Complaints about AMD’s PR rating don’t hold water. –Ed
Yesterday, I got an email pointing out this petition to AMD about the return of PR.
I have problems with this.
First, if there were such a thing as the Intel Dirty Tricks Division (and I’m not saying there is at all), this is exactly the kind of thing they’d put up. The way this is set up, no matter what AMD
does, Intel wins. If AMD drops PR, people with MHz on the brain buy Intel. If they don’t, just what kind of CPUs are the petitioners going to buy? Via?
Is that smart?
Second, calling, say, a 1.53GHz Palamino an Athlon 1800 is a lot closer to what I would call the truth in any comparison to the PIV than raw Mhz.
An Athlon MHz isn’t the same as a PIV MHz. Period. This measurement doesn’t work in this comparison, and everyone who does these measurements agrees.
The measurement isn’t good anymore. This petition insists on a broken measurement.
Is that smart?
Third, a few of you have written to me saying you’re afraid you won’t know what you’re getting. Everybody and his brother will have the actual MHz ratings up on these processors long before you’ll even get the chance of buying one, and if AMD starts messing with the numbers, plenty of people will yell about that.
Update: Take a look here for a chart showing the “real” MHz and the PR rating.
This petition is yelling about being deprived of something you can find out in five minutes.
Is that smart?
Fourth, a few overclockers indicated that they won’t be able to figure out the speed of the processor when they overclock. There is a program called WCPUID, and a million others like it that will do just that. They’ll continue to give you that number.
It’s kind of hard to claim being a technowiz if you can’t or won’t solve the problem by installing a program.
Is that smart?
Fifth, you can’t wait until the machine boots to find out your speed? Well, first, I suggest you look up the word P-A-T-I-E-N-C-E. It will do you well in life.
If that doesn’t work, here is how you can find that speed even before the boot up screen comes up.
Go into the BIOS, and write down the multiplier setting of your CPU on a piece of paper. Then find out the FSB of your machine, and write that number down right under your CPU multiplier.
Then multiply those two numbers, and you’ll know the MHz.
I don’t understand why this is so difficult. I don’t understand why someone would refuse to buy AMD anymore because they had to multiply two numbers.
Is that smart?
Finally, AMD isn’t doing this just to make your life miserable. They’re doing what they have to do to hold on against a massive Intel onslaught of inferior PIV/SDRAM machines with a “better number” to impress the ignorant and/or retarded.
Maybe I suffer from low self-esteem or something, but I find AMD trying to stay alive a little more important than my seeing a MHz number telling me what I do automatically in my head, anyway.
Even if I weren’t so altruistic, I have a problem finding the lack of a Mhz number to be worse than spending several hundred dollars more for an equivalent Intel chip.
Is that smart?
Help me. Taking all of this into account, signing this petition makes no sense to me if you like AMD at all.
This isn’t like PETA sticking up for the animals. That PR rating will give those who know nothing a better and truer idea of relative performance than a broken measurement. So you’re not doing the ignorant any favors by doing this, you’ll just help sell more PIV/SDRAM boxes.
If others don’t benefit from this, then the only person left is yourself, and for all the reasons stated above, I don’t see why this would be a big deal to anybody who really understood computers.
I just don’t understand why a smart mature person would have a problem with this.
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