Intel vs. AMD - Today's Generation Compared

Bender writes "The Tech Report compares 15 Core 2 and Athlon 64 processors from Intel and AMD — from sub-$200 to a cool grand, from slower dual cores to fast quad cores — in 32 & 64-bit apps in Windows Vista, including the new, multithreaded RTS game Supreme Commander. 'The release of Windows Vista and a round of price cuts by AMD prompted us to hatch a devious plan involving Vista, a new test suite full of multithreaded and 64-bit applications, fifteen different CPU configurations, and countless hours of lab testing. That plan has come to fruition in the form of a broad-based comparison of the latest processors from AMD and Intel... from the lowly Athlon 64 X2 4400+ and Core 2 Duo E6300 to the astounding Athlon 64 FX-74 and Core 2 Extreme QX6700.' Folding@Home in Linux, power use, and energy efficiency are tested, too."

Comments

Refreshing

[Visaris]

While the review is not perfect, it is a breath of fresh air compared to many of the tactics reviewers often use to skew the results in the favor of one company or the other (usually Intel). Tech Report presents benchmarks that each side wins. AMD takes a clear win in Cinebench and POV-Ray and some minor wins in a couple of other areas. It is good to see AMD get some accurate representation in a time when most are happy to claim that Conroe and the Core2 arch cannot be beaten. AMD's new architecture (new core enhancements as well as quad-core) will come out at the end of the second quarter this year, and if their claims of performance improvement on the per-core level is accurate, I think we may see another stage in the never ending game of leapfrog. Anyways, I'm pleased to see a mostly accurate review, even if I disagree with the commentary at times.

Re:Refreshing

[tomstdenis]

I didn't read the review [bah, ads] but the point isn't to be faster, it's to be better. Better often means things radically departed from simply faster.

For example, if AMD made a core, the same clock rate as their current mainstream core [say 2.4GHz], but take 40% less power at maximum, wouldn't that be better? It wouldn't render POV-Ray any faster but it would take less juice to do it. Aside from speed, size matters too. Smaller chips are cheaper to produce, reduces cost. Many design changes are for things customers don't even notice, like diagnostic support.

There is also the issue of the entire system. The CPUs are not the only power hungry thing in the typical box. The memory, south/north bridge, other controllers, storage, GFX, etc, all take power too. Especially north bridges [Intel camp in general] and GPUs take a lot of power.

So "leapfrog" doesn't always have to mean MIPS ratings. If the AMD core takes less power, but is marginally slower, that doesn't mean it's worse. As it stands now Intel is winning on both power and MIPS fronts. But they're competing against a 90nm process and are not winning by a landslide I might add. When AMD hits 65nm the energy scale may tip the other way again.

Tom

Re:Refreshing

[geekoid]

"(usually Intel)"
gah, talk about biased.

There skewed pretty evenly over all. gaame and 'geek' sites have a strong tendency to favor AMD. industry reviews have a tendency to favor Intel.

Summary - too blanket

[Visaris]

Intel > AMD at high end, Intel >= AMD at low end, Core 2 > A64, Intel finally has a lead in both architecture design and process (65nm).

I would agree with that as a generalization, but I still think it is very important for people to consider the applications they use most often. TR's benches clearly show that someone working primarily with POV-Ray would get better performance for $599 with AMD than for $999 with Intel. I agree that Intel takes the overall win, but blanket statements like this really fail to catch the areas where some chips shine and others do not.

True, but some still skew.

[Visaris]

Sure, performance is not the only factor. Intel does get some points for having a great combination of outstanding performance and very good thermal characteristics. Core2 is a great architecture, and I don't think anyone is trying to say otherwise. However, many people take Intel's general win and skew this into the claim that Intel and Core2 are the best for everything, which clearly is not true. The tactics used in the past by many reviewers have been to run overclocked Intel chips against stock AMD chips. This isn't exactly "cheating," but it ensures that Intel will be in the top stops on the charts. Also, many reviewers simply choose to skip the benches AMD is strong at, like Cinebench and POV-Ray. I'm not here to claim any one chip beats the hell out of the other, I just wish a lot of the fanboyism and Intel's reviewer payments would go away so we could get more reviews like TechReport's, which show many of the strong points and weaknesses of both sides.

Hidden away on page 14

[Andy_R]

"...the list of games that really use four cores is approximately zero."

That's the most interesting part of the article for me. Apart from 3-D rendering and folding@home, they are really pushed to find any real-world reason for having 4 cores.

Maybe they should have waited for Adobe's CS3 when heavy Photoshop tasks should provide nice real-world benchmark, and perhaps Apple will finally give us that long-awaited an 8-core Macintosh to put up against high-end Vista machines.

Re:Hidden away on page 14

[Anonymous Coward]

Virtualization.

For the first time in many many years, I am tempted to buy a computer *much* faster than a 1ghz PIII because I want to run several different operating systems on my computer at the same time. For that, I want as many cores per CPU as I can.

Re:Hidden away on page 14

[geekoid]

You can do the with SCSI and a celeron.
for example, My SCSI drive was too small. So I decided to put in a SATA drive. That was the only difference. I can no longer play WoW, and iTunes, and down load images from my camera at the same time without serious stuttering.

My point is, even 4 cores writing to a crappy hard drive architecture won't make much of a different for people using more then on program at a time.

Re:Hidden away on page 14

[AmigaBen]

"...the list of games that really use four cores is approximately zero."

"That's the most interesting part of the article for me... they are really pushed to find any real-world reason for having 4 cores."

Excuse me? Games=real world?

Sorry, must have missed the memo.

Re:Summary

[Barny]

In particular the x2 3600 and 3800 seem to be 2 of the best bang-for-buck chips out there.

Yes ANY of the CPUs tested will leave them for dead, but if your user is running WinXP, doing a bit of this (video transcoding) and a bit of that (watching streamed video) and even a bit of the other, they will do it and leave them thinking "damn this thing is fast" all for pocket change compared to these other chips.

Re:David v. Goliath?

[geekoid]

Don't be stupid.

AMD is just one factor in prices. CPU's weren't 2500 dollars a piece before AMD.

It was the AMD competition that lead to the MHz war; which is why we are just now getting multiple cpus/cores into the desktop at the consumer level.

While competition is good, and I am glad Intel has some, it doesn't make everything perfect.

x2 4400 low end???

[brennanw]

I don't even have a dual core chip. I guess that makes my computer non-existent... ...

Egads. I've been looking forward to getting a single-core 3800 -- that would be an upgrade for me.

Re:Summary

[geekoid]

"Maybe low end as far as what they tested, but there are a lot of non-X2 Athlon 64s and Pentium/Celeron Ds being sold. At the true low end, AMD is still more than competitive."

do you relize that you're saying AMD is on it's way to absolences?

AMDs new slogan: "We're really fast on old CPUs!"

Re:David v. Goliath?

[ozbird]

Kudos to AMD: without you Intel's CPUs for sure would have costed $2500 a piece.

... and a choice between either a 32-bit Pentium 4 or an Itanium. AMD's greatest contribution was bringing 64-bit CPUs to the x86 masses - without abandoning 32-bit compatibility.