Hardwarecentral have an interesting article discussing the pros and cons of AMD's performance rating system. Since the Athlon XP has been AMD's most successful processor to date, Intel have been querying their rating system and suggesting that it confuses consumers more than it clarifies the actual performance that the chips give.
Is there a need for a new industry standard for performance rating?
From hardware.earthweb.com:
We start off with an Athlon XP 1500+ running at 1.33GHz and end with an XP 2000+ running at 1.67GHz. Sounds about right, with a 333MHz core speed increase alongside a 500-point jump in the model numbers. If you compare the actual megahertz per PR score for each processor, however, things get weird -- the higher the model number, the exponentially faster the performance rating.
This is due to starting the 1.33GHz Athlon XP off at a relatively high 1500+ rating (88MHz per 100 PR points), then using a totally different 66MHz per 100 points for the following models. A different way to look at it is to take imaginary steps down the scale, to find that a theoretical Athlon XP 1000+ would actually run at 1.0GHz, while any lower-speed processors would feature clock rates in excess of their performance ratings.
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Intel seems bound and determined to jeer and resist any proposed move to a performance-ratings solution, probably because it enjoys a substantial clock-speed advantage in the current market. This strikes me as a bit ironic, because with the introduction of the Pentium 4 Northwood, Intel might actually benefit from some sort of performance rating comparison.
That's because the Northwood's 0.13-micron-process design and larger L2 cache deliver a higher level of performance per clock speed than the older Pentium 4. Sound familiar? The Northwood is an impressive processor, but its marketing puts Intel between a rock and hard place: If you're Joe Consumer, which would you buy, a Pentium 4/2.0A Northwood or slightly cheaper Pentium 4/2.0? According to Intel's conventional wisdom, 2.0GHz is 2.0GHz, so you're safe to save a few bucks with the older model.
Is there a need for a new industry standard for performance rating?