To: hmaly who wrote (73157 ) 3/4/2002 3:01:11 AM From: wanna_bmw Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 275872 hmaly, Re: "One AMD Quantispeed = 1 NWmhz." Where do you see this? I don't even think AMD has done Athlon XP vs Northwood comparisons. The last I checked, they used Willamette and beat it soundly. I guess they wanted to illustrate the "+" feature of their ratings system, and to prove that they have been conservative. But if what you say is true, shouldn't they have compared Northwood from the beginning? Seems like whomever is in charge of QuantiSpeed marketing isn't doing a very good job. Re: "HOw do we compare figure skating performances" Don't you think that CPU performance deserves just a little better comparison than figure skating. The latter here is clearly quite arbitrary, as this year's Olympics should tell you. However, the former, in order to have any backing by the industry, ought to have something more empirical, don't you think? Re: "Quit thinking the consumers are too stupid to know anything about rating systems; because they do." I think the majority of consumers are pretty ignorant of these things, but that's not a put-down. Heck, I know almost zero about the inside of cars. I can drive them, but hell if I know how rebuild an engine, for example. Not that it matters, though, since I don't need to know that to drive my car. Similarly, people don't need to know how CPUs work to run their computer. Now, knowing how they work when buying a computer can be an asset, just as knowing how engines work could help me to buy a better car. Of course, just as long as my car looks good, and it runs, then I am happy. I suspect that it's the same for most consumers buying a computer. Re: "Mhz itself is just a rating system. Maybe it is about time to give the consumers a better rating system." Of course, and I agree. Megahertz, though, is based on the frequency of the clock inside a microprocessor. Model numbers, if what you say is correct, are based on the frequency of the clock inside a Northwood microprocessor. No big deal, but the latter certainly hasn't improved upon the former, then. wbmw