Processors

[Zorro]

Could some of you boffins please give a rundown on the merits of Athlon v P4 ? does it make any difference, this is really advice for a mate who's about to buy a laptop.

What do the athlon numbers mean ?

[stevieb]

The numbers mean the equivelant P4 processor speed.

Athlon 2600 = P4 2.6 Ghz

It really depends what you are using the laptop for. But i would be inclined to look at the Pentium 4M chips designs for laptops and in most cases offer better performace and better battery life..

steve

[agent006]

AMD are considered batter for games and for those who hate microsoft

[arcturus]

I agree with what Stevieb says, although mobile athlon processors are not too bad.

They key thing to watch out for is that most of the sub £1000 laptops that use the P4 use the desktop P4 not the mobile one. That is how they keep the price down. The desktop P4 processor is cheaper but generates more heat and is not optimised for battery power like the mobile P4. It wont run as long on batteries as the true mobile P4.

If that is important to you, get a P4M not a P4.

[simpo two]

I thought that pound for pound Athlons performed better than the equivalent Pentium, hence the 'plus'?

Though having checked mine it says:
'AMD Athlon(TM) XP1800+'
'1.15GHz'

Err...

[dern]

The athlon 1800 runs at 1.5ish Ghz. However it runs something like 9 instructions per cycle rather than the 6 ish of the p4. There for an athlon runs 9 * 1.5 instructions a second which is about the same as a p4 which run 6 * 2.0... or something like that. They label them to reflect this equivelence I believe.

Here's some more info...

http://telnet7.tripod.com/articles/athlonxp_pr.htm

Here's an enourmous table of number which, erm, may help...

http://www6.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-32.html#comparison_table

Regards,

Mark

[_DJ_]

That's true. However, it depends on the code you're running. There's not much point running 9 instructions if the first one is a conditional jump.

[Zorro]

....preeechiate the info guys

[simpo two]

Thanks dern - I can see that the '1800' is not a clock speed but simply a number!
Do you have any idea why mine says 1.15Ghz and not 1.5Ghz?

[Bodo]

simpo two said:

Thanks dern - I can see that the '1800' is not a clock speed but simply a number! Do you have any idea why mine says 1.15Ghz and not 1.5Ghz?

What is the bus speed on the rest of your hardware?
My guess: When the XP1800 (1500MHz) has 133MHz bus speed, then the multiplier is 11.5
The same multiplier with 100MHz bus speed gives 1150MHz CPU frequency.

Your mainboard either supports only 100MHz FSB, or you can set it to the correct FSB/multiplier, by having a look in the documentation.

[dern]

Bodo said:

simpo two said: Thanks dern - I can see that the '1800' is not a clock speed but simply a number! Do you have any idea why mine says 1.15Ghz and not 1.5Ghz? What is the bus speed on the rest of your hardware? My guess: When the XP1800 (1500MHz) has 133MHz bus speed, then the multiplier is 11.5 The same multiplier with 100MHz bus speed gives 1150MHz CPU frequency. Your mainboard either supports only 100MHz FSB, or you can set it to the correct FSB/multiplier, by having a look in the documentation.

Also check out the board manufacturers website if they have one. Often these days boards are jumper free and the bus speed and processor configuration is done automatically for you. This relies on the bios being able to recognise the processor though so you may need to download and install (carefully ) the latest bios if they added code to recognise your processor.

I'll be downloading the latest bios for my board to enable it to correctly recognise the athlon 2400 I'm going to be installing soon.

Good luck,

Mark

[Plotloss]

General rule of thumb:

Entertainment - AMD

Business - Intel

Theres not much in it to be honest...

[WildfireS3]

Plotless is pretty much right. I do 3D graphics and am a staunch AMD/Nvidia supporter, but the Athlons can be really tempremental when it comes to stability for hi usage. Where as my P4 at work is rock solid. A bit slow and win 2k is poo but the processor is quiet and stable.

Athlon at home is fast an bit tempremental, eaisly overclockable and great for games. Actually bench markes faster than my work one. Athlon XP 2200+ and P4 2.4.

[jam1et]

I have machines based on both manufacturer's processors in my network. A ratio of about 70:30 in favour of AMD. This is purely due to AMD's cheaper price and a hatred of monopolies. Having said that, of my 150 or so machines dealing with the usual office workload (email/web/sql/foxpro/sage), I dont find Pentium chips any more reliable than the equivalent AMD.

[dern]

simpo two said:

Thanks dern - I can see that the '1800' is not a clock speed but simply a number! Do you have any idea why mine says 1.15Ghz and not 1.5Ghz?

Check in your bios settings, I just installed a 2400 in my pc and I needed to set the clock speed to 133 rather than 100 other wise it ran as an 1800+.

Regards,

Mark

[Edt]

Anyone have an ATHLON 64 PC yet?
Hoping to get new PC soon & this processor has been recommended to me

Ed

[davidd]

I have a dell inspiron 5150 with a P4M chip running at 3.06 ghz and 512mb of ram

At home we have a self built pc with an AMD athelon 2500 barton and 512mb of Ram

Apart fomr the fact that the pc has a much better disk subsystem and so loads things a lot faster (really, honestly it takes about four times as long to load photoshop on the laptop) but actual processing there is nothing in it, unless of course there is paging involved.

I do intend to upgrade the laptop to a disk runniung at 7200rpm at some point, if anyone has any sitting about give me a shout

D.

[pdV6]

stevieb said:

The numbers mean the equivelant P4 processor speed. Athlon 2600 = P4 2.6 Ghz

Nope. Athlon XP 2600+ is equivalent in processing power to an old Athlon Thunderbird running at 2.6 GHz (that's the "2600" bit)

The XP2600+ should be more equivalent to, say, a P4 running at around 2.8 GHz. (which is the "+" bit!)

>> Edited by pdV6 on Friday 16th January 10:10

[Plotloss]

Edt said:

Anyone have an ATHLON 64 PC yet? Hoping to get new PC soon & this processor has been recommended to me Ed

Bit like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut Ed.

Good for servers and multithreaded applications but for the usual word and games type stuff its an iteration too far at the current price point.

When they are sub £100 probably worth looking at...

[stevieb]

pdV6 said:

Nope. Athlon XP 2600+ is equivalent in processing power to an old Athlon Thunderbird running at 2.6 GHz (that's the "2600" bit) The XP2600+ should be more equivalent to, say, a P4 running at around 2.8 GHz. (which is the "+" bit!)

Got to disagree with you there the original press release for the Athlon was 2600+ bit was to signify it will run at a minimul equivelant to the P4-2.6. I reality i doubt that a XP2600 will run at speeds of a P4 2.8, unless it is overclocked.

>> Edited by stevieb on Friday 16th January 11:50

>> Edited by stevieb on Friday 16th January 11:55