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| Tomorrow has Arrived...... Welcome to CALROG.COM! | Oct. '01 Headlines |
AMD and the Old PR System: Say it Ain't So? By C. Rogers, 10.01 (Edited 05.05) Sadly, the average PC consumer only sees one thing when looking for a new system: megahertz. In today's modern society, the uneducated individual would see a system based around a 1.4 GHz Athlon, and one of a 2.0 GHz Pentium 4, and assume Intel has the fastest system-- based on the speed rating of the chip. AMD has proven since introduction of the P4 that clock speed is largely irrelevant. The Pentium 4 was designed from day one to ramp up in clock speed, regardless of performance. The sacrifice made by this ideal has made the Intel's latest chip less efficient. The Athlon performs more instructions-per-cylcle than the Pentium 4, and because of this, an Athlon at 1.4 GHz can sometimes steal the thunder from the Pentium 4 flagship in common benchmarks. One thing that Intel does have that AMD doesn't is marketing muscle. Intel has convinced Joe Customer that clock speed is what creates speed, and with a CPU running at 2 GHz, their performance is unmatched. AMD, as much as they want to convince the public that clock speed is one measure of performance, but doing so would be a slippery slope. Instead of educating the public, AMD will go back to the age old PR system. PR stands for performance-rating, an old trick used to rate a chip at a higher performance number. For example, the Athlon at 1.4 GHz may be released as An "Athlon Model 1800". While an Athlon at 1.4 GHz could destroy a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4, this act of rebranding a chip is deceiving. Especially in instances where video-decoding comes into play: an Intel Pentium 4 can smoke an Athlon of lower clock speed at any time. Clock for clock, the Athlon is a better CPU in terms of performance. It would be better if AMD told the public this, instead of creating smoke and mirrors with this new "model" (PR) system. One other way to get back at Intel for good would be to release processors on the Athlon core that run at 2 GHz+ speeds. But in all reality, existing Athlon cores may not be able to ramp this high. |
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