[ Thanks to Jeff
Field for this link. ]
“A few years ago, Cyrix, now part of VIA, released a
line of CPUs called the 6×86. Cyrix claimed that these CPUs were
equivalent to Intel CPUs of a higher clock, and labeled them as
such with “performance ratings,” PR ratings for short. Cyrix was
criticized for this, because the CPUs didn’t really outperform
higher clocked Intel CPUs. We have been without PR ratings from the
major CPU makers for the last few years, but now again we find them
in use, with the new Athlon XP line of CPUs.The first time PR ratings were used, by Cyrix, they were
somewhat fair — the CPUs beat or equaled Intel CPUs some of the
time, and were in other ways slower. However, since the release of
the Pentium IV, AMD has had a problem. AMD’s CPUs easily matched or
beat Pentium IV CPUs at higher clock speeds. However, Intel had the
upper hand in marketing. You see, the average consumer doesn’t
understand latency, pipelines, and other things that determine the
speed of a CPU. For the most part, most consumers cling to a
principle that just doesn’t work anymore — higher clock speed is
faster and better. If one chip runs at 1530MHz, and another runs at
1800MHz, most of them will pick the higher clocked CPU. This put
AMD at a disadvantage in the minds of consumers.In order to fix this problem, AMD has chosen to make the move
back to PR ratings for its CPUs. This latest AMD CPU, the Athlon XP
1800+, runs at 1.53GHz, yet it performs much faster than a Pentium
4 at 1.7GHz. So its fair game to label it an 1800+, because it
really does perform that well, and is in fact a bonus to consumers,
rather than burden — because by purchasing an AMD processor they
can, in most cases, save money, and get better, or at least
equivalent, performance.”