Talk:Athlon/Archives/2015

Image Problem
The image shown alongside the section for the palomino shows a chip dating back from 1999, when the chip was only released in 2001... another thunderbird athlon perhaps? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.178.91.29 (talk) 13:13, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

US VS British English
Seems very silly to see a spelling war over something that is clearly US based. Why can't some people accept meter over metre??? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.206.181.185 (talk • contribs).


 * Smells like a troll to me; your removal of material doesn't lend you much credibility either. You now have a link to the 'Manual of Style' entry on national English on your talk page, please read that. Fourohfour 14:40, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I didn't remove anything other than changing the spelling to what it should be.
 * Removal shown here. BTW, Athlon is made and sold worldwide. If you're seriously not trolling, create an account instead of anon editing via several IPs. Fourohfour 18:30, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This is also not a trolling action. I am absolutely tired of the "Commonwealth" trying to monopolize blatant US pages. But of course I am outnumbered here so my comments didn't have any bearing to begin with, right? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.206.181.177 (talk &bull; contribs).
 * It is a common Wikipedia convention to keep the dialect used by the original author, and it's considered poor taste to change it. Furthermore, your blanking of large parts of the page is considered vandalism, and please sign your talk posts (just type four ~ characters in a row). Jgp 17:45, 29 January 2006 (UTC)
 * This user is trolling; there have been many similar edits from the same IP block over the last few months. --Ali@gwc.org.uk 17:53, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Old comments
What exactly is meant by "The Athlon is an Intel Pentium II compatible processor" - same instruction set?

The major distinctions are in the SIMD instructions, neh?

Oh and perhaps this should be linked up as "Athlon"

The Athlon is considered "Pentium II compatible" because it supports the Intel MMX instruction set, but not the SSE found in the Pentium III. The Athlon XP added this functionality. Of course, the Athlons also supports instructions the Intel processors do not (3dNow and 3dNow Pro).

Some mention of Athlon MP (multiprocessing) would be good. Also, Opteron should be mentioned sometime.

I think all this talk about overclocking should be removed. It is simply unprofessional and does actually add little information.

-

re: Athlon XP: There's a lot of talk about the Thunderbird initially, but what are we reading that's specific to the XP line? Plus, there should be an entry about AMD rebranding the speed monikers to specify a comparison to VIA's EPIA chips, rather than a raw Mhz rating.

User: Stilroc

'Their big new fab in Dresden came on-line' - What is a 'fab'? A fabrication facility, I presume.
 * Yes, fab is short for fabrication. See the article on fab. No[[User_talk:norm|rm]] 12:37, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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There is a redirect from K7, that can mislead the reader when he types in "K7" and finds out Athlon 64 in the same article. Any ideas how to work it out? I know the main article's title is 'Athlon' but still the redirect is misleading. Elthe 20:28, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Relation between the architecture of the K6 and Athlon
Could someone doublecheck the facts relating to the section about the Athlon's design? It states that it is a reworking of the K6 design, but I remember when it was in development that this wasn't the story at all. AMD designed the K5 from scratch, then they bought NexGen which was working on a chip called the Nx6x86. That chip became the AMD K6. In the time being, AMD had acquired engineers from DEC and had begun working on a next generation chip called the "K7", which became the Athlon. In short, the AMD K5 and K7 (Athlon) were designed wholly by AMD, while the K6 was acquired from NexGen. I don't think there's any relation between the architecture of the K6 and Athlon.

A couple of things that stick out to me
A couple of things that stick out to me:

Too many products. Athlon, Athlon XP, mobiles, mention of Athlon 64- it's too much. Some can be resolved with a split, some just needs reworking. I don't think it's appropriate to bring up Opterons, as they are a server chip. Conversely, in the present state of affairs it may be necessary to add Athlon MPs, as they don't have a page of their own.

The topic of overclocking as it stands doesn't really fit. Some mention of it could be made in a different context, I suppose. Also, there is no explanation of the selection process that separates out Mobiles. Power Now! is not linked.

The article jumps from μm to micrometre as a measure of process size. It's inconsistent and confusing. Normally in discussions of process size, either μm or the term micron is used (except where nm is more appropriate). I'd be happy to stick with μm.

The abbreviation FSB is used inconsistently and without being directly expanded as front side bus. It's linked twice in the main body and repeatedly in the "Models" section. Conversely, Vcore, L1-cache, and L2-cache are never linked.

Codenames are not consistently italicized. What is the consensus on how this should be handled?

The Athlon XP logo down the right side should really be replaced with a picture of a Palomino in order to fit in with the rest of the images on the right. And if we're going that route, a Barton pictures makes sense as well. Aluvus 11:17, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I've added headings to this talk page so the threads are separated more visibly.
 * I think everybody will benefit if you or anyone removes all the editing inconsistencies like different and non-standard units, and sanitize linking.
 * However I think the article reads quite well, particularly overclocking is described in connection to the development of the chip. Any removing or splitting should be well thought-out. Conf 14:25, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Split-off Athlon XP
Is it right for this article to include the Athlon XPs as well? I realize the technical differences between the T-bird and XP are pretty minor, but you'd think the new name would merit a separate article, in the same way that Pentium II and Pentium III are separate (Deschutes P2 and Katmai P3 were nearly identical). SVI 10:30, 18 August 2005 (UTC)
 * It should be a good Idea to split Athlon and Athlon XP - there are a lot of differences between the original Athlon and the XP's --Denniss 13:23, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
 * Agree. Further, mobile Athlon XPs may deserve a separate article. They are really the same chips, but they're sold under a different branding. Aluvus 10:52, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

FSB issues
Since the FSB wars that have involved this and related pages seem to have started again, I'll try a new compromise: using MT/s for transfer rates. It's something I've seen used quite a bit, so I figure it's worth a try (and MT/s pretty much means MHz anyway--it's just semantics). I'm using this article as the testbed, as this is where the latest edit involving FSB semantics has hsppened. If this goes over well, I'll stick it in other applicable articles. Jgp 09:46, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Split off K7
The K7 architecture should have a separate article referenced by Athlon, Duron, ... 132.205.45.110 21:59, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
 * AMD K7

The Athlon name
"The name "Athlon" was chosen by AMD as short for "decathlon". " Where did that come from? That sentence by itself doesn't make sense since "Decathlon" itself is actually a combination of the Greek words deka, ten + athlon, competition (like sport)... and from that it is clearly visible that "athlon" by itself is a valid Greek word. --Arny 20:13, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I can find no evidence that "Athlon" by itself is a valid Greek word. Giving it meaning without a proper citation reeks of O.R. I'm not qualified to clear this up. Hopefully someone who is qualified will fix it. Rsduhamel (talk) 18:01, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Decathlon comes from δέκα ( deca, ten ) + άθλος ( athlos, very tough task). It shows that competing in ten succesive events is a very tough task and that the special purpose of the event is to test endurance. The change from s to n in the complex sport word is because Greek has grammatical genders that put a different postfix to the root of the word (the root in this case being athlo-). The modification to athlon was probably made so that it is sounds better as an English marketing word. The name could have been used in the initial processor (Athlon) to show that it acomplishes the very tough task of surpassing Intel's processor (Pentium III) in performace. Nxavar (talk) 13:46, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Just a random thought... the EV6 bus and Alpha design team that originally built the Athlon were mostly former.... Digital Equipment Corporation engineers. I mean, it surely couldn't have been an inside joke for DEC Athlon? Banish the thought *snicker* ;-D 208.124.75.21 (talk) 18:11, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

Building an Athlon / esp. Bonding
Should we put more information on the process of building an Athlon into the article? I mean: About the technology that is used to build it. Especially the bonding concerns me, since I have heard in the early 1990s, that it is done in case of very little contacts by humans, who might get health damage by certain gases and fumes... --Homer Landskirty 23:25, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

HP a810n 3300+ Barton
I removed the reference mentioning the existence of an AthlonXP 3300+ Barton because such a CPU cannot be found anywhere on the HP website for that model. In fact, the HP site states the desktop in question used an Athlon64:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?docname=c00280647&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN#N299

All other references to an AthlonXP 3300+ Barton in the a810n are those that cite the Wikipedia reference, which violates the rules regarding verification of fact. We cannot verify that such a CPU exists if we're citing sources that are citing Wikipedia.

Further research into the alleged a810 3300+ Barton needs to be conducted.ShadowTao 05:28, 19 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Yet however there seems to be some hybrid CPU's. Coupe of years ago we built and sold a number of PC's with Athon XP-M 3000+ CPU's that were 32-bit but 754 socket. Never before could imagine such! They were mobile CPU's and needed special tighter coolers and as well they needed special BIOSes that were made for ECS nForce 3 mainboard and ECS/Foxconn SiS761 mainboards. On F/761 that BIOS was finally emrged into mainstream BIOS, making sometimes users in forum wonder that some mobile CPU's work for them. That was a one-time dead though. I heard that early i80386 could only be used fo 16bit due to some bug in 32bit logic. Perhaps those CPU's had similar troubles in 64bit logic and were reduced to 32bit ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.140.220.135 (talk) 00:55, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The "3300+" Barton existed in _only_ in OEM systems, and even during its time it was NOWHERE to be found in retail. Also, all the K7 chips were identified _purely_ by running frequency that 3300+ chip could easily be running under your desk underclocked with Windows _and_BIOS_ saying "XP 2800+". My 2 cents. 95.105.180.253 (talk) 20:20, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

x86-64 vs AMD64
This article says "AMD64 (later renamed x86-64)" where the opteron page has the "AMD64 (formerly x86-64)". Which is right? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.71.165.70 (talk • contribs) 02:29, June 10, 2007 (UTC)
 * The original name was x86-64. —  Aluvus   t / c  06:47, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Neither. The original name used INTERNALLY and initially suggested by AMD was x86-64. Then Intel refused to accept it and started the "IA32e" marketing crap. Tides turned and AMD responded in kind, going for "AMD64" full throttle. At this time most vendors went for AMD64 because it was a) on the market b) IA32e was confusing to say the least. THEN Intel changed for "EM64T", but the general IT industry hating the confusion that ensued in public, and not liking to alienate at the time superior AMD, basically said "let's use a neutral term" when pushed by Intel and have gone to the roots for "x86-64". Later (esp. Microsoft) for the shortened form "x64".
 * Would make for a whole article, wouldn't it. :D 95.105.180.253 (talk) 20:31, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Undervolting vs. Underclocking
In the article it says "Underclocking is a process of determining the lowest Vcore at which a CPU can remain stable at for a given clock speed.". As far as I understand, "underclocking" is "lowering the frequency at which the CPU runs" and "undervolting" means the described "process of determining the lowest Vcore...". Both are means of lowering the CPU's power consumption; maybe these words could be explained here in a one or two sentences or linked to the corresponding articles. 89.14.105.18 (talk) 22:09, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

A quibble about "a series of different x86 processors"
In the first sentence, why not say "a series of x86 processors" or say "various x86 processors"? I don't think both "series" and "different" are needed in the sentence. Tashiro (talk) 15:19, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Missing info
The article is missing the transistor counts and die sizes. Rilak (talk) 18:56, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Missing CPUID info
Hi. It could be very nice fo have CPUID info among the specifications, just like on AMD_K6. --Jarl (talk) 04:48, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Athlon XP-M
athlon XP-M is told to be socket A. yet at east Ahlon XP-M 3000+ was a 32-bit socket-754 CPU ! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.237.58.198 (talk) 14:19, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
 * Athlon XP-M is a marketing name. Vast majority of sold units were K7/EV6 chips, but there were also some later budget K8 chips called the same. Those chips were much more of an oddity than anything but you are right - they deserve a mention to avoid confusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.105.180.253 (talk) 20:34, 27 May 2011 (UTC)