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Athlon Reviews
Since the NDA was lifted early this morning, several sites have released reviews of AMD's new Athlon chip (coming in 500, 550, 600, and 650MHz versions). The first was Bill Henning's CPUReview site. He
reviewed the Athlon 600 and has several nice things to say about it. Next up is The Upgrade Center's review, and two more submitted by kimmo, the first at Ace's Hardware, and the second at AGN Hardware. Next, Magnetism submitted a link to Tom's review. Finally, as submitted by pmmay, the ZDNet review. To finish, an article at the SJ Mercury that discusses AMD's strategy for the chip market (thanks to Greg Miller for that one). Update: 08/09 12:31 by J : Thanks to The Evil Dwarf from Hell for links to the AMD Benchmark Page, which even has SPECint and SPECfp scores, and to an anonymous reader for the Ars Technica review.
But daddy, I want an Oompa Loompa NOW!!!!!
Bad things often happen to good people,
It is up to them to see that they remain good.
check it
BLOCK STRUCTURE breathing apparatus required for special maneuvers!!
Again you forgot the Geramn Computer Mag c't. They have a very positive review (Athlon's gonna kick some butf) and very good benchmarks. Check it out here. ;-)
Oh and do not forgot to pop in your babelfish - it is in German
Finally, I can have a really high end x86 system that has no wintel parts. The Prophecy is complete.
-------------------------------END--COMMUNICATION
*** nothing further to say - the subject says everything! ***
Probable answer: Overclocking from 500 -> 600 is probably way too easy. The price of the 600 Mhz version is about double the price of the 500 MHz version...
This quite Intelish behaviour, if you ask me.
AC
The appropriate c't article via Babelfish (German->English) is here:
Athlon article
Unfortunately Babelfish translates only half of it...
What are YOU smoking? He was obviously referring to being able to build a high performance machine with the AMD Athlon, as opposed to building a decent performing, low priced machine with the older - not so hot - x86 clone CPUs.
- 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?"
Wow. These benches are awesome looking, but as I sit here in awe, I wonder, how much are they gonna cost? AMD has always been known for its great pricing, but now with this new chip, will they stray from their roots? I want to build a system soon, but if the processor is too expensive, it won't be an option for it. Let's hope AMD keeps it reasonable, even with its intel-crushing speed.
-- There's only one replacement for displacement.....
Why am I concerned?
It's now a good thing that competition in the x86-cpu area has revived. Unlike video cards and such, the end-user who buys thier computer will have a choice for their cpu. Computer vendors were stuck with selling intel because the end-users only knew/wanted intel. MAybe it will be like the 486 old days. Who knows?
They aren't worth the dowload all you see is graphics comparing Athlon and PIII. Basiccly on each graphics the Athlon Beats the Intels processors.
The quake Movie is dispointing they should have take shots of the same demo scene running on both Hardware ...
none Yet.
if the question is x86 alternatives the answer is dec alpha www.alpha-processor.com
Check out the review at Ars. the benchmarks are clearly explained, IMO, and thye writer doesn't just kiss Athlon ass like so many other sites are doing. Sure, they recognize that the performance is superior than that of the P6, but any red-blooded CPU lover knows that AMD has been in a similar position before: capable of kickin' Intel, but not capable of producing in quanity, while making money.
According to www.pricewatch.com Intel PIII 600 - 657 AMD Athlon 600 - 747 Price difference of 13.69%. Most of the benchmarks I've seen put the overall performance difference at between 12-15% at the same clock speed. So it's about the same bang for the buck. No big deal.. yet.
Apple keeps touting the G3 as a "Pentium Toaster", saying it beats the pants off of the PIII at the same clock speed. Now AMD seems to be saying that they can do the same. Are there any benchmarks out there doing G3 vs. K7^H^HAthlon? Methinks that could get interesting....
Juiced? Or Not?
on this page there's a link to all known review, with rating, very cool!
--
http://www.beroute.tzo.com
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Actually, you can't change that either. Both bus and CPU multiplier are set in the CPU. They stated that a hardware debugger could change these though and the hardware/software would be available at a decent price.
Hmmm. Kinda defeats AMD's reason for locking in the first place, "to prevent resellers from OCing the chips and remarking them". Since any reseller who's gonna do this will obviously get their hands on this. I suppose it will prevent the casual overclocker though.
OK, we'll need to do some things to add Athlon support to Linux:
a) Kernel - we need to add the Athlon to the cpuid lists so it won't come with the CPU type blank
b) gcc - we will have to edit the i386.md, i386.c and i386.h so gcc will know the instruction delays when you use -mcpu=k7 (generates faster code)
c) gas - we will have to add the new K7 instructions to it
d) rc5des (offtopic) - we need k7 cores
e) Xfree86 - we need optimized drivers for K7 (and for other archs, AFAIK we do not have any CPU-specific optimization in the drivers
Maybe we would need some SMP changes too, and UDMA and AGP support for the new chipsets.
Any more changes?
These tests show Quake2 to run at over 100 fps at times. No quicktime is going to show you that. Graphics quality won't change either so it's completely useless to show a movie of this.
Usually people will pay much more money for even a small increase in performance. That's why I am going to buy the Athlon 650. And that is why clustering is so hot.
Sigged!
OK, we'll need to do some things to add Athlon support to FreeBSD: a) Kernel - we need to add the Athlon to the cpuid lists so it won't come with the CPU type blank b) gcc - we will have to edit the i386.md, i386.c and i386.h so gcc will know the instruction delays when you use -mcpu=k7 (generates faster code) c) gas - we will have to add the new K7 instructions to it d) rc5des (offtopic) - we need k7 cores e) Xfree86 - we need optimized drivers for K7 (and for other archs, AFAIK we do not have any CPU-specific optimization in the drivers Maybe we would need some SMP changes too, and UDMA and AGP support for the new chipsets. Any more changes?
hmm if this is Intel IOAPIC then maybe I can get a DUAL AMD motherboard soon.. 2 600Mhz CPU's shure would scream.. it would be nice to see kernel compiles in a minute or two
Only 'flamers' flame!
M
"OK, we'll need to do some things to add Athlon support to Linux:"
;) then I can ALSO switch to *nix (yay).
I'm not a FSF bigot, but shouldn't this really be "support GNU" or "support POSIX" or "support UNIX"? but whatever.
Please please please make Linux, FreeBSD, FOOnix, KILLER on AMD chips. I am currently a pathetic windows junkie (although I've gone cold turkey on Linux before...mostly I'm lazy and want to play my old games). If *nix is killer on AMD, then WHEN I DO switch to AMD (most definately my next chip - Intel bugger off
Make it and I will come.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Their new processors will not only have flavors, but they will be scratch 'n sniff. And the mice will have psychoactive substances in them, addicting you to their one-buttoned glory.
-Some guy
*when calculating integers on good friday in partial indirect sunlight with the intel box turned off. Offer void in Utah
I don't have any personal experience with an AMD chip, but from friends that have had them, they never really liked then as much as Intel cpu's. Since I heard about the K7, I have been reading every artical I could find on it. What is said on tomshardware is just restating what was said by the firing-squad when they did thier first comparisons of the P3-550 and the K7-600. And then recently with thier P3-600 (and the oc'ed version P3-660) vs the K7-600.
.18 micron and have the Viper chipset for it. Another factor for not getting a K7 now, is waiting for the commercial release of a new, faster type of ram that can advantage of the fast EV6 bus better.
But the thing is, will big corperations be willing to use/trust another processor maker for new servers. With server market being run by Intel, Sun, and DEC, will there be enough room for AMD to pop up and show off its stuff. I personally will not get the K6 untill they implament the
Its not what it is, its something else.
Try one of these:
LinuxPPC
Yellow Dog Linux
As far as I can tell (I haven't used either), LinuxPPC is a general purpose distribution, along the same lines as Red Hat, Open Linux or Debian GNU/Linux. Yellow Dog is more targetted for the server market.
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Open mind, insert foot.
The K7/Athlon can be overclocked. Check out the Kryotech info towards the bottom of this site:
AGN Hardware: Athlon Review
They're looking at having an Athlon system running at 1GHz by November. My take is AMD has no problem with overclocking, as long as it's clearly labelled as such.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Do you *really* think that the typical desktop user will learn enough to install packages from source? Of course not.
Any time you can get an increase in CPU speed directly proportional to the increase in cost, you should jump on it (as in this case). Typically, high end processors demonstrate hard core diminishing marginal rates of return. Thus, the ten percent increase in performance you get by stepping up to the latest Xeon might increase your outlay by 50+%. Those $13,000 PA-RISC workstations, to take a different example, are NOT ten times as fast as a solid $1300 system. They'd be lucky if they could clock in at twice the speed. There's simply no way to say: "Ok, you can buy 1 point of SPECInt for $20."
--JZ
I am using an Abit BP6 dual socket 370 motherboard. So far the results are pleasing. Right out of the box the celeron did 500 with no problems. My second CPU is arriving shortly.
But Intel still has the monopoly on the APIC standard. The APIC standard is what Linux uses to parallelize the processors. AMD implements another standard. The fastest AMD will capture slower frame rates than a dual Pentium III.
On a related note, has anyone seen rc5/des benchmarks in any of the reviews? Though I've read many of the reviews, because there're so many, I haven't had time to read them all...
I know that there were some scores rumored to be about 1.6 Mk/sec, I'd prefer some verifiable numbers :).
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
You be hard pressed to find people that don't consider Athlon a Wintel part.
Seems that Tom's Hardware's ad server is down.. and of course in IE that when the ad fails to load after the page it flips to a stupid IE error message instead of just not displaying the ad. The only fix is to be quick on the stop button.. FUN...
... wish me luck... I cant wait...!!!!
Anyway... I am going to build a machine this month with a athalon 500
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
use junkbuster. http://www.junkbusters.com
Not exactly. Some archs use 2.5-1.7V for 1 and 0-1.3V for 0, while some other might use 1.7-1.3V for 1 and 0-0.2V for 0. Also, there is some difference in the ringing tolerance and other specs.
I'm just glad to see that Intel has got a real competitor (by the looks of things, anyway) for higher end servers and workstations. This is like a wake up call to them. They are having a helluva time with RAMBUS and Merced has been delayed forever. The Athlon/K7 is very scalable (again, by the looks of things) and it looks like the Camino will not be enough to catch up to it.
:-)
I don't know what will come of this, but I do know consumers are going to be winning big. We're going to have some cheap CPU's that are very good in the near future. Games are (hopefully) going to take advatange of this power. Maybe we'll have some on Linux too. I would just love to be able to put together a great system that does not involve two companies I simply do not like very much.
Oh yes, and it was nice to see the Linux Benchmarks on Ars
Geoff
Not exactly. Some archs use 2.5-1.7V for 1 and 0-1.3V for 0, while some other might use 1.7-1.3V for 1 and 0-0.2V for 0. Also, there is some difference in the ringing tolerance and other specs. We also have the pins that have 0-1.3V for 1 and 1.7-2.2V for 0 (forgot the name, they're the ones that have an # after the pin's name).
I saw a rumor about support for 16 meg of cache, instead of the 8 meg they originally intened. Why not support and build on 128 meg of cache? Also I'm wondering when the will do a K7-II
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Yes there are some of them in some of the reviews, and it has IIRC 1+Mk/sec (while the K6 is at ~ 0.5Mk/sec)
People should have to do this in the first place.. Linux needs to take alook at install feauture that are used in windows.. I just want one compact executable setup file, execute it, have it install and get on with life.
I ate my tag line.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
This is just pathetic. So much engineering effort for so little performance gain. Goes to show that the Intel platform is really on its last leg.
Will there be a 'mobile' version of the K7?
The review here says that they plan to add a marketing department. If you remember, that's what brought down NirvanaCo, Dilber's employer-for-a-show. Hope they know what they're doing :)
-S
Reading at the end of the Tom's article there have been heat buildup problems and the related stability problems on the P3-600. Suprising? Not to me.. Intel is worried... the pushed the core of the 600 up .05v (from 2.00v to 2.05v) isn't that the trick i did to my old 586's and ppro's when i upped the core clock? Wow.. intel using overclocker tricks. Have they run out of stuff from R&D to get their cpu's running faster? This is tight... I have a P3-500 running freeBSD as my main e-mail/dns server and it has occaisional hiccups. Hope to see better form the athalon when I get one in production. WOOHOO
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
An extensive install script could include compile as part of it. User selects some options, script compiles, then installs. Install just takes a little longer, that's all..
Anyone noticed how the name Athlon sounds a little awkward, that is until you go multi-processor: Biathlon, Triathlon, Pentathlon, Heptathlon, Decathlon...respect to whoever in AMD's marketing department. I'm ready for a biathlon now :-)
IIRC, the bulk price of the 500 is supposed to be around $260. On pricewatch.com, I saw 2 companies taking preorders around $350, which is a little high, even including markup. The vast majority or vendors on pricewatch seemed to be asking around $500 and up, a 100% markup. Prices will, of course come down, but AMD has a history of not being able to supply enough chips. I hops they've solved that problem, because if they haven't, I'm afraid we'll be looking forward to short supply and vendors charging as much as they can. A 500MHz Athlon under $300 would be sweet, but I'd be really pissed if I can't find one under $500. Does anyone else know what AMD's yield rates on Athlon are like? Will they be plentiful or will we be gouged? -- dgies
http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/
Actually, this makes it alot harder to remark chips... Before, all they needed to do what slap a new label on the chip.
If it can be done by software:
Now they'll have to put it on a board, boot, run some software, turn off the power, take it out of the board, then relabel.
If it has to be done via the goldfinger connector:
Now they'll have to take off the cpu case, put a dongle on the goldfinger connector, put the case back on, then relabel. And if you ever take off the case you can tell it was not running at the rated speed.
There are dozens of other variations that I can think of on what has to be done, but regardless, it just increased the amount of time needed to remark processors exponentially.
For the person who wants to be on the bleeding edge of speed (and as a result) is always monkeying with the internals of their machine, taking the case off of the cpu and putting it back on is nearly trivial...IMO.
[Referring to Intel's counter to the Athalon]
"A 700-MHz version is due in the fourth quarter, while Intel is planning 667-MHz and faster versions of the Pentium III."
I find it particularly interesting how Intel convieniently now rounds UP the .666_ instead of the canoical rounding down. Fear the marketing of a 666Mhz chip!
I measured 1.4M keys/sec; it's in my review.
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
First International Computer (FIC), who traditionally uses VIA chipsets has this Slot A motherboard available. At least the specs and a picture for it... :)
Looks like it beats a good deal of ass
We need no Windoze here.
The ads are useless anyway. Nobody clicks on them. And some even press Stop so they stop dancing in front of their view.
Wow! Me wants it! But not from stupid Intel. Me wants a 650MHz Athlon overclocked to _666_MHz!!!
And the K-7 will be out by Jan '99. HaHa! Let's see if AMD is even still in business in November. Oh yeah, before you flame - Think about it. Would you invest in AMD? If so, I got some lovely waterfront property for sale...
A G3 at the same clock speed as a PPC 601 or 604 should be 20 to 40 % faster.
Uhh, not quite. The G3 used the 603's FPU. For floating point operations, the 604 remains the best PowerPC. The G4 will use a FPU based on the 604 along with all the advantages of the G3 (backside cache, etc). Besides, the G3 lacks SMP support. Apple cannot hope to keep Photoshop users happy for long with single CPU systems when the same amount of money will buy you a dual processor NT machine. It's all about what get's the job done.
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
phobos
After reading several reviews of the AMD Athlon 600/650 MHz CPU, AMD has cured the problem of the poor FPU unit that plagued the K6 series and then some! (^_^)
The new pipelined FPU which can process THREE MMX, 3DNow!, and FP instructions per CPU cycle will make the Athlon THE CPU of choice for anyone who has to run any program that requires serious FPU performance, things like high-end games, CAD programs, photo-editing programs and illustration programs.
In short, AMD has left Intel in the dust with the Athlon's awesome FPU unit. When AMD starts to produce Athlon variants with full-speed L2 cache with 1, 2, 4 and 8 MB of cache RAM, very likely PC133 and RDRAM support, and SMP support, it'll make even the Pentium III variants based on the "Coppermine" technology obselete.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
- 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?"
Invest? I already did.
Get a clue, will you? We aren't talking about an air cooled processor. We're talking about a Kryotech system cooled to -40 degrees C. I'd be damned surprised if they couldn't get it to 1 Ghz by November. It's already running at 650 mhz air cooled.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
linux on the alpha platform can run x86 programs - em86. nt on the alpha platform can run x86 programs - fx!32.
Has anyone looked. For instance, if you have a 650 Mhz Processor with 22 Million transistors, you are bound to draw over 50 watts of power, plus the 200 Mhz main buss. add to that say a 7200K RPM UW SCSI disk, CD-Rom, CD-R, Zip, Floppy, voodoo2/3, sound card, modem, NIC, SCSI card, and multiple fans. for such a system, it seams as though a 300Watt Power supply or more would be needed. also, with all those transistors, especialy the .25 micron varity ought to pump out the heat like a space heater. is the standart case ready to handle all that heat, or do we all need to get SuperMicro 750A cases.
FPU unit in AMD Pent^H^H^H^HAthlon and Intel
19^H^Hx86 just sux badly comparing to ALPHA
processor.
The full report please... What compiler? What flags?... And what are the peak numbers? Die size?.. Some people probably think Intel is as good as dead ( ;-) ) - no chance. Why? nobody else can manufacture enough processors! When will dual systems be availible?..
Oh, almost forgot: I'M GOING TO BUY ONE!
Erik
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
I'm not saying they couldn't get it to 1gHZ. I'm saying based on their track record, expect March or April of next year (not November.) Unless you invest on a quarterly basis (buy just after each earning's report and sell just before the next earning's report) you're a fool. Wanna bet what's going to happen when AMD's next earnings report comes out? You guessed it... Earnings are far below expectations. Stock price falls. I'll stick with my Intel stock and continue collecting my large returns. Intel spends more money each year in development than AMD is worth. Intel could easily drop their prices by 70% and continue making a profit if they really felt that AMD is any type of threat. How long will AMD stick around if that happened? AMD has a nice little market share selling lower priced desktop processors. If they aren't careful, they could lose that too.
Sorry, I didn't realize that this was a souped up Athlon 650. Please disregard the above posting.
but that's one large, steamy pile of bullshit you're spewing there, bub. The fact that the G3 does not reach the same clock speeds as a PIII is in no way indicative of it's performance. The PIII runs at such high clock speeds (and insanely high temps.) because the only way Intel can continue to show performance increases is to keep increasing clock speeds. The G3, on the other hand, executes instructions at a faster rate than the x86 architecture, and is therefore able to get roughly similar performance at lower clock speeds. You are, however, correct in that this issue has nothing to do with RISC vs. CISC, as the Pentium and G3 are both equally close to being RISC architectures as they to anything else.
Run a full block for the good score. http://www.upgradecenter.net for the full review
1.4M? That's not real good. On my PII-450 (overclocked to 527) I get more than 1.4M keys per second (anywhere from 1.4, to 1.44)
Yeah, Intel could drop their prices by 70% and continue making a profit. That's *why* AMD needs the K-7. They can't compete with Intel in the low-end desktop market that they currently hold, because Intel is able to drop their prices to undercut AMD, sell the Celeron at a loss, and make up the difference on overpriced Xeons.
Enter the K-7... performance that smacks the Xeon, Hz for Hz, plus a higher clock, and more scalable to boot... all with a price tag an order of magnitude lower. The K-7's not aimed at the low-end desktop market, it's aimed to take the high-end x86 server market, where all the money is, away from Intel in one fell swoop. With a little help from Compaq (Compaq == DEC && K7_mb == Alpha_mb), and if the new Dresden fab can keep up with demand, they just might be able to pull it off, too...
And didn't Kryotech already have a GHz K-7 prototype running? I could have sworn I saw an article about it here a month or two back...
..I still like the idea of having the fastest x86 uniprocessor machine of the moment. And I do not plan to jump in immediately, I will wait for a faster Athlon, maybe a copper version (I think AMD is going to get the technology for copper from Motorola.. ) and at higher frequencies the gap between Intel PIII and K7 will be more notieable.
However, your reasoning is OK, and I was doing this way for many years.
Sigged!
Tell them you can do that, and you would contribute this to the Linux kernel for free, but you would need an Athlon-based PC. I bet they would be very happy to provide you with what you asked, it would be the best spent pocket money ever.
Sigged!
'whizz'
Go read the Infoworld article people, IBM is ging to introduce a 750 MHz PowerPC processor-based machine for Linux. We've seen what a 133MHz PPC machine can do to a 500MHz P!!!, haven't we now? It looks like Intel's not going to be the processor to have from now on. Assuming IBM has sensible people setting the prices, that is. Remember Big Blue, we aren't universities with the state exchequer standing behind us!
Okay, the original post said a G3 could smack down on a P3 at same clock speed. I bet it could. BUT it can't get to the same clock speed. And as it stands, 400mhz isn't enough to topple a 550mhz P3.
You may of course now debate that it can. I stand by saying it can't, but of course it could if it had a a few hundred more mhz...
Sorry if I wasn't clear.
~Kevin
:)
Hmpf.. it's a 450 MHz PowerPC 750 copper processor. Comments still stand.
Why do so many people keep saying things like "only time will tell if the coppermind can match the K7 in performance". I mean, hello???? Coppermine is just a P3 shrunk down to a .18 micron process that uses copper. It's what everyone is going to. This is the same technology AMD's new fab in Dresdon will be using. Just because Intel gives it a name and calls it a new product doesn't mean it will magically perform better. If anything my bet is when you compare a .18micron K7 and P3 (coppermine) the performance gap will widen a bit more (especially considering the faster clock speeds that will allow). It is also been shown that AMD can ramp up their processors to higher speeds on the same size process. A fact shown by Intel rushing to get the 600Mhz PIII out (still .25 micron, wasn't supposed to appear until Coppermine) while AMD again one ups them with a 650. I wouldn't be surprised if AMD can out with a 700MHz before the end of the year on .25 micron. Clock for Clock the K7 is faster than even a PIII Xeon. And next year AMD will surely stay ahead even in MHz. AMD has the advantage in both pure performance and price/performance in both integer and floating point (for x86s of course, they still can't touch a good RISC processor). The only question remaining is how well AMD can produce the K7 (we all know their previous track record in that area). With the opening of a new fab next year and the fact that AMD went into production well over a month before officially annoucing the processor makes me think they are finally ready to overcome this obstacle too. It certainly seems like AMD has got it right this time.
A better term would be Klinux (K* processor + Linux)
:)
The Linux box I have is a K6/133...guess what I'm asking Santa for?
Ok, so I did something wrong - here . The error of my ways was that slashdot no longer likes single quotes around the URL - need to use double quotes..
Erik
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
mobo=$250 500mhz=$285 550mhz=$500 600mhz=$675 ...hope the prices come down a bit. a p3 500 w/ mobo can be had for $440 on pricewatch.com -- wouldn't like to pay 25% extra for 20% increase in speed. At the same price point, I'd grab one though.
"Fester". Now that's a must-have.
I wish the alpha and ppc people would shut the hell up. When I see your chips and ATX mobo's on Pricewatch, then I'll take you guys seriously. Not until.
Don't forget that Intel still runs the market.* AMD is going to price and clock these things so that they're just a little cheaper and a little faster than Intel.
*Intel's got business desktops locked up with the Intel Inside marketing program - IIRC, this is the biggest chunk of the market. Even if AMD produced a chip that was 2x the speed and 1/2 the cost, you wouldn't see a Dell "Optiplex" or a Compaq "Deskpro" with an AMD chip until the vendors could get out from under Intel.
Furthermore, I don't see much general corporate demand for the new CPUs. They've already got enough CPU for MS Office and Win2000 and standard businessy stuff, so cheaper chips are going to rule the day.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I thought people bought Xeons to get the big cache, which is where the big performance gains come for certain types of operations (databases, for example). The K-7, as it stands, doesn't really hold up to the Xeon.
Admittedly, Intel forces folks who don't need the cache to buy Xeons, because the normal PIII only goes 2-way. So there's some market there.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
with a name like detrius --I'm guessing yes.
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
As has been pointed out, the "Pentium Toaster" ads only used the Bytemark benchmark, which is extraordinarily old and has very little relevance to the sorts of things CPUs do these days. For one thing, it includes no floating point tests at all, IIRC--and these days, most things the average user (i.e. no compiling) runs into that'll tax his/her CPU are floating point dependant. And furthermore, (also pointed out before), the MacOS hampers performance considerably. And if you want to do any sort of multitasking at all, it hampers it hilariously. Obscenely, even. Check out this article at the always impressive Ars Techinca for some ROFL confirmation. To be fair, this was benched before OS 8.6, which allows (gasp!) multithreading...but if I understand correctly, apps need to be rewritten to take advantage of it anyways.
As for real, cross-platform, general CPU benchmarks, there's pretty much only SPEC, limited as it is. Yes, to some degree it depends on issues of compilers, chipsets, RAM, etc. But it's good enough to at least be relevant.
Apparently, as far as SPEC95 goes, the G3 is about 14% faster/MHz than a P3 in SPECint, and about 9% slower/MHz than a P3 in SPECfp. Course, the G3 doesn't come anywhere near close to the P3 or K7 in MHz terms anyways.
And double of course, what really matters is app performance. Here, assuming one stays with the MacOS, we run into some serious problems. Essentially, ClarisWorks (now AppleWorks?) was way more optimized for Mac than PC (duh), and it showed. Photoshop is probably equally optimized for both--and no, contrary to what you've heard, it isn't necessarily faster on the Mac. Look a bit further in the Ars article above: turns out that while the Mac wins the Gaussian blur test w/64 megs RAM...it loses with 128 megs on a 100MB file...it loses on the lighting effects (FP intensive) tests...and, this is the big one, it takes 3 times longer to load the 100 MB TIFF in the first place. Woops. And as for, say, anything made by the Microsoft corporation, don't even bother: to say it's better optimized for PC is the understatement of the year. IIRC, MacOffice97 worked by just porting the relevant Win95 API's and keeping the program itself the same. MacOffice98 might be better...but not by too much.
Obviously, none of the above applies to K7 vs. P3 discussions--except, of course, for 3DNow(!) stuff, but by now most all video card drivers etc. are quite well optimized for 3DNow, and with AMD having the fastest chip on the market, that'll only improve. In any case, just read all the K7 reviews above, and you'll see that this thing doesn't just chew up the P3 in one or two CPU benchmarks...it whups it handily in just about everything. Synthetic benchmarks, Winstone, games, encoding, rendering, you name it. And this is before apps are optimized for it (new 3DNow instructions; 3-issue FPU unit, etc. all could benefit from optimizations).
[Note: from here on out, I'm pretty much talking out the ass of this page here on JC's News. Dunno how accurate it all is, but JC generally knows quite a bit about what he's talking about. And I've read some other stuff that backs him up.]
Now about the G4...well, it seems that the design goals of the G4 were to get SPECint 20 and SPECfp 20 @450MHz (I've heard this elsewhere, although I don't recall a mention of 450 specifically)--implying that it will run at around 450 on introduction. Now, the K7 at 600 beats both of those marks handily, and indeed if you assume, as JC does, that SPEC scales linearly (course it doesn't, but...) then the G4 is just a hair slower at SPECint (and exactly the same at 500MHz as the G3. Anyone else out there know if the G3 and G4 have exactly the same integer unit?), and a bit faster at SPECfp. Note that I'm not sure if he's using old guesses at the K7's SPEC marks, or real numbers...and I'm too lazy to figure it out right now.
Now, of course the target goals for the G4 were made back when they said it'd be coming out...well, by now. Instead it's going to ship in "Q3 1999"--where Q3 1999 is read, "January." So we can expect higher MHz on intro than 450.
Of course, by then, the Athlon'll be at 750 at least. Probably 850. Rumor has it 1GHz. We'll see. In any case, JC goes ahead and pits a projected G4-550 against a (projected?) K7-750...and guess what, the K7 is a hell of a lot faster.
On the *other* hand, the real wild card in all of this is the G4's AltiVec vector processing unit (for those who don't know, vector processing is the sort of thing Crays (used to?) use--very very good at many things that normal CPUs use floating point to do). On paper, it totally totally kicks ass. Like orders of magnitude faster than SSE/3DNow. And from what I hear, it'll be way easier to optimize for than SSE/3DNow, and waaaaaay easier than MMX (which required assembly programming)--i.e., it might just require a recompile with the "optimize for AltiVec" box checked.
On the other other hand, with the recent emphasis on nonupgradable machines (with comparitively poor 3D acceleration) in their consumer line, and a reported general lack of attention to gaming among Apple bigwigs (course, this was in some ZDnet story, so who knows if it's true), the amazing power of AltiVec might only end up being used in embedded DSP machines by Motorola and IBM.
On the fourth hand, if I had an iBook I could surf the internet while I was in the bathroom. Draw your own conclusions.
Not nobody... About 1.5-2% ( in case of some ads
up to 6-7% - really).. And anyway, ads are keeping most sites free.
If you look at a diagram of the layout, you'll see that a large portion of the transistors and chip area is in the L1 cache, all 128K of it. High speed L1 cache is just area-consuming and difficult to make, but it's an absolute must for scaling and high speeds. Really, the only difference between a decoupled x86 design (like K6, P6, and K7) and a "true RISC" (like there are any of *those*, laugh) design is the extra decoding and retirement logic. Internally, they're all just high-powered RISC-like machines.
... and in fact, in a lot of areas it dusts everything shy of the HP 8500 and the Compaq Alpha 21264. Perhaps you're referring to per-clock performance -- which is irrelevant, since if you can't (or won't) get to higher clocks, it doesn't matter if you can do twice as much at half the clock, at least not in a performance contest. The Athlon doesn't have all those transistors for no particular reason -- it has them because the design team focused on performance, somewhat at the expense of the compactness of the design. History (see Moore's Law) would say that they are correct in this decision ... the process will shrink to accomodate more transistors and lower the price, power consumption, etc. much faster than spending the extra design time. As the Athlon shows (beating the P3 in integer performance per-clock, and almost doubling the P3's double-precision floating-point performance, among other things), the x86 architecture has a fair bit of headroom left ... there are still many design tricks to pursue, as there are in all the other architectures "out there".
Saying "and it [an Athlon] only just beats a PIII" is really quite wrong -- in some areas, it completely dusts a PIII