AMD has the answer for Intel

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 13:36:31 +0100, "Ben Pope"
wrote:

I agree... but using MHz it's confusing. A DDR bus clocked at 200MHz is
fine. Calling it a 400MHz bus is confusing... it is neither data rate
(which would be in bits per second) nor the clock.

It's about time that the marketing types got a clue. How many times have
people come here and asked

Well, it's going to be a confusing, for the lay person, forever. Do
you think the average person has any idea of what synchronous memory
transfers are, or what double-data-rate memory is? The average person
knows they want to surf the net and play EverQuest. If someone really
wants to understand what's going on inside a PC, they're going to have
to do a lot of research. These are complex machines.

chrisv wrote:
On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 13:36:31 +0100, "Ben Pope"
wrote:

I agree... but using MHz it's confusing. A DDR bus clocked at 200MHz is
fine. Calling it a 400MHz bus is confusing... it is neither data rate
(which would be in bits per second) nor the clock.

It's about time that the marketing types got a clue. How many times have
people come here and asked

Well, it's going to be a confusing, for the lay person, forever. Do
you think the average person has any idea of what synchronous memory
transfers are, or what double-data-rate memory is? The average person
knows they want to surf the net and play EverQuest. If someone really
wants to understand what's going on inside a PC, they're going to have
to do a lot of research. These are complex machines.

I don't see as that as an excuse to lie or misrepresent the truth.

I think the average person can cope with double data rate means twice as
fast.

Ben
--
I'm not just a number. To many, I'm known as a String...

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 07:54:11 -0500, chrisv wrote:

On Tue, 30 Sep 2003 22:10:23 GMT, "Wes Newell"
wrote:

Now the marketing idiots decided to define the
bus by the data rate, but using the clock speed unit of measure (MHz)
instead of the data rate unit of measure (Bps, bps). Why? Simple because
it looks better, and the majority of the people don't know it's just BS.

Clueless.

What's that, your nickname?

--
Abit KT7-Raid (KT133) Tbred B core CPU @2400MHz (24x100FSB)
http://mysite.verizon.net/res0exft/cpu.html

On Wed, 01 Oct 2003 10:23:53 GMT, "Wes Newell"
wrote:
Both the P4 and Athlon now have a 200MHz FSB. Anything higher than that is
overclocked. There's no 400MHz FSB and no 800MHz fsb. Effective? Compared
to what? The P4 isn't an effective fsb of 800MHz if you compare it to the
Athlon FSB now is it? It's only effective 400MHz. Just another reason the
effective arguement is BS unless it's fully explained what it's compared
to. Yeah, I know, you know, but believe me, 90% of the people don't. And
that's why it's marketing BS.

I think what you're missing here is not so much that 90% (probably
more) of the people out there don't know, but rather that 90% of the
people out there don't care.

has been ok for
the PC world since we've had 64-bit buses on every system for nearly 10
years now.

10 years? It only started with the Athlon and P4. Prior to that all x86
cpu's had only one data bit per clock cycle.

Uhh, how does that change the fact that they were 64-bit buses?

So the Pentium was a 64-bit processor, as are all current PC chips

So if the P4 is a 64bit cpu, why won't it run a 64bit OS?

Because it's not a damn 64-bit CPU! That's what I've been trying to
get across the whole time! It's a 32-bit CPU that has a 64-bit data
bus.

I think you're confusing it's integrated memory controller with the
hypertransport link. Which is your "data bus"? At best this is only
slightly confusing in a single processor system, where you have memory
requests coming over one bus and all other I/O going over a single
hypertransport link. On multiprocessor systems, this gets MUCH worse,
as your memory could be local (going over your own memory bus) or remote
(going over a hypertransport link).

You're right. It's the data bus that's 72bits wide on the A64, and 144bits
on the Opteron/FX. Don't know what i was thinking.

Face it, defining the bit-ness of a chip by the width of the data bus
makes absolutely NO sense at all in this day and age! The Athlon64 and
Opteron are 64-bit chips because:

1. They have 64-bit integer registers 2. They use 64-bit address
pointers and address registers, program counter, etc.

So why does the Opteron/FX cpu's blow away the A64's at the same clock
speed if the data bus doesn't mean anything? That's the only difference
between them.

First off, the Opteron/Athlon64 FX don't "blow away" the Athlon64 at
the same clock speed. They are usually faster, but typically by only
10% or thereabouts. And if that were all that matters, why does the
P4, with it's 64-bit bus manage to match or beat the Opteron/Athlon64
FX in many tests, particularly if you're talking about the P4EE chip.

I'm not saying that the data bus doesn't mean anything, just that it
has no relevance as to whether the chip is a 32-bit chip or a 64-bit
chip.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 18:00:11 +0100, "Ben Pope"
wrote:
chrisv wrote:
Well, it's going to be a confusing, for the lay person, forever. Do
you think the average person has any idea of what synchronous memory
transfers are, or what double-data-rate memory is? The average person
knows they want to surf the net and play EverQuest. If someone really
wants to understand what's going on inside a PC, they're going to have
to do a lot of research. These are complex machines.

I don't see as that as an excuse to lie or misrepresent the truth.

I think the average person can cope with double data rate means twice as
fast.

You've never worked in retail sales, have you?

Sure, plenty of people COULD cope with double data rate meaning twice
as fast, but most simply don't care. Right or wrong, that's the way
it is, and if you go around trying to force people to care about this
sort of thing, they're just going to walk out of the store and go buy
something else.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

Tony Hill wrote:
You've never worked in retail sales, have you?

Actually I have... And as long as you don't expect everybody to be stupid
and explain it in simple terms, many actually want to know what it's all
about. This is not true of everybody or all products, but with PCs a lot of
people want to know what they are buying and make an effort to learn... it's
a big purchase.

Sure, plenty of people COULD cope with double data rate meaning twice
as fast, but most simply don't care. Right or wrong, that's the way
it is, and if you go around trying to force people to care about this
sort of thing, they're just going to walk out of the store and go buy
something else.


There are those that want to understand and those that don't want to.
Everybody is capable though. For those that don;t want to know, they're not
gonna care whether it's 800MHz, 400MHz or 200MHz. SDR, DDR or QDR. They
just want to know what they can do with it.

Ben
--
I'm not just a number. To many, I'm known as a String...

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 18:00:11 +0100, "Ben Pope"
wrote:

chrisv wrote:
On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 13:36:31 +0100, "Ben Pope"
wrote:

I agree... but using MHz it's confusing. A DDR bus clocked at 200MHz is
fine. Calling it a 400MHz bus is confusing... it is neither data rate
(which would be in bits per second) nor the clock.

It's about time that the marketing types got a clue. How many times have
people come here and asked

Well, it's going to be a confusing, for the lay person, forever. Do
you think the average person has any idea of what synchronous memory
transfers are, or what double-data-rate memory is? The average person
knows they want to surf the net and play EverQuest. If someone really
wants to understand what's going on inside a PC, they're going to have
to do a lot of research. These are complex machines.

I don't see as that as an excuse to lie or misrepresent the truth.

I have not seen you present evidence that anyone is lying or
"misrepresenting the truth". About the closest example to that that I
can think of is AMD's CPU naming. In any case, my point is that there
inevitably be loss of detail when a ton of information (how PC's work)
is compressed into an amount of information that the average consumer
can absorb. I have zero problem with the way, for example, Intel is
rating their front-side bus.

I think the average person can cope with double data rate means twice as
fast.

Twice as fast as what? RDRAM? What if I have two channels and you
have one? How wide are your channels? How many MB? What's the clock
rate? How about latency?

And this is only one small corner of the PC. Lossy compression is
REQUIRED.

chrisv wrote:
On Wed, 1 Oct 2003 18:00:11 +0100, "Ben Pope"
wrote:
I don't see as that as an excuse to lie or misrepresent the truth.

I have not seen you present evidence that anyone is lying or
"misrepresenting the truth".

Calling the Intel "FSB" or system bus or whatever they're calling it 800MHz
is incorrect. The clock is 200MHz. It is a 200MHz bus that can trasnfer
data 4 times per clock.

PC3200 is not 400MHz as many people call it. Thats misrepresentation, the
clock is 200MHz.

About the closest example to that that I
can think of is AMD's CPU naming. In any case, my point is that there

Amd call their CPUs 3200+ not 3200MHz. Since they have no unit, they cannot
be misrepresenting the truth.

inevitably be loss of detail when a ton of information (how PC's work)
is compressed into an amount of information that the average consumer
can absorb.

Loss of information, fine. Misrepresentation, not so.

I have zero problem with the way, for example, Intel is
rating their front-side bus.

I think the average person can cope with double data rate means twice as
fast.

Twice as fast as what? RDRAM?

Don't act stupid. You're cleverer than that. SDR, normal SDRAM.

What if I have two channels and you have one?How wide are your channels?
How many MB? What's the clock
rate? How about latency?

So as has already been said, compress that down to a bandwidth figure in
Megs/s or whatever. Don't lie about the clock speed to make the numbers
work.

And this is only one small corner of the PC. Lossy compression is
REQUIRED.


I totally agree. I don't see how misrepresentation has to be a part of
that.

Ben
--
I'm not just a number. To many, I'm known as a String...

On Thu, 02 Oct 2003 08:15:52 -0500, chrisv wrote:

I have zero problem with the way, for example, Intel is rating their
front-side bus.

Bus speed is adressed in 2 ways, the clock speed, which is measured in Hz,
and data rates which are measured in bps/Bps, more commonly called
throughput. Throughput is the effective data rate. A term you might be
more familiar with when talking about modems. Many people have called a
2400bps modem a 2400 baud modem incorrectly, using the throughput as the
signal rate, when in fact the signal rate was 600 baud. But if you ever
looked at the specs you would see that the box would say 2400bps, not 2400
baud. What Intel and AMD has done is taken the clock speed (MHz) and
multiplied it by the data rate (bps) and used the result as MHz. If you
can't see the error in this then you must be blind.

--
Abit KT7-Raid (KT133) Tbred B core CPU @2400MHz (24x100FSB)
http://mysite.verizon.net/res0exft/cpu.html

On Thu, 2 Oct 2003 14:48:58 +0100, "Ben Pope"
wrote:

Calling the Intel "FSB" or system bus or whatever they're calling it 800MHz
is incorrect. The clock is 200MHz. It is a 200MHz bus that can trasnfer
data 4 times per clock.

PC3200 is not 400MHz as many people call it. Thats misrepresentation, the
clock is 200MHz.

About the closest example to that that I
can think of is AMD's CPU naming. In any case, my point is that there

Amd call their CPUs 3200+ not 3200MHz. Since they have no unit, they cannot
be misrepresenting the truth.

Let me guess... You're an AMD FANatic. "AMD good. Intel bad."

There's nothing wrong with the "800MHz FSB" abbreviation. I use it
myself, and not to deceive, to communicate. It's a lot easier than
saying "200MHz quad-data-rate" and then having to explain what the
hell that means to someone who probably couldn't care less.

AMD's rating system, on the other hand, is quite shady. "No unit"
bullsh*t. A unit is strongly implied. It's deceptive. It
misrepresents the truth.