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Intel accused of inflating CPU benchmark results
(www.pcworld.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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I'm not going to say you're wrong but I'm surprised. It's like we lived in alternate universes.
Not that I think Intel wouldn't cheat, because they've showed what they're "capable of" time after time, but what I remember about Athlon vs P4 was that there was something about heat and wattage specified by AMD that was criticized heavily. Athlon was also not something you'd choose for overclock because of this.
I just googled a little and there didn't seem to be a trace of any controversy around P4 and tailormade compiler.
Oh boy the Tom's Hardware "scandal". That story was 100% planted by Intel. I think it was the K6, If the cooler dropped off, entirely the AMD thermal safety didn't react quickly enough. In my 40 years in IT I have NEVER heard about a cooler falling off the socket even once, except for that paid for cesspool of shit article.
That story together with the 180° they did on RAMBUS to favor P4 have made me NEVER use TOM's Hardware since. It was 100% dishonest paid for shilling. Either that or so idiotic it's not worth reading either way. Even you mentioning that now about 30 years later, it still pisses me off. 🤬 🤬 🤬
Never heard about heat problems with Athlon, and P3 and P4 weren't great overclockers either. Celeron was great, because you could up FSB 50%, Which made it actually faster than the top P3.
EDIT PS:
No there were no journalists that covered/revealed ANY of Intels shenanigans at the time. The entire industry seemed to be in an Intel Vacuum.
But entusiasts all knew that Athlon was way better than P4.
EDIT2:
There was also the issue that the Intel compiler had zero optimizations for any AMD CPU, but optimized heavily for P4. That was a general thing that Intel didn't even hide.
So the journalists are still covering for Intel to this day 15 years later, but the enthusiasts know the truth?
I'm still not saying you're wrong but you have to admit it's kinda strange a quick Google doesn't reveal anything?
So considering Intel used illegal means to keep AMD out, and was fined a billion dollars for it. You think they didn't touch gray areas in their marketing too? You seem to have no knowledge of what went on in IT in the 90's, and be very naive, or maybe just a shill or a troll.
What in "Not that I think Intel wouldn't cheat, because they've showed what they're "capable of" time after time.." was unclear for you? Your conclusion from the above statement is that I'm probably a shill or just doesn't know IT as good as you because I don't agree with you on the spot? Really? Is that what you using your full mental capacity was able to conclude from my statement?
Let me just clear up it a little for you: The issue isn't that Intel was (is) an asshole, it's that you blurb out unsubstantiated claims and when called out on it you claim that there's a conspiracy lead by Intel, all the journalists are on it but we all should take your word for it.
We both have all the information in the world literally in our hands and still you are unable to link to facts that support your statement and that is my fault somehow?
Nice talking to you. Have an awesome weekend. I will.
Hmm, do you remember the RAMBUS debacle, and the 180° turnaround Toms Hardware did on that in favor of Intel and P4?
I think that very clearly substantiates that Toms Hardware had an agenda to favor Intel.
It's not my fault if you are unaware of facts that were common knowledge among IT specialists at the time.
You are making the fallacy of "argument from ignorance". Just because you don't know, doesn't make it false.
So they put out an article claiming that the thermal safety was defective, and the thermal safety was defective, and you see that as some grandiose conspiracy perpetrated by Intel? And you’re still upset about it?
Even if Intel did discover and publish the defect, what exactly did they do wrong? I would reasonably expect AMD and Intel to be testing each other’s hardware constantly. Would you have preferred that Intel didn’t publish their findings?
The thermal safety was not defective, only a few years prior thermal safety wasn't even available. The article created an artificial situation that never occurs in reality, and claimed the CPU should be able to handle that.
The CPU handled a fan suddenly cutting off just fine, it handled being turned on without a cooler just fine. Only if the CPU was running full throttle, and the cooling block "fell off" suddenly and completely, the throttle wasn't fast enough.
When did you ever hear about that actually happening?
So you’re saying that the CPU burning out when the cooler is removed, is the thermal safety working as intended? Sorry, I am not familiar with the situation, but the way you initially described the issue doesn’t sound like foul play.
Edit: y’all are simping for a $300 billion dollar company rn lol
The cooler falling off is an impossible situation. It's a completely bullshit metric. Intel CPUs of the time ran hotter, used more power, and had lower IPC, hence the higher clock speeds but lower actual performance. They had to invent some bullshit to make themselves look good.
Besides, just a while before that generation thermal safety wasn't even a thing, if you remove the cooler from older Intel processors it just catches fire lol
I don’t disagree - I can’t imagine that ever happening in real life. But taking the cooler off while it’s running? I can definitely envision my idiot 13-year-old self doing that back when I was building my first PC.
Given this information, I probably still would have gone with the Athlon. Are you saying that a report about a very-difficult-to-trigger defect in the thermal safety single-handedly convinced thousands/millions of potential customers to choose the Pentium instead?
I’m guessing that’s why thermal safety was a selling point, no?
It was part a larger unethical media campaign and bribery chain by Intel. They did their damn best to hurt AMD, and they managed to pull it off, but some time later AMD brought their asses to court and sued over it, with literally billions in damages and agreements that Intel had to pay.
A ha! This part of the story hasn’t been brought up yet, and it sounds like it would completely change my opinion.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE5AB2LL/
AMD has argued that Intel used illegal means to preserve its 80 percent share of the global market for central processing units, which are the brains of personal computers. Regulators in Asia and Europe have agreed, imposing fines and other remedies on Intel. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is close to filing its own complaint, sources have said.I read that article and looked around a bit, and I can’t find anything related to AMD’s thermal safety mechanisms. What am I missing?
It's a broad series of court proceedings and shit and it covers a broad range of anti-trust, this article is more of a summary. You can try finding the actual court documents if you're that interested
It’s starting to sound like you have never seen any evidence that reporting on a rare AMD thermal safety defect is an intricate Intel psyop, or whatever the claim is.
My first comment in this thread simply asked for an explanation as to how a reported (and again, unimportant) defect in AMD chips is somehow Intel’s fault. I guess it was silly of me to expect a straight answer from AMDIsOurLord.
At the same time as Tom's Hardware made a very wrong and bogus claim, Intel was sued for bribery and unfair practices for multiple offenses and in multiple regions. I don't think something that has been proven in court is a grand conspiracy, especially considering that particular outlet has had some really shining moments of journalism lmao
But I can't prove this specific incident without a complete court record that I don't have
Wait, so the claim about the thermal safety defect was incorrect? That changes everything, and it’s the other half of what I’ve been trying to figure out the whole time. I’ve been struggling to find any information on the claim one way or the other.
Not incorrect, just very technically irrelevant and misleading. The article in question isn't outright lying, yes if you completely rip out the cooler when the CPU is at maximum it can be damaged, but they warped that into this supposedly big scary defect, which is manipulative at best
Ah, I see where you’re coming from now. Something like that is obviously a minor defect, and it should be treated as such.
There absolutely was. Intel got smacked on the wrist for doing their benchmarks using ICC.. you know, the compiler that builds code that detects that it's not running on an Intel CPU and disables all optimisations and extended instruction sets (like say MMX/SSE).
Let me repeat myself: I'm not defending Intel in any way. I've seen a lot of shit and murky business practices going down since the beginning of the 90's when I started my career in IT, so I have no trouble believing that Intel did it again and again.
However, it's not that hard to back claims you make with facts when on the internet. Normally ou can link whatever with two clicks maximum.
Still no one seems to want to help me read up on Pentium 4 and Intel cheating.
The ICC "optimization", as far as I remember it, was related to the Xeon line of processors. If it was P4 related, please link so that I can read up on it.
[General Rant and not about you]I really don't understand why it's so hard for people to post links that back their claims. If you post a link you give people the opportunity to learn. If you don't, it's like you just want to be right and nothing else.
False, when it's 30 years or more back, it absolutely is, even things I remember from just 20 years ago can be hard to find. Sometimes it disappears other times it's drowned out by similar stories that are newer.
You are completely delusional about the efficiency of search engines, and the memory of the Internet, not every thing stays up even for just a few years.
Also it may lack context of things that were common knowledge of the time.
Maybe that too, but it's still correct as @Kangie wrote, it was 100% also used against AMD on consumer products.
Intel used every trick in the book, even when they weren't quite legal, because P4 was a shitty product, and they couldn't compete on merits with it. They even tried to revive P3, but it failed above a certain clock speed, 1.13 Ghz if I remember correctly.
Oh AMD was definitely a cooking stove, but get a decent heat sink and paste and you are good to go.