intel irony

[acejj26]

does anyone else find it funny that in one case, intel says megahertz are the only real comparison between processors (to trumpet their advantage of their P4 over the Athlon), whereas they also have an 800 MHz Itanium and say that it is a great solution. well, according to their first statement, a 1 GHz celeron is "faster" than an 800 MHz Itanium. hey, for that matter, a 1 GHz Via C3 is faster than an Intel P3 933.

i don't care what mhz a processor is running at....if it performs, it performs. if it's a dog, it's a dog. it's great that we have hardware sites that benchmark the shiznit out of different processors and platforms to let the informed community know what we should be buying. too bad intel still sticks by an outdated methodology of comparing chips solely by frequency when architecture is just as important, if not more important

 

[fkloster]

<< . ..too bad intel still sticks by an outdated methodology of comparing chips solely by frequency when architecture is just as important, >>





lol, hate to break it to you but, Intel has a pretty nifty chip architecture as well...highly advanced

 

[acejj26]

<< lol, hate to break it to you but, Intel has a pretty nifty chip architecture as well...highly advanced >>



maybe so, but their recent attacks on AMD's Athlon XP say nothing about how their architecture is more advanced (which i'm not so sure it is, but that's not the point).....they only say that AMD is misleading customers about how "fast" their chip is by using a performance rating and not by its actual frequency. if they would say "intel's pentium 4 offers faster clock speed than the AMD Athlon XP and an advanced microarchitecture", that would be a correct statement.....just saying "our processor is faster cuz it runs at a higher frequency" is not necessarily a valid argument since their own itanium refutes that statement

 

[SCSIRAID]

Its called 'marketing'.

 

[andreasl]

Actually the Itanium DOES perform like an 800MHz chip! At least in SPECINT2000

 

[fkloster]

<< ...maybe so, but their recent attacks on AMD's Athlon XP say nothing about how their architecture is more advanced (which i'm not so sure it is >>



I did not say 'more' advanced (than AMD architecture, though it may well be more advanced...)...I said highly advanced.

 

[SexyK]

You know, a lot of people like to give Intel crap about this, but I don't really see what all the fuss is about. First of all, AMD's PR is confusing. The correlation between PR, MHz, and performance doesn't make much sense. If AMD were smart, they would simply be saying "Hey look, our 1.6GHz chip is a helluva lot faster than Intels 1.6GHz chip! Here are some real numbers that show it..." To the average user, PR2100+(1667MHz (or whatever)) is just confusing and not informative. Secondly, I don't think Intel has ever said "our chip is better because of MHz". Obviously any smart complany trying to sell chips would try to make their chips look good. Right now Intel has a faster chip in every aspect, and AMD is mired down in a clunky naming scheme. I can't blame Intel for trying to leverage the situation.

Kramer

ps - The P4 arcitechture is arguably the most advanced desktop arcitechture out there right now. The athlon core is pretty 1998!

 

[Rand]

I won't bother to get into a discussion of the relative merits of either architecture as their considerably different and have vastly different ways of obtaining high performance.
I'd agree that AMD's Model rating scheme isnt ideal, but it's also pretty much a necessity for them.
The average consumer doesnt know or care to know anything beyond sheer MHz. To the average person, MHz=performance and there is nothing beyond that.
Simply throwing up a few benchmarks and saying otherwise isnt going to convince the world to switch from a MHz is all perception. MHz sells, and AMD knows that quite well.
One could throw up a Willamette 1.7GHz paired with SDR SDRAM and to the vast majority of people it would be faster then an AthlonXP at 1.67GHz (2000+) paired with DDR SDRAM.
All the average person would care to see would be 1.7GHz vs. 1.67GHz, they don't care to know anything beyond that. A higher number sounds better, and it sells.
The Thunderbird was getting buried is sales in many loacations purely because of a MHz differential, marketing campaigns to inform customers that MHz isnt everything have been played through many times... by Cyrix, VIA, Transmeta, IDT, AMD, even INTEL has played it at one point in time.
In the long run however, the fact has always remained solid that the average consumer see's MHz and equates that to speed.

Regarding Intel saying MHz is the best indicator of relative performance, well it wasnt so long ago that AMD was saying the exact same thing when the
T-Bird easily scaling past 1GHz, and Intel was desperately trying to get 933-1GHz PIII in volume.

Regarding the Itanium, Intel need not worry about any MHz perception in the Itanium/Mckinley's targeted market. Those that might be considering such a purchase are well aware of the relative architectural merits of the Itanium relative to Sparc, Alpha, PowerPC, etc.
Nothing is 'average' about the corporations that might be interested in such servers/clusters.



<< well, according to their first statement, a 1 GHz celeron is "faster" than an 800 MHz Itanium. >>



Well it is faster
Hell, I've got a Classic P120 here tyhat beat out an 800MHz Itanium in most X86 code. It's no secret that the Itanium is more equatable to a 486 DX2 66MHz-P75 in terms of X86 performance. But then the Itanium needs nothing more then bare X86 compatibility. No one running an IA64 processor is running much in the way of X86 code.

 

[spanner]

AMD's PR rating is not confuzing. An XP1800 performs the same as a tbird at 1800 mhz, it is as simple as that. The relationship between an XP PR rating and its clock frequency is also a fixed and linear relationship (PRrating=Constant +(clock speed *constant) funny how Intels own propaganda shows this)and does not vary from one proc to another. Anyone who cannot comprehend the PR rating scheme should not be tinckering with computers. At the end of the day it will be intel who suffer from not using a PR rating. Intel is just desparate as they have nothing to compete with the hammer when it arrives.

 

[MasterHoss]

it's called shut the hell up about this sh!t.

How many times must people post and bitch about "I hate Intel because..." or "I hate AMD because...." it's whatever. Buy what you like, it's not ironic... it's marketing. I think the boys over at Intel know a little bit more than you do about what they're doing, don't you?

 

[ST4RCUTTER]

it's called shut the hell up about this sh!t.


Amen brother. :disgust: