AMD's Barton is here (Athlon XP with 512KB cache, 3000+ rating)

Asher · February 10, 2003, 01:40

http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=50000364

I expected a little more from it...

No real surprises here, the 3000+ has a L2 cache latency of 15 to 21 cycles, whereas the 3.06GHz P4 has a latency of 8 to 17 cycles, and runs at a significantly higher MHz too.

Bandwidth for L2 cache is a similar story. The Athlon XP 3000+ has 5.5GB/s bandwidth to its L2 cache in the real world, Pentium 4 3.06GHz has 19GB/s to the L2 cache. To be fair, the Athlon XP's L1 cache is higher performance (19GB/s on the Athlon to 15GB/s on the P4)

RAM is similar: Pentium 4 has 2.9GB/s to the RAM, Athlon has 2.2GB/s.

I was slightly surprised by how much the Athlon got hammered in the SpecViewPerf benchmarks, though.

Their conclusion:

Quote:

We have tested almost 20 different applications, but still I am not sure whether the 2.17 GHz Barton should carry the 3000+ rating. AMD marketing tells us that "The AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ is the world's highest performing desktop PC processor". They prove this by showing that the Athlon is between 8 and 17% faster than the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 in benchmark suites such as SYSmark 2001 Office Productivity, Business Winstone 2001 and SYSmark 2001 Internet Content Creation. But Sysmark 2001 contains old software such as Adobe Photoshop 5.5, Macromedia Dreamweaver 3.0, Netscape Navigator 4.73, and Macromedia Flash 5. I highly doubt that many Photoshop users are still using Photoshop 5.5 or that people are browsing the web with Netscape Navigator 4.73.

What this shows is that the Athlon outperforms the Pentium 4 with ease in unoptimized, slight older applications. Even our own quick testrun with a more recent benchmark suite such as Content Creation 2002 shows that the Athlon XP 3000+ outperforms the 3.06 Pentium 4 by 10% or more. So if you are using the applications in Content Creation 2002, and you won't upgrade your older software very soon, the Athlon XP 3000+ surely is the best CPU out there. Advertisement:

However, the number of applications that are optimized for the Pentium 4 is already numerous, and growing every day. You could focus on benchmarks with relatively small datasets (see our Lightwave tests) or benchmarks that rely on gigantic matrices (for example the Plasma benchmark) and say that the 3.06 GHz Pentium 4 is by far superior.

Neither two benchmark scenarios described are very realistic to most people out there. In other words, we need to test even more game engines and applications before we can pass our judgement on Barton. With the data we have today, I am inclined to tell you that the Athlon XP 3000+ should have been a 2.25 GHz Athlon XP with 512 KB cache. 3DSMax 4.26, Lightwave 7.5, Photoshop 7.0 all point out the Pentium 4 as winner, and only AutoCAD 2002 clearly favors the Athlon XP 3000+. These are all extremely popular applications which matter to many people.

Let us look at the games. Comanche 4, Battlefield 1942, and Ghost Recon heavily favor the Pentium 4. Unreal Tournament 2003 and Grand Prix run a (very) little bit faster on the Pentium 4, while Medieval: Total War runs a bit faster on the Athlon and Age of Mythology runs much better on the Athlon. All in all, it seems like the Pentium 4 has a small advantage. That is why I feel a that giving the 3000+ rating to a 2250 MHz Athlon "Barton" would have been more accurate. We could not test with the "Barton" Athlon XP 2800+, but it is likely the Barton 2800+ will live up to its claim, and probably even deserve the "+" behind its name by outperforming the 2.8 GHz Pentium 4. It is only logical that the extra 83 MHz that the Barton 3000+ has, is not enough to compete with a Pentium 4 which is clocked higher AND has Hyperthreading enabled.

The argument that at least AMD is much cheaper is well out the window as well.

PriceWatch lists the cheapest Athlon XP 3000+ at $623, the cheapest Pentium 4 3.06GHz is $627...

Seeing as how the desktop Hammer chips have been delayed now (again) towards the end of 2003, things don't look too cheery for AMD again this year...

Athlon 64 will launch around the same time as Prescott for Intel now. Prescott is to include SSE3 (Athlon 64 will adopt SSE2), HyperThreading 2, 1MB of L2 cache. Of particular importance is the strong rumours that Prescott's SSE3 will include FMA commands, which would be incredibly cool.

A 3.2GHz Pentium 4 with an 800MHz system bus is slated for launch in April of this year.

Oerdin · February 10, 2003, 01:43

We'll see how long the price stays higher then Intel. My guess is AMD will be forced to lower their prices below that of Intel simply because they have a weaker brand even though their products are often better. Also how bad is the heat problem? Traditionally AMD has a hard time dealing with heat.

chequita guevara · February 10, 2003, 01:49

The newer motherboards should have heat sensors which shut the system down before heat death occurs. Still, given that Intel's already got hyperthreading, I'd probably go Intel this year at least . . . were I building a new machine, which I'm not.

Asher · February 10, 2003, 01:51

Both Intel and AMD have hot-as-hell processors out now for the high end.

It's the result of performance competition between the two, they push the limits perhaps a bit too much.

Nominal voltage P4 3.06GHz: 1.55V
Nominal voltage Athlon XP 3000+: 1.65V

Typical Thermal Power P4 3.06GHz: 81 W
Typical Thermal Power Athlon XP 3000+: 74.3 W

Oerdin · February 10, 2003, 01:51

I ended up going Intel when I bought a new system last December. Hyper threading was one of the big reasons (the other is I wanted a Dell and Dell only uses Intel chips).

Asher · February 10, 2003, 01:52

Also, Banias (called Pentium-M formally) is going to be launched March 12th. It's an all-new processor design (first ever for a mobile chip) that shuts down parts of the chip and motherboard when not in use to save battery life.

Apparently some notebooks with Banias chips will last about 6 hours on one battery...

Performance is pretty impressive as well: http://www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030205/index.html

chequita guevara · February 10, 2003, 01:58

Hey, Asher, I'm wondering, since I've got 512 meg of RAM in my computer, do I really need a page file in WinXP or Win98? I'd really like to reclaim that space on my harddrive.

Asher · February 10, 2003, 02:00

Quote:

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Hey, Asher, I'm wondering, since I've got 512 meg of RAM in my computer, do I really need a page file in WinXP or Win98? I'd really like to reclaim that space on my harddrive.

People say 512MB and higher of RAM can eliminate the pagefile, but when I tried it on my 512MB system it crashed on bootup.

You can try and see what happens. If it doesn't work, boot into safemode and turn the pagefile back on.

Oerdin · February 10, 2003, 02:49

Hard drive space is so cheap now why not just kkep the page file?

Asher · February 10, 2003, 02:51

There's usually a sizable performance increase when the pagefile is eliminated. That's why most people do it, not 'cause of the HD space.

Urban Ranger · February 10, 2003, 03:08

Most people still use PhotoShop 5.5 or even earlier professionally. Shocking, eh?

Asher · February 10, 2003, 03:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Most people still use PhotoShop 5.5 or even earlier professionally. Shocking, eh?

Nu-uh, most professionals use Microsoft Paint.

If most professionals use Photoshop 5.5, most professionals use older computers as well, which would mean its relevance in performance for modern processors is moot.

Why would you spend $650 on a highend CPU and use old, unoptimized Photoshop 5.5 with less features? Make-a no sense-a.

Urban Ranger · February 10, 2003, 03:10

Prescott? That's just vapour for now.

Asher · February 10, 2003, 03:13

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Prescott? That's just vapour for now.

Yeah, because being shown physical demonstrations to the press REALLY tells us it's coming out soon.

How long ago did we see a Hammer demo, Urban? Really now...

Prescott is a modified version of Northwood on a 0.09 process. And Intel's 0.09 process's libraries have been complete for about a year now, they're almost done the 0.065 libs.

Prescott is just as much vapour as Athlon 64 is. The difference is, AMD has a shrinking R&D budget to cut costs and Intel's is unchanged.

notyoueither · February 10, 2003, 03:14

The page file will manage itself and is best left to do that.

Give XP a Gig of RAM, and you are unlikely to need to swap much in normal use. Hense the page file size will be small. Turn off the page file and you potentially cripple your computer when needs for memory exceed the amount of RAM you have.

Moral. Leave virtual memory settings on automatic and give your computer scads of RAM.

Oerdin · February 10, 2003, 03:19

For some dumb reason I actually increased the size of the page file on my computer. Maybe I should just go back to the default setting?

Asher · February 10, 2003, 03:20

Quote:

Originally posted by notyoueither
The page file will manage itself and is best left to do that.

Actually it's best to give it a fixed value. Set the minimum and maximum pagefile size to be the same, this prevents the horrible thrashing and slowdown when Windows needs to resize the pagefile.

Urban Ranger · February 10, 2003, 03:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
Nu-uh, most professionals use Microsoft Paint.

If most professionals use Photoshop 5.5, most professionals use older computers as well, which would mean its relevance in performance for modern processors is moot.

Why would you spend $650 on a highend CPU and use old, unoptimized Photoshop 5.5 with less features? Make-a no sense-a.

You're talking out of your arse, Glonkie. How many graphics professional do you know?

Asher · February 10, 2003, 03:24

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
You're talking out of your arse, Glonkie. How many graphics professional do you know?

3D graphics? About a dozen.
2D graphics? Not many.

I don't really care how many you know, I want to know how you're going to back up your claim that most people will be buying $650 CPUs in $4000 systems and installing Photoshop 5.5 on them when Photoshop 7 is out and much faster and improves productivity and has some other new features...

notyoueither · February 10, 2003, 03:26

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher

Actually it's best to give it a fixed value. Set the minimum and maximum pagefile size to be the same, this prevents the horrible thrashing and slowdown when Windows needs to resize the pagefile.

Why? Then you're stuck with it taking up space that you may never need.

Neither computer that I use here at home for personal use have ever 'thrashed'. They have more than enough RAM for what they do.

My view has been that it is usually better to let the software work the way the engineers and programers at MS intended it to. Guess what? My computers need very little (none) OS maintenance.

Urban Ranger · February 10, 2003, 03:29

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
Yeah, because being shown physical demonstrations to the press REALLY tells us it's coming out soon.

How long ago did we see a Hammer demo, Urban? Really now...

And how long ago did we we a Prescott demo?

Your logic just is plainly amusing.

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
Prescott is a modified version of Northwood on a 0.09 process. And Intel's 0.09 process's libraries have been complete for about a year now, they're almost done the 0.065 libs.

Libraries?

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
Prescott is just as much vapour as Athlon 64 is.

Asher · February 10, 2003, 03:29

Quote:

Originally posted by notyoueither
Why? Then you're stuck with it taking up space that you may never need.

You shouldn't need to set the pagefile to more than 500MB, and if it's 500MB that's a very tiny portion of modern harddrives...

Quote:

Neither computer that I use here at home for personal use have ever 'thrashed'. They have more than enough RAM for what they do.

My view has been that it is usually better to let the software work the way the engineers and programers at MS intended it to. Guess what? My computers need very little (none) OS maintenance.

MS intended Windows to work as a balance to most people. A resizable table is a balance between storage space and performance, having no table and having a fixed table size don't appeal to most users who probably don't have too much HD space to spare or RAM installed, but to people who do it's not much and there is performance improvements.

If you have a lot of RAM, it won't make that much difference. If you really use the pagefile a lot, it helps quite a bit in my experience. You'll also find most "tweak" sites recommend doing it as well.

Asher · February 10, 2003, 03:32

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
And how long ago did we we a Prescott demo?

Your logic just is plainly amusing.

Huh? That wasn't my logic at all. My logic is that showing a demonstration to the press means nothing. AMD demoed the Hammer running at an amazing 800MHz. The only reason they demoed it is because they NEEDED to show they had something working, their stock and their image took a severe beating last year.

Intel is in a entirely different boat. Do you remember when they demoed the Pentium 4 before they launched it?

Quote:

Libraries?

You need process libraries from the fab plants ready before you can design the chips. Intel has successfully produced 90nm products, and has began sampling 65nm products. 90nm will be ready for mass production in the latter half of this year, the same time as Prescott coincidentally.

Seeing as Prescott is just an evolutionary chip, I don't think your implications that it hasn't been demoed warrant it being labeled as "vapourware" are valid.

Quote:

By your logic the Pentium 4 was vapourware a month before it launches. You don't seem to understand the corporate differences between AMD and Intel -- AMD *needs* to demo their products to prove they have them, Intel doesn't need to -- people expect them to have them. It's AMD that has a very spotty history and jumps for joy every time a chip works.

And since the Athlon 64 isn't vapourware -- mind telling me what the confirmed launch speeds and system bus speeds will be? How about what kind of memory it'll interface with? Oh, that's right -- those aren't confirmed yet. There's just strong rumours...like Prescott.

Urban Ranger · February 10, 2003, 03:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
Huh? That wasn't my logic at all. My logic is that showing a demonstration to the press means nothing. AMD demoed the Hammer running at an amazing 800MHz. The only reason they demoed it is because they NEEDED to show they had something working, their stock and their image took a severe beating last year.

On the flip side, not showing it means you don't have it.

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
Intel is in a entirely different boat. Do you remember when they demoed the Pentium 4 before they launched it?

It appears that the situation was slightly different then. AMD didn't poise to ursurp the high end consumer market.

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
You need process libraries from the fab plants ready before you can design the chips. Intel has successfully produced 90nm products, and has began sampling 65nm products. 90nm will be ready for mass production in the latter half of this year, the same time as Prescott coincidentally.

The problem with the Clawhammer isn't the 90nm process, it is MOI. Since now they are making Bartons which are also MOI, I reckon AMD has licked the problem.

Quote:

Originally posted by Asher
Seeing as Prescott is just an evolutionary chip, I don't think your implications that it hasn't been demoed warrant it being labeled as "vapourware" are valid.

Well, we won't have long to wait to find out.

Asher · February 10, 2003, 03:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
On the flip side, not showing it means you don't have it.

I'm trying to decipher if this was a poor attempt at humour or if you've lost your mind. Can you clarify please.

Quote:

It appears that the situation was slightly different then. AMD didn't poise to ursurp the high end consumer market.

Uhh....what? At the time the Athlon was thoroughly spanking the Pentium III and the Pentium III was at its ceiling while the Athlon kept increasing. That was actually the HEIGHT of AMD's gain of marketshare taken from Intel...Intel still didn't demo the Pentium 4.

Quote:

The problem with the Clawhammer isn't the 90nm process, it is MOI. Since now they are making Bartons which are also MOI, I reckon AMD has licked the problem.

Seeing as Clawhammers are on the 130nm process, I'd completely agree with you that the 90nm process isn't the Clawhammer's problem.

BTW, what on earth is MOI? Are you thinking of SOI?

There obviously is more to the problem than getting SOI to work, they delayed the thing until the end of the year. It was originally due out in the second half of 2002...then delayed to first half of 2003...now the second half of 2003. You really think this is all due to SOI?

Rasbelin · February 10, 2003, 04:31

As I already said on AoE2.com in the latest "Insights into computing" article, I'm not waiting to see any modestly prices AMD Athlon 64 systems for a while, but I do think the AMD Athlon XP (Barton) sounds like something worth to keep an eye on. Assumably my new desktop system will be Barton powered, unless I don't crack and wait until next year for an Athlon 64 PC.

Oerdin · February 10, 2003, 04:37

Rasberry got a new avatar.

He's a beer drinking lizard?

Rasbelin · February 10, 2003, 04:48

It's Mozilla, and not just any common lizard.

pg · February 10, 2003, 04:59

i was a expecting a bit more. are they going to ramp it up to (much) higher speeds? maybe it'll have a bigger percentage preformance gain then. it was quite a bit faster in a few tests though - maybe it just comes down to optimization.

MarkG · February 10, 2003, 05:23

i've still to have an intel cpu on my computer....