11 Times AMD Beat Intel at the CPU Game

[Guest]

AMD’s rivalry with Intel dates back decades. And while Team Red has nearly always been the underdog, the smaller company has its fair share of CPU firsts.

11 Times AMD Beat Intel at the CPU Game : Read more

 

[salgado18]

AMD has beaten Intel a lot of times. But evil tactics from Intel and one bad generation from AMD made the first rest on its laurels, and the later to go nearly bankrupt.

But AMD has always been about inovation, like it or not.

 

[jeremyj_83]

The first Athlon at 1GHz was based on the K75 core not Thunderbird. It was a Slot A processor with 1/3 clock rate L2 cache.

 

[Onus]

I'm no Intel fanboy, but this article is really reaching. Highest clocks <> fastest processor, and Bulldozer was often called Faildozer for Reasons.
Today, a suitable PC for most any task (not requiring Big Iron) can be built with a CPU from either company.

 

[bloodroses]

Being first doesn't necessarily mean being better as software needs to be there as well to take advantage of it. AMD takes risks to try and stay competitive, Intel stays with the standard. the 64-bit CPU is a perfect example as while AMD may have hit 64-bit first with x86, 64-bit Windows didn't become viable until Intel joined the game as well. Anyone who ran the 64-bit version of Windows XP on their new AMD chip knows this very well.

Regardless, if it wasn't for AMD, innovation would stagnant as Intel wouldn't have actual competition in the x86 space.

 

[Martell1977]

I'm surprised there is no mention of the period when AMD was spanking Intel on IPC. In the time of 1.2ghz to 2.2ghz, AMD CPu's were killing Intel's P4. They had CPU's at 1.4ghz that were equivalent to Intel's 1.7 or 2.0ghz P4's.

 

[Gam3r01]

I'm no Intel fanboy, but this article is really reaching. Highest clocks <> fastest processor, and Bulldozer was often called Faildozer for Reasons.
Today, a suitable PC for most any task (not requiring Big Iron) can be built with a CPU from either company.

Im assuming we are supposed to read this article as a time based measure, not performance based. They beat them to that milestone, but failed to surpass intel with it. Which is not a great metric, but its something I guess.

 

[jimmysmitty]

I'm no Intel fanboy, but this article is really reaching. Highest clocks <> fastest processor, and Bulldozer was often called Faildozer for Reasons.
Today, a suitable PC for most any task (not requiring Big Iron) can be built with a CPU from either company.

Im assuming we are supposed to read this article as a time based measure, not performance based. They beat them to that milestone, but failed to surpass intel with it. Which is not a great metric, but its something I guess.

Than I would say how is that innovation? What good was a 5GHz FX-9590 that often couldn't stay at 5GHz without a decent CLC and even then failed to beat most stock clocked i5s?

IMC, sure. Dual core, yes. But some of these are not what I would call innovation.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Nice to finally see some competition again in the CPU space.

 

[almarcy]

Us geezers are amused by the state of the art... when I started, Univac still had in service computers using vacuum tubes. When the world went all SS, "Binning" of transistors was done by their switching speed. A given crop of theoretically similar pieces would require up to twenty bins. Ah, the good old days. Mainframes had vast back panels that sported huge coils of simple wire to get them all to work together, for a while. It was more fun, back when a system crash meant the user population could go home and call in daily to see if it was back up. I remember being at an IBM site that had crashed and stayed down over a week. Lots of three piece suits walking around, trying to look serious.

 

[gasaraki]

This article is reaching... Could have listed other things. Can't believe Bulldozer and FX is on here...

 

[Martell1977]

This article is reaching... Could have listed other things. Can't believe Bulldozer and FX is on here...

Bulldozer did have some milestones, it's just that they didn't equate to competitive performance in games. The 8320's were a decent file server CPU though. I built a client a file server that has 4 users connecting to it and it's been working nicely for several years now.

 

[DerekA_C]

Being first doesn't necessarily mean being better as software needs to be there as well to take advantage of it. AMD takes risks to try and stay competitive, Intel stays with the standard. the 64-bit CPU is a perfect example as while AMD may have hit 64-bit first with x86, 64-bit Windows didn't become viable until Intel joined the game as well. Anyone who ran the 64-bit version of Windows XP on their new AMD chip knows this very well.

Regardless, if it wasn't for AMD, innovation would stagnant as Intel wouldn't have actual competition in the x86 space.

Except Intel didn't make it viable, AMD did. Intel tried to force their Itanium 64 bit, A.K.A. IA-64 or did you forget this. IA-64 was an utter mess, a complete failure worse than AMD bulldozer. Not even a full iteration of IA-64 and it was gone, so much so that Intel had bought licensing for AMD64 tech and renamed it to x86-64 which is what we have today in all modern CPU's. I also remember that Far Cry was the first game to actually fully utilize AMD64bit to gain performance, I remember patching that game on my Athlon 64. I am no fanboy of either or any of these companies I have a Ryzen and a I7, I have AMD GPU and Nvidia GPU, I go where the value in performance is, for which tasks at hand I need Intel for gaming AMD for workload Nvidia for Gaming AMD for Stability. My 1080ti has had many hiccups along the way AMD has far less it just isn't as fast oh well, stable is more desirable on my eyes than fast.

 

[g-unit1111]

This article is reaching... Could have listed other things. Can't believe Bulldozer and FX is on here...

I can't believe the FX-9590 is on there, it generally has a reputation as being one of the worst CPUs ever made. The Ryzen 7 1700X is a million times better.

 

[lakimens]

As an AMD fanboy myself, this article is really bad. "AMD wins the 5GHZ race with the 9590" - The 4770 still mopped the floor with it.

 

[btmedic04]

Being first doesn't necessarily mean being better as software needs to be there as well to take advantage of it. AMD takes risks to try and stay competitive, Intel stays with the standard. the 64-bit CPU is a perfect example as while AMD may have hit 64-bit first with x86, 64-bit Windows didn't become viable until Intel joined the game as well. Anyone who ran the 64-bit version of Windows XP on their new AMD chip knows this very well.

Regardless, if it wasn't for AMD, innovation would stagnant as Intel wouldn't have actual competition in the x86 space.

Except Intel didn't make it viable, AMD did. Intel tried to force their Itanium 64 bit, A.K.A. IA-64 or did you forget this. IA-64 was an utter mess, a complete failure worse than AMD bulldozer. Not even a full iteration of IA-64 and it was gone, so much so that Intel had bought licensing for AMD64 tech and renamed it to x86-64 which is what we have today in all modern CPU's. I also remember that Far Cry was the first game to actually fully utilize AMD64bit to gain performance, I remember patching that game on my Athlon 64. I am no fanboy of either or any of these companies I have a Ryzen and a I7, I have AMD GPU and Nvidia GPU, I go where the value in performance is, for which tasks at hand I need Intel for gaming AMD for workload Nvidia for Gaming AMD for Stability. My 1080ti has had many hiccups along the way AMD has far less it just isn't as fast oh well, stable is more desirable on my eyes than fast.

Thanks for covering IA-64 AKA Itanic, I was just about to say something to the same affect as you lol

 

[jimmysmitty]

Being first doesn't necessarily mean being better as software needs to be there as well to take advantage of it. AMD takes risks to try and stay competitive, Intel stays with the standard. the 64-bit CPU is a perfect example as while AMD may have hit 64-bit first with x86, 64-bit Windows didn't become viable until Intel joined the game as well. Anyone who ran the 64-bit version of Windows XP on their new AMD chip knows this very well.

Regardless, if it wasn't for AMD, innovation would stagnant as Intel wouldn't have actual competition in the x86 space.

Except Intel didn't make it viable, AMD did. Intel tried to force their Itanium 64 bit, A.K.A. IA-64 or did you forget this. IA-64 was an utter mess, a complete failure worse than AMD bulldozer. Not even a full iteration of IA-64 and it was gone, so much so that Intel had bought licensing for AMD64 tech and renamed it to x86-64 which is what we have today in all modern CPU's. I also remember that Far Cry was the first game to actually fully utilize AMD64bit to gain performance, I remember patching that game on my Athlon 64. I am no fanboy of either or any of these companies I have a Ryzen and a I7, I have AMD GPU and Nvidia GPU, I go where the value in performance is, for which tasks at hand I need Intel for gaming AMD for workload Nvidia for Gaming AMD for Stability. My 1080ti has had many hiccups along the way AMD has far less it just isn't as fast oh well, stable is more desirable on my eyes than fast.

Itanium wasn't a mess. It was a pure 64bit uArch instead of sticking us with the same old x86 we still have. The unfortunate side was that x86 had to be emulated which caused x86 performance to drop by roughly 20%. However as a 64bit uArch it was great and probably would be superior in a pure 64bit setting.

Far Cry 64 gained at best 4% performance from 64bit. Nothing notable.

BTW Itanium finally stopped being produced in 2017 with the Itanium 9700. It found a market in high-uptime servers.

 

[Martell1977]

I remember when Intel went exclusively to RAMBUS RAM, that was an epic fail as well. Didn't last long either.

I think it's interesting how AMD got slammed for years about acquiring ATI, but then during the Phenom1 and bulldozers days, it was the GPU department that kept the company in business.

They ups and down history of AMD looks like a heart monitor, lol

 

[mdarrish]

BLOODROSES said:
Being first doesn't necessarily mean being better as software needs to be there as well to take advantage of it. AMD takes risks to try and stay competitive, Intel stays with the standard. the 64-bit CPU is a perfect example as while AMD may have hit 64-bit first with x86, 64-bit Windows didn't become viable until Intel joined the game as well. Anyone who ran the 64-bit version of Windows XP on their new AMD chip knows this very well.

Regardless, if it wasn't for AMD, innovation would stagnant as Intel wouldn't have actual competition in the x86 space.

True, but there are better operating systems than Windows, like several UNIX variants, ported to the X86-64 instruction the same year AMD released Opteron, 2003.

 

[hypog60]

It's not that AMD cpus were bad, it was the poor motherboard support.

 

[robapacl]

My respect for AMD is decades old. When I needed a particular IC, I'd start with AMD because their catalogs had the best info. All that I needed to know almost always, and more usually. If a particular parameter could use a bit more info, I could call and almost always get it. And their components lived up to their specs. It was a pleasure to do business with them, more so than almost any other, and we seldom had problems but if we did, they helped nail 'em. Ah, the good old days.

 

[bill_bright]

10 times? But how many times has Intel leapfrogged back over AMD? And who's winning the war? Does it really matter? I say, "no".

We (consumers) need competition. AMD needs Intel so they will stay motivated to keep striving to win these smaller battles. Intel needs AMD to keep nipping at their heels so they don't become complacent - again. That makes it good for us - all of us.

And while the two companies might have been born as rivals, let's not forget they were also born as off-springs from the same parent, Fairchild.

 

[Marc_24]

AMD has beaten Intel a lot of times. But evil tactics from Intel and one bad generation from AMD made the first rest on its laurels, and the later to go nearly bankrupt.

But AMD has always been about inovation, like it or not.

For quite a long time you are correct and AMD was the innovator in the CPU market, but one of the reasons why Ryzen is so interesting is that it's the first time in a number of years that AMD has even tried to compete with Intel's CPU offerings. This is why Intel had no reason to make major changes to the core I3, I5, and I7 because they were so far ahead on AMD and their chips...FX anyone?

 

[lynno1354]

Gong back to my first ever build... AMD came out with a nicely priced and innovative 40mhz 386. It started a long line of non-Intel builds. I now have both AMD and Intel machines... they're both so powerful now (I'm a graphic designer) that it has to do with the best price/performance for my budget at the point the software has outpaced my platform. I can't go wrong either way.

 

[alexanderlecard]

Thanks intel for the check from the class action lawsuit you know lying about processor speeds and fudging benchtest speeds.ill keep my lowly 8350 overclocked to 6ghz on water.