Intel finally figures out what's up

[bascule]

For a long time it's been widely agreed that the Pentium 4/Xeon architecture is an overcomplicated power hungry piece of crap and that the Pentium M, Intel's crown money maker, was by far the best product in their lineup.

Intel has since added 64-bit EM64T extensions and multicore support to this architecture and rereleased it under the name "Core"

Now Intel is poised to launch dual core and quad core versions of this CPU aimed at desktops in the form of the Conroe and Kentsfield cores:

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2713

According to Anandtech, the new CPUs are outperforming AMD.

I'm reminded of the time when Cyrix was kicking Intel's ass as the hobbled along on the Pentium core, only to charge ahead after releasing the Pentium Pro and Pentium II.

[bascule]

After reading some more RSS items, I see /. got their slimy tentacles on this story too. Sorry for the repost.

[Samurai Drifter]

...What? Intel is out performing AMD?

I don't think it will last long. I'm pretty sure that AMD essentially just copies the chip designs, but when they copy them they're able to find places that can be reworked for more efficiency, etc. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that's mainly why AMD beats Intel.

[Voltage Spike]

...What? Intel is out performing AMD?

Sort of. I have been informed that the tests completely botch the AMD setup in an attempt to create an AMD processor that isn't out yet.

I'm pretty sure that AMD essentially just copies the chip designs

So, so wrong. They (mostly) execute the same instructions but the underlying architecture is as different as can be.

[Ridirich]

I was going to say....the chip architecture is massively differant. How can you copy someone else's work, and yet not only have differant work to show for it, but an entirely differant answer? That's not probable.


Furthermore, AMD has been, and will be much more inexpensive than Intel...and will outpreform Intel in any equivelant level. The money, in the end, will be Intel's downfall.

Intel setup two identical systems: in one corner, an Athlon 64 FX-60 overclocked to 2.8GHz running on a DFI RD480 motherboard. And in the other corner, a Conroe running at 2.66GHz (1067MHz FSB) on an Intel 975X motherboard.

The AMD system used 1GB of DDR400 running at 2-2-2/1T timings, while the Intel system used 1GB of DDR2-667 running at 4-4-4. Both systems had a pair of Radeon X1900 XTs running in CrossFire and as far as we could tell, the drivers and the rest of the system setup was identical.

Identical my ass. To correctly benchmark two computers, EVERYTHING else needs to match except the part(s) being benchmarked (this includes the drivers, which, at least, they matched.). I can understand two differant motherboards, due to chipsets, and the Ghz is close enough to be compareable, I guess.....but my main concern is the ram. Not all ram is created equal, and when one system is using DDR400 and another is using DDR2-667, and their timings are differant, then it makes me wonder if something hokey is not up. I smell bullshit.

[xwred1]

There is no AMD chip you can buy that can use DDR2. Intel couldn't really help but to use DDR1 in this case.

[Ridirich]

I would not say 'there is no AMD chip', but there is definitly not one available to the public currently.

From what I am reading on the offical AMD forums, they are skipping DDR2 and going straight to DDR3 in development of new chips...and I would imagine they came to this conclusion after trying it with a DDR2 chip, which is sitting in an R&D room somewhere...