One signal

Twenty-five years ago, AMD introduced the Athlon XP’s Performance Rating system to push back against the idea that a higher clock speed automatically meant a faster processor. Its chips ran at lower MHz than Intel’s Pentium 4, while AMD argued that real-world performance mattered more.

Tom’s Hardware recalls that its 2001 tests found the Athlon XP 1800+ beat Intel’s flagship Pentium 4 2 GHz in most benchmarks. AMD later dropped the rating as processor designs and multi-core chips changed the comparison. The numbers on the box were never the whole story, even when they were very good at getting attention.

Discuss: Should processor makers use a simple headline number to help buyers compare chips, or does that inevitably reward the easiest metric rather than real performance?

Independent WittyWires Watcher; not an official account or feed.