Slashdot Mirror
Athlon Benchmarks Out
|jasper| writes "on AMD's home page they now have
Athlon processors benchmarked against P3 550.. Probably still biased.. but its something
" They claim that integer performance is slightly faster,
while floating point and 3d is significantly faster (at the same
clock speed)
Ok.. I'm getting sick of you people whining about how they show their bench marks. Just take 100 off of it and stop your bitching.
They did the basic set of tests, and remember the test systems are even fully optumized yet for this chip. But the rates look fantastic for this first batch that is going out, but we are going to have to wait till end of summer to get our hand on them becuase all the computer manufactures are going to gobbling them up left and right.
But I feel the 2nd batch should be alot better and the support will be alot better in the hardware and software areas.
Also note that the 600's will overclockable to 700 mhz. Think about what the ratings on that will be. Note this too, you will be able to do 8 meg of cache, better marks with that much cache, and you can do 16 way processing.
So what it boils down to is this, the bench marks are better toward it's competing chip 1 for 1 and this is just the beginning. When we will be able to get DIY kits we will have one heck of a machine for doing just about anything. Now if AMD wanted to kick some ass in the field, the would give 100% linux support.
But i'm just rambling on... So don't mind me.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
this is incorrect. the 200 MHz bus speed is the chipset-processor bus. the chipset will still have memory bus speeds comparable to Intel systems, so until memory can run faster than Intel chipsets support you won't see much difference there.
(In case there's any doubt, yes, I'm being sarcastic.)
If PIII scales same as Athlon, PIII would need to run @ 878MHz to equal in fp performance to AMD.
So, in theory, (and according to Intel's roadmap) AMD has 12 months to take over the world!
Everybody got insulting against the author of this post but I think he has a good point.
The whole idea of the graphs is for a pictorial display of the results, if they do this they might aswell start at 99%, put p3 at 100% and then the k7 with 150% will look 50 times faster.
The graphs serve absolutely no good purpose unless they show you the true ratio, and when you have your minimum at 100, max at 150 you can start at 0 without too much wasted space.
It's turtles all the way down.
There has been some leaked, 3rd party agreement with these numbers. Thus, I don't believe they are bogus. Public 3rd party numbers aparently won't be available until August.
subsidizing computer ads that feature Intel logos.
;) and I know that catalogs that are made for this company are largely financed by Intel, through massive reimbursements given for each page of the catalog which correctly incorporates Intel logos. (Intel Inside, Pentium III, Pentium III Xeon, etc.) "Correctly," in this case means in a certain size, placement, context, etc -- very defined.
I work (in the marketing end of things) for a large computer manufacturer in Austin, TX
I'm not sure if AMD also does this, but it sure is a big incentive to the advertisers, who ordinarily would not get money back this way.
timothy
Abit have their BP6 motherboard out shortly (2 PPGA sockets there on the board - plug and play), or you can buy socket adaptors with jumpers to set SMP on (from MSI).
Intel doesn't seem to like this much - there are rumours now of them revising the celeron to properly disable SMP. If you've been hankering for dual celeron, buy those CPUs now..
From what I heard, the boards should look like a standard chipset, from the OS programmer's point of view. So, really no adjustment would be necessary. Someone also noted on the linux-smp list that AMD supposedly said that the SMP support would be compatible (again, from a software standpoint) with the Intel SMP spec. So, in that case Linux would require *zero* modification to run on K7 platforms, SMP variants included.
I couldn't agree more. Since 1994 or so the interleaving idea has been used in many situations:
The pentium FX/HX/VX/TX chipsets required paired chips for (very poor) interleaving... SDRAM had its own dual-circuit interleaving right on the IC so that you didn't have to buy paired RAM anymore... but interleaving 100mhz ram _properly_ (which should be more than possible with an Alpha protocol base) would absolutely increase performance.
Although the efficiency (latency) is a very important factor in all of this, it seems that a lot of people seem to underestimate the power of raw bandwidth.
You want an example?
I've got a PII-350 that I run on a Shuttle 661/P-BX Rev. 1 (also have a Rev. 2 but i prefer the Rev. 1) that is running on a 133mhz bus (467 mhz) VERY reliably. I ran it at 490 (140 bus) on a Rev. 2 board for about 3 hours, but since i had more than one unexplained crash, I couldn't tolerate it.
It benches in many marks faster than a PIII-500 does, and it costs a whole lot less. Let's not forget that when you put well-manufactured components together, the benchmark results can differ VERY much. I also have a p200mmx at 250mhz (83 bus) that outperformed a Celeron 300A system because it was built on a good motherboard with a good hard drive.
Moral of the story: Don't be nearly as concerned with how fast your processor is. Far more important is the processor's stability and the stability of the components you put your processor with.
Interested in a better description of my PII-350 at 467? go to:
http://www.vectorstar.com/quake2/mar asmus.html
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
Yes, but you won't cry too loud if your kernel compiles 30 or 40 seconds (do you compile it a lot every day?), but you will cry a lot if your beloved Quake runs at 30, but not at promised 40 FPS. There is a _big_ difference between perl/gcc and some other products, where human perception plays the most important role.
It's kind of ironic that we have AMD to thank for all those great performing cheap Celerons. I can't believe Intel would have ever cut their profit margins without the competition.
But hey, if AMD gets investment, AMD can itself invest in all the areas that make it fall short in the face of Intel. Marketing, Quality Control, more R&D, etc.
Buying their stock will not give them any more money to invest with. Once the stock enters the secondary marketplace the company issuing the stock doesn't get any more money from it (Unless the do another public offering).
Michael
No, I don't get pissed off at stuff like this. Why? Because you're suppose to be looking at the numbers anyways.
They also don't need a "break in the axis." Stop assuming graphs always start at 0. They don't. Your fallacy, not AMD's. Yes, probably a marketing decision, but it's hardly stems only to marketing stuff. Researchers do it *all* the time in their papers.
btw, think of what you guys are saying when you complain about stuff like this. You admit you judge a book initially by its cover. Kinda hard to take a persons comments seriously when they admit that.
You should see the page that was linked to on the intel site a while back in a story here about
:^)
nifty/strange case designs coming from intel (the one with all the evil bunny people cavorting about). Each photo of a bunny person holding a case was _larger_ than a _megabyte_. For a photo.
No cropping of extraneous visual space. No jpeg optimization. I've downloaded rpms that were smaller than that.
Not an AC, just forgetting my password.
But he is yearlights from state of the art of real benchmarking. The SPEC (SPEC_int) people include PhDs in compilation, microprocessor design, etc... Tom reviews are to scientific performance evaluation what DOS is to operating systems.
In a way it depends on whether white-box and
brand-name companies would rather see AMD dead
or alive. In a way, they might be happier to
see AMD die -- yes, Intel would reflate their
own profits, but it would also give the box
makers an excuse to add to their margins too.
Kinda like how the Starbucks prices
go up when the price of coffee beans go up, in
a ratio that has little to do with commodities
and a lot to do with adding to the profit margin.
No, that doesn't make me mad. What does irritate me is that the graphs are redundant. The information is conveyed more understandably (and with no risk of confusing a reader) with a table.
Spec_int95 Athlon PIII
(350 MHz, L1=x y z
L2=y, etc.)
The graphs are indeed very misleading, but you couldn't expect otherwise from the actual manufacturer of a product.
These things are of course worthless, because they only confirm what everybody has been saying about the K7 all the time, which is that it beats Intel's fpu, and thus their 3D as well.
Heck I'll just wait for Tom and the rest of the world. Does anybody know about the availability of the motherboards though?
[slammer56]
Well gee look at that, what a confusing table!
The tabs did not show up, ah well, you get the idea.
From http://www.super7.net/cpus/AMD/K7/ k7preview1.htm:
Multi-Processing
The K7's use of the EV6 protocol also opens a door for AMD into the world of multi-processor systems, an
area that Intel has had a lock on for the last several years. The EV6 implements point-to-point topology. This
means that if there are multiple processors within the system, each gets a dedicated connection to the
chipset. Intel based multi-processor systems must share a bus interconnected with the chipset. This is the
technology that Intel has refused to share licensing for an so has pushed x86 CPU manufacturers away from
developing multi-processor systems. This technology of Intel's is also limited to the use of only four
processors within a given system. AMD's development of the EV6 protocol for x86 processors opens
systems up to use as many as 16 processors provided the memory bus architecture can support it. Even
though each processor gets a dedicated connection to the chipset is must share a system bus from the
chipset to main memory. This will step up development of larger and faster memory types than current 64-bit
access SDRAM. You can be assured that AMD will be developing for a variety of new memory types like
RAMBUS, DRDRAM or DDR SDRAM.
Starting the graph at 90% making the AMD look much faster than it really is. I wish people would stop doing that.
Hopefully, they won't suffer from the same fate as NexGen.
Are they afraid to admit they used the Intel compilers (what else could they have used?).
What's wrong with the Intel compilers? Given that AMD does an Intel *clone*, it must have used Intel compilers to re-assure us, that they didn't use their own specific K7 optimizations, which are not in the real-world apps (yet). So, it is only good if they have used the Intel compilers, what worries me is that they didn't explicitly stated it. Perhaps, they have used something like:
gcc -opts_k7
Does anyone know where I can find an equivalent of this for the Athlon?
Why would they want to use the Intel compiler? Currently the intel 4.0 compiler generate slower code than Microsoft's. What's really sad is that intel is trying to use their next compiler to make coppermine look like it's on even footing with K7.
In the past it was integer performance that AMD performed better clock for clock, now it is FPU.
Guys... Check benchmarks with 66 vs. 100. Guess what? It does nothing! Ok, it does help with AGP transfers because the slot runs at 133. (AGP 2X) The fastest any slot talks to the computer minus agp is 33 MHZ. (Yes I know, there are 66 MHZ, PCI, and there is also 64bit wide PCI), but still it talks at 66 MHZ. Memory speed does not make all that much diff. Now, the difference between 60MHZ RAM and 66 MHZ ram is huge, because the PCI slots are underspeed. That is why the biggest bang for your buck was taking a PPRO 180 and o/c to 200. Don't Believe me? http://www.sharkyextreme.com They say it all, and my tests back them up... Jdc
Assuming that these machines are equivalently configured, AMD's statistians intentionational set the starting x-axis closer to 100% to give the illusion that Athlon is way faster than Pentium III. Don't get me wrong Athlon is faster but the modest 10% in SPECint_base95 looks like a whooping 10% by bumping the x-axis.
Sharky's
They say it all, and my tests back them up... Jdc
I really hope that AMD can sell these at a reasonable profit. If not, we probably won't see a K8 or beyond. Any idea of selling price for CPU, motherboards and complete systems?
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
the initial results would say the K7 will be the king of the x86 hill for the next year or so.
But only if they can get around their historically abysmal early-production woes. Of course, that point has been beaten to death by others, so...
Ever since reading how that G3 SPANKED the PII in Unreal FPS on Apple.com, I will NEVER believe a benchmark directly from a company. AMD did this last time when the K6 came out saying that a K62 300 was just as fast as a PII 300 in Quake2. As you know even the Celeron beat the K62 in Quake2. Yeah Yeah the K6 wasnt optimized for 3dnow on Quake2, but even when it WAS it still didnt make me want to buy one.
Dont get me wrong, if the bencmarks prove correct, i WILL be buying one (heh, when it comes out in cpu+mobo combo).
Give me some benchmarks from Tomshardware or Sharkyextreme!
If you look at most independent benchmarks, the only place the K6-2 beats even a Celeron was in low-end Winstone (basic windowing functions). The Celeron beat out the K6-2 in almost all other areas.
The K6-3 was marginally (.1 to 1 point) better than the celeron, save in the FPU, but, since it was a known issue already, it's not worth harping about.
Also, since I'm too lazy to post multiple articles under this subthread, I'll answer the "If not for AMD, the Celeron wouldn't exist". That's bull. Celeron was initially intended to take the lower end market away from the Cyrix chips, as AMD was competing in the mid-range market. It just so happened, that, once the 128K on-die cache was added that performance in 90% of the benchmarks became almost identical to (if not superior in a couple areas) the P2. If you wish to use that sort of damaged, circular "logic", I can justify saying that Intel is responsible for the K7.
Also, to the contented owners of the various AMD products I mentioned before. I'm glad that you are satisfied with the hardware you've bought. I, however, have found their offerings substandard for my purposes. Usually I find the reasons for the performance deficits I see in independent benchmarks. It's something you don't normally see in manufacturer-run benchmarks, since you don't have any sort of clue what environment the tests were run under.
Plus, NOBODY, AMD or Intel or anybody else for that matter, is going to come out and go "Yeah! We're 20% faster here, here, here, and here. But we're 20% slower here, here, and here."
Again, if you're happy with what you have, more power to you. I prefer to wait. Since I prefer not to get cut up on the bleeding edge.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
OK, I'm biased. Still, until very recently the processor market was as dominated by intel as M$ dominates the OS market, if not more so. So I've been cheering on AMD all the while, just 'cause I always feel the need to support the underdog. And of course, I've also scraped up every little technical detail about the K7 that I could. And the benchmarks are no surprise.
Yessiree, the K7 rocks. Perhaps it will start some true competition in the processor market.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
from the site:
Interger Performance
SPECint_base95
it's OK AMD, I still love you.
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
I think it may be the "more sophisticated motherboard" that saves AMDs butt in the end. Whatever part of the Alpha architecture they could bring in and still maintain the sacred cow of the wintel market (backward compatability), the better off they are. DEC did some amazing things with the Alpha, and the more of us that can reap the rewards the better. Anyway, it's a marginal speed gain, and people will continue to buy AMD processors for the same reason they always did. They're cheap. Besides, Linux already runs on the Alpha, let's just ditch CISC and be done with it.
-- "it's not enough to be a great programmer; you have to find a great problem" - Charles Simonyi
Doesn't it make you mad when people do shit like this? If you were to look at the bars and not notice the numbers, you'd conclude that the Athlon @550 was about three times as fast as the P3 @550 in the top two categories and about twice as fast in the third. It is in fact a good deal faster, but not twice as fast. When presenting just a part of a graph like this, the least you can do is indicate a break in the axis. This is pure evil.
--
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Just increasing the bandwidth doesn't always help.
Latency is a very big factor and often it is more important than raw bandwidth.
Someone already mentioned the latency vs. bandwidth articles on Tom's Hardware Guide but this holds for software as well as hardware.
Read some posts from Linus on linux-kernel and you will see that he is very concerned about latency of system calls but doesn't care as much about the raw throughput.
> this is incorrect. the 200 MHz bus speed is the chipset-processor bus. the chipset will still have
> memory bus speeds comparable to Intel systems, so until memory can run faster than Intel chipsets
> support you won't see much difference there.
What stops MoBo/chipset makers from interleaving RAM banks? You can already buy Alphas with huge databusses to the DRAM. IIRC this is the reason for this 200-400MHz EV6 protocol: To make the memory bus independent (and asynchron) to the underlying memory system.
BTW: Since this is now an Alpha protocol, nobody cares that much, what Intel chipsets support (RAMBUS? - No, thank you!!).
All these benchmarks and stuff proclaiming that it's fatser then then PIII etc, but what speed is the L2 cache running at. I'm assuming that it's 1/2 core speed like the PII/PIII. I can't find any info to say otherwise.
:))
I seem to remember AMD saying that you could eventually buy chips that had a full core speed L2 cache. Link that with the fact that upto 8M of L2 cache can be supported on the EV6 async bus and these babies are gonna be pretty kick ass as AMD roll out the server version later next year.
I think i'll wait just a little while so that i can go SMP K7
Iggy
Actually, the K6-2 300 chip did kick the PentiumII's ass with the AMD 3DNOW Quake2 driver. While this driver was specifically optimized for the Voodoo2, at the time it was the best card to play Quake2 on anyway.
Now really, modest 10% look like whooping 10%? What a nice trick. But in fact moving the origin away from zero is common in such diagrams, and it is useful, because more space of the diragram is used for the differences instead of the 0..100% range that bears no information. Of course in this case, just showing one processor is faster than another, the whole diagram itself is eye-candy and not really useful.
The benchmarks on the K7 compared to the PIII seem very similar to the comparisons of Linux and NT. I can't wait until some TRUE third party tests (none of this "sponsored" crap) tests come out for the K7 vs. PIII and Linux vs. NT...
Yep those Phds are intelligent but those benchmarks are probably best for people doing scientific or engineering apps on their machines. Since I don't design bridges or predict the weather at home the kind of benchmarks Tom provides are actually what I need.
From AMD's Athlon FAQ:
http://www.amd.com/products/cpg/athlon/faq
Question:
Will the AMD Athlon[tm] processor support multiprocessing?
Answer:
Yes. The AMD Athlon[tm] processor bus architecture is designed to support scalable multiprocessing. As the AMD Athlon evolves into a family of processors, multiprocessor systems (workstations and servers) based on forthcoming AMD Athlon platforms are planned to become available. The number of AMD Athlon processors in a multiprocessor system is a function of chipset implementation, and not the AMD Athlon design. Forthcoming optimized chipsets are planned to enable multiprocessor system designs based on 2,4,8 or more AMD Athlon processors.
Every 45 seconds, another arrest for Linux. 695000 last year. It's time for a change.
Everybody so far has said "yes, it supports SMP" but the question is will they make SMP boards? Something tells me we wont see more then a dual CPU board come out
Am i the only one that seems these tests are unfair.
First of all the mother board that the PIII is on is a P2B Right. Well that trows the 3D test in the garbage because the mainboard is doubling the results because of AGPx4 Which is to do with the main board not the actual processor RIGHT. So with AGPx4 the speed of 3D should be quite a bite higher. Great that doesn't tell us if the processor is anyfaster. Because you can be sure that AMD used a AGPx4 Board.
Also the AMD board is for sure equiped with ATA66 which throws the testes out more. Might not make a big difference if any. So yes the New chip looks great but in real world test hows is it really. Hope fully some on will do a bench mark and us systems that are equal to each other.
Why wait for the K7, if you want fast integer and floating point, just get the chip that AMD is basing their cpu around, the Alpha. I've got a 21164 533 setup that smokes in linux, espcially now that I've got it pushed to 666mhz (I still get a kick out of seeing that on the AlphaBIOS startup), and it's over a year old! The 21264 makes my chip look like crap, dusting it in both int and fp. As far as I'm concerned, Intel was whipped a long time ago, and had never recovered.
Joshua Coombs
hype@mint.net
on the Alpha vs. the P3 & K7 are all comparable. I've read that the design of the Alpha is quite different from the x86-esque chips and that the high clock-speeds are attainable because of a fundamentally different way that the chip operates/is designed.
ie. using clock speed as a measurement for processor performance is shaky at best, and just because your Alpha runs at 666MHz and a K7 or P3 runs at 500 doesn't mean the Alpha will outperform the P3 or K7 in similar tests.
That said, I haven't compared performance resules between Alphas and other chips, so it may still kick the crap out of everything -- just wanted to point out that clock speed != MPH (as in cars).
There are too many people here complaining about the K6-3's slow fpu and 'low end winstone performer'.
I have a linux server at home running a K3/450, and believe me or not, but for what I do with it (database server), it IS faster than a Compaq server with 1 Xeon/450 !
Yes, for database applications, including Oracle 8, the K6-III is THE faster cpu.
I don't care a lot about floating point, in my job we just want the best performance out of our c/s applications, and forus, the K6-3 is the best perf/value ratio ever !
SPECint_95 = 25.7
SPECfp_95 = 22.5
Probably the fastest (affordable) an Compaq AlphaServer DS20 (21264@500MHZ) machine has:
SPECint_95 = 23.6
SPECfp_95 = 48.4
and the fastest intel (PIII xeon @550 MHz):
SPECint_95 = 23.6
SPECfp_95 = 15.1
So unless Compaq starts making $3000 machines I will use K7's soon
Copyright 1998 arne Verbatim copying and distribution is permited as long as this message is preserved
> Intel doesn't seem to like this much - there are
> rumours now of them revising the celeron to
> properly disable SMP. If you've been hankering
> for dual celeron, buy those CPUs now..
For this particular reason I've decided to buy something else than Intel to my next machine. I have no respect for companies deliberately crippling their own products and selling them cheaper; they should sell them cheaper in the first place.
This exactly what Creative Labs did to their SB AWE line. The first SB AWE 32 released had all the stuff. I bought an early SB32 and it had everything else except the 512K on board ram, which didn't matter, because I immediately installed 8 Mb of extra ram. When they released the SB AWE 64 and advertised the SP/DIF digital output of the card the SB32's were crippled, the SP/DIF pins were not on the board anymore (my old version has them). Both of the cards use the same EMU8K chip that has the SP/DIF capability built in.
Creative effectively sold the same hardware for many years advertising other capabilities of the chip. Actually the SB Live! was the first with something new to offer after the original SB AWE 32. These practices make me wanna puke; this is not proper customer service, it's ripping the customers off.
Wasn't the K6 supposed to blow away the Pentium chips? The AMD graphs said it would. Sorry, didn't happen. Plus the little beasts were hot and temp-sensitive (15 degree operational range).
Wasn't the K6-2 supposed to blow away the P2? The AMD graphs said it would. Sorry, didn't happen. Even the Celerons whupped up on them (and then the Celeron A-series just made it look even worse for AMD).
Wasn't the K6-3 supposed to blow away the P2/P3? The AMD graphs said it would. Sorry, didn't happen YET AGAIN. The only areas where the chip really performed better was low-end Winstone. As if I really cared that a window would render itself on-screen in .001 nanoseconds instead of .02 nanoseconds.
The only machine based off AMD's technology that had any excessive power was the HYPE MACHINE.
I'll wait for some independent tests from the various hardware sites and my Q&A department before I go dropping cash for them. All these morons (Dubbed Athalonic Supporters on various forums) who pre-ordered theirs are dancing on the razor's edge.
In addition, the commodity market isn't going to see K7 for a while yet, as their production is going toward OEM supply FIRST. And the prices they're quoting right now ($324 for the 500mhz I think was one), are BULK pricing (in lots of 1000). Figure a fairly splefty markup to take place.
Sure, they COULD get lucky and get a chip that absoloutely tears up. Then again, they may get stuck with what the other AMD chip-buyers got. Buyer's Remorse.
I hope that AMD finally comes down with a winner on it's side this time. But I'll play it cautious and wait a while.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I just visited Datek to check the price on AMD stock, which has been a dog for quite some time, and as per the subject line, it's about USD17. (That means you could own ten shares for under $200, including brokerage fees.)
... you get the picture.
...
If AMD jumps, as I hope it will, it would be nice to own even 10 shares (the number that I will likely start with). AMD stock has been panned (rightly) for the way the company keeps announcing great products but not delivering, or delivering late, or delivering spottily, or
But hey, if AMD gets investment, AMD can itself invest in all the areas that make it fall short in the face of Intel. Marketing, Quality Control, more R&D, etc.
I don't think that Intel will ever be totally without competition, unless the governments of the world so decree (the only way you get real monopolies, anyhow), but I'd certainly like to increase the market diversity for chips, esp. if it means making some money.
Have any slashdotters invested in AMD stock, and would they like to comment? I'd like to hear whether this is idiocy or not
Best,
With the cowardice of anonymity, but really timothy
Um.. well you're right if you're a gamer. However, in the real world, not everybody use their machines as frag stations. K6 interger performance is still strong.
Besides, it's only because of the K6 that we're seeing sub $80 Celeron prices. Think Intel would throw out money like that without competition? No way..
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
The worst part is that they misspelled integer (interger)...
Anyway, I expected a bit more. Can anybody produce numbers comparing, say, a pentium 200 and a pentium pro 200? I think because the K7 is supposed to be a big generational leap in processors, I expected bigger numbers.
You are correct at first when you say that the K7's double-precision floating-point is quite fast. Actually, the K7 on double-precision should be (relative to the P3's performance levels) much faster than in single-precision. This is relatively speaking -- meaning that the K7 should be *much* faster than the P3 on double-precision, and only a good bit faster on single precision (depending on the code mix, see below).
... :) So really, anything that's optimized to run fast on a P3 will also run fast on a K7, unless you're referring to SSE instructions. In the case of SIMD instructions, a P3+SSE and a K7+3DNow have the same theoretical throughput -- it's always up to the compiler/programmer to get the most out of that.
Also, the K7 is (or should be, depending on your level of optimism) quite a bit faster in single precision, too. The main difference is that the K7 has two true multipliers: the PPro/2/3 only has one multiplier, so to get full utilization of the pipelined floating-point unit, you have to intersperse your FADD and FMUL instructions. This is the "Intel optimization" that makes such a difference for floating point on the P6-series, and seems to hurt the non-Intel CPUs. The K7 should run fast even on code that is Intel-optimized, in addition to being able to handle the cases that cannot be optimized to run quickly on a P6 processor. Furthermore, the K7 has a halfway-pipelined division unit (something that is not pipelined on the P6 series), so that it can do a division and a multiplication sorta in parallel -- the multiply doesn't have to wait for the divide to completely finish, they sorta share the multiply unit. (Maybe the best way of saying it is that the K7 has 3 and a half floating-point pipelines. Or maybe that's an oversimplification.) Last, the K7 has a dedicated load/store/housekeeping pipeline in the floating point unit (2 pipes for add/multiply, 1 for load/store/housekeeping), and that eliminates a lot of the penalties associated with the x86 stack-based floating point architecture. This is one of those hard-to-quantify (in terms of absolute cycles) things that should make the K7 blaze on floating point.
As for Intel-specific optimizations, the K7 and P3 are more alike than they are different: the K7 is just bigger (more instructions/clock) and easier to manufacture at higher clocks. (The deep buffering and scheduling depth doesn't hurt, nor does the 128K L1 cache
There have been a number of different "third-party" (unnamed third parties, that is) confirmations of these numbers. Generally, they all seem to put the K7 and P3 about on par (with the K7 slightly edging ahead) in integer performance, and the K7 dusting the P3 by 40-50% in raw floating-point power. Furthermore, remember that the K7 has a number of design features (deep read/write buffers, a deep scheduler) that take better advantage of high clock rates -- so it should scale to higher clock rates better than a P3. How this all translates to real-world speed and real-world yield levels is yet to be seen, but the initial results would say the K7 will be the king of the x86 hill for the next year or so.
The short answer is: sorta, but not like you're thinking. Anything purely integer based, probably about the same speed as an equivalently-clocked K6. (Remember that the K6 really doesn't get much above 500Mhz on the .25mu process, so ... it's hard to compare them clock-for-clock.)
:) ... if the K6 does all you need (and you wrote the above as if you already own one), then don't upgrade.
All the things you mention, though -- playing mp3s and mpeg2 movies -- are floating-point intensive. So, in that case the K7 should completely leave a K6 in the dust -- on the order of 100% (or more) faster at the same clock. (Pipelining is a wonderful thing.) More like "AMD K7 can play a 44100 16 bit mp3 using 5% *of* the cpu time (95% less) that a K6 uses", and the same for the movie. That's a substantial difference, if you ask me. Granted, maybe you don't need that much power -- the K7 is targeted at the high end engineering workstation market and the "enthusiast consumer" (people who live for Quake3, they mean
Heh. I'm on a 192kbps DSL line. I just think it's dumb when sites are not optimized. That page could've been an order of magnitude smaller and still contained the same information in a pleasing format.
...but liars use statistics. I can stand them being faster than the PIII. The PIII ain't all that. But the scale bothers me. Whether its a 9% gain, or a 30% gain, it looks the same...suspicious. Gimme integer values and I'll be happy.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
My guess is that it's a typo. Here's why:
1. If you replaced the 90% with 80%, the graph would look identical.
2. If someone were to look at the graph and make the assumtion that the lines are at 10%, it would look _worse_ for AMD.
"Whatever can go wrong, will." --Finagle's Law
Well, that is why I have guns, you paranoid weenie. Stop whining about a lack of utopia and make sure that you can defend your opinion with FLAMING DEATH!!!!!!!
/. kiddies will be able to vote in seven or eight years -- look forward to it and use it.
Ahem.
Look, the older I get, the more clear it seems to be to me that with almost no exceptions, the only people who have to worry about the police are people doing something wrong. And if all the people who felt strongly about stuff that is now illegal that makes very little difference (weed, crypto, gay marraige, and so on) actually wrote frigging letters to their congresscritters instead of complaining and trying not to get caught, then all of that stuff would no longer be illegal.
I recall that people were saying that taxes would never fall (they did), that Komrade Klinton would raise taxes through the roof (he tried many, many times -- he failed many, many times), that we would never see the end of the 55mph speed limit (there are no daytime speed limits here and I love it)(I am told that Nevada is coming soon and Texas will be 80mph in a few months), that we would never be able to do banking on the phone because the powerful bank lobbies wouldn't allow it (now we can do banking in the Internet, banking with our brokers, and do interbank transfers from an ATM), and that insurance would never fall in price (it has, a lot).
A free markets helps a lot, but writing your congresscritter and voting agressively is key. I realize that most
And buy guns. Guns are cool, really.
What are you talking about? Yes it was expensive. I paid $751 for a P120, Mobo & 16MB RAM (mainly the ram, which was still ~$30/MB or so). There were plenty of computer shops for you to "buy the pieces and make your own". No, they weren't a click away on the web, but they were there.
:) Although overclocking those AMD 486's sure was fun, hehe
In the day of the P100 there was the AMD 486/100's and 5x86/133's. No not quite as good as a Pentium, but AMD never really has been, until now hopefully...
Possibly not, but the information is right there on AMD's website (admittedly for batches of 1000, but that's the best you ever get out of chip manufacturers....)
Tim
It's official. Most of you are morons.
because obviously it is its from the damn
company that made it!
its borderline worthless, but i shall
refrain from flaming you into the ground because
of your disclaimer.
I don't understand why people think the K6-2 was such a failure. I own a K6-2 300 and there isn't a game on the market that doesn't run well. Graphic drivers are a lot more mature with their 3dnow support than when the chip first came out.
The K7 doesn't have a huge edge despite requiring a more sophisicated motherboard. Even if they make their volumes and already had the same reputation as Intel, it would still be a tight run for the money.
But AMD and Intel aren't on equal footing. Intel has enough cash in their pocket to be very competitive with their chips. For some reason, they also have a better reputation.
I'll buy one of these guys if I see one, but unfortunately, I think I'll see AMD go bankrupt before they get enough volume out the door to put a K7 in front of me at prices near the MSRP. I'm still waiting to see a K6-III for less than the price of a Celeron with motherboard.
I'm beginning to think it is a good thing that I didn't buy stock in the company.
The Intel site was not set up for Joe Q. Slashdot, but rather for promotion agencies, local hardware shops, and other websites/print media.
I sometimes wish more companies would put up full quality promo shots that I can work with. It makes it a lot easier than begging.
Lowmag.net
well...
i'd say anyone who cares about cpus?
'nuff said.
to each his own.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
i could deal with the fact that he was benchmarking with broken code, as long as he labeled the benchmarks as such, but when brian hook said in his .plan to take the benchmarks with a grain of salt, because the code was broken, and tom's rebuttal was "no, brian hook, you are wrong, my benchmarks are valid" i lost pretty much any respect i had for the guy.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Someone want to grab their graphs, redo them on a scale of about 1000 that make their chip and the Intel one seem EXACTLY the same, and repost them?
Hmm, it looks like in general you're getting about 10% extra from the 600 MhZ chip, for twice the price. Your best bet appears to be the dual 500 system (And it'll probably cost about as much as a single PII.)
There's some people complaining that they can't see the actual #'s, so here they are:
/w 1/3 speed (183 Mhz) L2 cache:
AMD K7 @ 550 MHz
SPECint_95 = 25.7
SPECfp_95 = 22.5
I haven't found a good list of x86 chips vs. #'s to compare, but if someone has them, feel free to post.
The K7 is supposed to be a full generation ahead of the PIII.
The bus speed is doubled, the cache is better, and yet it only gains 9% improvement in Integer performance.
It's dissapointing.
This is a comparison of an ASUS motherboard over a year old, and a chip which you can get now to an AMD "reference" board, and a chip which I know you couldn't buy unless you tried really hard or paid a heck of a lot of money for. According to AMD "Consumer systems based on the AMD Athlon processor are planned to be available in Q3 1999." -- I don't think Intel has any big plans for September, but they're not going to stand idly by.
I want AMD to kick some butt as much as the next guy, but abyssmal FP didn't sink AMD in the past, and stellar FP isn't going to make them big in the future.
But you're right, the FP performance is definately strong. If this chip is produced in decent volume and cheap enough, it will be serious competition for Intel. I just don't think AMD's production track record is all that great, and I can't think of any reason why a 200MHz SlotA motherboard made in lower volumes than a Slot1 board is going to be cheap.
Something else to point out, IMHO, is that integer performance is not that big of a deal anymore. It's kinda like 2d acceleration; pretty much everyone has it figured out. Sure, I'd like a cpu that runs 45% faster on integer, but that's not going to happen on x86. The big optimizations are still fp.
This is probably a trend for the future. I can imagine that most of the integer parrellelism has been extracted from x86 code. I can only imagine x86 integer parrellelism would increase only via better compilers and optimizers. However, it is hard to expect significantly better performance from any new integer core for x86 code. 9% on unoptimized code is good, and I can imagine that the difference will increase slightly as optimization also increases.
Expect future x86 chips to focus on high MHZ, wide buses, and floating point performance.
Oh, and stellar FP will make AMD big if they can pull it off. Look at intel and it's celeron line. The only reason the celeron and PII/PIII was big (last time I checked) was that it had a good FP unit (compared to the K6) and did well on 32bit code.
I'll bet it doesn't for SPEC. Take a look at the real reported SPEC data on www.spec.org. Everyone uses the Intel compiler.
What does the MS compiler beat the Intel compiler on? Is there even an Intel Fortran compiler?
"It's an i386 chip; that's supported. It has 3DNow; that's supported (not by AMD, but hey, it's a compiler problem). What else do you want?"
How about they help work on gcc to make k6, k6-2, k6-3, and k7 optimizations?
Intel releases their own compiler which beats the crap out of gcc for optimization of Intel chips, I would like to see AMD produce optimizing code for gcc.
If AMD did produce an optimized version of gcc that and you could compile a Linux kernel or entire system that ran 20-33% faster on AMD that the equvalent Intel chip they would dominate not only the linux home user market, but also the linux server market which is starting to develop.
High end corporations such as Dell and Compaq would still put Xeon's in their DB servers, but if VA and Penguin started using AMD because it was optimized, AMD would start to penetrate a market that is still owned by Intel.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Just an observation about the end price and the published prices... The last couple of years anyway, with intel chips, you have been able to buy them quite a bit cheaper on the net than what intel said they were going for, usually in the neighborhood of 20-40% less. I'm not saying that this will happen with the K7's but who knows. I'd be absolutely thrilled for a $250 (or whatever) K7 500.
I read somewhere (and i forget where, otherwise I'd give a URL) that they were selling Slot A motherboards earlier in Japan (didn't get why) and there they were going for $200 American, so they'll probably less here. Atleast I'm hoping so.
$699 + $200 is under 1000 for the fastest motherboard/single chip x86 combinations. Sounds great to me.
The "good" thing is that I recall reading somewhere how AMD got up to making 5 million CPUS a month, but was only getting 3.2 million out the door or some such. Dont quote me on the numbers, but the point remains: with the K6 family, selling them is now the issue.
Matt will still probably build a dual celeron box.
As a K6 owener I am quite pleased. Not only has the K6 performed, but for me it was worth the price I paid. When I bought my K6 it was half the cost of a same priced Pentium... for what, a gain of at most a second in opening a window... I'm going to use your statement As if I really cared that a window would render itself on-screen in .001 nanoseconds instead of .02 nanoseconds. I really wouldn't care if it took as much as half a second longer. Keep in mind, I only have a Pentium killer, and when finding the best deal for my money, the K6 was The Deal®. They have only gotten better with each release since. I look forward to getting my K7, but I will be waiting for a while before I do. Not because I don't want it, but because I can't afford it myself. You won't find me buying a PIII either, but for the same reason. When it comes right down to it, the K6 serries has always performed as well as I expected it to, and often better.
I will admit that the K6 I have is somewhat temperature sensitive. I tried to overclock it, and raised it from it's rated 233 to 225, by raising the FSB and lowering the clockrate. While a slower clockrate doesn't seem like an improvement, the faster FSB increased my system performance by close to 10%. More than enough to make it worth it, and the CPU runs cool to the touch. I could have raised my core voltage and bumped the clockrate up slightly I think, but it is already faster, and again, an excellent deal.
Am I slightly biased now. Yes!!. But only because I've had excellent performance from the K6. Only because I found that the processor exceeded my expectations. When I finally collect enough money to consider a K7 or PIII, I can assure you that the K7 is going to get my first consideration.
Ryan
Time flies like an arrow;
Time flies like an arrow;
Fruit flies like a bananna
SPECint95 has very few cache misses (presumably even less with the larger caches on K7), so the effect of a faster bus is very little. SPECfp95 is a bit more memory intensive, so the faster bus should give a boost to the score.
If I was shopping for a new system.. I'd either get a really cheap and reasonably fast cel or.. really cheap and kickass fast dual cel. The word is making dual cel systems is painless now, with some adapters or something.
Yes, I know, dual systems only work with only a few OSen/programs. But hey, these are the programs that require that much horsepower.
It seems like AMD is having huge losses because of celeron and they can't afford to sell athlon cheaper..
Does this all mean AMD will go bankrupt? I hope not. If they do, intel will start overcharging for fast cpu's again. I wonder if DOJ going to attack intel for cel pricing..
ah well
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
I know with the G3 processor (and I admit I am assuming the same with CISC processors) that the size of the backside cache made more of a difference that the main memory bus speed. Newer Tech posted a paper demonstrating that moving from a 30Mhz to 66Mhz bus (this was when the G3 first came out) with a G3, produced a mere 5 - 8% speed change, but moving from the 512K backside cache to the 1MB produced an increase of aprox 20 - 30% and you could get another 10-15% (if I remember correctly) moving from the 2:1 cache ratio to the 1:1 cache ratio, this is why Apple's old 300 beige (which had the 66mhz bus but a full 1MB cache), could beat the new 300 blue (with a 100mhz bus but only 512K cache) in processor tests, of course the new ATI 128 vs the Rage Pro made sure the new 300 beat the old in every other important test (Quake frame rates!!!)
Besides, I don't want to support a company that sticks an ID on my processor...
Besides, I don't want to support a company that sticks an ID on my ethernet card. Oh wait!!....
um...
When I bought my K6 it was half the cost of a same priced Pentium.
:(
half the cost of the same price??.. what? hehe sorry for raggin on your grammer.. just couldn't resist
(you know. I really think this comment doesn't deserve 2 points.. but its automatic for me.. umm as a suggestion would it be possible for people to purposfully lower the scroes of their own post. This would be helpful in things that we don't think deserve a high score or things that we have to resubmit and would like to moderate the old one out of existance..hmm maby for having this nice suggestion this does deserve the 2 hehe -laugh- )
Then you don't like Sun or any ethernet NIC manufacturer either. But it sure blows, because an awful lot of the world runs one (or likely both) of those. When you throw Pentium III's into the mix, you're going to be hard pressed to do anything digital in the modern world without at least passively supporting the concept of serialized computer hardware.
And when you go out and actually buy that 3com NIC, you're really feeling the pain. Because you just told 3com that you have no trouble whatsoever with a unique MAC address. Like McNealy said: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
Don't get me wrong: I agree with you. I think think PSNs suck (no, I'm not talking about packet switching). And I've been a long-time AMD user (I'm even an AMD stockholder). But you can't possibly try to use the argument that you'll buy AMD because you're in some way against serialized hardware. It just won't fly, man.
-B
Oh yeah, you can take a look at pictures of the K7 if you're curious. There's no mistaking what hardware you're running, that's for sure. I might have to actually put the case on...
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Tom was dorking around with the IHV Test which he wasn't legally allowed to get his hands on. Nice one.
id said from the start that the timedemo was not to be used for quantitative measurement of how Q3 would run on your hardware. Tom to Carmack : "Sorry, but your code works and I know it."
Brilliant, Tom.
Tom's public responses to BH were completely arrogant. COMPLETELY!
BH said why he was leaving id in his plan. The public fight with Tom only improved his standing with most people out there.
-kabloie
I use lynx at home. Have to check the site on
Monday when I go into work to tell what the hell
everyone is talking about. Most of the time I figure
if it isn't typed in it isn't worth my time. I am
not big into eye candy.
AMD chips are usually pretty good, and a much cheaper
than intel chips. But average Joe six pack doesn't
care. He buys intel chips cause of the the many
intel comercials. AMD needs to spend money (if they
can) attracting the average user. Maybe start sticking
"AMD inside" stickers on new PCs or something.
They have to come up with better ads then those
stupid bunny suit ads.
PC100 memory on the systems. Imagine the difference when you're running that K7 on a 200MHz bus with the appropriate memory. What's Intel's next bus speed bump? Only to 133MHz?
Also the results on the website are all 'BASE' values (i.e. little compiler optimisation). Presumably the P-III will beat the K7 under optimisation until compilers are modified for K7 optimisation.
Still, these figures are uncouraging.
I just want to know if this new AMD chip will have SMP, I'd lvoe to have a dual 600Mhz AMD system, although I do not know what I'd do with it yet.. maybe some Distributed net stuff ;-)..
Only 'flamers' flame!
We still need to support AMD. Think of a world where AMD did not exist, do you have any idea how much a pentium would cost? Intel only lowers its prices because it has to. Intel has publicly expressed that the only reason it is selling Celerons so cheap is because they need to compete on the low end. As soon as AMD is gone we are gonna get *ucked up the yin-yang by Intel. Besides, I don't want to support a company that sticks an ID on my processor... Call me paranoid.
Anyone heard of the pricing on these little suckers? Are they going to be cheaper than pIII's or what?
From www.3ag.net
CPU's at
500MHz $298
550MHz $459
600MHz $686
I guess that with several mobo vendors, long term mobo prices shouldn't be more than a current dual P-II, but the first few are bound to be pricey.
But Richard Stallman would tell you that GIF files are evil, and Jpeg files are good. (check out the preaching at the GNU website)
Jesus loves me, yes I know....
I sure don't. The bottlenecks in my system are my hard drive, and my modem. I only buy the cheapest CPU's available now, even the very low end (K6/2's) are far more than I need.
CPU manufacturers are a lousy investment.
Yeah, too bad Id didnt mention the broken code when Tom got the demo. This was clearly a problem was mis-communications (between language barriers since Toms english is the best). Then Mr. Hook decides to start a marjor flame war on Toms Delphi forum. Ohhh and ya wonder why Mr. Hook isnt working for Id anymore, smells like a peon (who had NOTHING to do with timedemo code)trying to get "20" minutes of fame.
Why does everyone expect AMD to magically get cash and resources put into their pocket? AMD has a single fabrication facility, in which they make several lines of CPU's. Intel has many more in which they make many lines of CPU's. How the hell do you think AMD is going to get their chip prices lower? And why is it that the K6-III is seen as a competitor for the Celeron. It's not! The Celeron is a budget chip, it has a small onboard cache and uses the PII's processor core, therefore it doesnt cost nearly as much as a PII (SRAM is very expensive). The K6-III is not a budget chip and hasn't been marketed it as one, it's supposed to compete with the PII not the Celeron. I can't stand how people expect AMD to just come up from behind and hit Intel with a shovel. Only recently have OEM's started using AMD's chips in their machines. A year ago how many new computers could you find with an AMD chip in them? Not very many. Seeing as how AMD has just begun to really give Intel some competition why not calm yourselves and stop talking about bankruptcy and get off AMD's case for a minute. When their new fab facility is finished we're probably going to see a marginal drop in their chip prices because then they will be able to produce more chips and let the price drop on them.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
SPECfp and SPECint are standard benchmarks. Why do not they give the exact numbers so that we can compare with other processors also. Intel is doing this regularly for all of its processors. AMD is eager to compete but I am sorry to to say even their attitude do not match, forget about the products.
Man, some people have some serious issues :)
Time to get off that 9600!
I'm not too sure, but could someone clue me as to what kind of SMP support (if any, this chip would have?). As it is, I dont really see myself buying a single processor based system anytime in the future.
The prices for 500mhz seems to be reasonable and if they are good enough, and does SMP, hell, i'd even dump my PII's and get some of these babies.
On SMP, saw the cool abit dual celeron board? very nice (now i wonder if that would compete with a single K7).
--
Damnit, I think everyone who has eyes can read numbers, its like AMD has some ultradevious scheme to trick you all, just some subtle effects.
And 10-40% is a pretty damn nice leap considering that the thing is already so f**** fast anyways, if it really does turn out to be something like that. Any improvement is great, if its a better product at the same or cheaper price, just get it. If AMD goes under then you'll have a lot more to complain about, think about that.
It's not only hardware manufacturers that do this.
There's for instance a mac-on-pc emulator called fusion (www.microcode-solutions.com) that compare their product to other mac emulators, but they "forget" to include Basilisk II in their table, which has al the functionality of their program but is significantly cheaper (it's free).
No significant increase can be gained by feeding the CPU data twice as fast? What are you smoking, and where can I get some of it?
The AMD K7 can play a 44100 16 bit mp3 using 5% less CPU time than the K6. The K7 can play a 24 fps movie using 5% less CPU time than the K6. The K7 boots Linux 5% faster than the K6. Is the K7 going to do anything new instead of running the same applications 5% faster?
you won't be running tasks that fit only in the CPU's onboard cache, you'll be needing data from main memory all the time. Right now, the bus between main memory and the CPU is a bottleneck on both Intel and AMD. AMD'll just be making it less of a bottleneck by opening it up to 200MHz. SO we should see those worthless ZDNet benchmark scores go up quite a bit. Along with just about all your other apps.
They've used single, huge jpg images for each benchmark page, where a much more bandwidth friendly 5-color indexed gif would have worked better (we're talking solid colored areas and line art here).
And let's not even get into how annoying it is to download a whole page of text that is presented as a graphic. They really should've typed the stuff in.
I guess that's why AMD doesn't get paid for web design.
Don't complain about pictures, marketing of AMD, ...
... stuff.
benchmark lies,
The real question/TO-DO is:
Will AMD or a mobo-manufacturer give some boards to Linux Kernel Hackers for free to get Linux support for this new CPU, Slot A,
besides, just because serialised components already exists doesnt mean we shouldnt strive towards the ideal.
Why shouldnt we have privacy ?
The K6-III is the fastest chip at compiling the linux kernel (it beats everything except an overclocked Celeron), so it is useful for something - software development.
AMD's chips have also tended to be cheaper than the equivalent offerings from Intel.
There's some people complaining that they can't see the actual #'s, so here they are
First of all, as for 3DNow under Linux -- there is absolutely *no* reason you can't use 3DNow under Linux. In fact, the new version of the Mesa OpenGL-ish libraries can use 3DNow if you have it, and people have reported 10-15% speedups in 3D geometry setup (which is what it is designed to accelerate). There's also a patch to mpg123 to use 3DNow to knock down the CPU load playing mp3's, and I think one of the mp3 encoders also has a 3DNow patch. 3DNow is simply some special instructions for using the floating-point registers in a special, funky, parallel way -- there's no operating system support required (unlike SSE, which requires rewritten context switching code). In fact, the K6-3 is probably one of the best available Linux CPUs, because it's cheap, blazes on integer, and the on-chip 256K L2 cache helps it out a lot in multitasking performance.
... under Windows *and* Linux.
As for it being a headache to use AMD -- this is sometimes true. There were some Super7 motherboard compatibility issues (esp. with the TNT cards), and in general video card makers haven't made that big an effort to support AMD, thinking that most of their market was based on Intel processors. This is changing -- and if the K7 is as high-performing as it initially seems, then I would bet most video card makers will optimize for it, if for no other reason than to show off the performance of their high-end 3D accelerators.
Your last question is about the K7 in 3D games -- if anything, the place the K7 should shine is floating-point performance. The K7 should wipe the floor with P3s in Quake and other 3D applications. I kid you not. And this is just straight, raw floating point power -- no 3DNow or SSE optimizations required (although they could make it go still faster, theoretically). If you want to go really fast come October, you're going to buy a K7-650 and a Matrox G400Max, and that will be faster than anything you have ever seen
If your thing is fast floating point, if gaming performance is what drives you, then the K7 is your chip.
You can never really trust benchmarks by these hardware developers against other hardware, there is no way they are going to make themselves look bad. Look at the bar graphs, the way they made them look is 9% looks like 100% more than the PII, because they start at like 90%, there actually pretty simular, when they make them look drastically different. I am just going to wait and find out what people really think, in the real world. Benchmarks aren't all there cracked up to bed, in many ways. So I wouldnt go around bragging about this or that, just wait.
Your Momma's so fat she makes emacs look like nano!
While the distorted way the graphs are drawn is a form of cheating, the SPEC benchmarks are industry standard and very hard to cheat, because the rules are very tight, so the underlying numbers can be counted on: the new processor is a hair better than the PIII for integer, with a more significant gain for floating point. Of course this doesn't mean that your floating point program will run 50% faster, but as benchmarks go SPEC is about the best available.
The real question, though, is whether AMD will be able to manufacture this processor with sufficient yield to be able to meet demand or make money. In the past, the fact that they haven't been able to do this is the primary reason that AMD has lost money in recent years. If they can't convince the PC manufacturers that they have their past problems beat, no one will do a deal with them and the speed of the processor will not matter.
A better comparison would probably be with the Pentium III Xeon not just the PIII. But, several groups have gotten ahold of late model K7's and there benchmarks are similar (try looking at http://www.jc-news.com/pc for more info).
:)
SMP is coming but your going to have to wait a while. There currently just trying to get to market. (supposedly K7's are shiiping but you won't be able to buy them for at least a month)
This processor should scale to higher speeds more easily than the pIII which is being increasingly delayed. however, intel has such huge manufacturing capabilities compared to AMD.
AMD financially is in really bad shape but this is a kick ass processor. I hope they pull it off. I tink my new machine is going to be a K7
its hard to beat the giant
Oh give me a break. The whole let's attack Tom thing got way out of hand. Tom himself has even said the benchmarks were not perfect but they did say some interesting things. I just think alot of people finally found the chink in the armor they were so desperatly looking for. How many sites covered Tom's so called _broken_ benchmarks? Did you ever ask why they were covering it? Maybe stop to think and read Tom's side?
The guy deserves a lot of respect. He's always been honest about a product and never falling for Name brand zealotisim. Unlike some of the reviewers out there. Never took mony from the company's or signed up for any "Review Promotions" (ahem, Hello 3dfx). Next time find out a little more about something before just taking a news byte off of some site about it.
(I don't mean to sound upset here. it's just very few bothered to look at Tom's side and just attacked him with the rest of the crowd.)
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds