JavaFox

(1995) Pentium
It is revealed that the Pentium can't do math properly under some circumstances. The Pentium FDIV Bug, as it has come to be called, is well-documented and quite infamous. Interested parties can click here to see a dramatic example of how serious this bug can be.

(1997) MMX
Called the "Pentium FO bug," this little flaw causes MMX-enabled processors to freeze. Fun!

(1997) Pentium II FPU
Intel is declared winner of the "Most Floating Point Bugs in a Single Year" award when Robert Collins discovers a bug in the PII's FPU that renders the processor incapable of converting large floating point numbers into integers. Intel fesses up and licks its wounds.(link)

(1998) Deschutes (Celeron)
This is the release that to this day makes consumers afraid of the Celeron name. Cacheless and crippled, Deschutes was a eunuch of a processor.

(1999) Katmai (Pentium III)
Lackluster and inadequate, this processor single-handedly lost Intel's speed advantage to AMD. It would not regain it, really, until 2002. If Katmai hadn't been so crappy, and the Athlon so good, AMD would have never nabbed 25% of the market. Thanks, Intel!

(1999) Whitney (i810)
Do we need to go there? Where's the AGP port? Has AMD ever put out a chipset this poor? I think not.

(2000) Camino (i820)
Damage control gone seriously wrong. Intel, through some act of monumental and cosmic stupidity, adopts RDRAM for its PIII platform. Nevermind the fact that PC800 doesn't do a damned thing for a CPU with an FSB of 133MHz, RDRAM is so expensive that nobody buys it. As such, Intel tries to make their flagship chipset run both expensive RDRAM and inexpensive SDRAM. The result is a fiasco of recalls, instabilities issues, and a whole lot of crow-eating. This leaves PIII users stranded, forced to use either third-party or outdated chipsets. It isn't until i815 that we see a good chipset out of the chipmaker.

(2000) Cu128 (Celeron)
CuMine-based Celerons hit the market and--- they are smacked down HARD by AMD's Duron. A thoroughly unattractive chip, the Celeron soldiers on for almost a year until Intel finally decides to equip it with a halfway decent 100MHz bus. It still sucks, though.

(2000) 1.13GHz (Pentium III)
2000 is a big year for Intel. It's also a big year for the industry. This year marks the first time a desktop processor capable of one billion clock cycles per second is released -- and it came from AMD. In an attempt to be the first ABOVE 1GHz, Intel releases their 1.13GHz Pentium III. It proves to be unstable, and Intel again suffers the indignity of a recall.

(2001) Willamette (Pentium 4)
The release of the Willamette is absolutely underwhelming. The Willamette has bizarre power issues, has a die-size the size of the Lousiana Purchase, is expensive, is architecturarlly inferior, and is easily outperformed by AMD processors at lower clockspeeds. It isn't until these bad boys hit 2GHz that they start to match Athlon performance.

--

If anyone has anything to add, please do!

brc64

Yeah, like AMD has a great history.. don't make me plug my K6-2 500 back in and do some benchmarks..

Could your descriptions of Intel products be any more biased? I'm sure if I put much effort into it, I could post equally disparaging remarks regarding every major AMD CPU that came along, but unlike you, I have more important things to do with my life. You go ahead and post your anti-Intel propaganda, but know this.. my Intel CPU may not be as fast as yours, but when it comes to today's applications, I can run every damn one you can.

- Me

[SIZE=xx-small]How was that?[/SIZE]

JavaFox

Bias? Most of my comments were based on fact. The Pentium did HAVE documented bugs. So did the PII. There were documented recalls of Camino and the 1.13GHz CuMine. The Willamette does have power problems, has a large die size, is more expensive, and is outperformed by most Athlons. Those are all factual statements; do you want to debate them with me?

As far as my criticism of the Katmai, Deschutes, Whitney, Netburst, and Cu128 -- I think my complaints are valid. If you want to argue that any of these were good products, by all means DO. They may have not been defective like the processors mentioned in the previous paragraph, but they were not very competitive.

Propaganda, if you know what the word means, merely means arguements in favor of something. By that definition, this was absolutely propaganda; I'll admit to that. Some of it was editorial, but a lot of it was based on harsh, documented, and irrefutable fact. Don't get upset at me for telling the truth. If you want to complain about AMD's past, by all means DO. Nowhere in my post did I pimp the K6s, because, frankly, they were bad chips. But look at the topic. I'm writing about Intel's fuckups, not AMD's.

Why? Why the one-sidedness, you say?

The answer to that is simple. Intel has this reputation in business of being stable, superior, and faultless. Are they? Not always. It's for that reason that I feel it necessary to complain a little. Intel's shit isn't always perfect, it isn't always good, and sometimes it's so bad it can't even be released.

AMD has no such reputation. They have made mistakes, of course -- every company does. But AMD does not have an ironclad rep' like Intel does; I don't see a point in trying to poke holes in what arguably does not exist.

As for the "get a life"-esque comment -- I wrote that up at work. Sue me for being bored.

Dom

Anything worng with the Northwood's?

brc64

One of these days I'll post a halfway decent flame.. until then, where's reno?

- Me

JavaFox

Price, mostly. And the aforementioned power issues and limitations of Netburst still exist. As far as defects go, some people have claimed that throttling has kicked in during normal operations, and there is, also, Ed Stroligo's stuttering P4 problem. And if there's anything Ol' Ed isn't, it's biased towards AMD. He's one of the most vehement AMD critics I've seen.

"Here, I'm noticing that when I'm watching a video, the video stutters. Long enough to be noticeable, often enough to be noticeable. Not something I noticed with the same files on the Athlon system. Same video card, same hard drive, did defragmentation just to make sure.

Not just a matter of speed, either. I see the same thing whether I'm running at 2.67 or 2.13GHz.

I know, thermal throttling is the standard explanation, but this is happening on a water-cooled system that doesn't get above 43C or so.

Looking elsewhere, here and there, in the air war, I read about more extreme examples of this. One of the more extreme examples I read was of someone getting a bit less than 4K Sandra CPU when he should have been getting over 5K. That's a huge difference. "

Dom

I got mines pretty cheap, 1.8A Ghz, 512 cache - 185$.

JavaFox

That's not bad at all, but I could get an Athlon XP 1800+, ECS K7S5A, and 256MB of PC2100 for $189. An Intel processor will never allow you to get that kind of a deal.

Dom

Where did you see that deal at?

Jeff

Id get any Athlon based processor, but for Intel, Northwood or nothing.

__________________

JavaFox

NewEgg.com my friend, New.Egg.com.

Dom

Hehe, thanks.

reno

eh hem, just a slight correction...

Katmai for the P3 core only went up to 667Mhz, and depending what proc you got (some had 100mhz FSB, orthers 133mhz, some had on die 256k cache others had off die 512k, etc.) the Katmai easily beat the early athlons up to 700mhz.

As soon as coppermine came out, (133mhz FSB, on die 256k cache) Intel claimed advantage again, until around the 800mhz mark, where intel was slower to ratchet up the clock speed.

RDRAM was excellent for the P3, it's just that no one really needed it and it was so overpriced that it was ineffective.

One thing that I notice comparing old AMD to old intel is that old intel has a lot less "hitching" and "jerking" while playing games. You know how when something loads into cache, or there are tons of chars on the screen, the P3 will be a lot smoother into the transition (def. not let you realize there is a transition until you see "loaded (model name here).(extention))

And the original pentium clocked at 266 can kick the pants off anything AMD until they get above 350mhz. But still, anything K6 named sucked major cheapo ass. even Cyrix was better.

reno

43C WATERCOOLED? Man he's doing something wrong, I get that with air cooling on a stock HSF with a thermal pad. It probably is throttling cause it's going over 70C under load.

BTW, now that my computer room has skyrocketed to 29C (holy hotness!) my poor processor is hitting the 50s range of temps...ah well, with an ambient case temp of 31C I guess that isn't too bad...

Ambient 18C: Core 43C/Case 23C

Ambient 29C: Core 55C/Case 31C

@ load

Not bad scaling I guess, just a little too hot for me.

Silentst2000

I just have two things to say.

If Amd has such great cpu's then why arn't they on top and why did they develop a bad rep for being unstable in the past

also the pentium crap was only for pentium 60 mhz?( the pentium stuff was before I got into com's)

__________________
P4@2.4ghz
Radeon 9700pro
DDR 400
Nuff said

Necrosis

You are right about the first part. Especially since at the the time the Athlon's cache only ran at half the speed of the processor. However, my old 750 Slot A outpaced my friend's 866 P3.

The Cyrix comment was a bit much. I've owned a number of K6, K6-2, & 3's. No way in hell did the Cyrix ever come close to them for gaming. The Cyrix just planned sucked ass, and was only good for 2D and Office apps.

SnoopyII

The majority of Intel's home user CPU R & D and ad money is directly siphoned from profits in their SERVER market. If Intel had no server market and the home CPU sales were directly compared you night be shocked...

reno

Man, even worms is slow on a 350 k6-2! The last game I was ever able to play on my p233MMx (later replaced by a 266 I found in my school) was fallout tactics. I was able to play at 800x600, but it still ran rather fluidly and sufficed until I got my 750 duron in. Anything pre Slot A athlon 600+mhz from AMD earned it's reputation as last-resortware.

Necrosis

I remember playing Quake 2 & 3 on the same processor w/ a TNT2 Ultra with no problems. Think I also played MechWarrior 3 as well with no problems. Of course these games run much better with "other" processors (P2, PIII, Celery, Duron, Athlon, P4), still I did not have many gaming issues. However, when I moved from 350 K6-2 (back tracked from a 450 K6-3) to an Athlon 750 I found out what I had been missing. Funny thing is one of the most impressive systems I ever have owned was the orginal K6 300 on an Intel chipset. If Intel really wanted take a bite out of AMD, they should make chipsets for their processors.

Here is the K6's I have owned

K6 300, K6-2 300, K6-2 400, K6-2 450, K6-2 500, & K6-3 450.

While I'm at it here are my Athlon's.

Athlon Classic 750, Athlon 1 Gig TB, 1.2 Gig TB, 1.4 Gig TB, XP 1500, 1.2 Gig Athlon 4 & XP 1800.

Now I will do Intel

486sx 20MHz, Pentium 150 MHz, 166 Mhz, 200Mhz, 266MHz Mobile, P4 2.26 Ghz.

Oh, I also have a 600Mhz flip chip Celery somewhere in my house.

JavaFox

Actually, Silentst2000, if you read the post, you'd see that it was more a critique of Intel than it was a glowing reccomendation of AMD. I am not, in this post, arguing that AMD is more deserving of the reputation Intel has. I did not say that. What I am saying, and what all you Intel fanboys are apparently missing, is that INTEL does NOT deserve the reputation it has. It doesn't.

Yeah, there are a bunch of more critiques than that, in case you didn't notice.


And by the way, if ANY processor looks like a Cyrix, it's the Celeron, when compared to the Duron.

Domo Kun

AMD isnt on top because they dont pound commercials into people like intel does. advertising is the only reason things sell to the majority. the minority is smart enough to fend for itself, but the larger crowd must be hand fed. intel is feeding them with the millions of dollars pumped into leotard-wearing homosexuals and blue aliens dancing with processors that magically make their spaceship blare multimedia from nowhere. as long as people think that these processors are the pinnacle of computing (believe me, a 1.7ghz pentium 4 with 128mb of ram for $1200 is NOT the pinnacle, but hey... clockspeed sells more than options.) then companies will newb their computers up even more. less memory, less hd speed.... just more #s! i get a 2ghz pentium 4 for $700, wohoo! too bad it comes with 64mb of sdram and a refurbished 20gb hard drive, with onboard sound and onboard video. yippee, i can almost play solitaire at 640x480. they do this with evey computer. i see XP1600+ chips packaged with integrated video, i mean come on people.


when will users realize that a subsystem is just as important (if not more) than a cpu? because a 2.53ghz p4 with geforce 2 mx 200 vs, say, a penium 3 with a geforce 4 ti4600 is going to be a pushover in favor of the p3. companies dont tell them that, do they?

JavaFox

Exactly. I was going to address this point, but someone beat me to it. Intel spends as much on advertising as AMD makes in a given year, and that's why they're on top. Netburst, as far as I'm concerned, is 90% advertising and 10% technology. Think about it. The P4's design cuts every corner and sacrifices everything to boost clockspeed.

If it wasn't for aggressive marketing and strong business partners like Dell, Intel would not have the majority of the market. 'Cause they sure as hell aren't the leaders because of good tech'.

Now, if the rumors are true, and Sun Microsystems starts selling AMD boxes, that may level the playing field a little, in terms of sales.

Necrosis

AMD has only had one commercial if any of you was lucky enough to have seen it. I never seen it on TV but it was on their site for awhile. It felt really good to see them do that, just wish they would of done it more. I also think for a nice marketing ploy. AMD should change the Advanced to American Micro Devices. For along time I was proud to own a prcessor that was made in the states, from an American company.

I bet I know the computer your talking about. That nasty Gateway box you see advertised all the time. Everytime I hear of someone buying a Dell or a Gateway I go off, and then show them how much cheaper they can get it if they build it themselves.

JavaFox

If you read any of those awful computer magazines, you'll see that AMD does a print ad every once in a while. Not much, but it's something.

I think 25% marketshare is not too shabby considering the utter lack of advertisment. I think that if Sun picks up the Opteron, it will legitimize AMD in the eyes of Big Business, which should definitely help boost sales.

They're fabbed in Germany, dude.

Necrosis

Not always, Dresden came on-line in 1999.

UberLord

You mean that parts of Germany have never been on-line since 1999?

Holy Broadband Batman!

__________________
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"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
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JavaFox

True that.

I once read an article that stated that some Intel engineers refer to Dresden as "The Death Star." Heh heh.