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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer who wrote (120329)	7/15/2000 7:59:37 PM
From: Scumbria	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571924

Elmer, 1) The Athlon never was 7th generation. It is very likely that Willy will have lower performance at the same clock speed than Athlon or PIII. What is your definition of "7th generation"? Performance of most benchmarks continues to be largely limited by memory latency. If you want a fast computer, use a fast disk, a fast video card, and put 256MB of SRAM on the motherboard. Scumbria

To: Elmer who wrote (120329)	7/15/2000 8:09:16 PM
From: Cirruslvr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571924

Elmer, Can you provide any non-3DNOW!/SSE enhanced benchmarks that show the PIII being at least 40% faster than the Athlon at the same clock speed?

To: Elmer who wrote (120329)	7/16/2000 12:10:53 AM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 1571924

Elmer - Re: "The TTurd is supposed to be 7th generation technology. The TTurd has 3 FPU execution units to only 2 for the CuMine. The TTurd has more on-die cache. The TTurd has a faster memory bus. The TTurd finally has the benefit of a K7 optimizing compiler and it still trails the old outdated antique one generation behind CuMine. How can this be??????" The TTURD would have been OK if the Coppermine was as SLOW as the AMDroids had predicted. However, with the Coppermine already faster than the TTURDs and AthWiper (Notice the SYNERGY between TTURD and ATHWiper !!!), and a 1.13 GHz Coppermine due for release in a few weeks - WITH ALUMINUM METALLIZATION - AMD is on the defensive. Re: "The only hope AMD fans have performance wise is to keep the tiny MHz advantage because clock for clock the K7/Athlon/TTurd is not living up to the claims and the excuses are running out of gas." I guess we're in for some more jacked-up voltages on the AthWiper ! Paul

To: Elmer who wrote (120329)	7/16/2000 9:03:42 AM
From: hmaly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571924

Elmer .....Re<<<<<Let's face the facts. 1) The Athlon never was 7th generation. 2) The 3 FPU execution units were long on hype and short on superior performance. 3) The larger cache didn't make up for a inferior design. 4) The faster memory bus doesn't provide superior performance. 5) A K7 optimizing compiler won't make up the difference either. AMD is better off comparing the K7 with unoptimized code to CuMine with unoptimized code. The only hope AMD fans have performance wise is to keep the tiny MHz advantage because clock for clock the K7/Athlon/TTurd is not living up to the claims and the excuses are running out of gas. <<<<<<>>>>> Elmer, you say that but even AMD's harshest critic agrees the Athlon is better than Coppermine. <<<<<<<Kumar: That’s due to the phrase work in process. If a company goes through multiple product transitions, they we need to be cognizant. Their execution record over the last four quarters has been anything but stellar. They received a black eye with Rambus (RMBS: news, msgs), and this is one of the many negative impacts the company has had to go through. The hope is, the execution in the second half of next year will be significantly different. The big product that’s coming out in the fall is the Willamette. This is the first new micro architecture the company’s introduced in the last five years. It’s extremely important that the execution goes as planned, otherwise, the company, essentially has a product portfolio that’s not very competitive against AMD (AMD: news, msgs). <<<<<>>>>> Did you read that last sentence carefully? Don't you think you'd be better off trying to convince Kumar that Coppermines are faster than Athy's? It's getting pretty bad when even Intel's staunchest analyst believes Coppermine isn't competitive anymore.

To: Elmer who wrote (120329)	7/17/2000 10:50:13 AM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1571924

Dear Elmer: Intel has a lot of advantages: 1) Software has been optimized for Pentium, P2, and P3 internal architectures. For example, It has been optimized to use the FADD every cycle while thinking to use FMULT every other cycle with lots of FXCHG instructuctions interspersed (this is why even Intel needs to rewrite for P4 due to FXCHG not being free anymore). When software is optimized for 1 FPU Address generation, 1 FADD, and 1 FMULT per clock cycle, Athlon wipes P3 away. 2) Athlon needs more memory bandwidth. This is an acknowledged chipset deficiency. It is strange that when like chipset cores are used (VIA 133A and KT133), P3 loses almost all benchmarks to an equivalently clocked Athlon Classic or Thunderbird. 3) QMC and Moldyn compare unoptimized code between the CPUs. Even with the advantage of point 1, P3 loses big time to Athlon. Linpack also show the Athlon being faster than P3. 4) Intel did not release the compiler used in the benchmark when they sent it in either. They waited almost six months to release it. Intel also should know that the compiler is unstable. They could not produce running code for QMC with it. 5) 1 GHz P3 still is unavailable to the DIY market and it is over two weeks into Q3. Evidently, shipping volume is not even high enough for one to show up on Pricewatch. Over 3 pages of listings on 1 GHz Athlons are there. There is even less listings of 933 MHz P3s than 1 GHz Athlons. Thunderbirds have 7 pages of listings, and Durons have 6 pages as of Saturday. 6) Intels vaunted production ramp has hit a snag. They have given different explainations every quarter. This is wearing thin. 7) It is strange that Athlon can match, even outrun, P3 on code optimized for the 6th generation hardware. Even Intel is expecting that P4 will not do well clock for clock with P3. They do say that P4 will outrun P3 at the sweet spot clock for each CPU. 8) Intels Itanium still have reports that it does not make its goal of 800 MHz. Intel will probably "vapor" launch this one too. Its time Intel came clean and admit they are behind design wise. They may need for those other divisions to make a profit. All of these divisions, which Intel conveniently does not seperate out in their Income statements, lost money for at least the last 4 quarters. Only the Capital and Computation Divisions made money in the last quarter. Pete