"Core 2 Duo -- The Embarrassing Secrets"? - Page 3

Go read his comments... all pro-AMD. Always criticizing Core 2 Duo and always praising the so called superior AMD motherboards.
no offense, but i wouldn't categorize that as fanboyism...
i haven't read his posts on AMDzone, but i'm sure he wouldn't post something very different from what he posts here.

he can criticize Core 2, if he can provide facts to back them up. the real fanbois would be the ones who posted the "appreciation threads" this morning, where he did not cite anything to back his statements up. that's pure fanboyism.

criticizing, and backing it up with facts and benchmarks, is an act of debate, not fanboyism.

Neither have I. I've never called him a fanboy. I believe it was Dasickninja who brought about that word.

I called him biased.

Vern, it may be a different life experience, being older, or only just being influenced by different folks, but unethical has always been "bad" (that is undesirable and a fault) since as long as I can remember. I wonder if you only just switched your view to "unethical is not bad". Just looking at that, doesn't it make you do a double take? Sometimes it's possible that a group of people will lead themselves into rather dispicable behaviour, over time. History has a lot of examples. One of the things that happens is that words take on new meaning.

All that aside, I wouldn't say Intel was unethical (since I use to word to denote actually evil actions). Instead I'd say it simply tried to prevent competition, instead of allowing it. If you made a product and your competitor went to all the re-sellers and paid them kickbacks to sell either none or very small amounts of your product, with non-disclosure agreements, you'd think of them as....______?

I supposed I'd say cowards and liers, etc. But I couldn't call them unethical by my use of words. Unethical is still bad here in this house.

But that was then for Intel (2005, etc). Now Intel is on top for the moment, and doesn't need to do it, and has a spotlight on them, etc.

But....having been in business actually, my personal subjective reaction is I'd rather buy at a significant cost disadvantage to avoid the cowardly lying company. I just don't want to do business with them.

That's at the same time that I admire their products, their great engineering, and the beneficial effects of their competion when I do buy. So I like Intel, while I will not do business with them.

Some folks here would have it that I'm a bad person in some way because I state and have a personal preference that isn't their own, or isn't based on the same criteria as theirs. But "Freedom" is the opposite of this. Finally, some try to smear those who have different opinions, and that is indeed cowardly and lying both, isn't it?

Don't be afraid of such people, for your own self-respect, I say!

I think the "author" (I use that term loosely) of the "article" (again, I'm being generous) was trying to state that the C2D line of processors was built to excel at benchmarks instead of actual applications. Think of stuff like 3DMark... sure, we all want higher scores, but that's not an actual game any of us play. I think that's where he was going with that.

I know... but it excels in applications moreso then it does in 3D Mark or other synthetic tests. He used the term "benchmark". Benchmarking can be a test of any degree, real world or synthetic. Therefore he's claiming ALL tests done on the C2D are fake.

IIRC AMD is hitting the 65nm thermal wall with 2.5 GHz and half the cores.

Lets say Intel really did make C2D a bench CPU. But wouldnt C2D development have taken Intel like 100 years to complete since it wins in any possible application?

Just an observation... but arent we talking economics here?

The reason why I post this is for context. Under our economic context, what Intel did there IS unethical in a free and open capitalistic economy. Its why we have government. But generally I agree with you both to most exstent. I live in California. A few years back, the "government" (pregovernator) chose to give everyone a chance to be winners in HS sports. IF they wanted to, they could be in the playoffs, regaurdless of record. To me, thats what this article reminds me of. If you want everyone to be able to play, then YOU pay for it, not me. And dont try to tell me that just because this team or that team needs a chance by whatever logic, or fogged distortions, is just as good cause they play too, I aint buyin it. ONLY when its worth buying it, THEN Ill spend my money and takes my chances

How do you make a CPU that runs 3DMark better than applications?

If I remember correctly, when nvidia were 'optimising' 3DMark they detected the camera movement and replaced the shaders with different ones to improve their performance. Do you think that Intel have a 'cheat unit' in the C2D which detects 3DMark and runs different code?

3DMark runs the same instructions as applications do. If Intel improved the performance of some instructions that 3DMark uses, then the same performance boost will be achieved by applications which use those instructions. If Intel increased the cache to make 3DMark run faster, then other applications that want a large cache will run faster too. How would they 'cheat' to make 3DMark run faster without making other things run faster?

[quote="MarkG"]

Easy, usually benchmarking applications run different tests in isolation and after compute a score based on individual test's score.

Now if you improve parts of CPU like for example integer multiplication using a high order of magnitude like 4 times faster but memory access stays the same. in the benchmarks like SpecInt you will see a great increase but the real life applications won't see that much of a difference because the system didn't get an overall improvement, and SpecInt is a specific benchmark.

(Well I'm not implying that this is the case for Core 2 as tests clearly confirm that's it's a architecture that's improved overall even for memory access despite using old fsb)

So the answer to your question, optimizing a CPU for benchmarks means not making overall optimizations to the architecture, but local ones which results in greater benchmarks scores but possibly lower real applications benefits.

I just explained to him what the expresion 'optimized for benckmarks' means or could mean, I din't sugest anything. Where did the money part came from?

No I think that article is good for it's purpose. Re-assuring fan boys that AMD is fine and kicking ass. However C2D is the least of their problems. If Intel manufacturing side can kick out Penryn before barcelona hits critical channel mass AMD might end up never getting Barcelona to market very well and losing more share/cash. At that point the R600/graphics side or the possibility of re-integrating graphics/chipsets or hitting critical mass in cheap computers for asia/third world to continue. Words/statistics can prove anything. Sure we can always look at the downsides of something. Ok I'm tired and cranky nm back to work so I can go home.

are you debating me or commenting.
I didn't have any major point nor am I an AMD fanboy I have my intel OC'd but I would love to get a K10 and a Penryn.
While I know the entire change in CPU/GPU /CGPU will be interesting to see what happens if anything along those lines I'd still favor ATI integrated over Intel although who knows regarding their re-organization and pickup of graphics people(employees) last year.
A lot is in the air.
I'm not sure why you decided to dissect my post as I said my mind is failing as I'm finishing a few last things before leaving work.

It was on AMDZone. To prop up AMD/dig at Intel and it did that. *shrug* I'm out for real now tho and I get it now =P

Sharikou props up AMD and digs at Intel