Dual-Core Shoot Out - Intel vs. AMD

sebFlyte writes "The Intel vs AMD battle of the benchmarks continues. ZDNet is running its rather comprehensive-looking guide to a side-by-side test of Intel and AMD's dual-core desktop chips, the Athlon 64 X2 3200+ and the Pentium D 820. They look at pure performance, as well as the difference it makes to apps you might use on the desktop. In the end, AMD comes out as the winner. From the article: 'AMD currently offers the most attractive dual core option. The Athlon 64 X2 3800+ may cost $87 more than its Intel counterpart, the Pentium D 820, but the AMD chip is a much better performer. It also uses considerably less power.'"

Comments

Itanium

[Work Account]

(If you can afford it) I have found Itaniums to be very QUALITY platforms.

They basically got as fed up as you with archaic x86 instructions and set out to make a good new platform.

Engineering-wise Itanium is the bee's knees.

Unfortunately they ARE expensive, so you probably have to be a full-time geek like me to afford one ;)

Re:AMD looks fine on paper, but...

[Jherek Carnelian]

Intel's compiler only supports AMD in the most basic way possible. It assumes that all non-Intel chips stopped advancing around the time of the Pentium 2. Meaning it will produce good SSE2 code, but that code will be wrapped in a if(chip==Intel) RunSSE2; else RunNormal;

You are correct. This either Intel CYA or Intel monopoly-abuse, depending on your perspective.

Regardless of perspective, you can diable this behaviour at the expense of making your binaries SSE2-only with a single compiler switch. Sorry, I do not remember it off the top of my head, I know of it because I looked it up last time ./ ran a story about Intel's compilers "cheating" on AMD cpus.