General said:
Don't be an idiot, unless your an employee of AMD your interest should be
in buying the best system that you can, not whether it's Intel or AMD. For
the last two years it's been an easy decision because AMD processors were
clearly superior in every dimension but with the release of Woodcrest and
Conroe it looks like the tables are about to turn for systems with two or
fewer chips. Intel has fixed their power problems, Conroe takes 65W which
is easily coolable. It's true that an Intel motherboard will require about
20W more than an AMD motherboard because it still has a North Bridge but
you really care about that. The problem with P4s was that the CPU consumed
so much power that it required a big loud fan to cool it and even with
that it always ran hot as compared to an Athlon 64. With Conroe and
Woodcrest that problem is solved. Intel has also fixed their performance
problems. The source of all of Intel's troubles was their pipeline, in the
P4 it was 30 stages deep which was very inefficient. In the Core2 it's
only 14 stages deep, about the same as AMD's, so the efficiency is now on
a par with the A64. Intel still lacks an on chip memory controller so
their main memory latency is longer, however they have much bigger caches
which compensate for the longer DRAM access times. Big caches are an
expensive solution because they take a lot of die area, however Intel is
already at 65nm vs 90nm for AMD so they can afford to waste some space. A
year from now when the K8Ls come out (which will be AMD's 65nm parts), the
pendulum may swing back to AMD a little. However for the next 12 months it
looks like Intel will have an advantage.
As I said in my original post even if you still want an AMD system you
should wait until Conroe comes out because it's going to force AMD to
lower their prices. AMD has had the luxury of keeping their prices high
for the last two years because Intel's parts were so inferior especially
in the area of power consumption. Now that Intel's parts are competitive
again we are going to return to the days of price wars which is good for
you, the consumer, but bad for AMD share holders.
I mostly agree especially for the bit about waiting whatever your
planning.
However two points I disagree on are firstly your claims about the last
2 years. IMHO, AMD have had the clear lead for perhaps the past 5 years
(with one recent issue to cloud things). Since 2001 or so, AMD have
been a better choice for the vast majority of users (except perhaps for
some people with specialist uses like video encoding or in some case,
for those looking at the real high end). AMD processors have been
better price/performance wise. Intel has come close perhaps
occasionally, but never really been the better choice. At best, in
certain circumstances it could be described as equal.
To be fair, with the launch of the Athlon 64, AMD wouldn't have been
such a clear favourite were it not for the fact Intel was so crap by
that time but they still managed to remain the clear better choice.
However I do have to say, with the advent of dual core, it hasn't been
so clear cut for the average user IMHO. For the gamer etc, the Athlon
64 has been the clear winner. But the average user on a budget rarely
needs that much computing power (so to speak). However when Intel
launched their D 805 they brought dual core to a resonable pricing for
the average user. Sure given Intel's dual core problems and the Intel's
performance problems in general, it would have been wacked silly in
even a multithreaded benchmark by a comparably priced Athlon 64 system.
But as I said, raw performance isn't so important to the average users.
The advantages of dual core (especially given the fact that Windows's
thread management has always been a bit crap) however could easily
outweight the fact that the D 805 was a POS. Obviously if your budget
was a bit higher and within the range of one of the Athlon X2s, the
choice was clear but for the average user on a lower budget, IMHO the D
805 has been the better choice since it's launch.
The other point I disagree on is your assesment of the Conroe. It's
good for the user in many ways but IMHO, it's still not clear if Intel
really has the lead. I don't take much stock in the crappy 'benchmarks'
aka Intel's marketing departments PR campaign. Until real thorough
non-Intel controlled benchmarks come out I'm reserving judgment. I do
think Intel has come close again (as I said, it won't be the first time
but this time they do appear to have a decent product which should last
a while rather then a momentary advantage) but it doesn't mean they've
taken the lead price/performance wise. AMD's biggest problem is
probably in the dual core arena. IMHO, AMD seriously needs to cut
prices here. As someone with a socket 939 I can only hope that their
future moves would benefit me since I'm still waiting for a dual core
processor to be resonably priced.
Cheers
