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I like the following part :
Sleazy Marketing Targeting Stupid People
While I certainly support educating people to the fact that CLOCK SPEED IS NOT EVERYTHING (you just knew that was coming) the marketing tactic used by AMD to number their processors slightly above the true clock speed is misleading. A 1.33 GHz Athlon XP is called the Athlon XP 1500. Makes you believe it is a 1.5 GHz chip, yet it most cases the chip runs slower than AMD's older Athlon Thunderbird 1400.
This sleazy numbering scheme has also allowed AMD to pull another trick that we've all seen them pull over the past 6 months, and that is to use a big number increase to hide a rather small clock speed increase. In October they launched the Athlon XP 1500, 1600, 1700, and 1800 models, followed in November by the 1900, then in January the 2000, and most recently the 2100. That's a lot of chips and a lot of numbers. But look at how they dumb it down to take advantage of most people's poor math skills:
The 1500 is a 1.33 GHz chip. Each subsequent "100" increase in part number corresponds to a 66 or 67 MHz instead in true clock speed. For example, the 1800 runs at 1.53 GHz, and the 2100 runs at 1.73 GHz clock speed.
While 2100/1500 = 1.4, which would imply a 40% increase in speed since October, the actual clock speeds - 1.73/1.33 = 1.3 - only indicate a 30% speed increase from the 1500 part to the 2100 part. In other words, AMD has sneaked in a whole 10% phantom speed increase that isn't there! Add to that the fact that AMD was already shipping the 1400 MHz Athlon already, and this 40% marketed speed increase really translates into just 23%.
Also if you do the math, i.e. 66/1600, each 66 MHz increase in speed from one part to the next is really only about a 4% real increase. 4%, that's it. Looking at AMD's wholesale pricing on their web site, each extra 4% increase in speed translates into a whopping 20% hike in the price. The XP2100 (the 1.73 GHz chip) literally costs $81 more than the XP2000 (the 1.67 GHz chip) costs, and that extra $81 for 4% more speed is a bad tradeoff.
Since I have always disliked the performance rating system this come as no surprise to me.
What do come as a surprise is that emulators.com was one of the hardest critics of the P4 when it arrived.
Oh well ....
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