AMD vs Intel

Excalibur · May 30, 2005

I am just wondering as I couldn't find anything on the board about this Why is the FX55 which has a clock speed of 2.6 fatser than a P4 @ 2.6. I know that they are different CPUs and they are different architectures but it has to more than AMD having an on Die memory controller or something.

My Mum always said God has a plan, guess I was Plan B

RichPLS · May 30, 2005

Simply because Athlon's do more work, clock for clock compared to the P4 chip design, which makes them more efficient.

<pre>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre>

RichPLS · May 30, 2005

Yeah, and that is partly why the stock market bubble burst too... Next is the housing market bubble...

<pre>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre>

Ned_Flanders · May 30, 2005

Efficiency!

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Welcome to my Shed of Pleasure

mozzartusm · May 30, 2005

This is almost flame war material. Im certainly not going to start anything.

BTW, rumor has it that intel runs circles around AMD :tongue:

Intel P4 550(3.4)@5Ghz
Asus P5AD2-E-Premium
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TT 680W PSU

Ned_Flanders · May 30, 2005

STFU, you Intel scum.

AMD PWNZ J00!

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Welcome to my Shed of Pleasure

endyen · May 30, 2005

With the added pipelines that Intel installed in netburst, comes an error fee. As a result, a lot of the extra speed is tied up in error correction.
Netburst also takes a major hit, due to memory bandwidth, for the same reason.

Crashman · May 30, 2005

P4 waste clock cycles creating errors and fixing them.

Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!
Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!

lonelypauly · May 30, 2005

I wrote this article for my website...I just went off the top of my head and I was about 6-7 beers deep at the time...might be good for a newbie, or good for a laugh so you guys can tell me how wrong I am...http://www.minestorm.com/html/article402.html

Athlon64 3200+ Winchester/MSI Neo4 Platinum SLI/MSI 6800 Ultra/1 GB Kingston HyperX (Dual Channel)/74GB WD Raptor/600Watt Enermax Noisetaker/ Dual Mitsubishi 21 Inch Monitors

mpasternak · May 30, 2005

Several Good reasons have been described inside this thread. and a few horrible ones from the fan boys

the main one that most articles address is the pipeline and amount of instructions that a thread must go through to finish it's computing. when you need to proces more commands to finish a threads computing, it takes longer or has a longer pathway to go. AMD runs around a dozen or so of these commands in it's pipe and intel runs around 30 something. so you have a ration of around 3:1. for every 1 command AMD needs in it's pipeline, AMD only has 1. now this deoesnt equate into intel running 3x as slow as AMD (nice try fanboys). what it DOES mean is intel needed to increase the speed of their processor's mhz.

Despite what AMD Fanboys will tell you, Intel IS NOT playing a catch up game with AMD. they are not revving up their clock speeds to match AMD. AMD has ALWAYS played cathcup behind intel to meet or beet the intel chips. but instead of revving up the MHZ all the time. AMD makes their chips more efficient to do the same (or better) performance than the Intel Rival. and for you Intel fanboys, higher MHZ also Doesnt mean better performance.

a good example is the update from the P3 to the P4. the P3 capped out because of heat and they needed to redesign the chip. what they developed was the P4. now the P4 of equal or even greater clock speed turned out to perform WORSE than a slightly lower clock speed P3 because of efficiency.

last remind for the fanboys
AMD FANBOYS- AMD usually plays catchup to intel's development and performance and intel USUALLY is the leader in the cyclical developement of processors

INTEL FANBOYS - Higher clockspeeds doesnt guarantee better performance. AMD has often countered an Intel chip with a better performaning chip due to optimization rather than purely upping the clocks.

in closing. the CPU market works in cycles.and at any given time one of the companies is chasing the other for dominance. right now, I believe that AMD probably has the upper hand in the desktop market with the FX series. that hcip blows my mind. But thats not to say it'll stay this way. Look at the Intel Pentium-M using the Dothan Technology. this chip could blow the P4 and any AMD out of the water with even LESS clock speeds (highest is around 2.13ghz) and less heat (27w)

RichPLS · May 30, 2005

Intel is mo l377 then AMD, thus they cost more and as a result are a HOT item. Fo sho!

<pre>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre>

pat · May 31, 2005

AMD did play catch up with Intel for a while, but when they decided to drop the MHz race and design the A64, they became leader. I'm not a fanboy, just an observator. And when they design their A64, they designed it to be efficient and scalable. That means that from the start, their chip were designed to either be efficiently used in a multi-cpu architecture or for dual core.

Now, intel has drop the MHz race not because they did win it, but rather because they were racing alone. And now, they are playing catch up game for 64 bits instruction, rushed dual core and thermal management.

I dont say Intel make bad chip. Amd are just better and efficient right now. Unless you are a diehard Intel fanboy, you'll be forced to admit that what AMD did with their A64 line is impressive in term of efficiency, thermal management for a good price.

When Intel introduced their netburst architecture, if you remember, they said that it could achieve speed near to 10GHz by 2005. They are far from that.. not able to even past 4 GHz because of thermal problems. They now need something else, and since they were putting high hope on netburst, they did not really design alternative. While being not that bad, their dual core are not impressive, compared to AMD design. But they couldnt compete with AMD dual core with their single core not going to past the 4 GHz so they improvised something to at least stay in the market equivalence.

AMD dual core are expensives. But are faster than Intel one in most single threaded apps. But when it come to apps optimized for dual core, Intel are no match. Intel did something right by pricing their dual core lower than AMD. That what they worth really. They are not to be used by professionnal, but by casual users and that where they target it with their price.

Maybe that this will give you some more time to design something new and improved that will compete or surpass AMD. Only time will tell.

Sig space for rent. make your offer.

Starfishy · May 31, 2005

I am going to have to agree with Pat here. I don't know how you could consider the A64 architecture "catch up". It's Intels turn to play that game.

endyen · May 31, 2005

For acuracy's sake, here is how it went.
Intel pretty much had it's own way until the K6-2 days.
That is when Amd started to push.
With the first athlons, Amd was able to outperform intel.
Amd hit 1 ghz first. As a kneejerk reaction, Intel pushed out the P4s too early, in an attempt to catch up. It failed, while the P3s made after, were good competition.
The early P4s, up to the P4b were no competition to the athlons. With the faster fsb, and the larger cache of the P4b chips, Intel was finally able to catch up. For a while, things were pretty close. Then Intel came out with the P4c. That was a clear winner, eating athlons with the faster fsb, and dual channel memory interface. We all know what followed, with the press-hots, and the A64s.
Personnally, I am somewhat amazed that a group as small as Amd has been able to push things as well as they have, but mostly I'm glad that they are there. Not only have they kept things moving quickly, but have also caused a major reduction in chip prices.
Amd should get a lot of credit for bringing the PC to what it is today. They get little enough cash.

HansGruber · May 31, 2005

Intel CPU is like a factory that has really fast production lines, but that has poor logistics/long distance to a warehouse.
So it has production lines that run fast, but are mostly empty, and which mostly just heat up the factory.

AMD has built it's production lines next to a warehouse, so AMD can keep it's production line at full use.
So AMD's lover linespeed won't hurt overall output.
And lower speed also means less power consumed = less heat produced.

P4Man · May 31, 2005

Oh dear.. a correction that needs a lot of ahmm.. correcting here.

>the main one that most articles address is the pipeline and
>amount of instructions that a thread must go through to
>finish it's computing.

The "ammount of instructions" a "thread must go through" is is absolutely equal on any chip running the same code. You can count them in the binary code if you like.

>when you need to proces more commands to finish a threads
>computing, it takes longer or has a longer pathway to go

Nop, same ammount of "commands", unless you are referring to microops, there might be a difference, but frankly, I wouldn't even know which way.

>AMD runs around a dozen or so of these commands in it's pipe
> and intel runs around 30 something. so you have a ration of
> around 3:1.

Consider this: both Ford and GM produce the exact same car (the code) on a production line. Fords line only has 100 steps (pipeline length), GM has 200. In both factories, cars move from one step to the other every 2 minutes (clock). Now tell me which one produces more cars ? They will both pump out a car every 2 minutes, so performance will be identical once you get beyond that first finished car ..

Pipeline length has no impact on throughput, it only incurs a penalty regarding the ammount of "work", say the number of people working on the poduction line, which in the case of cpu's translates into heat. More importantly, it has a huge impact on branch misprediction. In our car assembly analogy, it would be like constantly missguessing what colour and options the customer wanted, and moving the car back from the end of the line to the start. Since GMs line was 2x as long, and it still took 2 minutes to go through every step, that is where it starts to hurt, since much more work is lost every missed guess.

>Despite what AMD Fanboys will tell you, Intel IS NOT playing
> a catch up game with AMD. they are not revving up their
>clock speeds to match AMD.

Oh please, both intel and AMD constantly up their clocks *and* try to improve IPC.

>AMD has ALWAYS played cathcup behind intel to meet or beet
>the intel chips

Except at those times when the fastest CPU you could buy was an AMD 286-12 Mhz (*), an AMD 386-40 MHz, a K6-233 MHz, arguably an Athlon 500, without a doubt the 700, 1 GHz, 1.2 GHz,.. the first XPs, and now A64s and opterons.

>a good example is the update from the P3 to the P4. the P3
>capped out because of heat and they needed to redesign the
>chip.

Great example, except P3 was in no way thermally limited, especially not Tualatin on 130nm.

>Look at the Intel Pentium-M using the Dothan Technology.
>this chip could blow the P4 and any AMD out of the water
>with even LESS clock speeds (highest is around 2.13ghz) and
>less heat (27w)

Spoken like a real fanboy yourself here.

(*) granted, that chip was manufactured by AMD, but sold by intel. Imagine a chip that looks like this today:
<A HREF="http://www.cpu-collector.com/photos/AMDN80L2868C2H_FL.jpg" target="_new">http://www.cpu-collector.com/photos/AMDN80L2868C2H_FL.jpg</A>

= The views stated herein are my personal views, and not necessarily the views of my wife. =

RichPLS · May 31, 2005

Weren't you a Intel fanboi that saw the light?

<pre>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre>

fishmahn · May 31, 2005

...AMD 286-12 Mhz (*)..,
(*) granted, that chip was manufactured by AMD, but sold by intel.

AMD Also made 16 and 20 Mhz versions of the 286, and the 20mhz could actually outperform a 386/20 in Windows 3.0.

Mike.

slvr_phoenix · Jun 1, 2005

Unless you are a diehard Intel fanboy, you'll be forced to admit that what AMD did with their A64 line is impressive in term of efficiency, thermal management for a good price.

???

Not really.

IMHO you could only say that if you were an AMD fanboy. Anyone even remotely neutral would have to admit to the simple fact that with as many process changes (and not just the die shrinks) anyone would easily net around the same improvements.

Had the P3 gone through the exact same changes as the Athlon you'd end up with the same efficiency and thermal management. In fact, that's exactly what the PM is, and it's even more efficient and has better thermals. Not that this makes it better, since it also has lower clockspeeds and could use a few architectural changes to compete better on the desktop. But the point is that if you stick with any one architecture, you'll find ways to make it better.

The only real difference between Intel and AMD was that Intel tried to actually switch to a new architecture at one point. AMD didn't. They're still making upgrades to the same architecture.

Was either path better or more impressive? Not really, since neither seemed to really gain any significant foothold over the other. AMD still has the performance advantage that they've always had, and Intel still has the market share. Had either company actually managed to make a significant change in that, then they'd have done something impressive.

<pre>Jesters do oft prove prophets. -Regan in
King Lear (Act V, Scene iii) by William Shakespear</pre>@ 189K -> 200,000 miles or bust!

pat · Jun 2, 2005

Had the P3 gone through the exact same changes as the Athlon you'd end up with the same efficiency and thermal management.

The p3 was better than the thunderbird for heat, it is a fact. But I'm not talking about 5-6 years old chip. The P3 is no more current as well as the thunderbird. We have NOW Prescott and A64. The P3 was not able to attain high MHz that Intel was wishing, so they devellop a product that could.. but it was not performing as they were hoping for.

But the point is that if you stick with any one architecture, you'll find ways to make it better.

If AMD would have stick to Athlon XP architecture, would it be better now than the A64 architecture? I dont think so. A64 architecture allow AMD to devellop new technology that allowed improvement in performance, thermal and power management. They did the wise choice when they stopped their XP developpement in favor of the new A64. Intel keep ramping up the MHz hoping to reach higher speed, but it fail.

The only real difference between Intel and AMD was that Intel tried to actually switch to a new architecture at one point. AMD didn't. They're still making upgrades to the same architecture.

Intel switched from the P3 architecture to the P4 423, 478 and 775. AMD switched to the Athlon 462 to the A64 940, 754 and 939. So each of them switched 2 time of architecture, with many revision core. Intel switched faster than AMD to a new socket, and keep trying to improve it, to a certain point, with revision while AMD used their socket 462 longer until they were not able to make it better. Then they switched to A64 which they are still improving with different core revision.

Had either company actually managed to make a significant change in that, then they'd have done something impressive.

AMD did push the market to newer thing. They brought 64 bits
and customers, by buying the cpu put pressure on software developper to move to 64 bits faster. They forced Intel to adopt their 64 bits instruction set. They put pressure on dual core with their new architecture scaling really well with 2 cores because it was designed with dual core capability, better than Intel one that have been rushed to the market to have something to compete. But Intel solution do work! But if it hasent been from the pressure that AMD put, maybe Intel alone would have wait longer to release either 64 bits cpu or dual core. AMD brought something good. This is called "competition". Competition is maybe not good for the customers, as they are "forced" to upgrade because newer CPU perform better in benchmark, which in turn, put more pressure on our ego. But for avancement in technology, this is good. If you look further than your own home and doom3 or HL2, you will see place where faster computer is really needed and can even save life. And that is a reason to keep improving thing.

Performance alone wont have me buy something. performance/price ratio will. I dont care if the Prescott 3.4 is faster than my 3000+. Because I know that my system give me a good feeling in term of performance and I still have money to do something else, unless your computer is your only passion. In my case, I have a quad (ATV), I do scuba diving, I travel and I enjoy good time. And that cost money. So, the less I put in one thing, the more I have for the other. that might make me look like an AMD fanboy, but I'm not. I just try to make smart choice base on the knowledge I have, and for NOW, AMD is a better value than Intel. I dont need benchmark for that.. they would only tell me that my computer is not the fastest one around. But it does everything right and fast enough for me.

Sig space for rent. make your offer.

pat · Jun 2, 2005

And what it means here?

Sig space for rent. make your offer.

Zoron · Jun 2, 2005

Aye, different socket doesn't necessarily mean different architecture. The P4 has gone through 2 socket changes now... yet the architecture is essentially the same.

 If you design software that is fool-proof, only a fool will want to use it.

wolverinero79 · Jun 2, 2005

You said:

"AMD did push the market to newer thing. They brought 64 bits
and customers, by buying the cpu put pressure on software developper to move to 64 bits faster. They forced Intel to adopt their 64 bits instruction set. They put pressure on dual core with their new architecture scaling really well with 2 cores because it was designed with dual core capability, better than Intel one that have been rushed to the market to have something to compete. But Intel solution do work! But if it hasent been from the pressure that AMD put, maybe Intel alone would have wait longer to release either 64 bits cpu or dual core. AMD brought something good. This is called "competition". Competition is maybe not good for the customers, as they are "forced" to upgrade because newer CPU perform better in benchmark, which in turn, put more pressure on our ego."

So first of all, you claim that AMD forced Intel to use AMD's 64-bit set. Is that really a great accomplishment? What this means is that AMD had to spend the money, time, and work to get software companies to open up to the idea of using 64-bit software (which still isn't mainstream, and won't be for some time). Then Intel comes along and says "ok, *tweak*, now our hardware can be used by those software companies too...Thanks for blazing the trail, AMD". We've seen AMD ride Intel's coat-tails before with things like MMX and SSE. AMD, being the smaller company with the smaller RnD/Marketing budget, maybe shouldn't be driving the industry. Looking at their balance sheet, it certainly isn't sustainable right now. I would love it if Intel pushed through new markets and provided new capabilities and then AMD continued to capitalize on Intel's success. IMO, they're being slightly more aggressive right now than they can sustain.

Another good example of AMD on Intel's tail is Dual Core support. Or rather, more generically, multi-threaded applications. A lot of the reason for the adoption of AMD dual core chips will be that Intel has already paved the way with HT, trying to at least begin the adoption of multi-threaded application design. I think this is fantastic for AMD. Why don't they continue this model? If AMD's trying to gain significant market share immediately, I think they're suffering from dillusions of granduer.

I'm just your average habitual smiler =D

lonelypauly · Jun 2, 2005

Hasn't AMD been designing it's CPU's with multicore architecture in mind since 1999? It's rather obvious that AMD was planning for this long before Intel. Seems like Intel is following the leader.

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apesoccer · Jun 2, 2005

G5's roxor intelzilla and amdminizilla times infinity

=P

Hands down.

F@H:
AMD: [64 3000+][2500+][2000+ down][1.3x2][366]
Intel: [X 3.0x3][P4 3.0x2][P4 2.4x5 down][P4 1.4]

"...and i'm not gay" RX8 -Greatest Quote of ALL Time

AMD vs Intel

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