AMD, despite the modest success that they’ve had with their “True Performance” rating system, is still seeking for a better way to tackle the so-called megahertz myth. The company has joined forces with unnamed industry partners todraft a proposalfor the industry due out sometime at the beginning of next year. At the heart of the matter is the fact that internal clockspeeds alone cannot accurately relay performance capabilitiesin and ofthemselves.
"Lightbulbs have better information about them at the point of sale than PCs," Moorhead [vice president of consumer advocacy for AMD] said, adding that what’s good for customers is good for the business–now in the throes of a major sales slump. "A confused buyer is a buyer who sits on the sidelines. That’s not good for the industry," he said.
All of this sounds remarkably similar to the editorial Moorhead publishedon CNet late in July, wherein Moorhead bemoaned all the techno "gobbledygook" that consumers have to wade through when buying their computers, arguing that the industry needs to put the consumerbackin the center of the technology discussion. From early reports, it appears as though AMD is seeking some kind of aggregate rating system, a rating system that would largely be doomed to fail in our opinion. No single benchmark can possibly convey the overall performance capabilities nor value of any given machine, be it Photoshop or UT 2003.
