Should I Stay or Should I Go?

[danterner]

Yesterday, after a month of waiting, two missed UPS deliveries, and an hour of waiting at the UPS counter, I finally laid my hands on my new Axim 400. (Sadly, upon returning home with the box my wife decided to appropriate it so she can give it to me as my birthday present - she has spirited it away until my birthday on Feb 10 - argh!). If I have to wait much longer I'm going to implode.

I'm very much looking forward to using the Axim. As my current PDA is a Palm M100 (2mb, monochrome) it should be a big step up. I was somewhat discouraged, though, to read a recent article about revisions to the Xscale processor imminently to be released by Intel. See:

http://www.brighthand.com/article/Intel_Up...cale_Processors

If I'm reading this article correctly, it's essentially stating that the Axim is hobbled by a buggy processor and insufficient bus, making it perform consistent with a 200 mhz ARM PDA. If that's the case, what's the benefit of having an AXIM 400 as opposed to a 300 (extra storage capacity and cradle notwithstanding?) Are they functionally the same machine until the XScale processor is corrected?

My question is this: since I'm still within the 30 day return window, should I return my Axim and wait to get one with the updated XScale processor? This might put off my becoming an Axim owner by several months. It would probably also mean that I lose the $50 rebate. As an alternative, I could just hold onto the Axim I have and, if I experience a legitimate problem with it (mushy D-Pad, etc), then I could exchange it at that time (ideally holding off on the return until sometime in June or so, when all X5s will presumably have the revised processor).

As an aside: The Axim I was shipped happens to be an A04 hardware revision (I peeked in the box before resealing it and surrendering it to my wife - I admit it), but I have yet to read a post detailing any real difference between A04 and A05, so I'm okay with having an A04 as long as it works.

Taking all of the above into consideration, can anyone offer guidance?

[Mattman]

You should ask for a Pre-Birthday present of charging up your battery on Feb. 9th. :D This will allow you to actually use your Axim on your B-Day.

As far as the new XScale processor.....you could always wait around to get the latest and greatest, but you know what....you never get anything, because your waiting for the next latest and greatest thing. If you wait for PXA250 C1, you'll have to wait for the PXA260 that will be announced to be released a month later. So you wait for that, then right before you buy it, they announce the PXA300. It's a never ending cycle. Sooner or later, you just bite the bullet, get one, and be happy with it (provided everything works as it should).

Doesn't that new processor compliment the current one? Either way without software optimized for the XScale it won't matter. Pocket PC 2003 might not even support it from what I've read.

[danterner]

Originally posted by Mattman@Jan 30 2003, 03:27 PM
As far as the new XScale processor.....you could always wait around to get the latest and greatest, but you know what....you never get anything, because your waiting for the next latest and greatest thing.  If you wait for PXA250 C1, you'll have to wait for the PXA260 that will be announced to be released a month later.

I understand your point, Mattman, and it's well taken. I would fully expect a PXA260 based AXIM to be more expensive than a PXA250. I bought a PXA250 based device, and I'm happy with that. There's always going to be something newer and better. (See, e.g. Moore's Law

http://www.intel.com/research/silicon/mooreslaw.htm ).

The PXA250 and PXA250 C1 are the same processor though - the latter is just revised so that it works the way it was originally intended to function. Intel isn't charging any more for the PXA250 C1 than for the PXA250. It's a hardware bug-fix, if I'm understanding correctly. I wonder if there's any chance that Dell would issue a recall so that early adopters of the Axim don't suffer for their pioneering spirit...

But this is a moot point if the OS doesn't support the processor isn't it?

[andsoitgoes]

Originally posted by danterner@Jan 30 2003, 03:37 PM
I wonder if there's any chance that Dell would issue a recall so that early adopters of the Axim don't suffer for their pioneering spirit...

I haven't laughed like that in a long time.

Heh... Seriously, Dell recalling 50,000+ units? I'd LOVE to see it happen, but I can guarantee you that they'll just wait for people to complain, and until then they will just sit on it and wait it out.

Look at the Intel chipset they released back in the early days of the P3. I can't remember if it WAS the coppermine, or was before (or after - Ha, I'm useless) - but they had a fautly CPU that they discontinued, but there were *no* recalls. Intel is notorious for doing this. They have to keep up with the Mac and AMD competition (for PCs) so they just develop and shove stuff out the door much faster than they should, without proper testing and sometimes it ends up incredibly buggy, such as in this case.

In all honesty, it's the only intelligent way for Dell to do it without losing a ton of money. In all honesty, most people aren't even going to use the device enough to note a *major* problem, however those like us that do *will* call Dell and tell them where they can put the faulty XScale chips - and in this case, I'm pretty certain we'll get what's asked for :)

Nick

[chuckecheese]

so, a new chip? fudddlle duddle!!!

should have seen it coming.

should i try to return my ax or just say oh well screwwed by the computer gods again. but wait... if intel put out a crappy chip the first go and now they want to roll out a new one, what's to say that it won't be crap too.

at what point did they decide "darn we need a bigger bus"
it would seem that they knew sometime in sept, oct minimum (those in the know please feel free to correct estimate) well before the dell roll out as it would take several months to reconfig to start producing the new chips. perhaps i'm wrong....

how many of us 1st gen axers had to return our ax's due to sync problems or faulty d-pads. as clint would say "do you feel lucky?" if your current ax is working (finally) properly why take the risk when only a few of us (me excluded) will even notice the difference.

i think this will become a test of loyalty for dell and intel, reward or ignore the 1st gen axers.

[merle]

Originally posted by cageyjames@Jan 30 2003, 04:14 PM
But this is a moot point if the OS doesn't support the processor isn't it?

Actually, the performance increase in the new chip should not depend on OS optimization. The old XScale chip has a 100MHz bus. Because the XScale chip runs at 300/400MHz (much faster than the bus), and program instructions and data come via the bus, the chip has to wait for instructions to arrive. Thus, the bus is a major bottleneck. The new bus of 200MHz should improve the situation greatly. No software changes are needed.

Note also that the old StrongARM chip runs at 200MHz but uses a 103MHz bus. That's a slightly faster bus than that the current XScale uses. So not surprisingly the StrongARM can outperform the XScale on certain memory-intensive applications. For example, several benchmarks have shown that the current XScale is much slower than the old StrongARM on "memory move" operations. If you know anything about programming, you know that "memory move" is a very common operation.

At least that's how I understand it from what I've read. Not that I've done any benchmarking myself.

Here's a more detailed article about the bus problem. Looks like Intel agreed.

From http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/articles.p...ion=expand,5432

"In reality the speed factor between CPU and the memory bus is the opposite of what we just described. XScale Pocket PCs running at 400 MHz, 300 MHz and 200 MHz all use a 100 MHz bus, and the 206 MHz StrongARM use a 103 MHz bus.

I guess you just spotted the main bottleneck, and the reason why XScale running at 400 MHz, 300 MHz and 200 MHz get almost identical benchmark results for tests that involve shuffling memory around – typical applications are graphics and multimedia. (Note: some Pocket PCs incorporate graphics accelerators that might confuse this picture a little bit). And since the StrongARM use a bus that is 3 % faster than the bus used in XScale, we also find a logical explanation for why StrongARM based Pocket PC’s are sometimes slightly faster than XScale based Pocket PC’s in some tests."

[merle]

Originally posted by chuckecheese@Jan 30 2003, 04:54 PM
at what point did they decide "darn we need a bigger bus" it would seem that they knew sometime in sept, oct minimum (those in the know please feel free to correct estimate) well before the dell roll out as it would take several months to reconfig to start producing the new chips. perhaps i'm wrong....

Yeah, it's pretty upsetting that Intel screwed up so badly. According Intel's notice for the new chip, they began releasing samples on Dec. 18, 2002.

They probably knew about the problem long before that. Ever since last June, there's been articles criticizing the XScale, saying that it's not any faster than the 3-year-old StrongARM. The initial blame was pinned on Microsoft for not optimizing the OS for XScale. But since the XScale is merely version 5 of StrongARM and run StrongARM instructions natively (its relation to StrongARM 4 is like that of Pentium MMX to Pentium), that didn't quite make sense. What I don't understand is why Microsoft didn't put the blame back on Intel, where now it seems to have belonged.

By the way, since this revision is like a bug fix for the chip, Intel will not be producing any more of the old chip (with the slower bus) once the revision finalized (which may already have happened). It expects that by March 28, it will only be shipping new version of the chip.

[Emonair]

So how do I answer this poll?

Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Yes or No?

I'm not sure my voting makes sense. My .02 is I will have 4-6 months of use out of my Axim with the 100mhz bus by the time you MAY get the faster chip.

I'm extremely happy with it too, it's still faster than some of my college buddies Desktops :*)

[merle]

For an idea of the possible performance improvement of doubling the bus speed, we can look at the benchmark done with an overclocked XScale Pocket PC. Hack Master, a software utility, by fiddling with XScale internal registers, I think, allows you increase your XScale's speed to 472MHz and the memory bus speed to 118MHz. The benchmarks here show up to a 20% improvement in performance when overclocked, and the difference is noticeable. I don't think people have seen an that much difference in performance between a 300MHz and a 400MHz XScale. So much of the improvement could be due to the speedup in bus:

http://www.firstloox.org/hackmaster.htm

Overclocking Results tested with VOBenchmark:

CPU 398Mhz 472Mhz
Floating Point 12.61 15.01
Integer 29.94 31.87

Graphics/Bitmap
BitBlt 58.15 69.97
StrechBlt 0.95 1.11

Graphics/Filled
Ellipse 0.91 1.07
Rectangle 5.41 6.51
Rounded Rect 0.89 1.09

Memory
Allocation 10.83 13.90
Fill 0.91 1.08
Move 0.36 0.42
Text 3.81 4.52

As you can see from the results, the over-clocking of the XScale CPU comes up with an increase of up to 20% compared to the normal CPU settings. This looks impressive!

All day experience shows that the over-clocked Pocket Loox seems to be more responsive, processes seem to be noticeably faster.

[mesa]

What,.......................a whopping millisecond or two faster. whooooooo mercy....... let it stay..... by the time you unwrap your new one, a newer faster and better chip just gets released

[Mike C]

You better budget in a new one every year or so if it matters that much. Get one now if you need one.

[Fritz]

I'm just wondering:

"Should I stay, or should I go?" -- if I answer "Yes", did I just vote for "Yes, you should stay." or "Yes, you should go."?

I *THINK* 'yes' means to stay... but as you can see how the poll results can be kinda confusing...

[ericartman]

I don't know that much about handhelds in the Axim range, my last one was a Handspring Visor but if my experience in desktops counts the difference with bus speeds and ram speeds look good on paper but when it comes to real life application the difference is negligible. I have a friend who went the whole rambus, overclocking, new XP2100, mobo, yada yada yada. When we put his 'puter and mine in the same room the dif wasn't to apparent. Yes if he was doing video editing with 3dMax or heavy Photoshop work the difference showed but hey for the money he put out it should. According to Moore's law though, in a year and a half he slips back into second place. If you got the money it's a fun game to play but being satisfied with what you got ain't bad either.