<font color=red>Subject: Sharps Group Whitepaper Date: 3/28/02 6:28 PM
Sharps Group
Intel's GHz Equivalency: Inexperienced Buyers Accept Bad Science
An Executive White Paper
March 28, 2002
Executive Summary
Man, computers are hard to figure out. They've got like Gigahertz, Megahertz, Gigabyte, and Megabyte. More like Mega Hurts to figure out what all this here jive means! People just want to find a single metric for figuring out what makes one computer better than another. I'll admit, I don't know crap about making analogies, and I know even less about cars. Therefore, I'll make a bunch of analogies about cars and computers!
Now, back in the good old days, AMD made crappy products (or at least ones with major problems), and Intel made 'teh good stuff'. It was easy, just buy Intel. Then AMD made the Athlon, which was good, to compete with the Pentium III, which was also good. They had so much in common that it actually made sense to compare Megahertz (MHz) to Megahertz. But then, Intel did some weird a$$ thing with the Pentium 4, and suddenly MHz became Gigahertz (GHz), and that's where everything went down slopes with some slick properties.
So, wassup with Intel's Pentium 4 (P4) GHz? Well, for one thing, the chip doesn't really run at any single clock speed. You've got these new fangled Arithmetic Logic Units (ALU) running at twice the clock speed of the rest of the chip. But, that's really just the net effect, see, 'cause these puppies really just work slightly outta sync so that instructions finish a half clock after each other, making it look like it's running at 2x the clock speed. Say what? Exactly. What the frig does Intel's GHz really mean if different parts of the chip are handling things at different 'speeds'?
Alright, and like the Alaskan pipeline, data travels through 'em to get processed. However, AMD's only going from like Texas to like, uh Arkansas. Intel decided with the Pentium 4 to go from like Alaska, to uh Florida. That's a longer trip y'all, and that can cause some problems. Cause if a Central Processing Unit (CPU) is like an engine, it needs oil to run properly. Well, AMD's Athlon is getting oil a lot quicker to keep things running smoothly. Intel's Pentium 4, while advertising really high clock speeds stills gotta wait fer that there oil, and sometimes it'll stall out.
What All Be That Clock Cycle Yo?
I was gonna ask Intel about that, but I said nah forget it.
Personal Computers (PC's) for MORONS
Some people might also consider this a usage model… We'll, SSE 2 just came out the other day, and that means that everyone instantly upgraded their software to take advantage of it. It is absolutely clear and undisputable, according to sources, that everyone uses SSE 2 all day long in every application they use. SSE 2 makes the Internet go faster. Psyche!
See, now the SSE 2 unit in the P4 doesn't exist in any other chip, and very little software makes use of it. It vectorizes information and uses Blasto technology and has something to do with the Taco unit. But, because SSE 2 isn't really used a lot, it shouldn't really be put in synthetic benchmarks that model real world usage. And because it handles data a lot differently than the rest of the chip, you get a distorted view of GHz! Obviously. Whatever.
Flaws. Flaws? Flaws! Jaws…
I didn't expect to find anything wrong with good old Gigahertz, but it seems as if Intel's entire Pentium 4 processor is just one big flaw. I hate trivia, but here it is: Gigahertz isn't fair at all. It gives Intel a big fat advantage and something about goats blowing in the wind excessively. Bah!
Incontinent Results
Uh, crap, this report ain't over yet? So, yeah. Intel's Pentium 4 processor is known to throttle sometimes. Affectionately called 'protecting the CPU from going up in a flaming nuclear disaster', this distorts the consistency of GHz. Especially if it throttles all the friggin time in notebooks…
Return of the Flawed Avenger
* Using GHz to determine performance relies upon consistent architectures with sane designs
* It implies that the computer is turned on and doing something
* Cross-dressing platform addictions
* Go to sleep Sharps, you're tired now
boards.fool.com
M. :o)
and
Author: elryn Number: of 96341
Subject: Intel's PR ratings (Humor) Date: 3/28/02 10:23 PM
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I pulled this off of Hardocp.com today. thought some of you might get a chuckle out of it.
"O.K. this isn't real news...this is just flat out real comedy. My bro Nathan said that after reading our commentary on the "AMD PR Rating" deal, he did some undercover work at Intel and found their "Pentium4 PR Rating", brace yourselves, this is what he found:
Following AMD's marketing change in it's processor labeling, Intel decided to mark P4's with a new PR rating. Just like AMD compares it's Athlon XP processor with the old Athlon processor line, Intel decided to compare the performance of the Pentium 4 with Pentium III chips. Changes are follows:
P4 1500Mhz = "PR 1100-"
P4 1600Mhz = "PR 1166-"
P4 1700Mhz = "PR 1233-"
P4 1800Mhz = "PR 1300-"
P4 1900Mhz = "PR 1466-"
P4 2000Mhz = "PR 1533-"
P4 2200Mhz = "PR 1700-"
The new system should help consumers understand IPC and deep pipelines according to Intel's press release." |
