exactly my feelings - which is why i bought my 1.4 the only advantage i can see with an XP is bragging rights, but other than that, it has improved SSE, the same amount of cache, a slightly bigger die (wow) and improved instruction sets. not worth the money for them at the mo me thinks.
I presume they havn't increased word size .... more cache is good.... I would like to see some sandra benches comparing a normal 1.4@1.5 with an XP 1800
At current prices i wouldnt bother, conisdering an XP1800 cost over twice the price of a normal 1.4 Tbird I like the look of the XP1500 mind, i can get em for about £115 (its a 1.33Ghz chip but will prolly outperform a normal 1.4Tbird)
hopefuly you can still do th bridges othrwise amd might find a few more people deserting them for the P4 due to the fact they cant wind up the clock speed. Also the XP1800 is ment to compeate withteh P4 1.8 however what compeats with the P4 at 2.0 ghz ?
No the AMD chips are "modest" atm. The 1800+ (1.53gig) compares to the P4 2.0gig atm, and they have a 1900+ and 2000+ in the process (respectively 1.6gig and 1.666gig i think*) Anyway, they are still mutliplyer unlocked afaik. I read it somewhere, ppl have had pretty good sucess with Ocing them. 1.53gigs get up to 1.8gig+ The only reason they have been modest with the PR rating is due to the release of the "northwood" 0.13micron P4 core which is meant to be supa supa fast and has 2x as much cache (512kb) and other "improvements" designed to put down AMDs comparitive speed. The Northwoods start at 2.0-2.2gig afaik, and afaik again are due for release in December... sometime...
I thought they were multiplier locked and you have to make five L1 bridges to unlock it (similar to the old ahtlons). AMD have now put little 'pits in the middle of the broken bridges - so you can't just use a HB pencil to make them either (though filling them up with silver paint and then using the pensil trick works I'm told). Cheers, r.
A little birdie has recently told me that all xp's are locked and all mp's unlocked. So when they're available you can get an mp if you want to overclock it by the multiplier... Cheers, r,
If they are locked surly half the reason peeps buy AMD who are computer user is because they can over clock. i knwo the performance market is a small portion of there users but the average AOL user isnt ether going to bother tring. After all how many sales are down to CPU that get fried in OC situations quite a few me thinks
No i don't think so... most cpu's don't go more than 10-15% over their rated speed without a lot of help (there are exceptions such as my 1gig AXIA @ 1.4 for example). AMD cpu's sell well because they're very quick and nice n cheap. Besides most hardcore overclockers don't touch the multiplier anyway, it's the fsb that gets hiked. r.