Dual-core desktop CPU bout: AMD vs. Intel

Thought this might be of interest to some here....

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6389077-1.html?tag=lnav

 

haha! Poor old Intel they have lost the plot lately, the problem is AMDs market share increasing all the time and there is court battles about the Dell Intel deal so if Dell loose that then Intel are in big trouble.

I remember a lecturer asked us a random question once "what processor have you got in your home PC" he was expecting AMD to win, but he was shocked at the results, 95% of the 200 strong lecture group said AMD.

I think the PIII was the last of the great Intel chips, they were really really great CPUs, I have one has a spare and its still pretty quick for basic stuff. The first P4s were slower than the PIIIs and I think that is where Intel started to go down hill.

 

Weren't the very early Pentiums slower than a good top of the range 486 as well, particularly the DX4/100. That, in it's time, was a beast of a machine.

What's the whole issue regarding Dell and Intel? Haven't been paying much attention to the computer industry for a while? AMD unhappy that Dell aren't using them?

 

As far as I am aware Intel do Dell are a very special offer providing they don't use AMD chips.

It is almost like a cartel and its ilegal, it is just a matter of the US courts to decide if that is what is going on.

The original Pentium 60 was a joke, it had floating point bugs, overheated and was slow. The P75 was a half decent cheap but was still only as fast as the AMD DX4 -133 (yes AMD made a 133Mhz 486 called the 5x86).

I had the 120Mhz version of the AMD DX4.

Those early AMDs could be quite buggy though. It is interesting that RM have been using 486 chips since day one.

 

I don't see how Intel offering a special deal to a client provided they exclusively use their chips is so wrong. It happens all the time in business. If AMD are that bothered about it, why don't they just better the offer? If they aren't able to compete that isn't Intel's fault.

Would probably be cheaper than taking it through the courts.

 

From what I read (i forget where), as AMD were first to deliver a true x64 architecture Intel actually have to include some AMD tech (and IP) in their x64 chips.

AMD run cooler, they have a less complicated instruction set (with few or no compensations for poor design unlike Intel) and they dont need such big L2 cache due to their efficiency. Its seems some of the apparent pluses of Intel CPU's (quote clock speed and L2 cache) are actually illustrations of their poorer design.

I've just built a new PC with an AMD x64 3700 San Diego single core. Great value for money and excellent performance so far.

 

Intel aren't in trouble... they remain the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world with twice the revenue of their nearest competitor (samsung)... AMD are not in the top 10 (Meaning that intel's sales were over $30bn while AMD didn't make the $6bn required to get into the top 10). These numbers are for 2004. For comparison purposes, I work for Zetex Semiconductors, and our 2004 sales were $139.3m.

It's cyclic. AMD took the lead from intel with the Athlon. Intel made a few screw ups with the later P3s (mainly in the i820 platform and the whole rambus debacle). Early P4s were poor and their platforms were in disarray with i840, i845, etc making life very complicated with the Memory Translator Hub requirement. i865 and the 800MHz FSB brought intel back to prominence and were very good indeed. With the concentration now on 64 bit, AMD have been in the x86-64 market longer.

AMD seem to have their 64 bit strategy a bit more together, although intel's Core Duo chips are very interesting. With their basis in the Centrino "pentium-m" processor (which itself was more closely related to the P3 than the P4), they overcome the P4's problems with power and low IPC. Don't underestimate the marketing effect of Apple's very public move to these processors (although apple themselves account for only a very small part of the market, people often follow what they do).

The Dell situation is that as long as dell use intel processors exclusively, and in their advertising display the intel branding (and play that annoying plinky tune), intel pick up the tab for ALL of Dell's advertising. Dude!

 

In fact, I've just found the forecast 2005 ranking:

1 Intel $35.4bn
2 Samsung $17.6bn
3 TI $11.3bn
4 Toshiba $9.5bn
5 ST $8.8bn
6 Infineon $8.4bn
7 Renesas $8.3bn
8 TSMC $8.1bn
9 Sony $6bn
10 Philips $5.9bn
11 Freescale $5.7bn
12 AMD $5.7bn
13 NEC $5.7bn
14 Hynix $5.4bn
15 Micron $4.9bn
16 Fujitsu $4.5bn
17 Matsu****a $4.1bn
18 Qualcomm $3.4bn
19 UMC $3.3bn
20 IBM $3.0bn

 

most definitely - we have some 1GHz PIIIs still in use at work, and in comparison with, say, the 1.8Ghz P4s we have, they really are solid machines. just need to top up the RAM from 128MB and the users probably won't bat an eyelid prior to that i recall we had 1 guy who was sad to see his 166Mhz pentium go because it just performed way over spec. he had autocad 2000 running on it at one point (which seemed to tax our PII 350s pretty badly) and said it was fine.

 

Are the old P3's good for overclocking? The Aopen AX3S mobo that my P3 866 runs on seems to have various settings for upping the ante a little, but I haven't tried them yet....I've never really tried overclocking b4, but there's always a 1st time.....

I've put Windows ME on this machine to make the most of its performance, and with 192Mb Ram it runs pretty sweetly compared with my AMD 3200+ system with XP Pro. I did put XP on the P3 but it did drag its heels a little, and it's only an office workhorse so don't need any fancy stuff so dropped it back to ME.....
I also installed Ubuntu as a 2nd OS but that seemed a trifle sluggish also, mebbe more RAM yet.

 

How can IBM be all the way down there when they are doing the chips for playstations and the like?

 

I thought the PS3 was the first PS to have an IBM processor? Maybe not.

 

Holy buckaroo

 

One of the greatest chips ever was the PIII-S 1.4GHz. It had twice as much cache as a normal P3 (512k vs 256), and was the first cpu based on intel's 0.13um process (before the P4 moved to that process). They could outperform the 2.4GHz P4 in some disciplines, and dissipated only 35W at full load (half that of a contemporary 1.4GHz Athlon). Combine with the i815 platform, and it was a superb bit of kit...

However, things have moved on. Although the P3 was more "elegant" in ways, the P4 does have the raw horsepower advantage. Rose-tinted specs and all that...