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Coppermine vs. Athlon
SaDan writes "I checked out a comparison of the new Intel Coppermine processors and AMD's Athlon chips at Tom's Hardware Guide last night. It's kind of interesting, and I thought others would be curious about how Athlon stacks up against Intel's latest offering. "
Athlon still wins in Sysmark98 tests. I like AMD vs Intel stuff. It's similar to the linux vs M$ issues. Go AMD!
The referenced review basically shows that Intel once dropped to .18 and clocked 5% faster can pretty much keep pace with AMD's shipping product for $150 more.
Add to that Coppermines OLD core, Athlons scalability and Fab30 coming online soon and it is clear that INTC is going to have to do more than in the past to stay relevant.
If it isn't great news for AMD investors, this is at least great news for CPU buyers as INTC will have to WORK for it's money for a change!
There's also a comparison of several different processors ranging from a K6-III 400Mhz to the Athlon 700 with a couple Intel processors thrown into the mix...
i cle_id=84
http://www.aceshardware.com/Spades/read.php?art
It's always good to see the underdog getting ahead. Athlon seems to be the superior game performer, except for quake 3. But still, it really looks like AMD is becoming the best choice for gamers, not only because it's faster, but because it's cheaper.
Maybe they should both seek seperate markets, AMD should go for gaming/low cost 3D workstations, and Intel should stick to servers and the like. That may even out the market, and get rid of some of this "do everything we can to keep the competitors down" attitude. I mean really, when you have that much of the market, can they really be that much of a threat?
Start working towards real technological advances, rather than mediocre enhancements to beat the competition.
AMD i'm hoping you are still pushing to put out those mobile k6-3s. Along with a SMP athlon system, i want nothing more than a very efficient fast cheap notebook (only other option is the cool as hell, yet expensive, g3 powerbooks). Anyone else think a k6-3 mobile would sky rocket AMD sales in the portable market (though k6-2s seem to be doing great already)
it still pushes AMD to improve their design, perhaps to the point that the K7 can also be used in portable devices. i think that the major appeal of intel's newest processors will be in the laptop arena. it would be awesome to have the same power in a laptop as on the desktop with an x86 processor.
i really hate to say it, but it's getting to the point where it can be cheaper to buy a new system than to upgrade an older one (especially with DRAM prices so high.) of course, with the introduction of new processors and technology, older (obsolete?) models become much cheaper, and hey, a better processor is a better processor. competition is good, as long as the competition doesn't force either company out of business. that would be bad.
With the recent attitude of "innovate, retaliate, counterretaliate" in the chip market, both companies are really giving the consumers a lot to look forward to. The only thing I wonder is, how long will it be before Intel and AMD are forced to slow their shrinking price to performance ratio in order to protect their bottom line?
On an unrelated gripe, "Tom's Hardware Guide" isn't helping its credibility much by having a major error in the very first sentance. "pushed from its thrown"? Ugh.
(Of course, anyone that should be considering these high-end processors should be competent enough to know that performance is only positively correlated with the number of MHz. They don't run lock-step...)
(Of course, there aren't many really-high-powered laptops; there was only ever one Alpha-based laptop, few SPARC-based, and such... I agree with others that availability of faster AMD chips in the K6 series is more important at this time...)
(I half-expect to see a report from VA-Linux Systems some time soon...)
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I'm the kind of user who doesn't give a crap about who makes the chip, or how much it costs, just as long as it's the fastest mainstream consumer chip available. And as the basis of that, I'm still going with the Athlon for two reasons. It beat the new PIII in just about every test. Second, I haven't seen any super cooled PIII chips that are like what Kryotech has done. Can you say 1 GHz Athlons by December? Mmmm
... and I've been told that it supports PenIII's with a simple bios upgrade. Does this mean that I can use Coppermine processors in it? Anyone know?
What I like is how intel sidestepped the clock of the beast issue by making a 667Mhz processor. They really missed out on a great marketing opportunity! Frag your friends like never before, with a computer made by Satan's own hand: 666Mhz!
I'm hoping someone can clarify something for me. If I understand correctly, the slot that Pentium II/III's go in is called Slot 1. Intel patented Slot 1 so that other companies could no longer make replacement processors.
So AMD had to stick with the Socket370(?) form (which was the non-proprietary Pentium Pro socket.) Until they came out with the Athlon. AMD (or somebody) created the Slot A socket which is suprisingly(not!) similar to Slot 1 but not compatible. Main question: Is Slot A proprietary also? Or can other companies make processors for it other than AMD?
NOTE: The above is based on many guesses, assumptions, things I've read, and things I may have imagined reading. Please correct me or clarify (I'm sure there are errors.)
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Soon after their new Pentium III chips were found to be outperformed by AMD, Intel released a very disappointing profit report, which sent stock prices down as much as 10 points within a couple of days. Immediately following this, Intel makes several announcements about Willamette and Coppermine, and their stock goes back up. It seems that Intel may be pushing these chips a little too quickly in an attempt to make their investors feel better.
sup
The main thing that AMD has gained out of this whole Athlon thing is respect. Real respect. Not just, "Gee, since I'm a very poor geek, I'm going to put an AMD chip in my box."
To illustrate: my college's career fair was just a few days ago. AMD was there. They have been there in the past. In the past, only die-hard computer engineering hardware geeks talked to them. This year, however, as they had Athlon processor periphenalia and even a couple actual processors (none of which they were giving away) there was a line. I'm talking about a long line. Everybody wanted to talk to teh AMD guys. I waited in it for over twenty minutes then decided that since hardware doesn't make me feel an extreme amount of joy inside I would go talk to someone else.
Bright Young Minds (at least, I think that's what we are) are taking notice of AMD and are intensely interested in being hired by them. This seems like a Good Crowd to have on your side when speculating on the future.
shipping G4's are .15 and 500 and 550mhz will be .13 microns
It's there for you to click on Pooky. It ain't great but it amuses me.
You the *man* doin' "fulltime" x 2 OK.
CC
"Pray arm me further by your reply" Winston Churchill
for all those germans :-) look at
http://www.heise.de/ct/99/22/132/
All I have to say to that is... **Please** put down your crack pipe.
The entire concept of media objectivity is a pointless exercise in wishful thinking. Any person who wishes to share a researched article with others should endeavor to make their bias KNOWN (as Tom has said on numerous occasions, he likes to "root for the underdog" [not a quote from Tom, just paraphrasing]) and with that in mind, present both sides of the issue fairly. Whether the author brings the research to a conclusion or leaves the matter up to the reader is an exercise in knowing what sort of article deserves which ending.
There are enough myths out in the world already. Please don't contribute to another.
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
Is it just me or does everything that comes out of T.H. seem really reliable? There was a time that I trusted him exclusively for all my HW advice (I'm really a software guy at heart). I've been a bit skeptical about his site since he went commercial, but what does the rest of /. think?
Can your IM do this?
To say Tom has a bias towards AMD or nVidea would be the understatement of the decade. You can see him grudgingly accepting how Intel put out a good P6 based chip, but a half a sentence later he's already preaching about how AMD is putting out a new design Real Soon Now.
He also seems a little too fond of the 3D Studio Max benchmark, it's his little toy that shows AMD doing 2x better, and he sort of glosses over the gaming performance (what was once his shouting point for AMD's and 3DNow).
In the end, it was an ok review if you just read the benchmarks. His recommendation at the end should have taken price into account, not the one 3DSMax benchmark. He just goes back onto the AMD soapbox, even including data on K6-3's and crap in the conclusion of an Intel product review.
(Note, Intel is not my favorite company. AMD has made a great chip, but Intel is responding to competition. Tom doesn't want to concede that fact. This is a Tom bash, not an AMD one).
sigh...
If you cool it well enough, you can overclock the 550 to 733, by changing the FSB setting. However, the Athlon can be overclocked also, by FSB and Multiplier, though the multiplier setting requires a soldering iron and a lot of guts. But at least it's possible. I'm personally going to choose the Athlon.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
Actually, that;s not the case. The BUS is really 33 1/3 MHz and 66 2/3, leading to exactly 100, 233, etc... not 231 or whatnot. the 66 MHz machine is closer to 67, and 233 is 233.33333333 etc.
I mean, the Athlon is a really cache dependent CPU. As everyone saw in the 3DSMAX benchmark, the FPU is fine, but when even a little bit of cache is necessary (see: Q3Test, Descent3), the Athlon starts lagging compared to the CuMine, especially at higher clock speeds where cache becomes a bigger factor.
I can't wait to see an Athlon Ultra. ^^
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
All this article talks about is how cool the Coppermine is, and how it's better than the Athlon. It looks more like Intel propaganda than a true comparison.
I can't even get a Coppermine box yet, so why should I care that some computer is better in theory?
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
OMG, don't talk man.
Intel HATES him. He released a Pentium II preview with a pre-production P2 which *sucked* it up bigtime. He's probably the most overtly anti-Intel man out. Why do you think he made a reference to a "fishy article" (pun at Sharky - who is biased towards Intel.)
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
You fail to consider the fact that he glosses over the gaming benchmark for a good reason. The G-Force probably had optimized SSE and Coppermine drivers (nVidia is really quick on new techs) while the 3D Max benchmark was a more even race. Second, he DOES say that PIII might be better if you are into gaming, but you should definitly stick to Athlon if you are running a workstation.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You fail to consider the fact that he glosses over the gaming benchmark for a good reason. The G-Force probably had optimized SSE and Coppermine drivers (nVidia is really quick on new techs) while the 3D Max benchmark was a more even race. Second, he DOES say that PIII might be better if you are into gaming, but you should definitly stick to Athlon if you are running a workstation. And don't doubt Athlon's gaming performane. Under the TNT 2 Ultra, it beats the PIII 120 fps to 90 fps.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I will let this exchange make my point.
CC
"Pray arm me further by your reply" Winston Churchill
--
Intel. That wasn't so bad now was it? At least it isn't a 4-letter word. :)
:)
Signed,
SEAL - who is sick of ticker-symbols
I don't know about the rest of you, but I am VERY happy that AMD is giving Intel a run for our money.
Personally, I was getting REALLY tired of the "new" and exciting "innovative" processors a whole 33Mhz / 50Mhz faster than last quarters every quarter.
Since the Athlon has been out, P3 prices have been plummeting; I've been keeping track
of the fall in prices; there is NO WAY prices would have fallen so low without the Athlon goosing Intel!
I am very much looking forward to testing some Coppermine's, as soon as I can get my hands on them.
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
I mean, if speed was the only thing, we'd have had Alphas on all of our desktops for years, right? (Yeah, I've got *one*, but also seven x86s).
The point is, I'm certainly not going to buy any AMD CPUs until their chipsets get stabler. This isn't intended to be FUD, but every non-USA chipset design I've used in the past (VIA, SIS and whomever) have just not been as stable (even when motherboards are from the same manufacturer) as their Intel brethren. I'm going to stick with Intel and 440BX until something stabler and better comes along -- and with features that I feel I need, unlike the 810 and 820 sets.
-Chris
Don't moderate this, bitch.
Why are CPU's considered more "cool" than other components? Why do people spend $250 more to gain a few MHz when the same money will get them more memory and a faster drive? I think it's because it's easy to quantify. People like that MHz is one simple number.
So what if the Athlon is a tiny bit more value for the money - I'll get a lot more value if the price of a really good 19" monitor drops a couple of hundred bucks.
It's not much different now than when the PII came out, the K6-2 underperformed and he pretty much declared AMD to be in the dumper, all hail to Intel, etc.
but you haven't really contributed anything at all have you. Maybe if you read the sources then you might have something interesting to say instead of just telling ppl that they are wrong without any evidence.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
freedom is the by-product of economic surplus but hey, I've had a long day
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
You should be ashamed of that attitude. Too many people share it. If, say Intel, is always putting out a chip 5% faster than AMD (or even 0% the way so many people buy only from the industry leader) and you types only buy from Intel, then within a few years, AMD will drop out and you'll see prices rise fast and performance rise slowly. And you'll have yourselfs to thank. Some temporary self-sacrifice from time to time can be a good thing in the long run. Do you really need that extra 5%? I'll answer for you. You don't.
I find this to be highly entertaining -- we've seen Intel basically dominate the market since it's creation. AMD the poor-geek's tool. I remember thinking back in the days of P6's (96 I think) that AMD's were simply a hack for people that couldn't afford the good stuff.
I'm damn glad things have turned -- now we have AMD kicking Intel's ass in both price and power (For the most part -- I think that AMD is a better chip) and this really is shaking Intel up.
I mean -- really, what type of respectable company would have the "Athalon Killer" anyway.
$0.02 to AMD
-= Making the world a better place =-
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
The benchmarks were odd, for everything else, the coppermine chips acted more or less like the other P3 chips, then in gaming stuff all of a sudden they jump way up. why?
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
Slashdot would never set that up because they need the money from the ADs. And if some guy just hacked something up and threw it on his own server for all us to use then i think Slashdot would sue. I could be wrong.
I have to return some videotapes...
Did I misunderstand, or did Tom say there are a few PPGA socket 370 Pentium III's called 550E's. If so, would these work in the ABIT BP6 to give a relatively cheap dual Pentium III (or provide a good upgrade from a dual celeron system)?
Intel and AMD are going to soon milk the x86 design for all its worth, the moment either of them comes out with a true 64bit chip, I'll open my checkbook, otherwise I'll keep the PII 333 I bought a year ago ...
Every article I have read on that site has at least 1 point that gets on my nerves due to a low tech understanding of the issues. He claims that its a compiler difference that causes the big jump in performance on the Coppermine with the Q3 benchmark.
Lets think about this for a minute! If Intel didn't change the SSE core then why would a compiler with SSE changes produce a binary that ran better on the same SSE core? The answer: Because its not the compiler! A better answer would be that the changes intel made to the cache result in significant performance gains in some situations. Tom dumps their tech doc's on what they did:
1 they increased the associatively of the cache
2 they widened the L2 data path to the CPU
3 they decreased the latency
4 Lastly they decreased the size by 1/2.
In general 1 and 4 tend to cancel themselves to give similar performance (pick up an architecture book and read about caches if you don't know what I'm talking about here) So we are left with 2 and 3. Now 2 and 3 tend to allow you to get to the cache faster and get more data per cycle. Now quake is really an tiny engine (significant amount of the time it supposedly fits in L1) accessing a massive amount of data. Now lets assume that quake is so tight that it manages to fetch its data out of L2 cache a very large percentage of its time (as opposed to windows just randomly switching tasks, and using main memory like a big disk cache) now if suddenly your data loads which were always in the cache get to the processor faster keeping it from stalling a pipeline for 5 or 6 cycles what happens?
Memory architecture is a __BIG__ deal with modern CPU's. A very large percentage of time on modern CPU design is spent trying to optimize data accesses. The intel engineers have done their homework. The PC market now considers games the standard benchmark (Quake being the main one, Celery-vs-K6! When was the last time you out typed Word? On the other hand when was the last time your Celery helped you kick that poor K6 owners ass because you were getting an extra 20fps?) so they discovered a way to help quake out while maintaining decent performance with data sets that were more sensitive to cache size rather than access times.
Can anyone give any info on the relative merits (and accuracy) of the two different FPU benchmarks used by Tom's and Sharky. The 3D Rendering on Tom's shows a huge difference in favor of the Athalon, while the ZD FPUMark shows the new intel with a slight advantage. This is important to me because we are deciding on a machine to purchase in the next couple of months that will be more or less dedicated to floating point calculations.
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Remember, this isn't like cheering for your favorite football team. I purchase whatever chip provides the greatest value/price ratio. I'm still a fan of AMD, but would switch to Intel in an instant if they matched their prices.
Strict brand loyalty is a dangerous economic force. A history of quality products, more compatible 3rd party applications, and better tech support contribute to the value of a product, and should be considered. But factors like popularity (independent of compatibility) and company size/worth should be ignored. I honestly wouldn't care if Intel were the world's biggest, nastiest corporation -- it's the chips that matter.
Weighing in at 2 ounces...
For those less knowledgable amongst us, like me, could you explain the significance of Tom's oversight?
they didn't HAVE to go smaller to get more speed.
Just a couple of niggles here. I'm not a hardware engineer, but I do believe that's wrong. At smaller feature sizes capacitors get more efficient and switching gets faster. Because your capacitor is more efficient you can use lower voltage. As voltage decreases so does power consumption, as the square. Less power consumption = less heat, so higher clock rates.
They (Mot) did so they could reduce costs. The more chips you squeeze onto a wafer, the more money you generate from said wafer.
Errr, somewhat correct. Yield plays a big part in the equation - as feature size goes down, so does yield, especially since new untried manufacturing processes have to be brought on line each time feature size ratchets down.
The bottom line is that smaller features size is good - very good.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Even then, the 667 Mhz CPU approxmates 666 Mhz.
This is to say, the manufactor, while not being the evil one, approximates or tends to be so, which isn't that much different.
Out of curiosity, do anyone recall any strange changes that took place at intel when people started dualing 333 Celeries?
As observed something should be going on from there to make the company look what it is today...
It stands for "Flip Chip Pin Grid Array", and is the new format for the Coppermines (which will also be available in Slot 1). Intel expects to move the PIIIs over to FCPGA by late 2000 (and discontinue Slot 1 at that point).
Advantages of FCPGA: lower cost, lower power consumption, and lower EMF interference.
why is there such a fuss in the x86 world over a 5 percent performance gain? If you really want a performance gain go get an alpha or a MIPS.
The one thing we all need to remember is that if you like Intel dropping it's prices, you better buy an Athlon. Otherwise, you can forget the dropping prices as this stint of competition will be over. Don't forget that AMD has bet EVERYTHING on the Athlon. They went deep into debt on Fab 30 and they have been losing money for the last several quarters. They have even announced they are going to sell one of their non-chip divisions which is profitable for cash to continue to fund their chip business. AMD is doing well on the technical side, but if they can't succeed with the Athlon, AMD is history. If it weren't for AMD there wouldn't have been low cost Celerons available to compete with their K6-2. If it weren't for the Athlon, Pentium 3 prices would still be much higher. This is not the first round of this fight. This fight has been going on for years, so many may be complacent that it will continue. You think AMD will always be around? Trust me, you will miss them when they are gone. If they lose this round, there won't be another one. Paul
That is SO true... Last time I read something that good was from classic literature.
...has to do with how many memory different places in the cache each memory address can reside. This is not a measure of size, rather a measure of versatility. That is, in a direct mapped cache each memory address can be cached in one and only one cache line. This obviously leads to an overlap since main memory is alwasys larger than the cache. So, if a particular memory location is cached in a particular line, and another memory location that must be mapped to the same line in the cache is accessed, then the first must be flushed no matter how "fresh" it is.
A two way set associative cache allows any memory address to be placed in one of two locations in the cache. A four way cache has four spots where each memory address can be cached, etc. Again this is not a matter of size, rather a measure of how flexible the cache is.
The more "ways" the cache has the more flexible it is and this results in fewer flushes and overall more "fresh" data in the cache. This is what a cache is all about. That is, keeping the data that is needed right now, right here close to the CPU.
These "X ways set associations" are expensive in terms of logic and chip space. Ideally, a cache would be fully associative and allow any memory address to be cached anywhere in the cache memory. Because this stuff is expensive, it is usually reserved only for the highest performance parts, that is, the level 1 cache which is the closest to the processor core and usually the smaller one. AFAIK, all mainboard caches are direct mapped. They compensate by usually being bigger and even thoough they are slower, they are still a good bit faster than main memory, but nowhere near as fast as a level 1 cache or register access.
According to the previous poster, Tom got the two caches backwards. I don't have a data book on the new chip, but I'd really be surprised if they actually made an 8 way set associative cache that is 256K in size. No biggie, but it's an obvious error to those of us that know something of what the h*ll he's talking about.
As far as his comment on the benchmarks goes, I have no idea where he's coming from on that one.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
...have been a "feature" of Tom's since the beginning. They are nowhere near as frequent now as they were a while back.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
You took the bait.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
It's this type of thinking that brings the world so many Disclaimers and Fine Prints. Nowadays everyone complains about anything, and if you can't find a fault with Tom's site or his articles, why not bash his spelling.
... well, everywhere!. Even at the bottom of this Slashdot page!
No wonder there are so many Disclamers and Fine Prints in advertising and
Note: the opinions expressed in the preceding statement are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Slashdot or Andover.net.
I just bought a 19 inch monitor on the savings I got from buying the slowest proc I could find(350MHz for crying out loud!) instead of the fastest...I remember when PPro 200s were the fastest you could find. Sheesh!
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I don't play slots. As I also don't play poker, blackjack, or drink alcohol. It's immoral. :) unity ps:the only way to fix it is to flush it all away. psps: :( I just ran out of southern comfort. damn
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
yeah but the coppermine is supposed to be the same design. so the optimizations should work for the other P3s too...seems weird.. ah well
-I go to Rice, so figure out my email address
If they suck so bad at making processors and are so damn good at manufacturing, maybe we should get apple to make AMD's chips. Think, a .15u Athlon right now. Immediatley scalable to probably 1Ghz. They'd trample all over intel.
unity
ps:the only way to fix it is to flush it all away
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I don't play slots. As I also don't play poker, blackjack, or drink alcohol. It's immoral. :)
:( I just ran out of southern comfort. damn
unity
ps:the only way to fix it is to flush it all away.
psps:
freakin' html.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
That was supposed to bring us mainboards that were capable of accepting AMD or Digital (now Compaq) Alpha processors... nothing ever came of it that I saw. It's been quite a while, at least as far as processor development is concerned.
I do remember that the bus was nice. Seperate comm channels to memory, I/O, and... I forget what else. I remember thinking that it seemed quite the intelligent idea, made good sense and all that. Then again, I'm not a chip engineer, and I don't play one on TV.
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
1) room for much more of the expensive L2 cache for full speed operation and modules up to 2MB.
2) redesign to the AGTL+ bus, which allows four processors to run, even using modules (versus the normal P6 bus, delivering two way SMP with the module, four way with the older socket).
3) more money. Intel knows that people who need 4-way or better SMP systems will pay for this, often to a foolish extent. Intel loves to milk some sector for high margins, and you can guess this won't happen when there's a direct (or near so) replacement like K6 or Athlon.
Ok, so now consider PIII Xeon with only 256KB of L2 cache. Certainly, this is the same chip as you get when you buy a PIII-regular. But of course, it's on the Slot 2 module, and if you want a four processor (or better) SMP system, you have no other choice. Intel basically has you, and they like it that way.
In fact, I'm surprised it only around $50.
-Dave Haynie
Does Intel's Coppermine use copper traces - I think
not, since that technology was only recently
developed by IBM/Motorola. Are they calling it
"Coppermine" just to confuse people who are aware
of the IBM/MC chips?
Yes. They are. Though to be fair you have to also consider that they typically pick (if I remember correctly) names of streams and rivers to name the experiments by- apparently there was a Coppermine River or something, so naturally this name they're keeping.
Does anyone know why the two major chip companies picked up the slot design then so quickly dropped it to go back to socket?
Looking at the design of them I would have thought the slot would be a better design because it gets the chip off the board allowing more room for thumping heatsinks.
What has caused them to abandon the design like rats off a sinking ship?
They didn't recompile all of those games, you know, so the compiler had nothing to do with it. The apps were probably compiled a year ago on the MS compiler, since the Intel compiler is only used by a few companies due to its history of bugs. And keep in mind that Carmack has stated several times that Quake 2 was optimized for 3DNow!, but not for SSE.
My thoughts on the comparative performance of Coppermine and Athlon: 1) AMD bet the farm on this chip and the fab to produce them, 2) AMD beat Intel to market, and beat Intel's best performer by a significant margin, 3) AMD is supposedly using .18 line widths for all of their transistors, beating Intel to this landmark, 4) AMD won over a lot of people who considered them sellers of low quality, low performance CPUs, 5) And Intel essentially caught up to them with little effort. Remember, AMD is already using their next generation CPU core. They are already using .18 technology to increase their clock rate. They already have their 200MHz bus. What tricks do they have left? And after all of that, Intel is already faster at integer work, and only 10-15% (at worst) behind on floating point. And Intel is using a core that was first sold in 1995! What do you think is going to happen when Intel releases Willamette next summer? Go ahead, talk about AMD's EV6 bus, larger caches, 1GHz speeds. Do you think that those are going to be enough to compete with a brand new architecture? I will bet anyone that Willamette will be at least 50% faster than Athlon at release. Remember 386 vs 286, 486 vs 386, Pentium vs. 486, Pentium Pro vs. Pentium (ignoring 16 bit code)? All were >40% speed increases over the fastest chip on the old core. My opinion? AMD is dead. Bet on IBM buying them in the next 18 months, which will put 2 Chipzillas against each other. I wonder who all of the Slashdot readers will cheer for then...Via?
animosity n : a feeling of ill will arousing active hostility.
----- dictionary.com
He starts all of his charts from zero! Normally when something performs let's say 102 and something else performs 101 ppl start their charts from 100. That way their favorite thingie seems to ouperform the other thingie by 100%!(
So i guess i trust the guy.
LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X
FRA: STFU GTFO
It seems funny to me that Tom is putting up Coppermine on two mobos based on chipsets supporting AGPx4 and 133MHz memory FSB. What is the Athlon running on? If it's a mobo based on the AMD-751 then the best it can do AGPx2 and PC-100 memory. Wouldn't we have seen a review from Tom if he had his hands on a VIA KX133-based motherboard? The VIA 133 boards for Coppermine aren't vapour, but the i810 is no more solid than the VIA KX133 mobos. We'll have to see what gives when Tyan brings out their KX133-based board in December.
Tom's Hardware these days seems to be trying for sensationalist reporting. Perhaps he's just trying to raise a stink so he can get an early-release of a Tyan Athlon mobo. Or perhaps not. But wouldn't Quake 3 with its fancy 32-bit textures be more likely to take advantage of AGPx4? Didn't Tom's video card reviewer even say so in a previous column?
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
The Athlon CPUs out there does NOT use .18 micron .25 technology.
technology. It uses
The Coppermine has better cache and 4x AGP,
All of which will be simple to bring to the Athlon.
The fact that AMDs Athlon can reach 700mhz
WITH 0.25 micron, while Intel could ONLY get there
with 0.18, says a lot of the Athlon core.
AND: Intel needed Rambusmemory to beat the Athlon.
This is the situation:
Intel uses 4x AGP, 0.18 micron (to get higher MHZ), RAMBUS and better
caching. And it _still_ isn't a Athlon-killer.
Think of an Athlon with 4 x AGP, 0.18 micron
copperprocessors (can you say 1.6GHZ?) and
512kb full-speed cache and DDR-sdram or rambus.
It _will_ beat a similiarly clocked Coppermine
by about 20-30 %.
The Willamette might come out summer 2k,
but the Athlon is here now, and will be available
in dual-processorboards at 1GHZ come February.
Besides the Athlon has not yet shown it's full
potential. The motherboards out have not gone through 2 years of tweaking, like the BX-boards.
AND: the Athlon was designed to reach high frequencies. Which means higher latencies, and
slower functioning at similiar MHZ as a processor
only designed for medium/low frequencies (P6).
You sometimes have to sacrifice something, to
be able to create a processor capable of going
into the future, Intel will have to do it with
the Willamette.
Another point: Amd high busspeed isn't at it's
highest. the EV6 is spec'd to reach 400mhz,
AMD is just holding out, because other components
really aren't ready for this. Besides, the
200mhz bus we have today isn't showing it's full
potential either, because of the slow RAM.
Intel changed the socket. It doesn't use
socket-370 but a new one.
I really find this rather repulsive.
Does anyone have any idea why Intel changed
the socket (besides money).
I find it rather unlikely that Intel
HAD to do it.
It has become known that the socketed coppermines
won't be using the socket-370, but a new
socket.
I find this repulsive, I wanted a dual coppermine
in my BP6
quake2 was _not_ optimized for SSE or 3DNow, however many video card vendors have optimized their drivers for these instruction sets. The only thing that could have benefitted in quake2 from 3DNow or SSE was the sound code (other than odd hacks an optimizing compiler would cause). It is the only thing that really takes computation in quake2 that can benefit from these. The enemy AI doesn't really associate with these special purpose functions, nor does the BSP code. And all the video code is in the vendor OGL drivers.
there's NO copper in the coppermine and you won't see it until intel is ready for .13. On the other hand, Amd's fab 30 will produce copper .18 athlons
---
Intel needs to sweat over the server markets. Tyan releases their dual-Athlon board next month, and don't forget about that 8-way chipset under developement. If AMD plays their cards right (and gives us the beefy 8MB L2 sizes), Intel will have to cut it's prices on it's top of the line Xeons for the first time since their introduction. (I have yet to see a top of the line Xeon go below $3400.)
As I see it, Athlon will have some big advantages in large SMP systems because of the faster bus, the EV-6 design, and the gobs of L2. I'll be more than happy to see what happens when Athlons go head-to-head with Xeons.
I've followed all the news about the K7 for a long time, but I have to admit that I do not know much about the Coppermine. The main feeling I have is that the K7 is a lot more innovative than Coppermine, and that it leaves a lot more to do on its platform based on the magic Alpha design.
Intel seems to be exploiting all the possible core technology to push an unconvincing design. Perhaps the best of their innovative effort has gone into the IA64. Consent me a final thought...
If that old damned x86 legacy were not, we would probably be 5-6 years ahead. Think of Intel mass production coupled with better designs that minor sellers like Apple-Motorola-IBM still provide with quite less MHz!
And that is a good explanation of the concept. Although I'd have to say "small" and very fast hash table implemented in hardware. ;-) The hashing algorithm is usually pretty simple. A direct mapped cache is usually working directly from the upper memory address bits that are used to split the address space into pages that are each the size of the cache. So...Page 1, address X is cached in cache line X. So is Page 2, address X, etc. A two way associative cache has to have an additional set of bits that contain the page address and each time a location is accessed a "freshness" bit is set for that location and cleared for the alternate location so that it is tagged as "older". A 4 way cache has two freshness bits, etc. As you might imagine, the lookup gets harder as you "add more ways". Each access has to match the memory location and the page and find the freshest line now that the memory can be cached in more than one location in the cache...
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
True coppermine's will still have their 440bx, oh yippie use an old core on an old board, but where is my athlon boards period? We haven't seen boards coming out of anyone but the original 3???
I want to upgrade but I don't want a shitty mother board, I want a quality board for a quality cpu. Asus makes some of the best boards, and they refused to comment on Athlon?!@#@!#
Also whats with kryotech's bloat prices?
Why is a "Cool ATHLON 900" costing $2200?
Where the components are a ton cheaper then that? Doesn't make much sense, I would buy the cool 900 if it was half reasonable and actually said which motherboard it shipped with.
If you checked it out, you would know that AMD developed the Athlon Chipset (AMD-751 Northbridge and AMD-756 Southbridge). Some motherboards will use a VIA "super-southbridge", but all use the AMD-751 Northbridge (the part that connects the processor to AGP, Memory and PCI). If the BX is what you like - you should like the AMD chipset. And it has UDMA-66 IDE interface which Intel's BX set does not. Later..
Don't sweat it, it's only ones and zeros...
Alpha processors have reached that clock speed long before, and they were marketed as 667 MHz processors as well.
I think it would be a bad idea to run ads with the number 666 anywere in it: it takes just one religious zealot to raise a riot, and to discourage a lot of people from buying your product. Or worse, having your company burnt down.
(Although I can imagine there are some products where you actually want to use that particular number.)
WWTTD?
Becuase 3DNow support with nVidia is traditionally behind Intel support. 3Dnow came out much later for TNT than for other cards. + Athlon is faster with TNT 2 so mightn't it be more likly that SSE is the culprit?
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