Quick Take on the AthlonXP

By: biatch0

The AMD AthlonXP is the newest addition to the already large AMD Athlon processor family. From the Slot1 Argon to the SocketA Thunderbird, we now have the AthlonXP (still on good ol’ SocketA@Socket462 unfortunately). Here’s a bunch of new features the AthlonXP has that the old Tbird doesn’t:

New design to reduce power consumption over Thunderbird core by 20%
Implementation of the full Intel SSE instruction set. The SSE processor flag is set (if the motherboard BIOS supports Palomino) so that software can recognize AthlonMP as a SSE-capable processor. AMD calls its SSE-implementation '3Dnow! Professional'.
Hardware auto data pre-fetching unit
L1 Data TLB (Translation Look-Aside Buffer) was increased from 32 to 40 entries, the architecture of the data and instruction L1 and L2 TLBs was made exclusive and TLB-entries can be written speculatively.

Implementation of a thermal diode to monitor processor temperature
Anyway, some time ago AMD launched 4 new AthlonXP processors (there are now 6) running at clock speeds of 1333, 1400, 1466 and 1533. The difference now, is that AMD doesn’t want to have the clock speeds floating around everywhere. Enter the re-introduction of the PR ratings. For old school hardware fans, you’d probably remember the days of the Cyrix MII, AMD K5, etc.etc. Those ratings were rather misleading you might say, since a Cyrix MII PR200 running at 166MHz rarely ever reached the performance of an Intel 200MHz. Now, the case is slightly different.

Clock Speed (MHz): 1333
Name String: AthlonXP 1500+

Clock Speed (MHz): 1400
Name String: AthlonXP 1600+

Clock Speed (MHz): 1466
Name String: AthlonXP 1700+

Clock Speed (MHz): 1533
Name String: AthlonXP 1800+

Clock Speed (MHz): 1610
Name String: AthlonXP 1900+

Clock Speed (MHz): 1670
Name String: AthlonXP 2000+

Basically what AMD have done here is rated their own processors as compared to the Pentium4 family. In simpler words, AMD believes their AthlonXP 1500+ (running at a 1333MHz clock speed) processor to be at least as fast as an Intel Pentium4 running at 1.5GHz. Simple enough no?

Now, why on earth would AMD want to bring back PR ratings when just about everybody in the industry knows that AMD processors kick ass? The answer is in the question, because everybody in the industry knows, but outside of the industry, who knows? A few people who happen to have friends in the industry? The number of consumers who ARE in the industry are definitely not high enough to keep a company like AMD going.

First up, an average Joe walks into a computer store. He sees Intel, he sees AMD. He’s heard of Intel, but hasn’t heard of AMD (you’ll be surprised how many people are like this). He looks at the price; Intel is more expensive. He looks at the numbers, Intel has a 1.7GHz monster, AMD has a 1.4GHz piece of metal.

To this average Joe Blow, he sees an established company in Intel and an unheard of company in AMD. He sees Intel being more expensive, and thinks, more expensive means better. He sees 1.7GHz, and “knows” that 1.7GHz has GOT to be better than 1.4GHz. He ends up buying the Intel system. Now, I might be overdoing it by saying AMD is an unheard of company, but it’s for the sake of the example. Over the past few years beginning with its’ original Athlon Slot 1 processor, AMD have been quite the advertisers.

The biggest problem that AMD faces is the 1.7GHz vs 1.4GHz. Now that Intel has released it’s 2.2GHz Northwood, AMD is still at 1.663GHz (AthlonXP 2000+). The average user compares the numbers, rather just looks at the difference, and makes the assumption that 2.2GHz is better than 1.663GHz. What AMD has to do here, is to find a way to convince the general public that Performance Matter More Than MHz, which is incidentally an AMD ad off their website. This is all about AMDs struggle to change people's perception of computer performance, which - rightly or not - has been based on the good old 'megahertz' for decades.

Still, what choice has AMD got? How much do you think a marketing campaign would cost that would make all those potential customers understand that Athlon at 1.5 GHz is faster than Pentium 4 at 2 GHz? I don't even think it would be possible. When Intel's engineers designed Pentium 4 for high clock frequencies they knew they had AMD by the balls. So AMD HAS TO fall back onto the good old PR-rating idea unless it wants to lose its balls.

Most online benchmarks show quite clearly that AthlonXP 1800+ is able to beat Intel's flagship Pentium 4 2.2GHz in the majority of benchmarks. From that point of view, the AthlonXP at 1533 MHz would have rather deserved the model number 2000+ or even 2200+. However, AMD was basing its model rating on the expected performance of the next Pentium 4 core 'Northwood', which will be performing better per clock than current Pentium 4 CPUs.

Fortunately, this will only be temporary. In case you didn’t notice, Intel is already using 0.13 micron technology to create it’s Northwood cores while AMD is still stuck at 0.18 believing that they can still squeeze more out of the 0.18mm design. Once AMD moves on to 0.13 micron, and the playing grounds are level, I’d have to put my money on AMD.

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