How does AMD does it???

[Dbest]

How does AMD manage to outperform a P4 while not running at a faster speed. Is it that it's capable of performing more instructions per cycle?

[Whir]

They're just darn good! Better FPU and stuff? I don't question, I just see cheaper + faster = good!

-Whir

[Dbest]

I agree with you they do know how to make CPU , but I would like to know how they do this, they make great CPU and also at a great price. Any idea of how this is possible

[Whir]

It's probably just in the chip architecture itself. Pentiums are faster at some things. Overall, I personally don't notice a different between say a T-Bird 1G running at 133 and a PIII 1G. I have no experience with the XP chips yet though, but I've heard some good things and plan on that being my next computer upgrade.

-Whir

[AuraEdge]

Yep, is more IPC (Instructions per clock). The Athlon outperforms all consumer Intel chips in IPC. P3 was close to Athlon in IPC, but the P4 chopped the Average IPC down to about 75-80% of what the P3's IPC is so that they could get the Mhz up - They did this because people see Mhz not IPC. AMD decided to continue increasing IPC (IPC went up a little bit from TBird to AthlonXP), and ramping up Mhz steadly as well, instead of sacrificing one for the other.

The reasoning behind this is based on the stages of each CPU - The P3 and the Athlon i believe work on a 12 stage cycle, while the P4 works on a 20 stage cycle. That means it takes longer to get each instruction done.
..Or something like that...

[Ace McGirk]

Here is a start,it explains x86 performance,and how to get more from it,which should give you a better idea how the Athlons ipc is better
http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=15000182



And this page will give you more stuff to read that will shed some light(you get to search around,lol)look near the bottom for the "secrets of high performance" series
http://www.aceshardware.com/list.jsp?id=4

[FreakyOCR]

Yeah it's IPC.... AMD makes it easy to understand....

P4 is like a 4 cylinder engine.

XP is like a V6 engine.

The XP can do more work at lower revs (MHz) whilst the P4 has to get way higher revs to get the same speed, but even at the higher revs the 4 cyl. has a hard time keeping up.

And yes the v6 will use more fuel, but it is electricity and the cost difference is negligble... especially when you consider the cost difference between the two processors....

AMD has a superior product, but Intel is using people's judgement that 2.0 GHz must be faster than 1.6 GHz.... hence AMD started labeling their processors as 1900+... some places are already labeling them as 1.9GHz parts.... heck the might as well..... AMD knocks the socks off Intel anyways.... and they are cheaper....

[skuz]

AMD didn't dump the numeric coprocessor.