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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."
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.
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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.
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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.
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"...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.
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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.
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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.
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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.