hmmm goes both ways imo

[Testin da Cable]

I read this on la reg. It's the "rated MHz vs. performance MHz" argument. For a time I didn't really care about it. I bought an AMD tbird and then an XP1800+ because every hardware site on the planet stood up and splattered tadpoles in all directions when they got their hands on the chips.
Now for the namage. I know a ~1600MHz XP pees all over a 2GHz P4. Great. That XP happens to be called a "2000+". Big deal...or is it? Thing is, it's finally started to bug me heh.
What do you guys think?

 

[kanonfodda]

I don't go for clock speed, I go for performance. But I can see the argument, I have friends who insist on buying Intel "coz the clock speed is higher". then they get upset when my AMD pisses all over them ;0). I do think the companies need to find a new way to measure it though, simply to stop confusing Joe Public.

 

[Will]

Well, the rating system doesn't really pitch at people like us, who base our purchases on benchmarks rather then "wow, a 2Gz at under £999.99", and AMD isn't really involved in that sector of the market at the moment. Maybe that's what they are trying for with this. *shrugs*

I do think a rating system needs to be introduced though. Intel are pushing clock speed too strongly, using their dominant position to shut up any loud naysayers.

 

[xane]

Back in the days of the T-Bird the problem was chipsets, Intel had royally screwed up with their i820 and had no chipset to support 133Mhz FSB/RAM, they harassed VIA in the courts to prevent them doing a 133Mhz version, they still stuck to their support of RAMBUS and that failed too, when DDR RAM came out that finally killed all hope of a decent Pentium III motherboard from Intel.

The joke was Intel had been producing 133Mhz FSB CPUs for around 4 months and still hadn't got a motherboard for them. AMD won ahead because not only were their CPUs faster, but the chipset support was cheaper and faster too, and more up-to-date, Intel became overpriced because of RAMBUS and poor quality lower performance motherboards.

Now AMD and Intel are on level terms, the performance war is over, won by AMD, and the marketting war continues.

 

[Testin da Cable]

indeed, and there's no war more dirty than one fought in the hills and plains of marketeering