Today both the 2.2 P4 and 2.0+ XP are announcend and many reviews appeared on the web.
Which cpu is faster is not important here, what is, is the testing methodology.
Most reviews I saw use the i850 chipset + Rambus for the P4 platform. XP and P4 are neck to neck (but us linux users know SSE and other sauces are not important so it is XP for us
) in most benchmarks and one cant really tell which is the fastest CPU.
One thing that amazes me is how come when a new speed grade comes up (the 2.2 and the 2000+) suddenly the slower ones get high differences. What I mean is: the 1900+ and the P4 2.0G were neck to neck when they were reviewed against each other, now the 1900+ (heck even the 1700+) is so much faster than the 2.0G? What changed? Same CPU's same benchmarks!
Anyway, most reviewers ended up saying the P4 is now a viable solution and really stands up against the XP so at last we have a choice. So, quoting from anandtech:
Quote:
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In the end, the choice is no longer simple. Both the Athlon XP 2000+ and the Pentium 4 2.2GHz processors are very close performers in most respects, the final decision truly comes down to what your preferences are. The Pentium 4 2.2 will cost a bit more although it runs significantly cooler and has much more overclocking headroom, if combined with an 845 DDR platform you'll have one of the most stable setups we've ever tested. On the other hand, the Athlon XP 2000+ and a solid KT266A board will leave you with enough cash left over to consider upgrading other parts of your system.
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So the 2.2G stands up to the XP 2000+ but you only found out it does using the i850 + Rambus, but when it comes to suggesting what to buy, and to make a comparable budget between the two setups the 2.2G comes with the i845G + DDR (known to be slower than the i850 + Rambus by quite a margin). So will the 2.2G be as fast then? Is it still worth recommending then? How can you know if you tested for one thing and recommended another? And it's still more expensive (even after Tom's attempts to alarm for AMD's high prices quoting his title: Average Sales Price: High Prices, Also At AMD) but that's beyond the point here.
I agree you should use the best performing platform for each CPU when testing but don't confuse readers. And you should also make points about the other platforms available for each CPU and how they affect performance.
Given that people will by P4's off PCWorld's shelfs, thinking they're buying a fast system, when they get an SDR SDRAM box that even a P4 5GHz won't bring it close to the performance of a Duron 1.2 with DDR (look
here).
It's really a shame how people that come from a scientific background and know about bias and scientific testing and reporting forget all that (I don't presume why) and end up doing such misleading statements.
Again, this is not an AMD vs Intel thread (most people know my position in this debade). If anyone finds a DDR based 2.2G review against the 2000+ please post a link.
After comparing equal to equal should stand for what one pays (so where are the dual AMD boxes agains the single 2.2G + Rambus, hech they cost the same!!). If you just try to make an absolute comparison, my whole post is invalid, but at least they should have said so (there you go lobster is better than pizza!).
Thanks for looking.
), and same question bothers me too. I'm selling mostly AMD machines, but with P4X266A introduction I began to offer P4 too ('fire and forget", I still find Intel solution more stable, so I suggest to go with Intel for somebody who I don't want to see anymore 
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