I need some help with my research paper.... about why AMD's CPUs are better than Intels......

[ViperMagic]

I wrote this, and the teacher said it has a "tone unsuitable for a research paper", and it 'sounds like an advertisment for AMD", so any suggestions would be welcome, as wella s any technical details i messed up, and the second paragraph is messed up, and she thinks i should rewrite it, but I dont know what I should do...... here it is






Why AMD?s Athlon XP Processors are superior to Intel?s Pentium 4
If you were to go to a local computer shop and look at the line of Intel based systems available, you would see Pentium 4 processors clocking at 2,000,00,000 cycles per second (2.0 GigaHertz, or GHz) or more, while the fastest Athlon XP (Xtra Performance) clocks at 1.6Ghz (The 1.6GHz Athlon XP was not widely tested and thus will not be included in this report). That is a difference of 400MHz (MegaHerzt, 1000MHZ is 1GHz), still a respectable speed. Why would anyone want to buy an Athlon bases system then? An examination of memory, the megahertz myth, and benchmarks show that AMD?s Athlon XP line of Central Processing Units thoroughly and utterly destroy Intel?s flagship line of Pentium 4?s in terms of power and value.
*second paragraph elimaneted due to the fact that i hate it and as pointed out by notfred it was rather wrong. If soemne has an idea for a new one, please tell me*
Anand Lal Shimpi, of Anandtech (www.anandtech.com) recently did a test of the new Athlon XP against the Pentium 4. In the media encoding test, a test in which Intel claims the P4 excels, The Athlon XP 1600+ model, clocked at 1.4GHz, rendered 45.53 frames every second. The Pentium 4 2.0GHz did worse, with only 45 frames rendered per second. AMD?s flagship 1800+, with a clock speed of only about 75% of that of the Pentium?s rendered close to 50. In Max Payne, a 3d action game that relies heavily on CPU power, the entire Athlon line defeats the Pentium?s in frames per second by margins ranging from 26.01 FPS to 5.1 FPS. In this test an Athlon 1.33 GHz defeated the Pentium 4 2.0, Intel?s finest, and almost twice as fast, by 5.1 FPS. In the SPECview 3d Rendering & Animation Performance test, the Athlon XP?s scored 22.6 to 23.63, while the best a Pentium managed was 21.26. Again, the Athlon XP 1500+ 1.33GHz soundly trumped Intel?s Pentium 4 2.0GHz. And this says nothing of AMD?s 2000+ 1.67 GHz CPU due out inside of a week.
As seen on Tom?s Hardware (www.tomshardware.com) the Intel processors are also much less cost-effictive, with the 2.0GHz costing almost $25 per Cinebench point, while the Athlon XP 1800+ costs under $13. With the obvious defeat of the Pentium 4 by the Athlon XP, one would be expected to find the Pentium priced lower than the Athlon. Unfortunately for Intel, this is not true. The price of a Pentium 4 2.0 GHz processor is close to $500, while an Athlon XP 1800+ can be found for under $200. Intel also is in the habit of changing the size and style of the socket (form factor) that their CPUs fit into. The Pentium 4 has two different variants itself, the Celeron, Intel?s value line, has its own and the Pentium III again has two. AMD?s different lines, XP, its newest and its flagship line, the Duron, AMD?s value line, and the Thunderbird, the predecessor to the XP, all use but two form factors, allowing the user to switch between processors much easier and less expensively. To upgrade an Intel chip the end-user would need to buy an entirely new motherboard, or take a rather small jump inside of their current form factor. Any AMD motherboard is fully capable of taking chips from 750MHz all the way up to the newest 1.6GHz.
As you can clearly see due to memory issues, bad choices on the part of Intel in regard to form factors, and demonstrated through benchmarks, Intel?s Pentium 4 line of processors is far inferior to AMD?s Athlon XP. Intel is now preparing for the launch of the newly re-designed Pentium 4 ?Northwood?, which has already been shown in some preliminary testing to be inferior to AMD?s 2000+, which is also impending launch.

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Thanks alot

 

[Soybomb]

<< thoroughly and utterly destroy Intel?s flagship line of Pentium 4?s in t >>


You gotta admit that sounds a bit over the top. Tone it down a few notches. Show a few points where intel does accell and actually have a few positive design points and it will sound better.

 

[Spikesoldier]

AMD Athlon XP has 256KB of Level 2 Cache, and 128KB of L1 cache, for a 384KB total of on die cache.

 

[Jittles]

To debunk the MHz myth better, mention IPC of both processors, that will add some more technical info.

 

[ViperMagic]

<<

<< thoroughly and utterly destroy Intel?s flagship line of Pentium 4?s in t >>


You gotta admit that sounds a bit over the top. Tone it down a few notches. Show a few points where intel does accell and actually have a few positive design points and it will sound better. >>



Yeah, I got yelled at for that too. And a few people got yelled at for arguring aainst themselves, so I cant really show where Intel excels

 

[N8Magic]

Did you read that article I linked when you were doing your research?

 

[burnedout]

When you get CPU?s doing billions of operations per second, they are going to process lots of code or data.

OK, the words "get", "got" and "gotten" are two of the most overused words in American English. Because get means "have" (in this case), must, obtain, receive, etc.

Also look at this from a less personalized approach. Instead of "When you get CPU's" try something like "With Central Processing Units performing billions of calculations per second, substantial amounts of data is processed relative to...."

 

[voodooguy]

Just put in price/performance ratio and mention overclockability.

You get a whole lotta gigahertz for the money when you buy Athlon.

That is basically the pro-Athlon argument.

The con-Athlon argument is that it is not supported as well with mobo manufacturers, it heats a lot, and it does not fail gracefully should the heatsink or the fan malfunction/fall out/etc.

When P4's lose cooling, they slow down or shut themselves down. When Athlons lose cooling, they burn themselves to a crisp.

So for poor mofos like you and me, who need the best price/performance ratio, Athlon is better. For business buyers with lots of money, no need of high horsepower, and need for guaranteed uptime / graceful degradation, P4 is better.

 

[notfred]

This sounds a lot more like a persuasive essay than a reseach paper. If it was a research paper, you'd set out to see whether intel or AMD made better processors, not set out to convince people that AMD's processors are better.

 

[BigToque]

This doesn't prove one is better than the other, all it shows is that at similar clock speeds, the Athlon is faster. The P4 is designed to be run at incredible clock speeds to gain performance. AFAIK, the P4 is supposed to reach almost 10 GHz by the end of its lifespan.

The Athlon basically uses brute force to get the most performance per clock. The P4 does less work per clock, but can run at a much faster frequency therefore surpassing what it lost by doing less work per clock.

 

[Random Variable]

It would be much easier to write about why the IBM Power4 is better than the Intel Pentium 4, don't you think?

 

[burnedout]

notfred is correct.

Write this from a third person perspective.

Start with a comparison of the two processors. Then contrast the differences.

Finally, state your argument with sufficient data to backup your central idea as to why you believe AMD has the upper hand when it comes to performance.

Try not to be so personal. Instead of "you", use "one" or "endusers".

Another example: " As you can clearly see due to memory issues". Instead of this, try something like "As indicated by the differences in cache-memory capacity, fundamental variations......."

You are doing good. Just clean it up a little. Remember, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS.

 

[ViperMagic]

N8Magic: Was it that really long-ass one, if so yes, I used it, if it was the Ars one, no, I read it but didnt use it becasue it went right over my head

Burnedout: Ok, fixing 'got' now

notfred: She told us to pick one side of an argument and prove that its right, so thats what I did

 

[ViperMagic]

Also, if anyone has any ideas to replace my second paragraph, thatd be helpful

 

[notfred]

That essay has way too many numbers. The whole essay is "the pentuin 4 scored 37.545fps in benchmark X, and the Athlon scored 41.34534fps in the same benchmark, the Athlon cost $13 per point, the p$ cost $25 per point, the athlon has 128k cache, the p4 has 8k, etc" It's absolutely horrible to read. I mean, it's only 5 paragraphs long, and I couldn't read through the whole thing without skimming it, it's just a big long string of nunbers.

Also - if you're going to say the P3 uses two different formats, you should also say that the Athlon came in 2 different formats. Remember Slot A?

Also - you write half the essay aimed at a computer geek, and half aimed at someone with no experience at all. Example: "2,000,000 cycles per second (2.0 GigaHertz, or GHz)" you find it important to define what "Ghz" is, but you never evcen mentino what Mhz is. You jsut start using it in the next sentance. Also, the non-tech user has absolutely no idea what 2 billion cycles per secong actually means.

Oh, and 2,000,000 cycles per second = 2Mhz, not 2Ghz.

Edit: and if you have to explain what CPU stands for, you should also explain what the "Mhz Myth" is.

Edit #2: Data does NOT go from RAM > L2 > L1 > Registers. It goes directly from memory to a register. It is then also put on the cache, so that it can be used more quickly later.

 

[t3chvest]

<<Yeah, I got yelled at for that too. And a few people got yelled at for arguring aainst themselves, so I cant really show where Intel excels >>

When Soybomb said show some of Intel's strengths, he didn't mean contradict yourself. Something along the lines would be "Pentiums show to have more mhz than the new XP line of processors. They also have more FSB. However AMD has utilized ::technical jargon:: to make their processors equivalent, and actually even better than their equivalent Intel counterparts. Etc. etc."

You give their strongpoints, and then say why that doesn't make them better than athlons.

 

[ultimatebob]

Also, don't forget your target audience... Unless you are handing this paper to a computer science or electrical engineering teacher, they won't be able to understand your use of technical terms.

 

[ViperMagic]

techvest: yeah, I think I can do that

Bob: her words were "If you or your friends cant understand it, I dont want it. If they can, its fine"... she failed to consider that my friends are just as techie as me, and i brought that to her attention, and she said thats what she said, and shell live with her mistake

 

[notfred]

Gonna fix the factual errors, at least?

 

[ViperMagic]

Notfred, yeah I'm going to fix the facutal errors, becasue I asked for any of those to be pointed out. And I forgot about the Slot Athlon, and if you have any idea on how to elimante the numbers while maintinag the 5 paragraph min/max limit, I'm open to ideas.

 

[erikiksaz]

Let's see what i learned in English this year, a Research paper is explic-something. But anyways, i thought you were supposed to keep your opinion light on these types of papers. If you hit hard with your opinion, it'll turn to persuasion. And it'll be a bad persuasion at that, since you're not including both sides of the arguement. (too lazy to read it all, hehe)

 

[TranceNation]

don't foget the part about amd chips causing extreme heat and could potentially start a fire should the cooling fan stop or break.
something like
'AMD Athlon chips may seem like a good buy, but the customer must factor in life and health insurance while making the purchase, due to the potential risks of AMD's Athlon chips causing a file and burning down the customer's house.'

 

[LongCoolMother]

good job on picking a good subject. let us all take a look when you're done!