amd vs. intel

[bob]

i'm trying to figure out the differences between amd and intel
processors in a nutshell.

i heard that amd cpus can do instructions in fewer operations. if this
is true, why can't they just up the clock rate and have the fastest cpu
overall? why must their clock rates be below those of intel?

 

[Mike Walsh]

CPUs with long pipelines e.g. the Pentium 4 can operate at higher clock speeds because each stage does comparatively little processing, but are very inefficient. CPUs with shorter (fewer stages) pipelines e.g. Athlon and Pentium mobile chips have better performance at lower clock speeds. There are also many other things that affect performance e.g. L2 cache size and the Athlon's high speed memory controller.