Just saw on Tom's Hardware that AMD is planning on using model numbers instead of true clock speeds to identify their next Athlon CPU range.

"...because the new Athlon won't be specified by its clock speed anymore. AMD is having very rigorous plans. It starts with the printing on the chip. Future Athlons will be specified by 'MODEL' numbers. For instance a Palomino-Athlon that runs at 1.4 GHz will be MODEL 1600, because AMD considers Palomino 1.4 GHz to be at least as fast as a Pentium 4 1.6 GHz. The printing on the chip will be 'A1600 .....', even though its a 1400 MHz part only. The same is valid for motherboards and their POST. A new BIOS Writer's Guide prohibits the BIOS from ever displaying the true core frequency of Palomino! It has to display the MODEL number instead..."

You can see the entire article here.

Update by Nathan: I made this a full news-item. If this keeps up we may have to put together a more formal system :)

that sounds lovely

as long as i get what i pay for..

I don't understand what this will achieve though ??

to make their numbers look bigger :P

same...what is the point in displaying a pr number instead of the actually frequency??

As long as we get the same great performance at a decent price it is fine with me

Probably to fool "mum n dad" users and/or idiots who think more mhz / bigger number equals better.

All they seem to be doing is saying well it is a 1.4gig chip, but we will print a model number on it instead... Even if all the clock frequencies are kept "secret" the information will be leaked soon enough. Is this a plan to be able to sell an identical chips, but with a different model number printed on it ?? I dun get, AMD are going gay...

Because Intel is taking them to the cleaners in terms of mhz. Its a psychological thing, apparently. We're like supposed to get all excited when we see "2 GHZ" in big letters or something.

So it has nothing to do with people overclocking their chips or anything ?? Won't this affect hardcore overclockers ability at flexing wank factor and s*** ??

I get excited when I see Geforce3
3 is bigger than 2 which is bigger than 0 and according to gestalt theory 0 equals one and ill just stop now because im rambing and just too tired to amke anysense out of any matter whatsoever soupmix is good hop

Yeah I guess overclockers might be a target, but generally I thought AMD didn't really mind genuine overclockers, rather they were more concerned about people remarking and reselling cpus.

Its obviously designed to counter the whole "Intel P4 1.8ghz must be better than an AMD Athlon 1.4ghz" by simply giving them names that roughly match up with the speed compared to a P4.

The real question is, who gets to decide on what AMD chip matches up with what Intel chip? I mean, at least when you buy a P4 1.8ghz, you know that it does in fact run at 1.8ghz (although one could argue that doesn't tell you much to begin with *g*). With this naming scheme by AMD though, its more along the line that "well, we think its about this fast", which perhaps isn't quite as reassuring as a hard-and-fast number.

I'll still buy AMD (simply because they make faster chips for less money), but it will be interesting how this plays out.

Way to pull a Cyrix AMD!

I think this is funny, people won't even know what speed their CPU is running at ffs... It is the first thing you look at when considering an new system... I still can't believe how gay it is hahaha

Lol Cyrix... I had one of their god-awful CPUs (PR-200 to be exact, which ran at 150 mhz).

I had a Cyric 133 ( or 166? cant remember) and it ran just fine. did the job.

Now I have p3-733 it does its job too.

Maybe they are chaning the names beacuse a 1.8ghz cpu dosnt sound that much better then 1.6, its ONLY .2 ghz faster. Sif that will make a differance. but 1400 version to 1600, thats a WHOPNIG 200 thingos more!

I want one.

people will just bench it mentally based on experience like they always do

you'd have no idea how fast an (x)mhz cpu was either if you didn't have something to rate it against from prior experience

i'm looking at a athlon 1.4 and i currently have a p3 550 (at 733) what they have done is what EVERY single person that comes up to rivel intel

Good work at getting that PIII that high... I can't get my PIII 450 higher than 504 :o(

Ordinary-non-computer-type person walks into shop, looks at processors.

AMD 1.4ghz
Intel 1.8ghz

Good chance they'll go 'Wow, 1.8 is greater than 1.4!'

I'd imagine that even with a model name/number or whatever, they'll still print the Mhz somewhere...

I think that might also look at the price diff too SacredSperm :p

$2000+ for a 2GHz P4 v <$400 for 1.4GHz Athlon. Hmmm.

Now we have finally reached the funkiest news in this article. I already spoke about it before, AMD needs to do something about the huge clock frequency gap between its Athlon processors and Pentium 4. Shortly before the news arrived at my desk I was discussing this very issue with my editor Frank Voelkel, who is still obsessed by the mission to teach the masses that clock speed ain't saying nothing about performance. I told him that I gave up on it. Endless regurgitations of "don't just buy clock speed! AMD's Athlon is often faster than Pentium 4 even though it runs at a lower clock!" makes a man tired, especially someone who is struggling to get the word out for more than 5 years (with very few brakes). So I said "Frankly, the best thing AMD could do is bring back the good old PR-rating." Frank didn't like it. We all hated those PR-numbers used by AMD, Cyrix, IBM and Centaur a few years ago, because they were terribly misleading.

Still, what choice has AMD got? How much do you think a marketing campaign would cost that would make all those potential customers understand that Athlon at 1.5 GHz is faster than Pentium 4 at 2 GHz? I don't even think it would be possible. When Intel's engineers designed Pentium 4 for high clock frequencies they knew they had AMD by the balls. So AMD HAS TO fall back onto the good old PR-rating idea unless it wants to lose its balls.

considering hunter forgot to mention that, or even link to the page preceeding it, that last line makes it look like PURE SPECULATION about the entire thing.

It doesnt say they are, he just says they have to. Which doesnt mean amd will.

And just to put a bit more proof towards the fact thats its merely specualation, why doesn't any of the OTHER hardware review sites, ie, Anandtech, HardOCP, etc, mention anything about this?

Heck, could be speculation after all.

Correct, ppl. 'Tis indeed a psychological thingy-mahjiga...

One of the main reasons the G4 (Apple) sold terribly was the preception that since it was 513MHz (or whatever it was), it was much slower than the competition. WRONG!!! But poor Apple copped it anyway...

Lesson from all this: The public are stupid.

dose that mean we need to buy a chip then run cpuid only to find we got one that was 100mhz less than we needed?

That's Ghay

decane - did you even bother to read the thread, or just the first post in this thread and then reply?

i think that it would be extremely stupid to not, in the bios, tell you what mhz the cpu is runing at, or atleast, relese the detail on the web, so that ppl who ahve a clue, can go look at the sheet and compare it.

i will be buying AMD for quite some time to come, i dojnt' really care what intel does, but i would still like to know exactly what i'm getting for my buck.

Check out this article on Overclockers.Com to see their take on the whole AMD PR thing.

hmmmms

this has gotta affect overclocking in someway
coz wat are u gonna do if u dont know the mhz..
eg. a 1600 or 1.4 (using above example) wat does it become then a n 1700?
wtf...

nats :(
i know yer doing this on purpose, stop it :(
first silent remorse now hunter? yer going to need the ausgamer bar for my auslamer bar soon
just do this next time, cut news from lamer forum thread, paste into news posting triumphenginynatscodecainerthing and post it and just pretend yew never went into the forums
mark my werds, they'll take over, they will :(

oh and cyph re:decane, yew see ppl do that all the time in these forums, do yew think he'll even come back and read what yew sed heh

and SIF there wouldnt be hacked bios's to show mhz and almost guarantee'd the techs writing the bios's would have some versions done that show mhz, and they'd get leaked sooner or later in some way

yay, theres now something else about it? woo.

decane - did you even bother to read the thread, or just the first post in this thread and then reply?

Hell no u see how long this thing is...

U want me to read ALL of it before replying?

Hell No

Cos everyone knows that a 4 cylinder WRX = 4 cylinder hyundai, right?

What is it with these marketing bozos? If they can't easily explain it as simply as that, then they outta get into a new business.

But the really really dumb part is that they are rating their CPU against the P4, which is like saying "hey we aspire to being just like a P4".

I think they should use the QR - the Quake Rating.

When Joe I Dont Know s*** About Computers Jnr walks into a computer store and says "Well 1.8 is better then 1.4 ...its..its bigger" the computer salesmen is not goin to try and convince him to buy the cheaper AMD system when he can milk the sucker for what twice the price for the same performance..

AMD spend their time making quality processors, Intel spend their time making their processors 'sound' quality.

Penny-Arcade

"This is where Intel has the drop on AMD, because Intel has taken the path of least resistance. It doesn't require the dimwit to do anything more than "These costs the same. 1.7GHz is more than 1.4Ghz. Therefore 1.7GHz is better." That's simple and intuitive. "

since when does a 1.7gig pentium cost the same as a 1.4gig athlon? least that what it look like he's saying to me....if he's sayin the 1.7 is the athlon then wtf r AMD worried about?

Maybe in the USA, especially with the last batch of Price cuts. Besides it's an example, an the example still holds true.

I tend to agree with Suba. There should be an independant rating on processors. My thoughts were MIPS. But probably a rating based on the average scores from ten of the most popular benching apps would be even better. And I mean CPU benching, not system/vid card benching apps like 3dmark.