PAT is 'CONFIRMED' to be Marketing, nothing more!!!

[thatsright]

WELL THIS REALLY BLOWS!!!!

Not too sure if its a reliable, but I just read a article that says, basically that PAT, is nothing but Marketing. THATS IT. And straight from the Horses mouth, no less. It called PAT, but its really just soupped up, HQ silicon for the Memory controllers. (And I'm about to buy the ABIT IC7. One of the main reasons is because it has PAT.)

Thats it!!!!

Here ya go:


The inquirer article

 

[SexyK]

Most 875P preview articles explained PAT. All it means is the NB can function more efficiently and shave a few clocks off of memory accesses. I don't see how tangible performance increases are marketing, but if they are, I'm all for that kind of marketing from more companies!

 

[vetteguy]

I think this says it all:

The inquirer article

 

[thorin]

And so we reinforce the fact that all types of technology purchases are definately "buyer beware" (and buyer be educated).

Thorin

 

[Hulk]

The Lost Circuits TESTING of PAT clearly shows that it is decreasing latencies.

 

[NFS4]

http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/canterwood2/

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: NFS4
http://www.lostcircuits.com/motherboard/canterwood2/

OWN3D

- M4H

 

[astroview]

If all it is is marketing who cares as long as the 875 benches better?

 

[pm]

What the Inquirer is saying is that PAT is essentially bin splitting of chipsets and is not a new technology 'per se'. And their point is that it doesn't deserve a special marketing name since dividing silicon into various speed bins depending on the speed of the silicon is nothing new.

They are not saying that PAT doesn't exist. It is a known fact that it is there, it reduces memory latencies and it improves memory performance. The question raised is what do you call it. In the Inquirer's opinion, it is not a "technology" because it is nothing new. On the other hand, one could respond that no one has ever done speed bins on chipsets before, so it is a new thing. And does it really hurt anything to come up with a snazzy name for something that the average consumer and most technical people don't understand all that well, anyway? Does anyone have a better suggestion for a term for what PAT does?

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: pm
What the Inquirer is saying is that PAT is essentially bin splitting of chipsets and is not a new technology 'per se'. And their point is that it doesn't deserve a special marketing name since dividing silicon into various speed bins depending on the speed of the silicon is nothing new.

They are not saying that PAT doesn't exist. It is a known fact that it is there, it reduces memory latencies and it improves memory performance. The question raised is what do you call it. In the Inquirer's opinion, it is not a "technology" because it is nothing new. On the other hand, one could respond that no one has ever done speed bins on chipsets before, so it is a new thing. And does it really hurt anything to come up with a snazzy name for something that the average consumer (and most technical people) don't understand all that well, anyway? Does anyone have a better suggestion for a term for what PAT does?

That's an excellent way to put it. Take a look at the entire geForce lineup. Being as they're all the same chip within a series (Ti4200, Ti4400, Ti4600, Ti4800) with different core clocks - OMFG TEH NUMBARS R MARKETING!

- M4H

 

[TROGDORdBURNINATOR]

not marketing Don't you know enough not to believe anything that the inquirer prints? Jeeeeez
""Performance Acceleration Technology is one of the features of our 875P (Canterwood) chipset. We basically bin our Memory Controller Hub (MCH) chips like our CPUs, finding the fastest silicon. We can then use this fast silicon to shave off a couple of memory clock cycles, resulting in better performance."

So PAT does exist. It's a hardware feature, which, as XBit Labs astutely pointed out, is like AMD's old Super Bypass Mode. "

 

[astroview]

Trogdor what are the better forums you prefer?

 

[sharkeeper]

Why should anyone care about PAT? More than 50% of the userbase here overclocks anyways so it's time to move on!

-DAK-

 

[SexyK]

Originally posted by: shuttleteam
Why should anyone care about PAT? More than 50% of the userbase here overclocks anyways so it's time to move on!

-DAK-

I care about PAT because my 2.4C @ 3.0GHz with PAT is faster than a 2.4C @ 3.0GHz without PAT. Simple as that.

 

[sharkeeper]

I care about PAT because my 2.4C @ 3.0GHz with PAT is faster than a 2.4C @ 3.0GHz without PAT. Simple as that.

Outside of some benchmark program you will never see the difference. It's like increasing your memory timings.

It's still reducing margin. I would prefer to turn PAT off for better margins.

-DAK-

 

[thatsright]

Well I can't believe I didn't think of this when I first started the thread. But I guess with PAT, Intel had created a Brand Name (did they trademark PAT?) for a process that has been around in the semiconductor industry for decades. I guess Intel is just taking the 'cream of the crop' ICH chips they get out of the silicon, and labeling them PAT. Anything that 'sifts through' to the bottom of the stringent verification process, yet sill passes I suppose would end up in the 865 Motherboards.

Does this sound right?

Now like someone before mentioned, when your running a 3Ghz CPU, can you really notice a difference that you paid the extra $40 or so over a 865 MB for? Thats another question entirely??

 

[pm]

Well I can't believe I didn't think of this when I first started the thread. But I guess with PAT, Intel had created a Brand Name (did they trademark PAT?) for a process that has been around in the semiconductor industry for decades. I guess Intel is just taking the 'cream of the crop' ICH chips they get out of the silicon, and labeling them PAT.

And suppose that you are the marketing team at a company that is doing something like this - what would you call it? It's a feature, it deserves a name so that you can refer to it as a selling point. Latency Improvement through Tester Binning (LITB)? Faster Memory Access from Faster Silicon (FMAF)?

My point is that this name is as good as any other. Does it really matter?

And, no offense intended, but I find the title of this thread to be more misleading than the term "PAT". In the title it appears that you are saying that PAT doesn't exist - that it's a marketing term for nothing.

can you really notice a difference that you paid the extra $40 or so over a 865 MB for?

There's more to the i875 chipset than PAT. I personally would pay $40 more for ECC alone (and intend to do so).

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: pm

can you really notice a difference that you paid the extra $40 or so over a 865 MB for?

There's more to the i875 chipset than PAT. I personally would pay $40 more for ECC alone (and intend to do so).

in a home rig? you running 2 day jobs or something?

 

[pm]

in a home rig? you running 2 day jobs or something?

I run an ECC counter on my computer and I see a strike about every month or two - one time back in Jan. this year I saw three errors in two weeks.

I work from home occassionally. I have enough data on there that is important to me: all 4000 digital family photos, a lot of MiniDV video, our taxes for the last 7 years, our accounts for the last 6 years, not to mention a lot of letters, notes, programs, scripts, etc. that I'm not likely to look at but I might miss if it were gone. I have backups, but I don't backup as often as I should so they get out of sync. ECC is not too expensive and it definitely does do something. I consider it an inexpensive insurance policy against system instability.

 

[Rand]

Well this does explain much of why the P4P800 is able to match the Canterwood boards performance despite being based on the 865PE.

In essence all PAT is then would be the chips that binned the best and are more easily accepting of more stingent memory timings then the other chips.
I see nothing wong with naming it PAT however, it is an advatage to the 875 chipset and hence deserves a name so as to more easily facilitate marketing of the advantage.

Asus P4P800 has proven that at least some Springdale's can be tuned to performance levels on-par with the Centerwood however.

 

[sharkeeper]

I run an ECC counter on my computer and I see a strike about every month or two - one time back in Jan. this year I saw three errors in two weeks.

I work from home occassionally. I have enough data on there that is important to me: all 4000 digital family photos, a lot of MiniDV video, our taxes for the last 7 years, our accounts for the last 6 years, not to mention a lot of letters, notes, programs, scripts, etc. that I'm not likely to look at but I might miss if it were gone. I have backups, but I don't backup as often as I should so they get out of sync. ECC is not too expensive and it definitely does do something. I consider it an inexpensive insurance policy against system instability.

Good advice. Our mainboards require it so no choice.

pm: How are you verifying ECC errors? BIOS DMI logs or through software?

-DAK-

 

[pm]

I have used both. Most of the time, I have used software - the ecc.o module for Linux... which I am running about 70% of the time my computer is on. In the past, the motherboards that I used would record it. A couple of years back, when writing device drivers was easier (before WinXP and Win2k), I wrote a handler that would monitor the chipset registers for ECC events. But I have never got it working for Windows XP. Lately, I'm mostly using Linux anyway so I use the module.

 

[Viper96720]

A reason why THG is junk a quote from their news section
"Intel representative George Alfs stated that PAT is nothing more than marchitecture, and simply doesn't exist on i875 Canterwood chipsets."

Then the article interview with George Alfs
I don't see where he stated its marchitecture.

 

[thorin]

Originally posted by: Trogdor
I spend a lot of time in different forums and anandtech's definitely has the lowest IQ settings of all of them...

Originally posted by: astroview
Trogdor what are the better forums you prefer?

Yet he continues to come back here...... So we quote Anthony Hopkins from The Edge

Who is more the fool: the fool, or the fool that follows him?

Thorin

 

[Viper96720]

LOL Trog's bringing the IQ down. I'm above average IQ according to one of those online tests you can take.