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To: Dan3 who wrote (136596)	6/4/2001 3:22:43 PM
From: fingolfen	Respond to of 186894

Palamino is expected to run about 20% faster, meaning that next quarter's .18 Athlons should have peak binsplits around 1.7GHZ and overclock to 2.1GHZ with a good heatsink and fan. This is pretty close to what P4 does on .18 in terms of nominal clock speed. There have also been some indications that P4s faster than 1.7GHZ will spend a lot time clock throttled, regardless of cooling. Some indications, as in a bunch of made up FUD? I think you're stretching. I don't think that AMD will get anywhere near 1.7GHz for peak binsplit this year on the K7 core. I do not expect to see a 1.7GHz part in volume until next year from AMD. At the same clock, single channel SDRAM Athlons and Coppermines perform about 20% better than P4. DDR Athlon vs. SDRAM P4 will have Athlon outperforming identically clocked P4 CPUs by at least 40%, possibly as much as 50%. On select benchmarks the Athlon looks great, but what about SSE2 optimized? Any program with SSE/SSE2 optimization runs far better on the P4 than on the Athlon... even clock for clock. If P4 gets the reputation that it runs about half as fast as the equivalent Athlon, and that it clock throttles down to less than 1.5GHZ under load, even with oversized heatsinks and fans installed, P4 will be in big trouble as a product family. That's the lie that AMD has to try to sell. It just isn't true, and volume of RDRAM chipsets and mobos being sold vs. DDR shows that the public hasn't been fooled by AMD's FUD. The .18 Athlons shipping later in the year support SSE which makes it much harder for Intel to come up with gimmicked benchmarks (that largely indicate whether or not the chip supports SSE). And more and more buyers have learned that P4 performs poorly on virtually all benchmarks that weren't carefully tuned against a P4 to make it look better than it is. Again, that's the lie that AMD has to try and sell. The sales numbers which are in channel indicate that P4 + RDRAM is preferred over K7 + DDR... with DDR looking so poor that mobo makers are waiting to port the P4 to it to save the memory standard. You've also completely ignored the fact that Intel will be over on 0.13 micron with the Pentium 4 long before the K7 core is moved to a 0.13 micron process... alleviating power consumption problems and opening up a lot more frequency headroom for the Pentium 4. Initial projections put the Pentium 4 at 2.2GHz on 0.13 micron in Q4... and that's for openers. The question in my mind is will the K7 core break 2.0GHz before the P4 core breaks 3.0GHz?

To: Dan3 who wrote (136596)	6/4/2001 11:39:53 PM
From: dale_laroy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 186894

>Overclockers are finding that chips from the most recent Thunderbird stepping are running 1.6GHZ to 1.7GHZ with a good heatsink and fan.< Typically, a chip should be able to overclock by about 15% to be considered shippable. The overclock of the newest stepping indicates that 1.467 GHz is possible, but AMD is probably right about never shipping TBird at 1.5 GHz or higher. >Palamino is expected to run about 20% faster, meaning that next quarter's .18 Athlons should have peak binsplits around 1.7GHZ and overclock to 2.1GHZ with a good heatsink and fan. This is pretty close to what P4 does on .18 in terms of nominal clock speed. There have also been some indications that P4s faster than 1.7GHZ will spend a lot time clock throttled, regardless of cooling.< Palomino should be able to clock at least 25% higher, but not in Q3. The fastest Palomino shipped in Q3 will be 1.533 GHz, or possibly 1.6 GHz. It is possible that 1.733 GHz will ship by the end of Q4, but even this is uncertain. But 1.8 GHz before Thoroughbred ships is probable. >At the same clock, single channel SDRAM Athlons and Coppermines perform about 20% better than P4. DDR Athlon vs. SDRAM P4 will have Athlon outperforming identically clocked P4 CPUs by at least 40%, possibly as much as 50%.< Not exactly true. A 1.333 GHz Palomino in an nForce 420D motherboard might be able to average better performance than 2.0 GHz P4 (Willamette) with equivalent graphics, but this is not the same as 50% better performance. Performance does not scale linearly, so this would probably translate to at best 30% higher performance at the same clock rate, and perhaps a 10% performance advantage for the fastest Palomino versus the fastest Willamette. >That's the kind of IPC performance failure that just about killed Celeron, until the chip was redesigned to improve IPC. And it killed winchip dead. If a chip gets the reputation that it's a fraud, it becomes very difficult to sell.< Winchip didn't sell because IDT was a relatively unknown company entering an increasingly competitive market. And, Northwood should deliver improved IPC. I would guess that the peak speed grade Northwood will be a good match for the peak speed grade Palomino. >If P4 gets the reputation that it runs about half as fast as the equivalent Athlon, and that it clock throttles down to less than 1.5GHZ under load, even with oversized heatsinks and fans installed, P4 will be in big trouble as a product family.< This would only be true in the corporate market. >The .18 Athlons shipping later in the year support SSE which makes it much harder for Intel to come up with gimmicked benchmarks (that largely indicate whether or not the chip supports SSE). And more and more buyers have learned that P4 performs poorly on virtually all benchmarks that weren't carefully tuned against a P4 to make it look better than it is. The "gimmicked" benchmarks primarily unrealistically optimize in ways that benefit Athlon as well as P4, although they benefit P4 more. Other than that, Intel's favored benchmarks stress L2 cache bandwidth and SSE2, neither of which will be addressed by Palomino.