AMD Releases Barton: Athlon 3000+ 323
Harle writes "Today AMD has introduced a new version of the Athlon, codenamed "Barton," that features twice as much L2 cache as previous chips. Along with the increase in L2 cache comes an increase in the Athlon's performance rating -- specifically the new 2.17 GHz chip is rated at 3000+.
The clockrate is actually slighly lower than the Athlon XP 2800+'s 2.25 GHz speed, so the question becomes "Does the cache improve performance enough to counter the loss in clockspeed?" For the most part, the answer seems to be "yes," however, it doesn't unilaterally stand up to the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4.
With the recent delay of the Athlon 64 to September, this is AMD's top desktop chip for some time to come. The reviews are starting to pop up at Ace's Hardware and Extremetech." There's also reviews on The Tech Report, SimHQ, HotHardware, EarthV, in Norwegian on Hardware.no, and last but not least AMD's press release. I'm sure there's many many more links, but I'm tired of pasting them all in here, so post 'em below. *grin*
Anandtech link (Score:5, Informative)
so post 'em below..
OK Then... Anandtech link [anandtech.com]
Re:Anandtech link (Score:5, Funny)
Tom's hardware comes out with
A review so that I can swing
By that website and check out all
the new ads they have and see
How many pages they've broken the
review up into. I bet it's like
12.
Re:Anandtech link (Score:4, Interesting)
--
If cars were open sourced, there would be at least five steering wheels in the cockpit, each operating differently -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo.
Quick, to the Order Form!! (Score:2, Offtopic)
640 kb on die cache (Score:5, Funny)
Am I the only one who can see Bill Gates drooling over this?
Re:640 kb on die cache (Score:2, Funny)
Raf
Re:640 kb on die cache (Score:3, Interesting)
I mean, nobody says their system has '128.5 megabytes of memory in total' if they have a single 128 meg memory module and 512Kbyte of cache in the CPU.
Re:640 kb on die cache (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:640 kb on die cache (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be insanely fast.
Re:640 kb on die cache (Score:3, Funny)
Re:640 kb on die cache (Score:3, Insightful)
Hurry Up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:5, Insightful)
The vast majority of people don't need the P4 3GHZ, and anyone with any sense would find the current "sweet spot" in the CPU vs price tables. AMD have Intel beat all the way up to the AMD max speed, so how is Intel "kicking there ars"?
You could also say that Ferrari are kicking Ford's ass, since they make a faster car - it just doesn't work like that...
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:2, Insightful)
Daniel
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Problem with that being that most people buying computers dont have any sense, they buy what the salesdrone tells them.
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:4, Informative)
All X86 CPUs are "emulators", regardless of who manufactures them. The real guts of a P4 look nothing at all like you would expect from the opcodes you feed into it. It's emulating that 25 year old architecture.
Since AMD has been producing X86 CPUs since the days of the 8086, I would argue that they have just about as much experience in emulating X86 CPUs as intel does.
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:3, Interesting)
Also I find it hard to understand how 1) a CPU that follows a published standard (X86) could be an emulator and 2) how this emulator can outperform a "pure" system at a slower speed? This could be due to my own ignorance though, please educate me.
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:3, Informative)
This system is still in use today, as AMD purchased NexGen in 1997.
These processors don't really "emulate" a processor, although many people thought the NexGen did since it was always recognized as a 386, even if it was far faster. One of the reasons out of order execution is so important in these processors is the fairly random X86 instructions are reordered into the most efficient RISC instructions possible.
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to admit, that may have something to do with the codec. However, last night I compressed a movie - split into 2 - into Divx 5.02 Pro, using 2 pass encoding, 1 hour of compressing over both passes took 2 hours. Add another 5-10 minutes to transform the audio to 256kbit mp3, and it was complete... well, the first half. The bitrate was equivalent - if I recall, around 1350kbps for the video.....
I've got a similar setup to you - XP2100+, 512mb 333ddr cas2 mushkin, and 2x80gb 7200 8mb WD drives striped. I'm just curious if the WME is what is taking so long.....
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:2)
Anyways, the file "time" was 1 hour, the compression total time was about 2 hours and 10 minutes.
I was just a little thrown by your "9 hours" statement.....
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:5, Insightful)
While RIGHT NOW we have limited use for such monster-CPU's, what about tomorrow? When I buy a computer, I don't look at what things I would be doing with it today, I would also think what I would be doing with it in the future. While 3+GHz might be overkill right now, is it overkill few years down the road?
Sure, I could get a slower and cheaper CPU. But it would get obsolete sooner. If I buy faster CPU, it will be fast enough longer period of time (and as a bonus, I will enjoy the increased performance while the slower CPU would just be "fast enough". If I could shave some time off my compile-times or encoding-times, I'm all for it!).
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you serious? Do you actually buy computer products with the full expectation of not needing the power until years down the road? In almost EVERY situation, that is very bad advice to follow and sounds like a sales pitch you'd get from from BestBuy or Compaq. The rate at which the price drops and the performance increases it would not be a good idea to by more then 1 or 2 months in advance of expected need. Upgradability is a good idea in theory but not from a financial standpoint. In 2 years when you "need" that certain level of speed, the components to get it will be about 25% of the price and probably 300% better then the current offerings. If you need the speed now or don't mind spending the extra money to get products above the knee on a price to performance ratio scale, then by all means go for it.
Obviously you haven't played SimCity 4 (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:3, Insightful)
Just putting a 64-bit chip on the market doesn't mean that AMD will be on top. No stockholder cares about a 64-bit processor that no one buys (think itanium).
Even after opterons are plentiful on the market, who do we know that will buy one? Sure, 90% of /. might be drooling over it. But how many of those people are actually in a position to replace their company's old Xeon servers with new 64-bit opteron servers?
I know it's been said before, but cool processors don't always make investors rich. AMD has been worrying more about improving their company's image as a provider of die-hard, dependable chips . And rightly so (see /. article on opterons being used in new cray supercomputer).
I've spent a good amount of time working in more than one IT department. And I've never had a manager make a buying decision based on /. posts. Fact is, when the s@*t goes down (aka server hardware fails), the IT manager doesn't want any chance for that failure to be due to parts that lack industry-wide acceptance.
So despite all the "technobabble" that goes on (and I'm guilty of it too), it's important to think of how your non-technologist boss views a tech company and the products it puts out. I'm glad that AMD realizes this. I just hope AMD's /. fanbase comes to the same conclusion.
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:2)
People don't want slow processors that work 'technically fast' they want pure real performance. Adding 3000+ to the name won't change it and it seems they're banking on their older systems almost keeping up to the name, by then adding in a cheaper dumbed down version that goes nowhere near it
It is a pity as I see AMD as the more Open solution there. Not Intel.
Re:Hurry Up! (Score:2)
How so? Most of the reviews see the Barton to be pretty close to the p4 @ 3.06. AMD doesn't need to catch up in ghz/mhz, only in performance, and it looks like if it has done that.
> then they could be in for some trouble
The market for the top rated desktop chips (in this case the p4 3.06 ghz and this new chip) is always pretty small (especially with the p4 3.06 ghz being priced extremely high)
worth it??? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is 1.1 fps improvement for Jedi knight,
and this comes at 200$+ Isnt it better to invest this money in a graphics card...
Other benchmarks also dont show marked improvement. I guess this is due to delays introduced by the much larger die size...
AMD's botched it for sure this time. I hope they bring down the pricing to a more sensible level.
Oh come one.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you know what bottom-of-the-barrel is right now? It's like an Athlon 1800+ depending on where you shop [digilinkcomputers.com]. (Gee, I was just in there last week and they were still selling 1.2GHz Durons...) Do you know how much an Athlon 1800+ cost when it came out? Do you really think this price is permenent?
What's the alternative? Never introduct a chip until it's cheap? Doesn't work that way, for a whole lotta reasons.
Fast! (Score:2, Funny)
GIIIIGGGGAAAAAHHHEEEEEEERTTTTZZZZZZ, cool.
Needs more penis though.
2.7GhzPenis now that's fast!
Thx.
Aussie Athlon? (Score:5, Funny)
I'm never buying a 'Keating' or 'Howard' though...
Re:Aussie Athlon? (Score:2)
Mixing the cards... no wait: cores. (Score:5, Informative)
Due to this and AMD's PR ratings you have to be real careful of what you buy, if you're aming for a specific core. Expecially since AMD doesn't plan to replace all Athlon XPs with the new core.
Just remember to do your research, and you'll be fine
Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: dough (Score:2, Funny)
mmm, freshly baked Athlon
Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: dough (Score:3, Funny)
I baked an Athlon MP last spring. I can assure you the reaction to the smell is not "mmmm...."
Oh wait. Actually, I guess that was because I _fried_ it. Oh yea. Thats it.
In any case, it was the most _expensive_ bad smell I've ever smelled.
Re:Mixing the cards... no wait: cores. (Score:5, Informative)
AMD Processor Ordering Part Number (OPN) Breakdown
(1) Processor Core Architecture/Brand Name
(2) Model Number
(3) Package Type
(4) Operating Voltage(Nominal Core Voltage)
(5) Maximum Die Temperature
(6) Level 2 Cache Size
(7) Maximum System-Bus (Front-Side-Bus) Speed
(1) Processor Core Architecture/Brand Name
(only Thoroughbred and Barton cores are 0.13 m)
AXDA ----- AMD Athlon XP -- 0.13 m
AX ------- AMD Athlon XP -- 0.18 m
AMSN ----- AMD Athlon MP -- 0.13 m
AMP/AHX -- AMD Athlon MP -- 0.18 m
K7/A ----- AMD Athlon ----- 0.18 m
(6) Level 2 Cache Size
1 -- 64 KB
2 -- 128 KB
3 -- 256 KB
4 -- 512 KB (only Barton cores have a 512 KB L2 cache)
(7) Maximum System-Bus Speed
B -- 200 MHz
C -- 266 MHz
D -- 333 MHz
Linux? (Score:3, Troll)
Therefore I really encourage these producers like AMD to start benchmarking Linux applications for their new procs. For example, run a %top instance and then run a few different programs: for example 1) a C++ app... 2) a JAVA app... 3) and perhaps a compile of the Linux kernel (2.2x series though, not 3.x).
That would indicate a great deal of things including thruput and FSB calculations as well as hard disk access times in conjunction with a fast CPU.
We want to no what we're getting here so don't give us QUAKE III marks, give us Linux benchmarks that reflect real life computer code!
Re:Linux? (Score:2)
What are you smoking man ? What's wrong with 2.4 ? The current stable kernel, which has been so for over a year... 3.0 would be rather hard to benchmark since it doesn't even exist yet, what *Does* exist is 2.5.* which migth become 2.6 or 3.0 (whatever Linus decides) once it's done.
Crack-smoking Moderators Again (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Linux? (Score:2)
give us Linux benchmarks that reflect real life computer code!
You have a good point, although it could be argued that all benchmarks are artificial, never to be seen outside the controlled laboratory environment. That being the case, you'll need to develop the same sense of skepticism and comparison between
- the hardware you're running now, with Linux
- the benchmarks for "similar" software on Windows on the same dated hardware
in order to get an estimate of how well the new hardware will perform on your mix of Linux applications.But your point is a good one in one sense.
Linux is comparitively dirt cheap relative to buying all those Windows licenses, so that the proportion of your overall IT costs going to hardware is greater. That being the case, Linux users really want to get the best price/performance hardware they can.
OTOH, you could just as well argue that the Windows IT shops are so strapped for case having to shell out for Software Assurance whatnot, that they are particularly starved of funds and really have to find the best deal on hardware they can get.
I'd be curious if there's any correlation between what OS is running on what brand/age of hardware in the big co-lo shops.
Anyone?
Three (thousand), it's the magic number. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wouldn't be the first time, though. In one episode of Gundam Wing where Heero Yuy disarms a nuclear bomb, if you look closely you can see scrawled onto the side of the nuke in yellow "Intel Inside". Perhaps AMD is returning the favour!
Re:Three (thousand), it's the magic number. (Score:2)
I think you're right.
A shade off-topic, but did you notice the schematics that Heero is viewing in one episode, too? They're none other than excerpts from everyone's favourite bedtime story, the Adobe Photoshop manual.
Before you start booing about power consumption... (Score:5, Informative)
Before you start booing about power consumption, here's some facts:
Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton) typical/max: 58.4W / 74.3W
Pentium 4 3.06 GHz typical/max: 81W / ~105W
The short buying guide is: "Benchmark for your application", which can be further expanded into these guidelines:
With games the difference is small enought to only be of interest to gamers whose main "game" is to benchmark their computers.
All in all, just another speedbump on the way to 64bit heaven :-O
Re:Before you start booing about power consumption (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll forgive me if I keep my AthlonXP as the centre of my digital world for just a while longer.
Re:Before you start booing about power consumption (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I wouldn't know about that. Because it sucks down bandwidth, RAM and even hard disc space, 64 bit is more of a hindrance in a lot of cases, the only things going for it are 64 bit ints, which are used rarely, and larger than 4GB address space, which won't be useful for mainstream desktops for a few years yet, the exceptions being high-end work.
have you seen the prices? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:have you seen the prices? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:have you seen the prices? (Score:2)
As an example say AMD sells a certain processor at $100 if you buy 10,000 but is willing to drop the price by 10% if you buy more than 100,000. If an OEM needed 90,000 and could sell their extra processors for $60, they could save $600,000 by buying 100,000 and selling 10,000 processors to the grey market. So even though AMD's list prices are very near Intel's in a few weeks the street prices will be far below list.
Re:have you seen the prices? (Score:2)
Uhm, but on more reputable hardware review sources (e.g, non-THG), such as Anandtech, the Barton smacks the p4 at General Usage Performance and at new FPS games (unreal2k3), get smacked by the p4 in content creation-type things, such as video and 3d rendering (suprise suprise), and older FPS games (quake3 based games, suprise suprise). They tie in pretty much everything else.
The moral of the story is not to trust THG for most of anything.
yipes (Score:2, Funny)
What a sleek and sexy name! I want one!
AMD may be too late for Hammer in Sept. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:AMD may be too late for Hammer in Sept. (Score:2)
Comparing to the P4 3.06... (Score:5, Funny)
Well, of course not... if it did, they'd be calling it the Athlon XP 3060, wouldn't they?
Out of curiosity (Score:5, Interesting)
This exclusive 512 KB L2-cache works together with the 128 KB L1-cache (64 KB data, 64 KB instruction) to form one impressive 640 KB on-die cache. According to AMD, the extra 256 KB cache boosts, an 2170 MHz Athlon XP from a 2700+ level to a 3000+ one.
If this is the case why do AMD, and Intel for that matter not put ever larger amounts of cache on their existing chips to achieve better performance ? Does the cost implications completely prohibit this or do the performance benefits tail off too quickly. SUN seem to able to achieve impressive performance with lower far lower Mhz (I know its different architecture) but I get the impression the large amounts of cache (2-4 MB) they use contributes significantly to performance.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:3, Informative)
Too expensive, especially in terms of yields. The cache use a _large_ area of the die. Larger core, more room for defects.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, cache is terribly expensive to place on chips in large amounts. It tends to be much harder to shrink than the rest of the transistors on the chip, and the design work necessary to scale the cache to meet the ever shrinking die size is complex and harsh. Overall, with consumer chips that need to be under a certain price threshold to be purchased, Intel and AMD have both found its far cheaper to keep increasing clock speed while decreasing die size than it is to increase cache.
My guess is that this latest move by AMD is an update to that mentality. It proceeds along their realization that they might be unable to compete solely on the grounds of clockspeed. However, with the decreasing performance returns for clockspeed increases, this is less of an issue for AMD than one would think. This new core seems to indicate its becoming cheaper for their engineers to spend more time on chip design as well as use the limited die space for cache rather than other components.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2)
It seems to me (knowing nothing about chip design) that there should be some way to specify which parts of the cache are bad. Perhaps the cache could operate as normal, but if an address being fetched turns out to be in a bad part of the cache, it counts as a cache miss and is fetched from main memory as normal. A few dozen bad spots in a 512Kbyte cache shouldn't affect performance that much. The yield should be greatly increased.
There must be some good reason why this doesn't work, else the chip manufacturers would be doing it already. What is that?
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:4, Interesting)
That's one of the reasons AMD is losing hundreds of millions each quarter. They may have a 5% boost in perf from a fat cache, but they can only play that card once per architecture and it costs BUCKS to make it work. It's a stopgap measure AMD had to pull otherwise they'd have no product until spring, which would have been even more bad news for them. It's a sign AMD is flailing. Hopefully their new core will alleviate their suffering.
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2, Informative)
US2-400Mhz - 2Mb cache = $3895
US2-400Mhz - 4Mb cache = $4795
US2-450Mhz - 8Mb cache = $6695
I can't seem to find any price for the "US2-400Mhz - 8 Mb" in their list, but from memory it was around $6500.
I think you would find the same kind of price difference between Intel Xeon cpus with different levels of cache.
Sun also had some very bad PR way back in 2000-2001 with the Ecache errors on the 8Mb series (the cache was not ECC ram). Those CPUs caused the systems to panic randomly and the problem was only totally fixed by shipping a new revision with mirrored caches (they first tried fixing it with an OS patch)
Re:Out of curiosity (Score:2)
I'm still using a K6-2 500 for my main box. It has 512MB of ECC RAM at 100MHz and the level 2 cache on the board is 2MB. The CPU has 64k of level 1 cache (that's 8 times that of the Pentium IV, which only has 8k!). I used to have an NVidia TNT2 Ultra (the AGP is only 2x) and got about 30fps on quake 3 at 1027x768, 32-bit colour. I upgraded to a GeForce4 MX440 and now I get around 45fps at the same resolution, and ~35fps at 1600x1200, 32-bit colour. I've found that cache size and hard disk performace are very important in terms of overall system performance. A fast hard disk is a great performance boost. Linux kernels (2.4.20) take around 12 minutes to build on this machine on a 7200rpm Western Digital hard disk on an ATA100 interface. So, the whole thing's quite useable still and it's in its fourth year of operation (it started out with 64MB RAM, 2.2 kernel and a 400MHz K6-2).
How can you keep up with this crap? (Score:2, Funny)
Benchmarking... (Score:5, Interesting)
architecture is at the end of its useful life.
However,the performance difference is somewhat
"exaggerated" in favour of the P4. Most of the
"content creation" applications and games
are SSE2 enhanced while, on the other hand
3dnow is propably less popular. The hard fact,
of course, is that P4 needs less time in these
applications so it is faster (whatever the
reason).
However, for general purpose usage, I firmly
believe that the Athlon is faster, mostly
because everyday applications do not need
huge memory bandwidth and cannot be made to
run with SSE.
I'm thinking that someone should start doing
some "Open Source" benchmarks where the source
is available. A good idea would be to run
a set of:
a) Kernel compile (or gcc compile or something
like that) and perhaps even "make check"
gdb or gcc or some other application (libc!).
b) MP3 compression with lame
c) Video compression with xvid or ffmpeg
d) Linpack/POVray for fpu
e) Ecasound/LADSPA for sound processing
f) Maybe a perl/high-level bechmark for some
standard system tasks.
g) Cachegrind some of the above (have a look
at valgrind/cachegrind!!)
Anyway, if someone has anything above XP 2600+
let's gather some results.
P.
Re:Benchmarking... (Score:3, Informative)
You can find a thorough test of the Athlon XP 2700+, made with Linux software,
here [linuxhardware.org]
Re:Benchmarking... (Score:3, Interesting)
Most of the "content creation" applications and games are SSE2 enhanced while, on the other hand 3dnow is propably less popular.
No, almost no games are SSE2 enhanced because almost no games are using any significant amount of double-precision maths. For SIMD single-precision calculations, you use SSE, which AthlonXP also has.
SSE2 enchancements do certainly explain the huge lead the P4 has in rendering benchmarks.. damn, look at the difference in 3DS MAX, that must hurt AMD to see. Luckily Hammer is supposed to support the SSE2 instruction set.
Re:Benchmarking... (Score:2, Insightful)
Benchmarking is tough to do "fairly".
Excellent review at... (Score:2, Informative)
PR values (Score:2, Interesting)
It's pretty clear which one is a better measure of relative performance. Although Toms' Hardware would not admit it for some reason.
--
If cars were open sourced, there would be at least five steering wheels in the cockpit, each operating differently -- but you'd be able to shift gears with your car stereo.
really nice when the others get the upgrade (Score:2, Interesting)
Although I'm not really sure why I care other than when these things come out the slower ones go down in cost and that makes building clusters cheaper.
Right now I feel that the 2000+ chips are the best bang for the buck (I can make a single node in a cluster with one of those and 256M ram for under $300) - but perhaps with this thing coming out the pricing structure will shift and I can get me something faster.
hot damn.
Posting links below. (Score:4, Informative)
The real "P4 killer" coming later in spring? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember, under pure-CPU tests the Athlon XP 3000+ has almost the same performance as the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU with HyperThreading; what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory?
Re:The real "P4 killer" coming later in spring? (Score:5, Informative)
Remember, under pure-CPU tests the Athlon XP 3000+ has almost the same performance as the Intel Pentium 4 3.06 GHz CPU with HyperThreading; what will happen when the Athlon XP gets the Front Side Bus speed bump necessary to support DDR400 memory?
Not much I'd imagine, the bump to a 333MHz system bus did next to nothing. The P4 is far more sensitive to memory bandwidth than the Athlon.
And in April P4s at 3.2GHz with an 800MHz system bus come out...
640kb on die cache (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:640kb on die cache (Score:2)
Honest question; it's a nifty idea. Thinking inside the (CPU) box.
Re:640kb on die cache (Score:3, Funny)
On another geeky note, I wonder if you could somehow use this without any external RAM to run DOS...
Re:640kb on die cache (Score:3)
Sorry dude. Embedded apps usually aren't starved for CPU time. They are often real-time and have to be very predictable. Caches actually make things less predictable because the execution time of a high-priority task can substantially differ depending on the cache hit rate at a given execution.
And any embedded application that needs an Athlon, and can afford to dissipate 64 watts of power, will surely be larger than 640kb in footprint.
Not so! (Score:2)
Yes, a real time app wouldn't benefit, but other embedded/industrial apps would.
Toms Hardware Review (Score:4, Informative)
It's seems like they say that AMD'S 3000+ rating is extremely aggressive and they do not seem to think it should have had that rating. They also have a good point in there about price gouging essentially eliminating the comeptitive price difference. Since the chip is so hard to get the price skyrockets. It's kind of disturbing that AMD recommends testing this chip with DirectX 7 that definitely does not speak well of AMD's confidence in competing with Intel's stengths.
Re:Toms Hardware Review (Score:2)
X-bit labs review (Score:3, Informative)
The hype, the grave and the jaja's. (Score:4, Insightful)
So why is the hype aimed at so many desktop users? Simple: it's the largest market. Do we, the endusers, need it? No. Are we going to buy it, with the economy in the tight spot it's in? Nope. We're going to upgrade their memory sticks and leave it at that. I've got a trusty P3 600 which works fine with my GeForce 4 to run NWN at awe-inspiring resolutions and graphics, it's got 512mb so it's smoother than a narwhal, and I for one see no need to buy a new one anytime soon. The net result is that the intel/amd power struggle has been so intense that there's no point to it anymore. My system is still configured for gaming, but a lot of people - in companies as well as at home - only use their computers to email and write letters and maybe listen to some music. Like as not they'd much rather save for a 19" TFT than another tower. I own my own little IT company and generally advise my clients to stick to their 450mhz machines and upgrade a few choice parts.
The only thing I'm wondering is how big is the group that seriously uses such powerful machines? I can understand major websites or software companies will have clusters, but that can't be much more than a few percent can it? Anyone have an idea?
- Jynx
Winxp doesn't take advantage of L2 cache anyway (Score:3, Informative)
great scott! (Score:2, Funny)
Amdmb.com's Athlon XP 3000+ Processor Review (Score:2, Informative)
Not so sure about the name (Score:2)
"When it's over, "Barton Fink" feels like a sophisticated joke you didn't get but laughed at anyway for fear of looking stupid." [washingtonpost.com]
Performance vs Intel doesnt matter (Score:4, Insightful)
I've assembled many systems for value-conscious people around, most being Duron 700-950. Nowadays the Duron 1200-1600 are nice bets since any higher clock would push the price by a bigger margin.
The vast majority of customers, both OEM and custom-assembled, really couldnt care about the psychological 1GHz or 2GHz bump, or getting the very latest processor. The real competition is the number of processors sold, and everyone can see the Athlon has always outperformed the Pentium4 in price/performance competitions. Give the new power ratings, with the Athlon chugging lesser watts while pushing the cache for a more reasonable performance figure, I'd say AMD will come out the winner.
Most customers quite simply dont want a $3000 system with the latest and greatest parts. Sure such a market exists, but theyre a loud minority. There are parents buying systems for their kids, their offices and college guys for their collegework. There are ordiniary people who want ordiniary computers that just do the job reliably, you know, use MS Word, browse the net, maybe watch a DVD. You dont even need a processor clocked over 1GHz for this, a Duron 800 with 256MB RAM and a Geforce2MX card can hold its own even in todays market. Remember very few are really buying Windows XP right now.
In planning for the future, AMD should not ignore the FSB for the Hammer, nor should they ignore the power ratings. The price has always been their edge, but having the only 32/64-bit processor, they could even afford to jack it up a little assuming Intels 64-bit doesnt do too well with 32-bit code. What bothers Intel and Microsoft right now is that people are perfectly happy with a low-end machine, and will continue to be for a while. The whole North Amerian market is coming closer to saturation, and poorer countries would have a bell curve centered much closer to the very low end of America's computer buying bell curve. All this points to the next boom in extreme value systems, where AMD again has kept their edge over Intel, only to compete with transmeta and the C3.
Re:Fakery (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point, except this will never happen. Intel have based their marketing around the clockspeed, and to go back on that would be distasterous for them.
AMD have to pander to the 'OMG 3.2 Gigawats is better than 2.3Googawits!' idiocy.
Re:Fakery (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who care about the difference between AMDese and real megahertz, already know. Joe Public doesn't honestly care; an Athlon 2000 is a match for a Pentium IV 2000, and that's all that really matters. AMD aren't on the fiddle; they've been entirely fair with the ratings at which they market their chips (and the temptation to inflate a little would be considerable...)
As for asking Intel nicely to help out AMD's marketing department, what colour is the sky where you live? The Pentium IV is designed to get big megahertz at the expense of actual performance; why would Intel throw away their chip's advantage like that?
Re:Fakery (Score:5, Interesting)
you do realise that p4 3.06 is supposed to be better/faster than p4 2.8 would be at 3.06 speeds too? does that make calling p4 2.8 a p4 2.8 wrong, or calling 3.06 a 3.06 wrong? you can't compare even intel products just by the number they're sold with.
it certainly doesnt get 'bitchslapped'.
intel is far worse. they sell celerons and p4's with essentially same 'horsepower' numbers(to the consumer). not to mention their ht tech they're trying to make look far more better than it is. if you think the common joe can identify the differences then you're really wrong and haven't do enough mandatory helpdesking for your relatives.
intel is like a car dealer selling cars by just telling consumers how high they can rev, amd is telling a performance number(though, mostly just comparable to other amd cpu's, and thats alright, why should they change their rating system according to what their competitors do.)
i'd prefer to know the actual kw rating of the engine rather than just it's displacement and how high it can rev.
Re:Fakery (Score:2)
Where the fuck are you getting this from?
From Anandtech's review:
AMD's first CPU of the year and it's still not the elusive Hammer, but as the benchmarks show, it doesn't need to be. In many cases the Athlon XP 3000+ outperforms the 3.06GHz Pentium 4, while in others it manages to tie with Intel's flagship and yet in others it falls behind just as much. The overall performance is close enough to warrant the 3000+ rating in some cases, but there's no question that it is a very close call between the two top performing CPUs.
And anandtech pretty much tells it like it is. They're known for pretty much unbiased reporting unlike TomsHardware^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H some other hardware sites.
Re:Fakery (Score:2, Informative)
For an quick read on some of the issues associated with different benchmarks, you could look here [vuurwerk.net].
Re:It's time for the Athlon XP to retire. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MP's? (Score:2, Interesting)
What I've heard is that the MP chips are the "cream of the crop" of the XPs - AMD manufactures a batch, and then picks out the best to be MPs. So you do get something for what you pay for.
Re:Why does this not excite me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel has a faster processor than us, and we can catch up or even beat us, but that would only be an small percentage increase.... I say we just sit on our asses until we can double our speed. We'll be bankrupt by then, but users don't care about the releases.
If you are saying they should be doubling the speed at the same intervals as current incremental changes, you are being ridiculous. They are moving as fast as they can. This is what a competitive market does. They try to move any slower than they possibly can and competition leaves them behind. This is why the x86 platform is becoming much faster much more quickly than other platforms, the fierce competition.
If you don't like the small speed increase releases, just ignore them and pretend they never happen. For example, if you have an Athlon XP1500+, pretend that every successive release until now never happend. Then you'll be happy.
These are not meaningless speed increases. If you have the 2700+ processor, the 3000+ is faster, but not worth an upgrade (not yet anyway). If you have a 1500+ processor, this release is bound to make the 2700+ more reasonable, or even 3000+. Manufacturers do not expect a consumer to buy into every release cycle, but they expect different consumers to be ready to buy into different cycles at different intervals.
Re:Why does this not excite me? (Score:2)
Re:NTL (Score:2)
I'm sorry, I have to take issue with this. I have explained before [sucs.org] that I can easily exceed this limit legally. I do remote admin on a volunteer run Linux computer lab in my university, do you think that this is an exampl of a 'free ride'?