AMD's basis for its P4 Celeron attack

CHIP CONTENDER Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is still chasing its "megahertz myth" for all it's worth - something which we reported the other day.

AMD makes all out attack on Intel Pentium 4 Celeron

As we pointed out in this article above, we believe Intel is close to releasing 130 nanometer Celeron P4s with 256K cache, which might upset the fruit cart here.

But several readers have asked us what sort of systems AMD is comparing so we can get to compare apples and oranges for its figures.

The chart published below is also from a document marked AMD Confidential and aimed at its customers, all in an attempt to persuade them that apps - and perhaps games - run faster on its chips than its bigger and more profitable competitor.

The first of these charts above, marked "Office Productivity" is based on its Accenture endorsed benchmarks for programs such as Office 2000, Lotus Notes R5, Norton AV, Winzip 8, and others.

The next is called Digital Media, and includes Photoshop 5.0, Macromedia Dreamwaeaver 3.0, Flash 5, and Media Encoder 7.

3D Gaming is based on Half Life Smoking, Quake III, Aquamark, Drone Z, Generic, Unreal Tournament, Evolva, Serious Sam and other popular games, claims AMD.

So what systems is AMD comparing? Here are the specs from the same document, provided as backup materiel.

Duron
WinXP Pro RTM Build 2600, no service packs or updates, and DX 8.1 (4.08.01.0810), Media Encode Results containing a "soft" 3DNow Professional version, a 1.3GHz Duron, an MSI K74N420 Pro with Nvidia's Nforce 420D chipset BIOS version 4; 256MB of DDR 266 CAS 2.0 Micron memory; an IBM using NTFS format at UDMA 100 dubbed almost incomprehensibly the IC35L020AVER07-0, a 20.5GB drive; an Nforce MCP networking adaptor, audio processor and integrated GPU. Drivers are Nvidia 2.29 for the AGP miniport, EIDE drivers from XP, Nvidia network drivers 2.26, same for the sound card, while video drivers are version 28.32, at 1024 x 768. 32-bit colour depth, 100Hz refresh rate.

Athlon XP
Same builds of XP and Media ENcoder as above; an XP 1600+ processor, same mobo as above, same memory as above, same HDD as above, and everything else identical to the Duron.

Celeron
Same OS software build, but Media Encoder not included, a 1.7GHz CPU Celeron; an Intel D845GBVL using the 845G, BIOS version RG84510A.86A.0008.P03, 256MB of the same memory, same IBM HDD configuration, network card integrated Pro/100VE, sound card integrated SoundMAX digital audio, video card, the 82845G/GL graphics controller with UMA memory; EIDE drivers provided by the OS; network card drivers Intel 6.1.3.0, sound card Analog Devices 5.12.1.3500; video card drivers Intel's 6.13.1.3055 1024x768, 32-bit colour depth, 100Hz. In addition, USB drivers were installed from a CD shipped with the mobo, said AMD.

Pentium 4
Same OS, a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 CPU, same motherboard same BIOS version; same memory config, same HDD; same network card, sound card and video configration, with the drivers also the same as for the Celeron Pentium 4 above. µ