rec.autos.simulators

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Thursday, August 19, 1999 - 14:47 CDT
AMD Athlon Test Results Questioned

Questions have arisen regarding Advanced Micro Devices Athlon test
results since a Toronto-based company revealed that AMD modified its
test suite to give the new processor an unfair advantage over the
Pentium III. According to this statement, AMD engineers optimized the
test suite in violation of the licensing agreement, something no other
company, incuding Intel, has been given the chance to do. This means
AMD compared the optimized Athlon results to the generic test suite
used with the Pentium III.

AMD's test results, referred to in this release announcing the
shipping of the Athlon processor, demonstrated that in one of two
tests, the 600 MHz Athlon outperformed the 600 MHz Pentium III by over
30 percent. An AMD representative told TechWeb the customized test
suite was fully disclosed on page 39 of a 42-page software performance
guide accompanying the test results. However, in the guide, AMD does
not mention optimizing its code for other test suites. Other firms
have said the Athlon generally outperforms the Pentium III in a
variety of applications.

Reported by: David Laprad

--
* rrevved at mindspring dot com  

Couple things:

1) Its only one benchmark they've admitted to optimizing so far.  If
thats it, and they go "whoops!  Sorry", It'll be ok.

2) Read the original Techweb article at:
http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB19990819S0008

The Avault article is just a really obvious paraphrase.  I suppose
that's ok, but it makes people wonder how many places actually put
*out* news instead of just regurgitating news from other sites....

Ah well.  The best (or worst, depending on your point of view) type of
meta-content that I saw was when one of those Freespace2 sites
interviewed Evil Avatar for his thoughts.  A fan site interviewing a
news site guy.... yeah.... that's real content! :-)

snip

Really?  What else does that phrase work for in big business?

            Zog

"Futuremark allowed AMD to modify a version of 3DMark '99. Even still the
Athlon outperforms the PentiumIII in many other NON-optimized benchmarks."

As if Intel never did that..duh!  Time for the old Has-Been to start being
competitive again.  Wake Up Intel!

Falcification is a criminal act. And if they falcified benchmark results and
people baught the product because of these results:

- They should request a full refund, else the courts, will be more than
happy to handle the case. And I don't think that the company wants to get
this type of media attention. I'm sure that Intel will be also happy to
serve it's competitor's curtomers.

I recently aquired a AMD K6-III 450 MHz and I will be *NOT VERY HAPPY* if I
will find out that it doesn't perform as it's supposed to be.
:-|

Then why Futuremark is the first to issue a press release accusing AMD
falsify the benchmark?

Foxbat

Competition is good.  But I wonder want competition AMD will compete with
once the IA32/IA64 architectures from Intel enter the consumer market since
its NOT x86 in any matter whatsoever. :)  Perhaps they can compete with
whomever it was that bought up Cyrix.

"so what?"?  People don't understand the significance of the K7 I guess.
But then again, you are obviously a skeptic so Im not going to waste my time
trying to explain the K7's importance in the market and what it means to
Intel and to competition.

Comparing MHz to MHz doesn't mean squat when you are comparing a completely
different architecture.  You can put wider tires on your Chevette than your
neighbors Lotus and then brag about it but that doesn't mean that it will
handle better than the Lotus.  You have to use real world apps to judge it.
You can't compare MHz between apples and oranges.

Yeah well now it's time for the Has-Been to play catch up.  Anyway, what the
K6 lacked in floating point it made up for in other areas.

Ditto.

With the K7 in the market, IA64 will be overpriced and not necessary.  There
will not be a market for it IMO and the K7 will be one of the reasons for
this.  Anybody that purchased a K7 system is not even going to notice or
care about IA64 if and when it emerges.  As you posted above "so what?".

Read this..
http://www.fullon3d.com/
http://www.3dmark.com/press/rel3.html

3D Mark 99 and Athlon DLL | armin | 15:24 EDT
                                  There has been a row over the use of a DLL
that had been optimized
                                  by AMD and added to the 3D Mark 99 MAX
benchmark software
                                  shipped with their review systems.

                                  Futuremark released the following
statement on the issue. I'd assume
                                  they received heat from Intel and chose to
move themselves into a
                                  neutral position.

                                  This was followed by this article on EB
News, which was a poor
                                  interpretation of the press release.
Especially there is no claim by
                                  Futuremark that their trademark is
violated by AMD, but rather that
                                  such a violation would occur by using 3D
Mark scores with the Athlon
                                  DLL in a way that was not following their
detailed instructions in the
                                  press release.

                                  More specifically still there are no
claims made that the benchmark was
                                  rigged by using the DLL in question - my
information is that it simply
                                  makes use of the new 3DNow! instructions,
which, among other
                                  things, will crash the K6-2 and K6-III if
it is used.

                                  The integrity of the benchmark is not
threatened, the performance is
                                  just optimized for the newer CPU that was
not available when 3D Mark
                                  99 MAX was released. Any questions whether
Intel would have pushed
                                  for a SSE DLL if their Pentium III had
come out after 3D Mark 99 MAX
                                  was launched?

                                  In closing, let me quote one of our most
reliable 3D graphics industry
                                  sources:

                                       "... As the register has
demonstrated, not all journalists have the ability
                                       to write anything but inaccurate,
poor quality, sensationalist
                                       journalism. I was disgusted by their
article and the article that it was
                                       spawned from. [...] This is gutter
press."

They didn't accuse AMD about the benchmarks, that's just the way the
press twisted it (if you read the press release and compare to the
press versions you'll notice that press have given the story a _huge_
spin :). In the press release they make a point about how the scores
should be _reported_ so that no mixups would happen between the
downloadable and Athlon optimized version. 3DMark 2000 is supposeed to
have optimizations for everything that's on the markets this fall.
Guess, they figured that they can only officially support their own
products... ;)

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