Pentium III. It's not multiplier locked and has 512 KB l2 cache that runs at 1/2 core clock speed. I don't think 245 KB on die full speed L2 cache of PIII 600 (coppermine) can help push its CPUMARK99 from 46 to 70.1
By the way, according to Wintune98 benchmark program, K7-500Mhz (yes 500!)'s floating point performance (MFLOPS) is better than that of an overclocked CELERON A (with 128KB full speed L2 cache) 600 Mhz (yes 600!). Remember that CELERON A 's core is almost the same as PIII's core
Don't lose your faith in AMD K7 my friends
Shame to that baby boy.
Cheers
Vu Nguyen
Don't look for the K7 to be out in mass until the AMD fab in Dresden is fully operational, Q4 1999. It's not going to appear this summer.
-AC, who hopes he doesn't have to go dresden...
Theregister.co.uk has made me think it's just another tabloid of the computer industry. Here are some of the winbench99(v1.1) marks for various Intel cpus : :))
:)
:)
:) That Acer research engineer is a liar liar liar.
CELERON A 500 Mhz (5x100 overclocked) CPUMark 99 = 39.6
Pentium III (3) 504 Mhz (4.5 x 112 o/c) CPUMark99 = 38.2 -- (slower than CEL A 500
Pentium III (3) 598.5 (~600) Mhz (4.5 x 133 o/c) CPUMark99 = 46
And here's what on theregister.co.uk
WinBench99 Version 1.1 (5 times measure) CPUMark99
- K7@600MHz 68.4 Mark
- Pentium III@600MHz 70.1 ----
My conclusion is that the benchmarks of K7 600 Mhz and PIII 600 Mhz at theregister.co.uk are fake. By the way, that PIII 598.5 (4.5x133 o/c) is a sample Intel Pentium III. It's not multiplier locked and has 512 KB l2 cache that runs at 1/2 core clock speed. I don't think 245 KB on die full speed L2 cache of PIII 600 (coppermine) can help push its CPUMARK99 from 46 to 70.1
By the way, according to Wintune98 benchmark program, K7-500Mhz (yes 500!)'s floating point performance (MFLOPS) is better than that of an overclocked CELERON A (with 128KB full speed L2 cache) 600 Mhz (yes 600!). Remember that CELERON A 's core is almost the same as PIII's core
Don't lose your faith in AMD K7 my friends
Shame to that baby boy.
Cheers
Vu Nguyen
Sorry I want to correct a mistake in my last post
:)"
:)"
"I don't think 245 KB on die full speed L2 cache of PIII 600 (coppermine) can help push its CPUMARK99 from 46 to 70.1
it should be
"I don't think 256 KB on die full speed L2 cache of PIII 600 (coppermine) can help push its CPUMARK99 from 46 to 70.1
REgards
Vu Nguyen
That's the truth. I'm an ardent supporter of AMD or any competitor to that behemoth and money sucking INTEL. Without AMD, any new Intel CPU (like the recent PIII) would cost ~ 1000 bucks or more, and there wouldn't be any CELERON (A) for all of us overclockers
Regards,
Vu Nguyen
Check out this thread on Ars Technica's BBS.
.com/forum/ubb/Forum1/HTML/001407.html
http://www.arstechnica
Considering that the G400 is in alpha silicon, Ultra 3 SCSO is still in writing, and RDRAM is having trouble being produced, that the PIII Camino version spec does not call for integrated cache, and that the K7 does not yet come in 600 MHz version, USB 2.0 is not even in draft yet, etc. No one could even think that this could be anything but a hoax.
The problem is that AMD Fab cost are twice as high as Intel's. Every chip that AMD sells costs them $20 in losses. They cannot and will not have any profits. AMD will be bancrupt soon unless the shareholders revolt.
These "benchmarks" are fakes, and have already been discredited - they're from some spanner in university in Thailand, who claimed to work for acer.
They're only being repeated in the register because the register has apparently got something against AMD (they're actually talking about suing AMD elsewhere on the site - just go to their front pages, and follow a few of their other AMD links)
The register isn't usually a hugely reliable source anyway. Out of the UK sites, Need To Know is much better.
> WinBench99 Version 1.1 (5 times measure)
> CPUMark99
> - K7@600MHz 68.4 Mark
> - Pentium III@600MHz 70.1 Mark
> FPUWinMark (CPU Floating Point Performance does
> - K7@600MHz 2,819 Mark
> - Pentium III@600MHz 3,104 Mark
(1 - 70.1/68.4) * 100 ~= 2.49%
(1 - 3104/2819) * 100 ~= 10.1%
2.49% It's a benchmark. Benchmarks don't measure
real world performance. 2.49% difference is
nothing.
10.1% That is a little more, but once again, it
is just a laboratory benchmark. Plus, the bus
speed on the K6 is signicantly lower.
All sites have problems, but TheRegister and BBC seem to not filter their news very well. Just a week or so ago TheRegister reported that Apple was switching to Intel chips. This has thoroughly been denied by all parties involved and confirmed by none. If I recall, the BBC also had a really fake story a while back, but I don't remember what it was.
Lesson: Don't trust the Register unless you write for them.
Having said that, AMD has a real uphill struggle on it's hands. They are ramping up the K7 on their 0.25um process while Intel is just moving to its 0.18um process for the P-III and P-III Xeon. And it's not just any old 0.18um process, according to a Register article I can't find right now and another recent article on comp.arch it has a lot of stuff that makes it more like a 0.13um process in some ways.
AMD really need to break into the high end on x86, otherwise Intel can keep killing them by pressing them into the sub-$100 space where they can't make any money. I wouldn't mind a K7-500 for under $100 though :-).
I will never understand why Motorola doesn't buy up the x86 part of AMD. AMD is cheap right now, they have a very good x86 design in the K7 and Motorola has the fabs. Are Motorola just going to leave the x86 market to Intel? Are they going to keep betting on the PowerPC to take off? Again and again, AMD has had a good design only to be outspent and outmanaged on the fab front. Motorola has the fab experience, they just need something with a high profit margin to build in them. Take a look at the Intel bottom line, there's money to be made in that business.
By the way: Interesting to see how crippled the x87 architecture really is. This is said to be a similar implementation technology to the Alpha 21264 (done by some of the same people if I recall correctly), yet the floating point performance of the 21264 in its current 600MHz 0.35um process totally smokes current high end x86s including, it seems, the K7 at 0.25um.
Erik Corry, who can't remember his password
This is a fake benchmark perpetrated by a guy who called himself AcermanPS. He lurks around at a Thai webboard called www.pantip.com at tech-exchange section.
He claimed to be working for Acer in Singapore but his IP address comes from Kasetsart University in Bangkok, Thailand.
He is the same guy who, a few months ago, claimed that he can overclock Celeron 300A to 600 MHz using only a fan. When pressed, for details, he defaulted with no proof whatsoever.
I wonder if AMD is planning on moving the L2 on-chip and upping the L1L2 speed. That would be nice. DRAM sucks, it's way to slow.
What I really want to know is where they got those G400's and when they will become available. And how well they work under X. :-)
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
The main reason why the K6-[123] had poor FPU performance was that the FPU unit wasn't pipelined. So while if you had to do one FPU instruction every once in a while, it was pretty fast (faster than chugging through the entire Intel pipeline) if you had to do a bunch of FPU calculations, it started going really slow, as it could only work on one at a time. Now the K7 has multiple FPU pipelines, so a whole bunch of floating-point instructions can be going all at once. Which lets it keep up with the P-II/III.
I'd like an alpha, except I hear Mozilla has big problems with the 64-bit architecture. That, and x86 chips are so darn cheap.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Have things changed a lot since then?
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
Funny, my copy of that Win2k beta has a licence that says that it isn't allowed to be used for benchmarking or performance testing. I wonder if these guys read their licence...
\\'
It looks like they are _both_ bound by the constraints of the x86 architecture, and that's what this is all about. Why should that surprise anybody? I'd be more surprised if AMD was able to _significantly_ beat Intel designs. I'd also be surprised if Intel was able to _significantly_ beat AMD designs, or their own designs from last year.
For crying out loud, haven't you PC guys been eating the same dog meat for ten years? Even if it's terrific don't you get a little sick of the lack of variety? Especially now that billions of dollars have been spent to work out _all_ the big wins in the designs so there is nothing left but piddly little gains at phenomenal cost.
More than ever I'm happy I've been using PPC- now that's something I'd like to keep available, in all its 32 register, general purpose vector (128 bit) processing unit, 1 meg of cache glory. What do you think would happen if the industry put the same amount of energy behind that as it does behind x86? Yeah- it'd zip right past x86 and you'd be buying PII-like daughtercard things with _sixteen_ or _thirty-two_ PPCs all on the same die- and you'd have to run Linux (or Solaris or something) because NT or MacOS don't _scale_ to that extent yet!
Instead most people want to eat the same dog food over and over, even when they have to _replace_ their RAM, their MB etc anyway (you'd think that would tip them off).
Linux runs _quite_ nicely on PPC and you don't have to give money to Apple directly to do it- homebuild something, buy older powermacs used (top of the line ones from a couple years back) and get ones that can be upgraded to G3 simply and easily (i.e. most of them, by now). That or wait around forever for somebody to make PC PPC mobos while _you_ keep eating old dog food because you don't see anybody making new recipes, which they won't as long as you and everybody else are still gobbling up the old dog food as fast as they can make it.
I hope PPC (or Alpha, or *fill in blank*) _does_ end up stomping all over x86. But if it does not, I don't regret for a second that I was willing to try it and see. I _like_ the way my PPCs work. I was able to get some frags on q3test against G3 guys and I only have a 200Mhz 604e on a slow bus! (unsupported, and running the Mesa libs) PPC is _so_ underestimated. (ok, end rant. phew.)
How does a processor make the Internet go faster? It makes all the cpu-intensive Java applets and VRML worlds that Intel pays sites to include go faster.
Promoting poorly-designed sites with more fluff than content for their own financial well-being... .
That AMD doesn't do that sort of thing (and doesn't have Intel's deceptive advertising) is among the reasons I favor them.
Posted by Perkolater:
I'll believe it when I believe it. When I see some benchmarks on non-sample, commercially-available hardware, using an operating system that ISN'T vaporware, then I'll start paying attention. This is beyond FUD -- it's AGFUD. (AG meaning "Axe Grinding")
If you take a look at www.pricewatch.com, it can be seen that the K6-3 450 is indeed slightly higher priced than the PII and PIII at the same clock speed. However, if you compare the K6-2 at 450mhz, you'll see that the K6-2 is over $225 cheaper than either of those chips. The K6-3 at 450mhz is currently the fastest processor by AMD that is on that page, and if you look at the K6-3 at 400mhz rather than 450mhz, the price is $170 less. ($235 vs $405) Now, if you look at say a 500mhz PIII xeon with 1meg of cache, the chip costs $2067. If you go for the highest end K7 that comes out the first day it's out, you'll probably pay quite a bit, but the lower end of the K7 spectrum should bottom out rather nicely to match what else is out there after a week or two. As to the benchmark situation, I think enough other people have shown the architecture benefits of the K7 cpu over current offerings, and why this test logically doesn't make very much sense.
The die sizes I quoted are all for a .25u process. According to AMD, the K7 die is less than 100sqmm at 0.18u.
...
...
...
I agree that the K6-III gets a real boost from its onchip L2, but remember that the K7 has 128Kb of L1, and this should be enough to compensate the "slow" half speed L2.
For the FPU, you're right, I should not draw conclusions from the tech docs, but the K7's FPU is something AMD seems really proud of
If theese numbers are true, I really wonder why AMD hired all theese Alpha designers, and what they've been doing for the past 2 years
Oh, another "weird" thing is that the tested K7 is supposed to run its L2 at 1/3 core speed. I thought that AMD demonstrated both 500Mhz and 600Mhz K7s with half speed cache (but I may be wrong)
Yep ... I don't trust theese numbers for some obvious reasons ...
...
... Delay loops ??
... For people who don't know, ALI stands for Acer Labs Inc. so why the hell an Acer engineer is not using an ALI based test system ??! Moreover, the AMD Irongate chipset is not supposed (but don't quote me on this) to support DRDRAM.
... I read some K7 FPU tech docs (well, the few that are available), and there's absolutely no way that the K7 performs worse than a P3. K7 has 3 fully pipelined FP units, P3 has 2 semi-pipelined units, and P3 has more latency on FMUL, FDIV, etc ...
:)
Ok, so a K7 is slower at WinStone than a P3 at the same frequency ?? This would be VERY SURPRISING given that even the K6-III WS scores are significantly higher than a P3 at same clock speed. This would mean that the K7 is outperformed by a K6-III and I just can't belive this.
Let's compare the CPUs die sizes also :
K6-III : 91 sqmm
Pee!!! : about 120 sqmm
K7 : about 185 sqmm
K6-III 91 sqmm includes 64Kb L1 and 256Kb L2, K7 just have 128Kb L1 on die
So, if you got my point, the K7 is more than double the silicon size of the K6, so what do you think they put in
Another strange thing is that the K7 system uses and AMD chipset and DRDRAM. ALI is one of the supposed K7 chipset manufacturers
The FPU numbers are quite funny too
I won't trust any benchmark numbers unless they come from a reliable source, and the register, obviously, is not one (but we already knew it
Doesn't exactly look like responsible reporting to me. Upon a close inspection the system stats look hokey (Especially regarding RAM and HD). And if I understand correctly, ALi and VIA were to be creating the chipset. Additionally, according to AMD the backside L2 cache bus supposedly "scales past 1GHz," so I'd naturally assume that the L2 cache would be core speed, or at least 1/2 of it. And even the size (not to mention the Ultra3 speed) of the IBM hard disk looks fishy. What happened to 4.55, 9.1, 18.2, 36.4... From our favourite news source, even.
What the heck is a 7th generation CPU?
Are you counting back generations form the 8080?
8080 -> 8086 -> 80186 -> 80286 -> 80386 -> 80486 -> Pentium -> Pentium Pro -> Pentium II -> Pentium III
But even then before that was a 4040, or was it a 4004, I don't recall.
usb 2.0.. ultra 3 scsi, rdram, g400's?
Thems some craaaazy puters
you can get 533MHz 21164a's for dirt cheap from samsung dealers. (eg ~$200).
You can get a motherboard with onboard uw scsi, ethernet and 2MB L3 cache for the price of a high-end P11 board.
That's 533MHz, 8+8KB L1 cache@cpu clock, 96KB L2 @cpu clock and 2MB L3 @66mhz - and beats the pants off *any* intel chip at floating point. All at the same price, maybe less, than the latest intel stuff.
better still - it'll clock to 600, maybe even 667.
anybody considering doing 3d rendering should get an alpha rather than intel.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
This has already been discredited.
Look at it: it talks about USB2.0 (not ratified).
600MHz rdram doesn't exist.
one minute it says 133mhz fsb, next it says 200mhz.
it's a fake.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
I've got a Celeron 450a, which has 128K of full-speed L2 cache. It works very nicely. It's debatable which will give better performance, AMD's 128K of L1 and 512K L2 at FSB, or Intel's 32K of L1 and 256K of full-speed L2.
... oooh ... 200mHz FSB ...
Didn't K6-3 have on-chip L2? If they did it there, they'll likely do it to K7. IIRC, that was the move that made AMD start benching faster than PIII (but not Xeon) for non-FP stuff. A K6-3 would still make a bloody nice webserver, and K7 can do SMP, right?
I'm impressed that (if the tests are true, no way of telling) AMD finally has a machine that appears to be able to keep up w/Intel in FP performance. 3DNow! aside (since it's only used in a few specific applications, and Intel has their own SSE), the old K6 core was pretty pathetic in the FP department, about 40% slower than an equivalently clocked PentiumMMX.
But if K7 can keep up
I guess we're all being stupid. If we want fast computers we should abandon this 20 year old mickey mouse architecture and go buy Alphas. Mmmm, Alphas.
in these tests, just CPU FP and INT performance. So it probably doesn't matter, and I'm not surprised they give round numbers for the HD. The only important thing was that the systems be as close as possible to identical.
:)
Of course, I'd still like to verify this m'self. How about a K7, AMD?
But I disagree with some of your critiques:
.25u process, while the pIII is .18u, right?
- Die size: this is an early K7 built on the
- The k6-3 has L2 on chip, a significant speed boost for non-FP stuff. I imagine AMD will hurry up and add this to the next run of K7's.
- Don't draw any conclusions from white papers on FPU design. Benchmarks are benchmarks. I wouldn't trust anything written about those FPUs, there's just no way to tell what weird stuff will affect performance (e.g. PPro core is fast, but very easy to stall. Result --- some poorly-compiled programs get lousy performance)
Try reading the article you're recommending, Should The Register sue AMD? Despite the title that caused you to make an unwarranted leap to a foregone conclusion, they're NOT suing. The title is partly tongue in cheek, and partly asking for opinions from readers, but the key part of the article says "...So we're inclinded not to be litigious."
An American lawyer is quoted in the article as offering to represent The Register, and recommended that they make certain demands before they offer to refrain from suing...but it's not the Register that said that.
Yet another example of why you should read stories (and read them reasonably carefully) before jumping to conclusions.
(But yes, it's obvious the benchmarks are fakes, as you say; as to the reliability of the Register, I don't know their track record overall, and I don't read them regularly, but I've noticed a number of articles over time that were in fact accurate and did seem to be the one of the first sources to break new news, so I wouldn't discount them out of hand, either.)
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
Why would I take a PIII anyway? As far as I'm concerned, AMD will always have my $ and I'll always have their product unless they start this processor serial number crap too. And then in that case I'll just start working from my 486. I can get parts for it really cheap, and noone cares what I run on it. :)
-Philip
-ComStar
The PIII machine listed there purportedly has CPU speed L2 cache (600 MHz). But Xeons' smallest L2 setup is 256k, I thought. In any case, this PIII sounds like a next gen 'workstation' Xeon.
Anyway if these are right (and, IMO, they're not) then everything you've been told about the FPU of the K7 is wrong. Right?
The Register is not a good source for much. I am not familiar with the benchmark program, but believe time will show this to be baloney.
-k
(fud disclaimer, i'm a diehard linux fan, but the following is just the truth, taken from what i've read from linus)
that would be cool, until you hit 4, when linux's smp hits the wall, i haven't heard when linux is supposed to do 16 well, though i doubt i'll get that many processors any time soon...really, how many people do you know with 16way smp boards?
Maybe they make good motherboards, but that's it!!! Everything else they make "SUCKS ASS" - CD-ROM drives, complete systems, modems, etc. I think the motherboards are made my a separate division A-Open....
Though I highly doubt the credibility of these benchmarks, I wouldn't find them that far fetched either. Taking the naive attitude that AMD will build a supercomputer processor for cheaper than a Celeron is insane.
:)
If you take a look at chip pricing today. You will see that the AMD K6-III is currently more expensive than the PentiumII-450 (by about $39) and even the PentiumIII-450 (by about $25). What makes anyone think that when the K7 comes out it will be so much cheaper than Intel offerings. Companies are in business to make a profit. AMD is a company. Therefore, and this goes especially for AMD, getting profit it the bottom line. AMD has been losing money because of trying to sell their processors to cheap. A company can only do this for so long. When the Premium K7 comes out its also going to come out with a Premium price tag. Just like the Intel chips. So please, don't continue to think that the K7 will be a cheap chip. Performance has its price.
Taking the also very naive idea that Intel cant build a better chip than AMD is also idiotic. While in my eyes the K7 currently appears to be a better processor than the CURRENT PentiumIIIs. What makes anyone think that Intel cant do better than them? When prototype samples of the K7 are out, who do you think some of the first people to have their hands on the specimens are? I guarantee you Intel techs are some of those people. Intel knows what AMD is up to long before you and I do. And is it really that far fetched that there could be a pro-Intel guy working for AMD? Or vice-versa? Welcome to corporate America where _Everyone_ has their price (Except Linus Torvalds apparently.
We can crown a processor as king these days, but not for very long. And in all actuality its impossible to say who makes a better chip. AMD may bring out its K7, but in the fairly long time they have been designing this chip, who knows what Intel, Motorola, IBM and even 'lil Cyrix have come up with. One company may squeeze ahead for a while, but another one may squeeze by and take the lead from them. It will be interesting to see as the months (and years) go by who will come out on top. Who knows, maybe a few years from now we will all be running Linux on Cyrix chips. Hey, It could happen to Cyrix, did YOU think 3 years ago that AMD would pose such a threat to Intel's happy little camp?
-
aphex
I Steal Music!
... when you consider that AMD usually/always price thier chips BELOW intels. :)
Somone above did the math and found it was only 2% slower in one test, and 10% in the other. If AMD price their chip 25% less than intels, then with two CPU's of the same price, you still come out ahead, even with floating point (floating point performance is what has kept me with intel cpus up until now, so no I'm not an AMD zealot, just noting some math
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
This stuff happens way too often. Does anybody know if AMD has an e-mail address for reporting blatant FUD like this?
If you knew what you were tlaking about you'd know thats not a Xeon. It's a coppermine PIII. You know, 133mhz bus, 64k L1 cache, on chip full speed L2 cache of 256k. If your going to post things poeple read first and not bull like this posted by the register.
Do you consider your cdrom drive eating an AOL disk a problem ?
:)
If it were my cdrom, I would be proud of it
I dunno what's wrong with 6x100, but you know intel. Forcing a lot of people to upgrade motherboards (mine supports 133, many don't).
here's some info I found about the source of the data. It's copied from http://www.3dnow.net/
It appears that more bits have been found out about the source of these "Acer" benchmarks. Found this posted on the forum: "This is a fake benchmark perpetrated by a guy who called himself AcermanPS. He lurks around at a Thai webboard called www.pantip.com at tech-exchange section. He claimed to be working for Acer in Singapore but his IP address comes from Kasetsart University in
Bangkok, Thailand. He is the same guy who, a few months ago, claimed that he can overclock Celeron 300A to 600 MHz using only a fan. When pressed, for details, he defaulted with no proof whatsoever."
K7: 7th gen cpu, 200mhz, bus, 3 fpu units, huge pipeline, large L1
PIII: ppro w/mmx w/sse and slower cache (6th gen)
Even if the K7 sucked (probably won't) it would outperfrom the Pxxx at the same clock speed by at least 20%. The Register isn't exactly a reliable news source.
-- d'arcy poirot
Check Tom's hardware... he rates one of their boards as being the most stable socket 7 board out there. I've personally purchased three dozen computers based on Acer AP53, AP58, and AX59Pro motheboards for my customers over the past two years, and I've had no complaints at all. Most of these systems run NT Workstation 24/7 and get rebooted once a week at the most.
I ran Debian on a used AP53 with a Cyrix 166 and went two months without a reboot.
Don't knock hardware you don't have any experience with. Acer makes fine stuff.
I agree.
.
Motorola is in a very good position to buy AMD (which is in a very bad position). It makes a lot of sense for a variaty of reasons. also IBM should consider buying AMD.
it's interesting that AMD's stock is so low that ARM has nearly the same market cap as AMD. this is funny since ARM has no FABs.
come to think about the FABs that AMD have alone are worth more then their current market cap.
--------------------------------
check out my music
you might actually like it.
This would mean that aside from FPU, the K7 is roughly the performance levels of a K6 with an improved FPU (which is enough to throw considerable doubt on on the numbers, but is tangentical to my point).
This would mean that AMD has sacrificed more in the name of clockability that I had believed (recent reports from Sanders seem to indicate that MHz is king again and that's AMD's primary goal). In this case, AMD had best ramp the clock speeds up into the stratosphere quickly -- something they'll need to do even if the numbers are completely bogus.
Another possibility: is this benchmark first and foremost a L2 cache speed test?
SL
It will trail the K7 by 3 months to market.
The Coppermine is like the Celeron only with TWICE the L2 cache and the P3 instruction set (with SSE).
I think AMD will do MUCH BETTER once SLDRAM is on the market (i.e. the latency of DRDRAM just sux!).
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Here's one article (April 9, 1999) announcing the 700MHz spec. It exists, just not in desktop quantities; AFAIK, it's only just reaching the OEMs for server integration...
Just so there's no confusion, Direct Rambus DRAM (RDRAM) is a completely different memory architecture from the stuff in a regular PC. That's why the speeds are orders of magnitude faster
--The more you know, the less you know.
Eiether way these benchmarks really should go,
I still have a crappy PC. If I only had some
money, then I could get excited about it...
Hey, will we ever see dual K7's? I don't think
im going to buy a new motherboard/pc unless i can
get some kind of dual processing power.
Yes, and no. I'm not too sure on the dates. At the moment (I think, unless this is a one off chip...which I'd doubt) the K7 is .25u, but will be .18u when AMD get their collective sh_t together.
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
Well, I found these benchmarks a bit untrustworthy, so I decided to get my hands on a couple of test systems and do my own benchmarks. Here are the results:
K7-600 vs PIII-600
all peripherals identical
RESULTS:
rebrane niftymark 3000 (integer operation test, MMX register not included)
- PIII: 3.6
- K7: 1,953,234
rebrane FPUmark 3000 (FPU operation test, 3DNOW register not included)
- PIII: 0.5
- K7: 5,230,193,294
As you can see, these results clearly and conclusively show the superiority of the K7 over the Pentium III. I hope this puts an end to this Register nonsense once and for all!
-- neil
The last I heard the K7 was a very not cheap chip to produce and will most likely cost about the same as a comparable Intel chip
Thats a good call on the hard drives, I've been searching for a 10 gig scsi hard drive for a while now, need just a bit more than the 9 but not quite an 18, and no one makes them. Unless this is some new prototype there aren't any 10 gig scsi hard drives. Figures tho, since when has acer done anything good, much less reputable
From all I have read about the k7, architecturally there seems to be no good reason that its fpu would be slower than that of the Pentium III, ie, more parallel execution, more pipelining, and all the rest. Or the problem could be cropping up in the operating system, god knows microsoft plays enough tricks in its final releases, god only knows what they are up to in thier beta's.
:)
Either way, if these are true I am really dissapointed. I was planning on replacing this machine with a dual K7 system just about as soon as the chips and boards came out. Also if these are true it could spell the end to that small thorn in Intel's side known as AMD, and that would be a real shame. It might just be an american thing about rooting for the underdog, but damn if i didn't want the K7 to come out and just wipe the floor with intel and its crappy PIII adds. (how in god's name does your processor make the internet faster? someone want to explain that one to me?)
If AMD goes down the only real competition I can see Intel meeting is the DEC Alpha.(sorry Compaq, in my heart it will always be a dec) Once everyone realizes that they are going to need to move everything to epic, both on the development side, porting to epic, and on the consumer side, buying all new apps, people might really consider the alpha because atleast in Linux as of now its distributions are stable, its compilers and libraries are getting more and more mature, and no matter what it will be more mature and more stable than merced, just because it will have been around a lot longer. But I digress.
Someone please prove these benchmarks are crap...besides the fact that they came from acer
I would hate to see AMD go down now, getting so close but not quite knocking intel down.
In any good experiment its always nice to see where you might have screwed the pooch.
:)
1. Win 2k beta 3? why in gods name would you try and pass any type of reputable benchmark off on an operating system that isn't done yet.
2. Acer computers...need anyone say any more about that?
3. Intel FUD, acer, being a crappy company that makes crappy computers is just fine with being used as a toy for Intel's PR department. The last time I checked I didn't know acer made anything with an AMD chip in it, but I could be very wrong, I've been building my own machines for a while and don't stop to look at the specs on acer's most recent POS at compusa or wherever they sell them.
4. Timing, last I heard the K7 wasn't in final production yet so its also a beta chip.
Beta OS, beta chip, crappy company, looks like a load of BS to me.
Cheap computers making more money is utter bullshit. Albeit I've only been in computer sales for about three years. Then again I'm only 20, but from what I've seen switching from one computer retail center (OD) to an actual computer company (Moocow!!!) I've seen a great difference. The moo at the moo company my average sale is close to 3000 dollars where at the other place it was around 1300. At the moo place I do about 500,000 dollars a month in sales. The other place only netted about 200,000. Good companies put out good computers that people buy **Repeatedly** Shit computer companies put out shit computers that some people get stuck with once in a lifetime. I.E Acer, Compaq, Packard Bell, HP, and I list so long I dare not go on. Trust me cheap computers only make money for a short period of time then they fizzle. If cheap computers were so great, then Compaq wouldn't be taking such a big push into the small to medium grade business level now would they!!!
Technology's a battle between companies producing more idiot-proof systems and nature producing bigger and better idiots
Damn.. Looks like amd lost out in the 2000 speed race....
"Windows 98 Second Edition works and players better than ever." -Microsoft's Home page on Win98SE.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
the REGISTER. Plus, these tests conflict with all other test results I've seen, as well as Intel's take on the K7 (see various articles saying how AMD 'worries' Intel). There's another absurd article on the REGISTER mocking AMD. If they want to be Intel stooges, let them. Those of us with a clue will make an informed decision about what CPU we buy.
Nothing against them, I wish them the best and I think competition is good but why should anyone believe that these benchmarks are incorrect? (why should they believe them?) The K7 has impressive sounding specs but I've never known a chip company to underestimate their product's performance. Intel has never exaclty sat on their butts while a competitors made something amazing either, it sounds like the K7 and the P3 are about the same, as I would expect it.
I'm guessing that the K7 will perform on par with Intel's best and it's cost will also be on par with Intel's.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
> I'm a hardware research engineer from Acer Inc. (Singapore)
Do we have any proof of this? No.
> K7 test machines CPU K7 600MHz (FSB 200MHz x 3.0) 600MHz 128KB L1 Cache
> 2-way associative 200MHz 512KB L2 Cache 4-way associative EV6 BUS
> Controller L2 Cache Speed 1/3 FSB
Everyone on this message board has mentioned this part spec dozens of times, this could easily be expected.
>RAM TI Direct RDRAM 256MB at 600MHz
I believe Intel RDRAM spec is twin concurrent 16bit busses at 800mhz, not 600mhz. This would support the claims of 3.2GB/sec and multiples thereof with interleaving. Also, Sony has speced their PSX2 as having an 800mhz RDRAM bus. Nintendo RDRAM runs at 433mhz. I don't know of anyone making 600mhz rdram because nobody apparently intends to use it. I believe this is fake.
VGA
> Matrox Millennium G400MAX 32MB SGRAM 360MHz RAMDAC Resolution 1600x1200 32
> Bpp 85Hz
The card's been announced, everyone who read the press release saw it and full specs.
> Harddisk IBM Ultra3 SCSI 6ms 10.0 GB
Nobody makes a SCSI HD in 10.0GB. They're all multiples of 2.255GB. 4.55, 9.1, 18.2, 36.4 are all currently shipping capacities. I don't believe IBM has shown a U3W prototype yet, only Quantum has that I'm aware of. Also, there is no controller listed in this spec, and I haven't yet seen any manufacturer talking about and upcoming U3W controller for anytime this year. Not believable.
> Mainboard AMD Sample Chipset
> Northbridge AMD Irongate AGP4X SouthBridge AMD Cobra ATA66 USB 2.0
Chip names but no numbers. I believe the names were on AMD presentations or discussed at comp shows or shown on roadmaps. We obviously expect AGP 4x. Intel has not even finalized the USB 2.0 spec yet, so support for this in an already existing chipset is nonsense.
> OS-Windows 2000 Beta 3 WinHEC April 99 Release
Nobody in their right mind would run benchmark comparisons on a beta OS.
> P-III test machines CPU Pentium III Coppermine 600MHz (FSB 133MHzx4.5)
> 600MHz 32KB L1 Cache 4-way associative 600MHz 256KB L2 Cache on-die 4-way
> associative
We all expect this part eventually. Nothing new in the specs for it.
> Mainboard Intel Sample Chipset Northbridge
> FW82820 AGP4X Southbridge FW82801AA ATA66 USB 2.0
Chip numbers for this can probably be easily extrapolated from current intel partnumbers. We've been hearing for weeks about delays in the "intel 820" chipset. We know it will support agp4x and ata66 (not that anyone cares about ata66). I'm very confident it will NOT support USB 2.0 as intel has announced that will be coming up for early 2000.
> WinBench99 Version 1.1 ( 5 times measure ) CPUMark99 (CPU Integer
> Performance Not include MMX register) - K7@600MHz 68.4 Mark - Pentium
> III@600MHz 70.1 Mark
This is quite likely made up. The scores on the PIII which could be considered a "known" are way off from projections from standard clocks and results from overclocked systems. Sorry, this is most likely numbers drawn out of a hat and adjusted to make the K7 look bad.
> FPUWinMark( CPU Floating Point Performance Not Include
> MMX,SSE,3DNow!,FSTORE Extendtion register ) - K7@600MHz 2,819 Mark -
> Pentium III@600MHz 3,104 Mark
Again, probably random numbers.
Now I have to ask, how many people on here would not know where to find the press releases, product roadmaps, and rumored info to construct this kind of sham? The accuracy of the description is the only thing that makes it believable to any of us. The more you actually know about this upcoming hardware, the easier it is to fake, because you can get the audience's confidence with known facts and then slip the lies in at the end.
--
--
My sometimes helpful blog
Did the sock monkey commercial creep-out anyone else? I was having flashbacks to "Poltergeist".
Yes, give this one some time. I think we'll see these figures become more realistic. I don't think AMD will disappoint us on price, either.
Another ß Windows 2K? Hmm. We're not even internally supporting Office 2K until June, which is ready to ship AFIAK.
The party's over
I say take your idea a bit further. Disregard benchmarks altogether. Very rarely have I seen a benchmark that comes close to actual production performance. Is the K7 faster than the PIII? I dunno. Wait until it comes out and evaluate it yourself.
Acer isn't exactly known to be a trustworthy company. A while back they had a class action lawsuit filed against them for using old/used hardware in their new computers. Though my old acer is still running alright. So who knows.
Who is gonna have that type of spec. PC? The K7 is for consumers with a medium price limit so how the hell are they gonna aford Ultra SCSI 3 and 600Mhz Ram?
The K7 is gonna rule because since it is cheaper than the PIII people will be able to buy better quality parts for the rest of the machine.
---- Scrambler - Silicon@softhome.net
IBM has fabs and engineers to make Intel and Motorola drool. IBM has come in already and helped out AMD on their .25 fab and even talked about buying the company at one point. This is exactly what I think IBM will do if AMD gets into too much trouble. If IBM took the K7 design and let their engineers loose on it and converted it to their .18u copper process, Intel would be dead in the water.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
i'm certainly no benchmark guru -- but if the goal here is to test the motherboards, why the heck do they need all this other completely cutting edge hardware in them [g400 graphics accelerator, USB2.0, SCSI 3]?
Sounds more like an Acer engineer fell asleep at his keyboard and had some kind of hardware-based wetdream.
TravelMate indeed!
--
Rare Window - free your photos
Sorry , that last comment was mine , not Anon Cow
forgot to login .
squireson
Do you need to have a new motherboard to use an Alpha chip ? Do you need a new motherboard to get the advantages of a motherboard ? Where can I go to learn more about this ?
My IBM deskstar is advertised to have 10.1 GB.
I thought that the P-III ran on a 100 Mhz bus. This test was done with a 133 Mhz bus... Hmm that would seem like an overclocked P-III isn't much better than a standard K-7. I would like to look on Intel's website to see if the 600 Mhz P-III will be run at that bus speed, but their site sucks so much ass, that it is hard to find info on P-II, let alone the P-III. If it is supposed to be on a 100 Mhz bus the test would only be fair if it was against 266 Mhz bus on the K-7.
P.S. I wonder if AMD will put fun little IDs in their chips like Intel.
Well. Isn't this interesting. An anonymous poster, *claiming* to work for Acer, *claiming* to have access to a K7 chip and the kinds of hardware that he writes about *claims* to have benchmarks claiming the Pentium III will outperform the K7.
Well isn't this just *nice*. All scientific and wonderful. There's a problem, though, scientific studies are built on their ability to be *reproduced*. These results are not reproducable. No one has these systems. Furthermore the author has denied us even the oppertunity to contact him in order to find out what conditions the tests were undertaken as.
People, think back a week ago to the Mindspring-Microsoft scandal. That was a well-published, well-documented study claiming that Microsoft was better than Linux. And you know something? It was hogwash. All of it.
Benchmarks can just be affected *to* many ways for me to have much faith in well-documented tests. I *certainly* am not going to take the word of an anonymous test, no matter what he's waving about. Sorry, but I'll wait for the first real tests and take this as FUD.
--Virtual Adept
Correct?
I too have a 10.1 GB _IDE_ Deskstar by IBM.
They never said there were no hard drives that were 10 GB. They said no _SCSI_ hard drives at 10GB:
Harddisk IBM Ultra3 SCSI 6ms 10.0 GB
And yours isn't an Ultra3 SCSI is it?
:-)
If it is, let me know where you got it so I can get one.
~unyun~