Re: Because they were conducted with overclocked FSBs and, as the few datasets I pulled from AnandTech show, 3 datapoints are not a lot to guess a trend from, considering the error margins on the benchmarks (or benchmarkers) in question.
Hmmmm. You cheerfully posted some other results with 3 or fewer datapoints. (but I do think that it was only because you felt it added a few otherwise missing, but key, datapoints.
The thing is, you compared a linear scale P4, with a non-linear scale XP's 1.5X-500. Then you induced a more linear curve from P4's data and a less-linear curve from XP's data. This is not a revelation.
The fact that you used this analysis to refute an assertion that Athlon's slower, but much more sophisticated cache would let it provide higher performance on a given memory technology wasn't particularly relevant either way.
Then you responded that system performance was all that mattered so, since Intel offered dual channel chipsets and AMD didn't, AMD's better performance on a given memory technology didn't matter.
I see your point there, but would respond that memory technology has always changed much more slowly than CPU speed, and that it's usually much easier to just adopt a current, known, technology than create a new one.
I see Athlon's ability to extract more performance from a given memory technology as significant, because I think Intel may be stuck between a rock and a hard place due to their basic CPU architecture. Their very long pipeline fills up with bubbles unles they use a very fast cache, but very fast caches must be kept simple and fairly small. AMD's shorter pipeline can handle bubbles with less performance loss, so AMD's architecture can afford a more sophisticated, if somewhat slower, cache design.
A more sophisticated cache lets AMD extract more performance from a given memory technology, which could mean that P4's core architecture cannot ever compete with Athlon's (and Hammer is supposed to follow the basic design architecture of Athlon). If chip speeds continue to increase faster than main memory speeds (which has been just about as consistent as Moore's law), memory perfomrance will become the major performance bottleneck, and Athlon/Hammer's architecture should substantially outperform Intel's.
That was the point I was making when you induced AMD's model numbering system from posted benchmarks.
Regards,
Dan |
