Whats in the name?

Lol... I know I shouldn't be asking this but.

In "Atlthon 64 X2 6000+", what does the "6000+" actually mean?

(I KNOW I've read it somewhere, and now this friend asked me and I just wasent sure... :S)

It compared to a Pentium 4 running at 6 ghz.. They really need to redo the scale system though...s ince no normal joe has a 6 ghz pentium 4.. and... yeah... just.. yeah.. lol

HA! I KNEW IT! I made this bet with this intel guy who wouldn admit it! HA! So I googled it but no luck, wondering if anyone could give me some... hard evidence?

Well.. I knew it used to be to compare it to a Pentium 4.. But now I have no clue really... I think the X2s might be for Pentium Ds since a pentium D is a dual pentium 4... And I cant find any info on it anymore either.. I know someone here knows the details of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PR_rating

This is as I remembered it, the AXPs were rated compared to the Athlon Thunderbird chips according to AMD. However, almost everyone recognized this as BS, especially with later Athlon XP and 64 chips. A 3.2Ghz Thunderbird would eat the AXP 3200+ for lunch and ask for seconds. Same with the 6000+ in single threaded apps. While AMD might not admit it, the reason for the model numbers was to counteract the effect of seeing a 2.4Ghz Pentium4, and thinking its faster than a 2.0Ghz Athlon XP, which it most certainly wasn't.

In spirit you won the bet, but you will find no proof that this was AMD's intention unless your friend accepts common sense as proof.

The original naming system related to Thunderbirds, it had nothing to do with P4's. Since AMD kept up the naming convention, people applied it to P4's, which is incorrect. The numbering system used to have meaning, but not anymore. The number does not always mean higher performance. Also, a 6ghz PD would pretty much SMOKE a 6000+ at everything, but is not practical because it would require sub zero cooling. When they introduced the dual cores, everything pretty much went to hell, because they boosted the ratings for everything at the same clocks.


So, I'd say your friend was right.

I'd say he was wrong, but the PR system is not really used for comparing PDs anymore. Infact it was really stopped being used once A64s came out. The PR system is mostly to show you the difference between the chips and show you just how much of a 'leap' it is, going from say a 4200+ to a 4400+. The difference between those, IIRC, is that the 4400+ has 1mb of cache per core. That doesn't justify 200 mhz for a pentium D, so it really is only useful in distinguishing between the 2.

I too would say your friend is right, officially that is. You can never get AMD to admit that it has relevance to Intels performance, even if its pretty obvious it does. Who really cares about Thunderbirds performance? Not AMD for sure, its just to cover their legal asses.

I'd say neither is right for the reason Cheator pointed out. These days it has nothing to do with TBirds or Pentium 4s. An A64 4000+ at 2.6GHz and an X2 4000+ at 2GHz are clearly not identical in performance to each other, a pentium/Core anything at 4GHz, or a TBird at 4GHz.

As far as AMD's marketing department is concerned though, they're hoping you're thinking the bigger number is better . Hence, why did Intel bother making it an E6600 instead of a Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz CPU.