Front page info XP3000+

[NRG = mc²]

Got this in the mail from AMD today, I've never used the news feature on the front page so I'm not quite sure how to use it - if someone wants to add it then go ahead:

SUNNYVALE, CALIF.-FEBRUARY 10, 2003-AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced the AMD Athlon(tm) XP processor 3000+ - the world's highest performing desktop PC processor. Featuring increased cache memory for greater performance, the AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ outperforms competing desktop PC processors by up to 17 percent on a variety of industry standard software benchmarks.

Systems based on the AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ are immediately available from NEC-CI in Europe and soon from other computer manufacturers around the globe.

"AMD leads the desktop PC processor industry by delivering unsurpassed application performance for business and home consumers," said Rob Herb, AMD executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer. "We are absolutely committed to listening to our customers and responding with the best products to meet their computing performance needs."

The AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ features 640KB of total on-chip cache memory - an increase of nearly 70 percent over previous AMD Athlon XP processors and the highest amount of on-chip cache memory of any desktop PC processor. Increased cache memory allows more information to be stored closer to the processor, leading to greater performance on software applications such as digital content creation, 3-D gaming, media encoding and office productivity.

"Consumers should be aware that PC performance is more than just processor frequency alone," said Kevin Krewell, senior analyst of The
Microprocessor Report. "Today's PC processors can deliver higher performance through architectural enhancements such as increased cache memory and faster bus speeds. The overall performance of a system is what's important, and that's what buyers should focus on when making a purchasing decision."

Industry support for the AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+
"Packard Bell, the consumer brand of NEC Computers International and one of Europe's home PC leaders, is happy to broaden its product line-up with the AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ in order to offer a full range of solutions to its customers," said Aymar de Lencquesaing, vice president, sales and marketing, consumer division, NEC Computers International.

"ATI is committed to pushing the leading edge of graphics technology and creating the ultimate visual experience," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president, marketing and general manager, Desktop, ATI Technologies Inc. "With the introduction of the AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+, with more on-chip cache, AMD is demonstrating its dedication to the same goal. The RADEON 9700 PRO, the world's first and most advanced cinematic VPU, in combination with the AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+, unleashes an unbelievably realistic and immersive gaming experience."

"The high-performance AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ combined with our consumer-friendly software will help home users produce professional-level photos and videos that amaze their friends and family," said Mike Mickes, director of product management, Ulead Systems, North America. "With software such as our Ulead PhotoImpact and upcoming VideoStudio 7, consumers can have an enjoyable editing experience made faster and more productive by improved processor performance."

Availability
Systems based on the AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ are immediately available from NEC-CI in Europe and soon from other computer manufacturers around the globe.

Pricing
The AMD Athlon XP processor 3000+ is priced at $588 in 1,000-unit quantities. For additional information on pricing, please visit www.amd.com/pricing.

About the AMD Athlon(tm) XP Processor
The AMD Athlon XP processor features QuantiSpeed(tm) architecture and support for AMD's 3DNow!(tm) Professional instructions for enhanced multimedia capabilities. Depending on the core, AMD Athlon XP processors feature either 384KB or 640KB of on-chip, full-speed cache. The AMD Athlon XP processor is compatible with AMD's Socket A infrastructure, and supports the advanced 266 or 333 front-side bus (FSB). AMD Athlon XP processors are manufactured using AMD's 0.13 micron copper process technology in Fab 30 in Dresden, Germany.

 

[Pradeep]

Well the performance improvement is pretty disappointing really. Hopefully AMD can ramp up the MHz soon, because it's pretty sad when the non-Barton with a lower PR number outperforms in a few benchmarks. That 64 bit bus between CPU and L2 has to be upgraded.

 

[NRG = mc²]

That 64 bit bus between CPU and L2 has to be upgraded.

True... Since the coppermine, Intel has used 256 bit, makes you wonder why AMD doesn't do the same?

 

[Tea]

The benchmarks are weird. Ace's and X-bit have the best coverage, zame az usual.

What it boils down to is that there are three or four completely different types of apps, and that the processor you should buy depends entirely on which of these you are most interested in.

• Business apps: Barton is a killer. It is miles in front of anything else. (For me and Tannin, Barton iz a no-brainer.)
• Heavily SSE optimized ztuff: P4 for sure. At least according to my reading on Ace's, if you are using a High-end professional graphics card from Nvidia (i.e., not a Gforce thing, but a Quaddro), then the P4 rocks and Barton makes little difference.
• Graphic ztuff with very large or very small datasets: P4 again. Faster FSB and better memory bandwidth is the key.
• Graphic ztuff with moderate to large-sized datasets: Barton.
• Graphic ztuff with smallish to medium datasets: the Athlon with the impossible-to-zpell name starting with "Th" and ending in "red".
• Stuff that just want's heaps of floating-point grunt: Either one of the Athlonz, depending on which is more critical: cache size or clockspeed.
• Games: who cares?

By the way, can anyone help me learn how to stop zpelling "Throughuourououghbred"?

 

[The Grammar Police]

Excuse me, Tea, but your proofreading skills are apppalling. Where on earth did that want's come from?

 

[Tea]

Zorry.

 

[Buck]

Good points Tea, that is what I gathered from Aces too.

By the way, nice Avatar. Is that a picture of you after Tannin gave you a whirl in the clothes dryer?

 

[zx]

The Barton 3000+ is nothing more than an Athlon XP 3000+. It's nothing extraordinary. I would have thought that the extra cache would really boost the athlon's performance and help it regain the performance crown but sadly, it did not happen.

AMD is kind in survival mode with the Athlon right now. It cannot afford to be the leader in performance it once was. Since the Athlon XP, they took the habit of making very ordinary products. This is very understandable, since the K7 architecture is getting old and AMD is now developing it's 64 bit processors.

It reminds me of Intel just before the Pentium 4 release. If you remember, back then, AMD had the best performing processor around. They beat Intel at 1GHz, plus their new releases were always available on the market. Intel was making paper launches to keep up the pace. Plus, Intel were developing their new core, the Pentium 4.

Now, it's the opposite. Intel has the performance crown and AMD is just keeping up, making paper releases to try to be competitive.

Let's just hope that the hammer (Athlon64) will be a very good product like the P4 turned up to be.

 

[blakerwry]

Let's just hope that the hammer (Athlon64) will be a very good product like the P4 turned up to be.

Intel hasn't announced a competing product for this.. which I find strange...

they have the server platform Itanium... but nothing worthwhile on the PC side... are we just not ready for 64bit PC computing?

It's possible 64bit PC's are going to be more for workstations/bragging rights.. and Intel will wait to realease their 64 bit processor until it's safe... but this is a big step in the x86 line... I'm sure they hate to see AMD get their first.

 

[Fushigi]

The Barton 3000+ is nothing more than an Athlon XP 3000+. It's nothing extraordinary. I would have thought that the extra cache would really boost the athlon's performance and help it regain the performance crown but sadly, it did not happen.

If it would have been faster, it would have been named 3200+ or something else and not 3000+. The achievement here is that the CPU has a PR rating of 3000ish while the actual clock speed has gone down. As such, this is a real improvement. It's just not earth-shattering. The true performance boost will come if/when they crank the clock up.

The interesting part of this announcement to me is that we may be beginning to, as Tea described, be able to determine our desired processor based on what apps we will be running. Sort of a move away from the general purpose buy-me-a-fast-box mentality and towards the I-do-PhotoShop-so-I-need-a-___ mentality.

- Fushigi

 

[Tannin]

So, Fushigi, what kind of apes are you running?

 

[Tea]

Whooah there ZX!

The Barton 3000+ is nothing more than an Athlon XP 3000+. Yeah, well, what else could it be? I might as well say "The Pentium 4 2400 is nothing more than a 2400MHz Pentium 4".

I would have thought that the extra cache would really boost the athlon's performance and help it regain the performance crown but sadly, it did not happen. Sez who? It's the fastest X86 in the world, how fasst do you want it to be? Secondary cache size is less important to the Athlon than to the P4 because the Athlon has such a massive primary cache.

AMD is kind in survival mode with the Athlon right now. Huh? It's the fastest chip on the planet, what do you want them to do, have it slice your toast?

It reminds me of Intel just before the Pentium 4 release. If you remember, back then, AMD had the best performing processor around. They beat Intel at 1GHz, plus their new releases were always available on the market. Intel was making paper launches to keep up the pace. Plus, Intel were developing their new core, the Pentium 4. Now, it's the opposite. Intel has the performance crown and AMD is just keeping up, making paper releases to try to be competitive.

This was true for a short time while AMD sorted out their new 0.13 micron production process. It was not true prior to that, and is not true now. The XP 2800s were announced six months before AMD had production volumes, the 2400 three months prior. The earlier Athlons were released on time (i.e., within a month or at most two of the announcement) and AMD say that they will have XP3000+ parts here in Oz (usually the last place to get short-supply components because of the small size of the market) in three weeks' time. There is every reason to believe this: (a) Companies don't generally email their customers with local market announcements offering product on a certain date unless they expect to have that product on that date, and (b) the ample supplies of lesser 0.13 micron Athlons in the market at present demonstrate that the Dresden fab plant has the new process working well now.

Contrast the six month delay on a single product (XP 2800) with the one year delay between Intel's announcement of the P-III 1000 and its actual availability, the three month delay on the 24 and 2600 with the six to nine month delays we saw on the Coppermines. AMD weren't in nearly as much poo with 0.13 as Intel were with 0.18.

Hammer will undoubedly be a humdinger of a product in the 64-bit server space. It is expected to have FPU performance second only to Itanium, and integer performance (which is what you need for servers) way in advance of everything: Itanium, Power 4, PA-RISC, the lot. (We need not even consider MIPS or SPARC.) As a server chip, it's a no-brainer.

On the desktop, however, it might struggle to eclipse the Athlon and the P4. It has vastly better 32-bit performance than Itanium - but then, so has custard - but AMD have not yet got it to the point where it can clearly out-perform the best 32-bit native parts. Wait and see, I guess.

 

[Tannin]

Tea, you're unusually erudite thismorning. What happened to your "Z" key?

 

[Tea]

Zorry. I forgot. (Zometimez I do that. I need more potazzium in my diet, I think.)

 

[Tea]

The picture, by the way Buck, iz me looking at Groltz'z Athlon zyztem. It zeemz to cook along nicely enough, but I think he needz to turn his cooling fanz down a little.

 

[Buck]

I think it is time that we get some new picturez of Groltz'z mazter piece.

 

[zx]

Whooah there ZX!

The Barton 3000+ is nothing more than an Athlon XP 3000+. Yeah, well, what else could it be? I might as well say "The Pentium 4 2400 is nothing more than a 2400MHz Pentium 4".

Whoaaa, there's Tea!

What I meant (silly ape) is that the additionnal cache only compensates the fact that AMD are not able to boost the Athlon's clock speed. Imagine if they doubled the cache AND could give the XP a higher clock speed. Then we will have an extraordinary chip, much like the radeon 9700 is in the video card realm. What we got instead is an incremental enhancement.

I would have thought that the extra cache would really boost the athlon's performance and help it regain the performance crown but sadly, it did not happen. Sez who? It's the fastest X86 in the world, how fasst do you want it to be? Secondary cache size is less important to the Athlon than to the P4 because the Athlon has such a massive primary cache.

Well, if you take a look at the benchmarks, i believe that the p4 3Ghz HT outperforms the Athlon XP in many tasks. I would not call the Athlon XP 3000+ the fastest x86 chip in the world.

AMD is kind in survival mode with the Athlon right now. Huh? It's the fastest chip on the planet, what do you want them to do, have it slice your toast?

This is ridiculous. What else do you expect them to do? Of course I want them to slice my toast. Sheesh! (silly ape) :mrgrn:

Anyway, I just find that AMD are in a defensive position right now. BTW, I'm still not sure I can buy an Athlon XP 2800+ (tbred) in canada right now! Maybe things are better in australia...

 

[mubs]

Sheesh, Z-Eggz, we're a little rude to Tea today, aren't we???? :x

 

[Tea]

Naaaah ...... I started being rude firzt. All'z fair in love and CPU warz. You want to see "rude to Tea", you need to go read some of Tannin's postz. Now there is a zeriously grumpy human.

 

[CityK]

I saw on AMDmb that LiamC has weighed in with his opinion.

The achievement here is that the CPU has a PR rating of 3000ish while the actual clock speed has gone down. As such, this is a real improvement. It's just not earth-shattering. The true performance boost will come if/when they crank the clock up.

I agree. Unfortunately, I don't think that the later part will occur.

I've completely lost interest in all the Hammer talk - I'll read about in the fall when it really counts - but I do hope it pans out for AMD.

CK

 

[Buck]

Thanks for the link to Liam's article CityK, it was informative reading. I wish more people would make the evaluation and see that purchasing an AMD XP system at the moment is a great deal - the best ROI business decision in my opinion. The only caveat to this would be very graphic intensive work. And when that happens, I try not to rely on the CPU for all of the power. High end graphics cards (not ATI 9700 Pro or nVidia GeForce4 - better), plenty of fast memory, and a well thought out disk sub-system make a healthy contribution to performance capabilities. Granted, CPUs cannot be ignored, but they are not the only way to increase performance.

 

[Dïscfärm]

.. and Intel will wait to realease their 64 bit processor until it's safe... but this is a big step in the x86 line... I'm sure they hate to see AMD get their first.

Intel's basic Itanium (smallest cache) is supposed to be their 64-bit technical workstation microprocessor. SGI and HP are a couple out of a very few vendors that either have or have plans to release a workstation based on Itanium II. But, you better think about mortgaging the house if you want to buy an Itanium workstation -- at least at this point in time.

I'm still taking wagers on when Intel will finally say goodbye to the X86 processor family and only be making Itanium-based processors. My bet is still on 2007, which is about when I would guess that the Pentium V will have hit the end of a generation, with AMD then having over 50% of the mature X86 market. Intel will then switch over exclusively to processor lineup based on Itanium.

By the way, can anyone help me learn how to stop zpelling "Throughuourououghbred"?

ThurowBread

(economies and dough, duh)

 

[Tea]

"ThurowBread". Ahh. Thankyou Dïscfärm. That'z igzactly wot I kneeded too no.

 

[blakerwry]

.. and Intel will wait to realease their 64 bit processor until it's safe... but this is a big step in the x86 line... I'm sure they hate to see AMD get their first.

Intel's basic Itanium (smallest cache) is supposed to be their 64-bit technical workstation microprocessor. SGI and HP are a couple out of a very few vendors that either have or have plans to release a workstation based on Itanium II. But, you better think about mortgaging the house if you want to buy an Itanium workstation -- at least at this point in time.

I'm still taking wagers on when Intel will finally say goodbye to the X86 processor family and only be making Itanium-based processors. My bet is still on 2007, which is about when I would guess that the Pentium V will have hit the end of a generation, with AMD then having over 50% of the mature X86 market. Intel will then switch over exclusively to processor lineup based on Itanium.

By the way, can anyone help me learn how to stop zpelling "Throughuourououghbred"?

ThurowBread

(economies and dough, duh)

like i said... big step for x86.... Apple/motorolla has had 64 bit CPU's for a long time... intel makes the Itanium, but it's not x86 compatible(AFAIK).. only AMD has plans for it that i am aware of....

 

[Dïscfärm]

like i said... big step for x86.... Apple/motorolla has had 64 bit CPU's for a long time... intel makes the Itanium, but it's not x86 compatible(AFAIK).. only AMD has plans for it that i am aware of....

IBM has Power4 and PowrPC processors that are 64-bit, but not Apple. The G4 and G3 are all 32-bit "economy" processors. The G5 *will* be a 64-bit processor.

+

=

http://www.ustdrc.gov/members/thurow.html

 

[timwhit]

Thanks for the diagam.

 

[Tea]

So what you're saying to me, Dïscfärm, is that:

-

=

Poor Tannin. In both senses of the word. Barton, here I come!

 

[LiamC]

Ev'nin' all. Hi CityK, didn't know my notoriety had spread

My Barton piece has certainly generated some traffic. I don't know why biz people don't get the fact that for 95% of business use, Athlon makes a compelling case. Certainly I have never seen any of the majors spell it out.

P4 = fantastic multimedia machine.

Athlon XP = fantastic business machine.

Even businesses that do multimedia, most (75% or more) of the workers do "boring" office stuff. If I was trying to satisfy my people, I know which I'd choose.

Need to satisfy the minority, but want to be a single platform shop - buy them faster Athlons - as most businesses don't buy the top end. Problem solved.

Sigh - I just don't have the clout of Anand or Tom...

 

[Cliptin]

"ThurowBread". Ahh. Thankyou Dïscfärm. That'z igzactly wot I kneeded too no.

You could use "Thoreaubred". Ahh, contentment.

 

[Tea]

Sigh - I just don't have the clout of Anand or Tom...

But on the other hand. Bill, you write a simple, concise, accurate article which makes excellent sense. You have outdone yourself this time. (I think Tannin might be jealous.)

 

[LiamC]

Thank you Tea

 

[Groltz]

[j/k]More secret Barton information has been leaked:[/j/k]

http://www.amdboard.com/hn02110301.html

.

 

[Tea]

Nice one, Steve!

 

[Buck]

If anyone is interested in the setup that AMD used to test the XP 3000+, here is some information: they used an Asus A7N8X, Bios Rev 1001.D and disabled APIC in the BIOS. They also used the ATI Radeon 9700 with 128MB onboard DDR RAM, plus they used Video Driver 6.13.10.6218.12.09.2002. There is much more information in the PriceWaterhouseCoopers document if anybody would like to know.