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Well you sure point out all the best points of the pentium m and the worst of the XP-M.
Your contention that the power consumption is that much lower is not well taken. The heat dissipated over CPU feels the same. If you're saying that the pentium m lasts 2.5 times longer because of the CPU I'm afraid I have to contest that. It cannot be just the CPU - screen, disk etc use considerable power, the pentium m would have to be using no power to give rise to your claimed longevity. BTW 1.2 pentium m's I have used (Dell Latitude C400s) have nothing like the life you quote, more like 3 hours or less.
You have to equate other components, especially the battery.
On top of that the fpu on the pentium m sucks.
I want to see a comparison of the 2GHz pentium m with an athlonXP-M (NOT the ATHLON64). I think power consumption will be similar, integer will be similar and fpu will be much better in the athlon. All in all there won't be much in it.
Claiming that intel is streets ahead by intro'ing a 32-bit 2 GHz processor is just plain silly.
6. PCI-EXpress video
Just to add to your list.
AthlonXP Mobile (Barton) 266FSB
Well I just noticed how cheap these mobile Bartons have become. Decided to upgrade out AthlonXP 1800 to a 2600 Barton - note the mobiles use a 266FSB rather than the 333 or 400MHz FSB of the desktop variant. So I could upgrade our old 1800 without changing the memory/motherboard. Gigabyte thoughtfully just released a new BIOS to support these higher speed versions.
Power drops from 66W to 45W and at $99 from Newegg (with free shipping) I think the processor will pay for itself just in electrical savings.
What a difference from Intel's offerings where upgrades are severely limited.
150s, 250s & 850s are here.
See news, yahoo for one
also nice extension of Mirrorbit
Normally Tuesday is main day for news, what comes tomorrow?
AMD just keeps on delivering.
Comparing Dothan
With all the discussions of IPF and Atlon64 I think some people are missing the important comparison. The Dothan is very much like an AthlonXP, not an Athlon64.
That's where the comparison is and where benchmarks should be taken. Looking at notebooks today that's what I would compare.
Hell, as I saw someone point out today even the names are similar, only one letter different:
Athlon -> Lothan - > Dothan (was this an inadvertant admission by intel?)
Incidentally my wife went into a big PC parts distributor today to do some accounting/consulting and she ran a sales report by product. Evidentally #1, by a mile, was AMD (she can't remember which product, just it was AMD and a CPU); second was intel cpu of some kind. Evidentally this was quite a change from last year.
Oh elmerp, diss my retail observations if you like but how are they different from Osha's. Don't bother to answer, I have no time for the phud you spew anyway. You're just another marketing geek.
I compared notebooks in Best Buy today.
I especially looked at Pentiums & Athlons vs Athlon 64s from Emachines and HP. They were all running videos.
The Athlon64s were noticeably cooler over the keyboard, where the heatsink is usually located, than the Pentiums & Athlons. Much nicer to work on. (The desktop Athlon64s were really cool too when you put your hand behind the fan). A Toshiba I currently use is also really noisy when the fan runs all the time.
I think one point you are missing talking about battery life is that I would expect a $2000+ laptop to have a much more expensive battery than a budget ~ $1200 one. Batteries are expensive and power management hardware may well be different too. So you can't use battery life as a metric. I once had a laptop with some *hot* intel chip in it. It was awful to use, painful sitting on one's lap. I gave it back.
I would much rather use a true TDP to make a decision rather than one invented for marketing reasons (hey does this sound like BAPCO all over again?).
Sorry wbmw but intel using a fake power measure doesn't cut it for me, even if the battery does last longer. I want cool running and an assurance that the manufacturer isn't cheating.
Gateway to pay Intergraph $10m for Pentium "Clipper" Patents
http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-5212047.html?tag=nefd.top
Now this will make OEMs a bit less happy using Intel products,
"Gateway will pay Intergraph at least $10 million to settle a Pentium-related patent-infringement suit, the companies said this week.
In addition to the $10 million, Gateway will pay Intergraph royalties of $1.25 each for certain Gateway and eMachines brand PCs sold in the United States (Gateway acquired eMachines in March). The royalty arrangement will be in place till Feb. 2009. "
"But it doesn't even play in the same game as Hammer. It's a slightly cooler Athlon XP-M... That's it."
Well cooler is at issue. Certainly from what I've read. Little doubt however it has a slower FPU than the Athlons. Apart from that it looks pretty similar.
"Wake me when it gets some chest hair."
Now that made me grin!
AMD64: More Than Just 64-bit Extensions to x86
http://www.devx.com/amd/Article/20960
Comparison of AMD64 and intel's forthcoming copy.
Very interesting read.
Whoa some interesting stuff:
First a new article about porting codecs & other stuff to Win 64. Should interest Mr. Moy.
http://www.devx.com/amd/Article/20923
Which points to an AMD page I have never seen called "Other Tools"
in the AMD64 developer resource kit:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/DevelopWithAMD/0,,30_2252_9044,00.html
and I'm still looking at this - but I see some very good things here.
And from the StarNet article note this interesting bit:
"X-Win64 offers a significant boost in performance when connecting to high-end CAD, EDA and other graphics software running on powerful UNIX and LINUX servers. Benchmark tests showed a dramatic performance boost of 3-D applications with X-Win64 versus the same applications running on a 32-bit Windows system with X-Win32. The "Particle" OpenGL test application, for example, achieved a 129 frames-per-second (fps) rate on a 1.4GHz dual Opteron system running Windows XP/64. The same application recorded a 45 fps rate on a 2GHz Windows XP system."
Though the systems are different they seem to be saying that XP64 offers a speed increase over XP32.
Saving SSE registers.
It has done since Win 98.
Just because there's no push/pop instructions doesn't mean you can't save them. They can always be mov'd to memory. Its just that he doesn't see a push xmm0 as he expected.
OTOH the MMX & FPU state does not seem to be saved under a LONG MODE context switch with WinXP64 and that's why x87, MMX and 3DNow are not available - a reasonable tradeoff given the enhanced SSE under x86-64, the ease of moving xmm values to and from 64-bit registers.
Its worth noting that LONG MODE SSE & SSE2 is much better than SSE & SSE2 under 32-bit since AMD64 enhances the interface between the SSE regs and the 64-bit GP regs.
You said: "There is nothing stopping a licensee from building coherent HyperTransport:"
Yes there is! They would have to licence it from AMD and not contravene patent law. There are numerous patents on cHT. Just reverse engineering it doesn't make it right. Being a licensee of HT doesn't confer any rights on cHT. Intel could try to develop a coherent PCI-Express and I think they will, but they can't just copy cHT
This is not quite correct. The public standard is hypertransport, which allows the CPU to communicate with the southbridge.
The bus that allows interprocessor communication is called coherent hypertransport and that is NOT a public standard and is NOT available for licencing. Its probably a superset of HT.
Therefore the statement that with a licence Intel could make glueless multiprocessor systems is NOT correct.
HDTV: I see he moderator gave us some guidelines.
I am very interested in all these reports from firms like UMC reporting high fab activity. And MOT beats revenue by a mile. And TI doing well.
When I bought my TV Best Buy couldn't keep them in stock - I had to wait until the truck arrived to pick it up. All of the boxes on the truck were sold by the time it reached the dock. Two weeks after I took delivery some one at Best Buy, not your average sales person, phoned me up and quizzed me about the purchase. I had a feeling she was in their marketing department. It was obvious they were interested in why the units were so popular.
This is unusual in the home electronics biz. For a long time, maybe 5 years, the TV biz was depressed because nobody could sort out the standards. That wall of water has just broken.
My prior TV was c1986 and had given fine service so my upgrade cycle - yes usually about 10 years - was stretched to 17 years.
Who makes the electronics inside? There's a big frame buffer - we know that, and lots of decompression hardware. Short of taking out a screwdriver I want to know the bill of materials in these things. If I'm right and this will be the biggest impact on semi mftring in the coming two years I want to be aware who's results will be skewed and who will be on the sidelines. Anybody?
HDTV is not off topic when you're talking about flash & embedded processors.
Not to mention that my HDTV box has a DVI input and I'll be building an Athlon64 box to serve it.
I have a 32 inch Zenith direct view (CRT). Its part# is C32V37. I bought it for $899. I see Best Buy has raised the price to $949 - that makes a change! Normally things get cheaper the week after I buy them.
As a CRT its only 22" deep and $3000 cheaper than a flat screen. For that difference I can afford 22" of space. And the picture is better.
They're made in Mexico, not China for a change. I don't know who makes the innards but it is pretty much faultless. It looks just like the Sony 32HS510 bit its $300 less and has a built in tuner which would otherwise cost another $300.
Seen the jeep eh? I had something to do with extending that park recently. Your walks could be a *lot* longer now!
Once you've had 1080i or 720p you won'll change your mind about cable.
I think a lot of people will be like you, but enough will see the light and go for HD.
Try it - shove up an antenna or even some rabbit ears, or take a trip to the Best Buy on Victory & Topanga.
I don't get where you're coming from on VOIP. All you're saving is a bit of money, right? Whereas with HDTV its a whole new experience. I will probably never forget the first scene I saw on KCET HD, about exploring the Grand Canyon. It was almost better than being there. I couldn't wait for my family to get home to see it.
BTW they're watching "Gilmore Girls" now in 1080i, they wouldn't watch it any other way.
I think the cable companies are s**t scared of people finding out about over-the-air (OTA) HDTV. My buddy is already thinking about dumping his $100/month cable.
Re: DTV I live in Malibu. Its the opening shots you see on M*A*S*H, from the helicopter while "suicide is painless" plays.
My antenna is the same one I've been using for 10 years, intermediate range with a masthead amp. No special equipment, no "DTV antenna".
I get channels 2,4,5,7,9,11,13 then a bunch of foreign stuff up to 23 then 28 (2channels) of KCET, then a whole bunch up to 66. The PBS includes KOCE (orange county PBS)and Los Angeles Unified School (5 channels, 4 used during the day for schools but general programming later and at weekends on 3 of them). Most of the transmission comes from Mount Wilson I believe, exactly 35 miles.
You're right there can be no interference. You can only get some blockiness if there is momentarily no signal. I do not get that, perhaps on one channel which is excluded from the scan.
The TV I bought is being demonstrated in the Best Buy in Woodland Hills (big boxy metal building surrounded by running electronics) using set top RABBIT EARS!!!! That's about 30 miles from the transmitter.
Have you seen how much power they're pumping out on DTV signals? In excess of 1 megawatt here! Up to 5 MW is allowed I understand.
So I think that WS is currently ignoring what's going on - maybe the analysts are unable to hook up a TV.
"OTA needs line of sight"
Not so. I actually get horrid analog reception, especially on CBS. On DTV its perfect. I'm 35 miles from the transmitter and live in the hills & valleys. There's no direct line of sight. I get 40-50 DTV channels (some are multicast). Best of all I get 7 PBS channels whereas on analog I could get 1 1/2. There's an interesting new channel which is the local DTV, just licensed by the FCC, packing channels geographically closer together because there's no interference.
When I want to watch something I can usually find it, else there's always DVDs. I certainly wouldn't pay for cable/satellite.
There's no comparison between analog & DTV. That's why DTV will take over. As mainstream america realizes this it will be an enormous consumer boom in electronics - both at the client and the source.
OK, now to watch "Nightly Business News", albeit on 480i.
Hmm, interesting article but it misses one important point.
People with regular old antennas are getting free HD (1080i, 720p) broadcasts now. We haven't watched any analog TV broadcasts since the end of last year. I feel sorry for those paying for cable and getting inferior pictures and sound. Once it becomes known that all you need is a new TV (mine cost $899 from Best Buy and includes OTA decoder) people are going to start switching in droves.
I'm an early adopter but I know quite a few who have gone OTA HD already.
The article mainly addresses the shortcomings of cable and the cable industry's problem of keeping up the number of channels, which people got used to, while massively boosting the bandwidth per channel.
What does it mean for the electronics industry? There's a whole lot of silicon in these boxes. I know AMD is in some set top boxes, there must be some flash memory in the TV too. Where are they going to make all these chips when 250 million viewers decide next year that they want two new HD sets? At $899 they are an easy sell. Am I right in thinking that there's going to be something of a fab shortage?
Then there's the PVRs and recorders that are going to have to be upgraded to HD in a couple of years.
The future of the semi industry looks to be really healthy to me.
32-bit K8 is about PCI-Express.
Clearly, IMHO, socket 939 is awaiting the introduction of PCI-Express video cards.
Remember that the Pentium got its reputation not because it was so much better than the 486 but because the motherboards had PCI.
Remember too that Mickey Dell made that comment about AMD processors being less reliable because Intel managed to keep K6s out of Win2000 machines and running on Win98.
AMD won't let that happen again - a platform improvement that masks as a processor advantage. That's what Intel is hoping for with PCI-Express, the testers will compare an Intel PCI-Express Intel board with an AGP AMD processor. It would be stupid to let that happen.
So what to do about the K7s? Its rather late to expect the mobo manufacturers to intro K7 motherboards with PCI-Express. So AMD makes it easy for them, provide a 32-bit processor that competes with Intel's 32-bit lineup and uses the new platform.
That's my opinion.
What a load of baloney. That's a comparison of different video controllers. See how the nVidia Go5650 creams the ATI 9600.
You're trying to fud everyone by comparing a Radeon 9600 Pro Turbo on the banias with a 9600 on the Athlon64.
There is a comparison there - a Pentium M at 1.5GHz running the straight 9600. Even though these tests are graphics limited - it IS a test of video controllers - the Athlon64 beats it handily.
Your claims that banias at 1.7 sometimes beats an Athlon64 are bogus and you should be ashamed. Any system can be crippled by the weakest link.
That's the trouble with Intel - all marketing lies and no engineering.