Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
AMD Hardware

ZDNet Says AMD Posts Blatantly Deceptive Benchmark 180

Posted by Zonk from the read-things-on-the-internet-with-a-grain-of-salt dept.
Glasswire writes "George Ou, writing in ZDNet's Real World IT blog, accuses AMD of comparing processors the company will not be shipping for months (2.6GHz Barcelona quad core) with older Intel Xeon quad cores rather than currently shipping ones which would beat the (hypothetical) score AMD claims for the future Barcelona. I guess while even the much slower 2.0GHz Barcelona is due soon AMD didn't think results from the 2.0 would look good enough — even against the slower Xeons they picked. Maybe the right comparison should be either best cpu against best cpu — or compare ones at the same price — and only shipped products."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

ZDNet Says AMD Posts Blatantly Deceptive Benchmark More

ZDNet Says AMD Posts Blatantly Deceptive Benchmark

Comments Filter:

  • Who trusts a vendor's benchmarks anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nweaver ( 113078 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @02:32PM (#19756961) Homepage
    Vendor benchmarks are always considered untrustworthy, so I don't see what the big deal is.

    • Re:Who trusts a vendor's benchmarks anyway? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PFI_Optix ( 936301 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @02:37PM (#19757007) Journal
      If we don't point out every time they use blatantly unfair product comparisons, the amount of disinformation coming out of vendors will only increase. Even though very few people (just the fanboys) place any stock in AMD's or Intel's benchmarks, it's worth pointing out flaws like this to keep them as honest as we possibly can.

      • Re:Who trusts a vendor's benchmarks anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CatsupBoy ( 825578 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:03PM (#19757339)

        If we don't point out every time they use blatantly unfair product comparisons, the amount of disinformation coming out of vendors will only increase
        Or the amount of crap product comparisons will continue to be the same no matter how much its pointed out.

        Companies will continue to tout themselves as top dogs, regardless of the facts. And it never ceases to amaze me how far they go to stretch the truth in order to make themselves look good.

        How else could salesmen go into a room and pitch their product? Or how can manufacturers sell their AMD products when competitors are pushing Intel? And vice versa? Its capitalism at its best.

        • Re:Who trusts a vendor's benchmarks anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by PFI_Optix ( 936301 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:26PM (#19757639) Journal

          Or the amount of crap product comparisons will continue to be the same no matter how much its pointed out.


          You don't think it can get worse? You don't think it would get worse if there weren't people crying foul at the current comparisons?

          You can use legitimate comparisons to tout a product, you don't have to unfairly match them. Look at your average car commercial (fictional example):

          Ford's new truck gets better gas mileage than Dodge.
          Ford's new truck has a bigger, more powerful engine than Chevy.

          They just said it's better than Dodge and Chevy, but in two completely different ways. They do this all the time in marketing. If nothing else, AMD could talk up price points and power efficiency, two things they almost always have over Intel. Skewed benchmarks just make the company look inept and leave knowledgeable consumers feeling like AMD is insulting their intelligence.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If you read the comments on TFA, apparently the chart was originally posted in April. At the time these results were posted they were believed to be true (albeit based on "estimated" performance.) Same with the supposed WSJ ads. Since then the clock speed of the AMD has come down and the old scores have changed. It seems that AMD's real mistake here was not updating the information on their site.

        The skewed numbers for Intel's chip are also because the chart for Intel was compiled with different settings

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          If you read the comments on TFA

          You must be new here. Welcome to /.

      • Re:Who trusts a vendor's benchmarks anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:25PM (#19757635) Homepage Journal
        Still, the submission misses the point completely when it want benchmarks of only CPUs that's on the market. The reason for the benchmarks of CPUs that haven't been released yet is so OEMs and retailers know a little more of what to expect, and make plans for ordering (or not ordering) accordingly. If there's no benchmarks of unreleased CPUs, it would not hit the market, and thus wouldn't be benchmarked -- catch 22.

        Who the manufacturer compares against is of course up to them, and there's nothing "unfair" about it. It's telling the world that this is the competition they strive to beat. If it's an older CPU, the new CPU is obviously intended as a replacement for these. If I had a large server farm running these Xeons, I'd be most interested to see this benchmark, well before the CPUs actually come out (if they're already out on the market, they will be off the market by the time upper management approves the budget). And remember, AMD and Intel aren't in the game to try to trick you to buy a CPU that won't work well for you -- they want you to return for your CPU needs, over and over again. That's why they publish benchmarks like these, which are relevant, just not to the GP.

        Other comparisons both will and do appear once a CPU has hit the market. But for the initial pre-release vendor benchmarks, I'd rather it be the choice of the vendor, so we can see where the market position is going to be.

        Move along -- nothing to see here, except for a particularly silly submission.

      • Perhaps (Score:4, Informative)

        by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:52PM (#19757993)
        They are benchmarking against Xeons because they are going to price them at the older Xeon's level rather than the newer faster faster ones...

         
      • You think AMD cares about Slashdot's opinion? They're aiming at the PHBs.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by yfarren ( 159985 )
      The point is, someone is lying.

      While it may be the case that marketers generally lie, that is something to be opposed.

      When people lie, when people disseminate false information, it harms the public. That people do so a lot simply means that they are hurting the public a lot. To say "Well, everyone harms the public, why is it a big deal that this person is harming the public" is to say it is ok to harm the public.

      It isn't. Lying, disseminating false information is harmful. If it is done a lot, that just

      • Re:Who trusts a vendor's benchmarks anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:40PM (#19757839) Homepage Journal
        If someone is lying, could you please care to name a lie?
        Cause I can't see a single lie. Self-flattery, yes, and selective truths, yes, but no lies.

        If you're in the business (and if you're not, this type of benchmark isn't meant for you), you know very well how to read and interpret the reported benchmarks and marketese. It's the expected format, which is helpful to those who need to know these things, e.g. because they are planning on upgrading a large Xeon farm to faster CPUs at as low cost as possible, or because they're a large OEM who needs to know the market segment this CPU is intended for, so they know both how much to order and how to market it.

        Can we all stop this lynch mob now?

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by arivanov ( 12034 )
          Absolutely.

          And the fact that the CPU is not going to hit the high street for 6 odd months does not mean that selected engineering samples cannot be clocked to the same frequency. So in fact, the test is most likely run on a real CPU. Even further, if it is shipping in 6 months to stores the engineering samples have to hit OEMs and major manufacturers now so they can verify their designs.

          Oh, and by the way, both AMD and Intel do this all the time. Intel was publishing Core benchmarks for 3-6 months ahead of

          • Re:Who trusts a vendor's benchmarks anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by cbreaker ( 561297 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @04:04PM (#19758173) Journal
            And, not ONLY all that, all of these enthusiast sites continually post overclocked benchmarks for these CPU's.

            They used to do it with the Pentium 4 all the time; You'd see a currently available Athlon versus a currently available Pentium 4 in a bechmark chart, and next to it would be a 60% overclocked P4 that requires special cooling. Yet they'd always say "BUT The OverClocked one BLOWS AMD AWAY!"

            Just because this is coming from a manufacturer doesn't make it any less valid, and I don't see why AMD has to go hunting for Intel's latest CPU with the same model number (but a different revision) just to keep things fair OUT of their favor.

            Besides, all this SPECint and CPU benchmark crap is worthless anyways, unless all you do with your server is run scientific calculations. In real world SMP applications, such as heavy-use VMware servers or database servers with lots of I/O and RAM, the Opterons will always kick the crap out of the Intel boxes with the Northbridge bottleneck. HyperTransport is the key to actually USING all of those system resources.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by logicnazi ( 169418 )
            Actually the test results themselves say they were the result of internal simulations. Still, assuming they were done honestly, internal simulations are probably more accurate than test silicon.

            The real story here is not that "AMD LIED." Parent comments are right that AMD did not make any false statements. They were, however, misleading but I would normally let that slide for advertising.

            The story is that AMD slammed intel for being deceptive and turned around and did it themselves.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by adisakp ( 705706 )
          Cause I can't see a single lie

          You can imply a lot of things that are completely untrue without saying a single lie.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Surt ( 22457 )
        Actually, scientific research has proven that a little bit of lying is good for the public welfare. The question is really: is this too much lying?

        http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&safe=o ff&client=firefox-a&q=benefits+lying&btnG=Search [google.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by suv4x4 ( 956391 )
      Vendor benchmarks are always considered untrustworthy, so I don't see what the big deal is.

      Hm, what a nice example of self-fulfilling prophecy.

      I prefer another one though: accept Intel and AMD's benchmarks should be accurate to utmost detail, and put up a riot every time we see they aren't.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by baggins2001 ( 697667 )
      No kidding
      I don't think the accuracy of the benchmarks is in question here.
      The deceptive manor in which the benchmark data was presented is the issue. Which is really a none issue. This is advertisement, anybody who doesn't look critically at data presented by the manufacturere is really gullible.
      Anybody who doesn't look critically at the data from a third party is pretty gullible
      I really really don't see the problem here

    • Re:Who trusts a vendor's benchmarks anyway? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mgoheen ( 244365 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:19PM (#19757559) Journal
      > Vendor benchmarks are always considered untrustworthy, so I don't see what the big deal is.

      That logic gets you into trouble...

      Politician promises are always considered untrustworthy, so I don't see what the big deal is.

      Auto companies are untrustworthy, so you should expect the brakes to fail.

      People are untrustworthy, so if you are robbed, it's your fault for carrying cash.

      People are killed every day, so I don't see what the big deal with Iraq is.

      etc.

      Sheesh...wrong is wrong, no matter who is doing it. If you don't fight it, you're part of the problem.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by heinousjay ( 683506 )
        wrong is wrong, no matter who is doing it

        Wrong is subjective, depending on who is interpreting it. To state otherwise is to be the cause of the problem.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by arodland ( 127775 )
          Er no, quite the opposite. To state that is to be the cause of the problem. Notice that you can't even make your point without falling into your own trap. Your argument against a categorical morality is that believing in one is categorically wrong. :)
  • Core 2 is smoking AMD and they are panicking. Do they even have a real next gen architecture, aside from bizarre (albeit intriguing) CPU/GPU hybrids?
    • In the broader sense of an 'architecture' in my mind, AMDs has a more advanced one than Intel (the integrated and hypertransport IO/multi-processor strategy).

      Intel does, however, have a faster processor design than AMD's released product. If Barcelona levels the field in terms of instructions per clock, then the ball is back to Intel's court to at least meet AMDs memory/SMP/IO architecture or offset that deficiency with another leap in the processor technology. I hear Intel's roadmap eventually brings in

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Iam9376 ( 1096787 )

        In the broader sense of an 'architecture' in my mind, AMDs has a more advanced one than Intel (the integrated and hypertransport IO/multi-processor strategy).

        Then it seems your mind needs an update. Intel's Core 2 architecture is significantly better than AMD's current or past (and seemingly future) architectures.

        Putting all the fanboy drivel aside for a moment;
        Intel's processors are faster without using more transistors, indications that the architecture is more optimized and makes better use of the available transistors.
        Intel's processors scale vastly better than AMD's offerings both current and future.
        Also consider, the die shrink to 65nm for AMD

        • Re:Not the architecture.. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:22PM (#19757589) Journal

          Intel's Core 2 architecture is significantly better than AMD's current or past (and seemingly future) architectures
          In some ways, yes. The micro-op fusion stuff is incredibly shiny. They took some good branch prediction logic from NetBurst, and have a lot of neat tricks internally, particularly in the cache controller. On the edge of the CPU, AMD have the lead. They have a better interconnect (they are going to lose this lead soon, once Intel get CSI out of the door), and they have more intelligent memory controllers, which give them the edge in virtualisation and a few other things.

          It's not entirely fair to say Intel is ahead of AMD architecturally. Both architectures have their strengths and weaknesses. At the moment, Intel are getting better overall performance (which means performance per Watt these days), but their architecture does have a few issues.

        • Re:Not the architecture.. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Ambassador Kosh ( 18352 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:25PM (#19757633)
          I definitely don't agree that the intel systems scale vastly better. Most of the 4+ way benchmarks I have see with 8 or more cores go to amd pretty handily, The more memory the benchmarks need to use the worse off it gets for intel. So for desktops and very small servers where IO is not very important Intel is currently ahead in pure performance. If you need to setup an 8 core db server with 32GB of ram I would definitely go with opterons.

          AMD is definitely not losing on the higher end server stuff, they are losing on the gaming desktops though since the Core 2 is a faster chip. For business work you pretty much never need something very fast. Probably the 3600+ is overkill for just about any business task and it currently as the best value of any chip I know of.
        • Putting all the fanboy drivel aside for a moment;

          Chill out, man. The Parent didn't have any fanboyism at all, but your post is full of it.

          Intel's processors are faster without using more transistors, indications that the architecture is more optimized and makes better use of the available transistors.

          The Core2 has almost 2x the transistor count of the Athlon X2, due to the huge cache. Or do you mean logic transistors? I can't find numbers for those. (Not that using more transistors would necessarily speed t

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )
          Intel processors certainly do not scale better than AMD...
          AMD has a dedicated interconnect between processors, and a seperate memory bus for each processor, so adding an additional processor effectively doubles your memory bandwidth with a NUMA aware OS.
          Intel on the other hand, effectively halves it's per processor memory bandwidth each time the processor count is doubled. The shared bus has to be shared for everything, inter-processor communication, memory access and IO device access. Also, their quad core
    • Only to the bit-bucket... Too many processor bugs that can't be fixed via bios/firmware. Not saying that AMD doesn't have there's as well, but rushing hardware out only costs more than it makes in the long run if bugs like those creep into the product line.
  • i'm really not that interested in benchmarks. Besides my personal position is that AMD are the "good guys" and Intel are the "bad guys" because of their monopolistic practices.

    It's kinda hard when you see your "heroes" do bad things, and I feel tempted to give excuses. In any case, the news won't make me trade my 3800+ dual core Athlon 64 for an intel Core 2 duo of the same speed and have to pay twice the price.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by bealzabobs_youruncle ( 971430 )
      Or course it won't cause you to "trade my 3800+ dual core Athlon 64 for an intel Core 2 duo of the same speed and have to pay twice the price" becuase none of those circumstances are possible. I like AMD too, but they got owned this round and that is just the way it is. AMD is just as capable of evil and more guilty of whining, brand loyalty is for suckers in regards to performance desktop computing; buy the fastest gear you can get at the moment of purchase.
      • OTOH, perhaps an Athlon x64 3800 x2 is overkill in speed for whatever purposes he uses it for, meaning he actually doesn't have any need for a faster Intel Core 2 Duo?

        Also, AMD may not quite be the absolute fastest, but last I looked on Newegg (around last week) they certainly were the cheapest. And I don't mean only the processor was cheapest - each time I spec out parts for a motherboard/cpu/RAM/etc (that is, using a minimum standard of manufacture and processor class being Athlon/whatever Intel's equi

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by tcc3 ( 958644 )
          Ok so when the athlon and opterons were eating Intel chips for breakfact and exacting prices to match the story was "Amd has faster chips!"

          Now that Intel got their act together and are cleaning AMDs clock its "They are cheaper / a better value / more bang per buck."

          AMD dropped their prices because of the performance differential.

          They both make great stuff these days and are pushing each other to higher standards. Buy what you want or need but lets not pretend alot of this isnt just blatant fanboyism.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by QuantumPion ( 805098 )
      AMD and Intel are CPU manufacturers, not sports teams. Buy the product that is the best performing at the lowest price.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by timeOday ( 582209 )
        I mostly agree, but customers big enough to influece market dynamics, like Dell or the US Government, should think about how awful it's going to be buying a computer in a few years if AMD falls out of the race. Personally I'm a little worried about it.
        • I'm worried too, but AMD is not a startup. It's just as old as Intel, has diversified numerous times in its history, and has been at war with Intel for longer than you think. It's been through much worse times and is very used to playing catch-up. I'm sure its current financial situation is nowhere near the worst in its history, either.

          I question their management in the wake of the ATI purchase, but I'm not the one with 35 years of competing against Intel under my belt.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by freedumb2000 ( 966222 )
        That is true but should all be still hoping for a comeback of AMD. No one really wants the early 90s back where Intel ruled the block with no competitor, but high prices and complete control of if and when raise x86 CPU speeds to the next iteration. There is a reason why Intel still fights them tooth and nail. There where others before AMD but it's the only and first successful competitor in the x86 space for Intel. Imagine if there where only ATI or Nvida.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Matimus ( 598096 )
          In the early 90's Intel competed against AMD, Cyrix and Via (maybe others too). If anything, it is worse now. As far as I know, there is only AMD, Intel. Via has an offering, but it doesn't seriously compete with the others in any of the major market segments. People don't remember anyone but Intel because their "Intel Inside" campaign was so wildly successful.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ozbird ( 127571 )
        Buy the product that is the best performing at the lowest price.

        If you are purely a consumer, yes. If you want to ensure the continuation of the competition that lead to the current cheap Core 2 Duo vs. Athlon 64 X2 battle, you need to factor that in to the equation too. Otherwise, we'll be back to the days of paying through the nose for overpriced Pentium x shite.
    • I've currently got a couple of 3800+ based dual cores doing server duty and media recording, and a 5200+ for my main desktop rig. I'd spring for Core2's... except for the fact that they cost twice as much and don't add much value to my home network. Basically, AMD beats Intel in terms of value, but loses the "brute force" race.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rashkae ( 59673 )
        Of course it makes sense not to replace perfectly working, top of the line systems.. but where do you get this figure that Intel costs twice as much? Intel CPU's now cost *less* than equivalent performing AMD CPU's (Although, the figures kind of even out with all of AMD's recent price cuts.)

        • Intel CPU's now cost *less* than equivalent performing AMD CPU's

          The best price/performance at the moment is the AMD 3600. From there, the price performance ratios get progressively worse as performance increases. Other processors that aren't blatantly obsolete include: The AMD 5000, Intel 4300, AMD 5600, and a bunch of Intel processors costing over $200.

    • In any case, the news won't make me trade my 3800+ dual core Athlon 64 for an intel Core 2 duo of the same speed and have to pay twice the price.

      You shouldn't replace something you already have with something that isn't any better. Who is suggesting you do that? That would be a pretty stupid thing to do. Someone that has the Core 2 Duo would also be stupid to replace the system for an Athlon 64 of the same speed, both ways, it's spending money to get no improvement.

    • It's kinda hard when you see your "heroes" do bad things, and I feel tempted to give excuses. In any case, the news won't make me trade my 3800+ dual core Athlon 64 for an intel Core 2 duo of the same speed and have to pay twice the price.

      I'd kind of like to know where you are pricing processors. I bought a low end core 2 duo processor that beat the AMD processor on performance at the same price in a Dell computer. Maybe if you are making your own box, but whatever. The prices aren't that different. In

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Joe The Dragon ( 967727 )
      you can also get better chipsets with amd then with intel at the same price.
      Mid to high end AMD SLI Chip sets are the same price as low to mid end intle chipsets.

  • It's not the deceptive benchmarks that bother me (Score:4, Interesting)

    by realmolo ( 574068 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @02:40PM (#19757051)
    What REALLY upsets me is the fact that the writers at ZDNet actually get *paid* to regurgitate data they likely found on some other website via Google.

    What a great job.

    • Welcome to tech journalism. All you have to do is publish companies' press releases. For "in depth" articles, you visit their offices and have the PR guys talk to you all day. For product reviews, you repeat the companies' benchmarks and then turn on your demo unit to take some screenshots (if you can't find screenshots on the manufacturer's website, that is).

      As someone who once worked for a company producing a product that had major hardware issues (as well as some fairly significant software bugs) yet

  • This is surprising? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Etrias ( 1121031 )
    George Ou has long been an Intel/Windows whipping boy. He's not far off of writing the article that says that AMD has "Seal clubbing days" and internal seminars on "Making your grandmother cry".

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by edremy ( 36408 )
      I saw a lot of comments about that on the talkback section

      Perhaps you'd like to actually address the complaint? Seemed pretty solid to me- Intel has used the best available, hard-to-cheat-on benchmark out there (SPEC) and gotten results. AMD is posting old results for Intel, results for AMD processors that don't exist yet and ignoring the best possible Intel products. Yes, it's advertising, but it's pretty crappy advertising, bordering on the deliberately deceptive. I'm a longtime fan of AMD- my home

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by njfuzzy ( 734116 )
      A whipping boy is someone who gets an undue amount of negative attention. Are you trying to say that George Ou gets a lot of crap from Intel/Windows? I think you mean he is a schill, or maybe a hired gun.

  • trust? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by SolusSD ( 680489 )
    large publicly held corporations are usually only as honest as they have to be to hide their dishonesty

  • Yeah, But Ou Loudly Beat's Intel's Drum (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Being a subscriber to various TechRepublic newsletters I can say that ol' Georgie seems to have a very pro-Intel attitude, perhaps even to the point of "Fanboy".

    That being said, yes, these are vendor benches, which we all know are a scam. At the same time, the anti-AMD guy shouldn't be blowing the whistle and crying 'foul'; it makes him look like a whiner.

  • If AMD was comparing one architecture to another, they MUST do so based on identical core clock to memory clock ratios.

    So what are the ratios in question, ZDNet? <pull string> "Math is hard."

    Then the ZDNet jerkoff has the gall to complain that AMD didn't use the latest SPEC.org numbers. Well, duh. RUNNING benchmarks means just that: running them. You get the actual machines you want to compare, scrupulously make all the software as identical as possible, and let 'em rip. You DO NOT just grab

    • By get[ting] the actual machines you want to compare, scrupulously make all the software as identical as possible, and let 'em rip, you mean building a standard performance testing tool-set and letting an impartial non-profit organization oversee the tests to ensure fairness?

      That sounds like a really good idea... Why don't someone make one, and call it SPEO or something?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by edremy ( 36408 )
      Then the ZDNet jerkoff has the gall to complain that AMD didn't use the latest SPEC.org numbers. Well, duh. RUNNING benchmarks means just that: running them. You get the actual machines you want to compare, scrupulously make all the software as identical as possible, and let 'em rip. You DO NOT just grab random numbers generated by random software off a random website, no matter how impressive the numbers claim to be.

      You don't understand how SPEC works, do you? It's *not* a benchmark you just download an

  • So, what you are trying to tell me is that some company called AMD is posting benchmarks using processors that won't ship for a while (ahem, Sun / Sony), probably using carefully selected benchmarks (ahem, Apple / Motorola / IBM / Sony), and probably bragging about certain carefully selected synthetic results (ahem, Apple / Sony / IBM / Motorola) in carefully selected applications (ahem, ENTIRE FAB INDUSTRY).

    I only left Intel out because I'm typing this on a Core 2 and I'm scared that if I point out the n

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kohath ( 38547 )
      AMD may have lost their edge a little. But they used to look good by comparison with Intel, and now they look bad by that same comparison. Improvements at Intel are the major factor.
  • Can you say Oxymoron? I knew you could.

    • Can you say Oxymoron? I knew you could.

      In this case, we want redundant (which I'm sure I'll get modded for this), not oxymoron.

      An oxymoron would be something like "government intelligence" or "a little pregnant". Now, "Honest benchmark" when given by the vendor might be an oxymoron, "deceptive benchmark" is just a needless qualifier. :-P

      Some links to brush up on here [oxymoronlist.com] and here [wikipedia.org]

      Cheers

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by niceone ( 992278 ) *
      No, "Deceptive Benchmarks" is the opposite of an oxymoron - an nonoxymoron or noxymoron or maybe even oxysmartdude.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      A single benchmark, no matter how good or bad, gives you no meaningful information. It is neither honest nor deceptive, although it can be correct or incorrect. To get total coverage of a system with N characteristics, you must make at least N(N+1)/2 measurements of the system, isolating every combination in turn. (Characteristics not being measured need to be held to a fixed, known value.) Because profiles are more useful than isolated points, you really need at least three times as many measurements - thr

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 )
      Not an oxymoron, it's just repetative.
  • Is the price/performance ratio. Intel is currently ahead in the CPU performance top-end but AMD is ahead in the price and GPU areas. Thinking of past history I would expect a "Coup de grâce" from AMD in the near future. They seem to be some clever folks over there at AMD.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      Yep, nobody can copy intel in more clever way then the people at AMD.

      "Coup de grâce" ... I think you mean "Core de grâce" ;)

  • Let's all scream FIRE! (Score:5, Informative)

    by nick_davison ( 217681 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:10PM (#19757453)
    From the comments on the original article:

    The graphs are from a several months old marketing promo. Suddenly there's really no story.

    Claim: AMD listed a product they don't intend to release.
    Truth: AMD listed a product they intended to release at the time but subsequently withdrew.

    Claim: AMD deliberately used out of date Intel scores.
    Truth: AMD used the most current Intel scores available at the time. Improved scores came from an improved compiler - which may well change AMD's scores too. Either way, it wasn't available at the time of writing.

    Claim: AMD ignored the most recent Intel processor releases.
    Truth: Those Intel processors weren't released at the time of writing and no benchmarks existed.

    Journalistically, this is about on a par with finding footage from the 50's saying we'd all be driving flying cars by the year 2000 and boldly asserting there's clearly a government conspiracy to hide the technology from the people to protect big oil.

    Bold claims are one thing. Making them on the back of badly researching where the information came from is a great way to look like an idiot.
    • And this is why Blogs are a bad source of good journalism. Luckily, most news sources have editors to weed submissions like these out.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by neersign ( 956437 )

      from the summary (i refuse to read ZDNet articles):

      (2.6GHz Barcelona quad core) with older Intel Xeon quad cores rather than currently shipping ones which would beat the (hypothetical) score AMD claims for the future Barcelona. I guess while even the much slower 2.0GHz Barcelona is due soon AMD didn't think results from the 2.0 would look good enough - even against the slower Xeons they picked. Maybe the right comparison should be either best cpu against best cpu - or compare ones at the same price -- and

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Wavicle ( 181176 )
      Truth: AMD listed a product they intended to release at the time but subsequently withdrew.

      This article references AMD's CURRENT MARKETING page on Barcelona performance.

      Go to www.amd.com
      ->Processors
      ->Multi-core
      ->Products
      ->Barcelona
      ->Performance
      (You may have to select language in there somewhere)

      I don't see how calling AMD out on this is in any way inappropriate because they continue to use it.

      Truth: AMD used the most current Intel scores available at the time. Improved scores came from an imp
    • Look at the article's author. It's not so hard to believe George Ou would make such claims.

      After the whole OS X 'hacked in sixty seconds' fiasco, it appears he's still a gutter journalist.

      Still, to his credit he at least has a document to show everyone this time. That's a big step up for him.

  • Comparison points (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Todd Knarr ( 15451 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:14PM (#19757501) Homepage

    I'm interested in a side-by-side comparison at three points:

    1. Best against best. How do the current top-of-the-line CPUs from each company compare.
    2. Similar price points. If I'm willing to spend $X on a CPU, which company gives me the most performance for my money?
    3. Similar clock speeds. This is more a techie thing, gives me an idea of which company's wringing the most from each clock cycle in their chips. With current tech it's not a really reliable guide to which CPU to buy, but it gives me an idea of how their tech stacks up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )
      Price points based on what? dollar to Hz? Dollar to power consumed? Straight Dollar to dollar?

      "This is more a techie thing, gives me an idea of which company's wringing the most from each clock cycle in their chips. "

      This means almost nothing with todays chips. A well designed 2.5Ghz would be a better chip than a poorly designed 3GHz. what about duel/quad/infintium core chips?

      Nobody is going to release a chip that isn't pushing comparable cycles anymore.

      • Price points based on what? dollar to Hz? Dollar to power consumed? Straight Dollar to dollar?

        Straight dollars. Essentially, if I spend $300, how much performance will that buy me from each company?

        A well designed 2.5Ghz would be a better chip than a poorly designed 3GHz. what about duel/quad/infintium core chips?

        Which is why I noted in that item that it's not a reliable guide for buying chips. There's a lot of things that affect performance anymore, FSB speed, FSB architecture, memory subsystem, cac

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )
        Mips per dollar
        Mips per watt

        Processor X uses 100 watts, produces 3000 MIPS and costs $500
        Processor Y uses 50 watts, produces 2800 MIPS and costs $200

        etc..
        Or use mflops if that floats your boat.
    • I would like to add 4. Similar performance per watt consumed.
  • Maybe AMD used older Intel processors in the comparison because they wanted to compare processors of equal price. I don't know if that is the truth, but it certainly could be, which would then make the benchmarks realistic. Personally I don't care how fast the latest Intel Processor is unless it's performance per dollar is comparable to the latest AMD chips. This is part of why Apple moved away from IBM, which recently showed the fastest Micro Processors currently in existence, because even if IBM were to

  • WSJ ads are from april (Score:3, Informative)

    by nniillss ( 577580 ) on Thursday July 05, 2007 @03:34PM (#19757765)
    According to this post [zdnet.com], the comparisons, in particular the WSJ ads, are from april and at least the Intel numbers were correct at this time.
    • And, of course the numbers for the AMD processor (which has not been released then or now) were just as unreal in April as they are today.
    • Actually, did I understand you to say that AMD should only have compared processors which were available in April? I guess that means you can't compare processors which still aren't available in July either and there would be NO Barcelonas in the comparison at all.

  • The ZDNet blogger claims that Intel's XEON X5365 3.0 GHz quad-core CPU shipped back in April. However I can't find it in the current Intel pricelist [intel.com], neither at any of the popular online retailers. Only a bunch of hardware websites have been able to review this processor. It looks like its not yet available to the general public. Am I missing something ?

  • Unfortunately for us, FactCheck [factcheck.org] limits its interest to politics, although... this sorta posturing might even qualify as politics. Maybe they'll register the domain FactCheck.BIZ as well and start a new branch?

Slashdot Top Deals

Beware of Programmers who carry screwdrivers. -- Leonard Brandwein

Close