Intel Architecture vs AMD architecture, which is better?

[fazers_on_stun]

Currently Intel. It's an up and down roller coaster though.

Well you might be interested to read THIS article:

I think the whole AMD fanboy movement started with the success of the Athlon. I bet most AMD fans never even heard of AMD before the Athlon, or in fact haven't even owned a PC before that time. That is the only way in which I can explain their delusional idea that Intel and AMD are somehow each other's equals in a technological sense, and how they leap-frog over each other, trading the performance crown back and forth.

Clearly, anyone who bothered to study the history since the beginning of Intel's 8086-range will know that AMD started as an independent seller of x86 processors with the Am386 [after having been a second source for Intel with the 8086 and 80286 for years], and that they did this in 1991. Put this in the proper perspective: Intel released the original 80386 in 1985(!), and released the 80486(!) in 1989. So from the get-go, AMD was about six years behind Intel, with a gap of more than a generation.

One often hears the fairytale that AMD sold much faster 486 derivatives than Intel, so AMD must have had a technological advantage over Intel. While it is true that AMD sold 486 derivatives up to 133 MHz, while Intel's fastest was only 100 MHz, this has to be put in the proper perspective as well: AMD's first Am486 was introduced in 1993, actually a month AFTER Intel had introduced the Pentium, which may not have had higher clockspeeds at the time, but the Pentium had far higher performance per cycle, especially the FPU was an incredible deal faster than the outdated design of the 487. In fact, AMD didn't actually introduce those 100+ MHz 486s until 1995, while Intel released its last 486 in 1994.

So what really happened was that AMD basically was selling overclocked 486 processors as their high-end, while Intel had a much more advanced architecture which delivered much better performance, even at considerably lower clockspeeds. Clearly Intel wasn't even interested in selling high clockspeed 486 processors, as they would only threaten Pentium sales. And of course AMD was still a generation behind technologically, so the fact that they eventually had a 133 MHz 486 in 1995 doesn't mean much. Intel offered 133 and 150 MHz versions of the Pentium by then. So not only could Intel match AMD's clockspeed, but Intel's processors were MUCH faster at those clocks. In fact, even if we look at the fastest processor that you can put on a 486 socket, it's not AMD's, it's still Intel's. Intel even offered a Pentium Overdrive processor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_OverDrive for the 486 socket [although not all motherboards could support it]. It was a true Pentium processor at 83 MHz, complete with the superscalar architecture with the U and V pipelines, the large caches and the massively improved FPU. I've actually used it in my home server for a few years, running FreeBSD.

That's pretty much the story of AMD all around. Usually their CPUs were a generation behind, and also their manufacturing process was usually one node behind that of Intel. In fact, the entire success of the Athlon architecture is partly due to them being a generation behind. While Intel moved on to the Pentium 4 aka Netburst architecture, AMD was still working with an architecture that was closely related to Intel's P6 architecture, as used in the Pentium Pro, Pentium II and Pentium III.
Netburst didn't quite work out, and as a result, Intel had never killed off their P6 architecture completely. They used it in the Pentium M line for mobile devices, as the Pentium 4 just drew too much power [even the Pentium 4M derivative was useful for desktop replacements at best]. Overclockers already knew it, and Intel must have known as well: If you overclock the Pentium M (or later the Core Duo), you get performance very similar to that of the high-end Athlons and Pentium 4s.

 

[sminlal]

...anyone who bothered to study the history since the beginning of Intel's 8086-range will know that AMD started as an independent seller of x86 processors with the Am386 [after having been a second source for Intel with the 8086 and 80286 for years]

That reminds me of the days when you could buy a NEC V20 to drop into the CPU socket on the original IBM PC to get a machine that ran slightly faster than the "genuine" Intel 8088. That was a valuable lesson for me - it taught me that you can measure a 10% performance difference but you sure can't notice it.

 

[Upendra09]

synthetic means not real just so u know

 

[BadTrip]

thank you mister dictionary

 

[Upendra09]

ur welcome any day

 

[MU_Engineer]

Well you might be interested to read THIS article:

I think the whole AMD fanboy movement started with the success of the Athlon. I bet most AMD fans never even heard of AMD before the Athlon, or in fact haven't even owned a PC before that time. That is the only way in which I can explain their delusional idea that Intel and AMD are somehow each other's equals in a technological sense, and how they leap-frog over each other, trading the performance crown back and forth.

Clearly, anyone who bothered to study the history since the beginning of Intel's 8086-range will know that AMD started as an independent seller of x86 processors with the Am386 [after having been a second source for Intel with the 8086 and 80286 for years], and that they did this in 1991. Put this in the proper perspective: Intel released the original 80386 in 1985(!), and released the 80486(!) in 1989. So from the get-go, AMD was about six years behind Intel, with a gap of more than a generation.

One often hears the fairytale that AMD sold much faster 486 derivatives than Intel, so AMD must have had a technological advantage over Intel. While it is true that AMD sold 486 derivatives up to 133 MHz, while Intel's fastest was only 100 MHz, this has to be put in the proper perspective as well: AMD's first Am486 was introduced in 1993, actually a month AFTER Intel had introduced the Pentium, which may not have had higher clockspeeds at the time, but the Pentium had far higher performance per cycle, especially the FPU was an incredible deal faster than the outdated design of the 487. In fact, AMD didn't actually introduce those 100+ MHz 486s until 1995, while Intel released its last 486 in 1994.

So what really happened was that AMD basically was selling overclocked 486 processors as their high-end, while Intel had a much more advanced architecture which delivered much better performance, even at considerably lower clockspeeds. Clearly Intel wasn't even interested in selling high clockspeed 486 processors, as they would only threaten Pentium sales. And of course AMD was still a generation behind technologically, so the fact that they eventually had a 133 MHz 486 in 1995 doesn't mean much. Intel offered 133 and 150 MHz versions of the Pentium by then. So not only could Intel match AMD's clockspeed, but Intel's processors were MUCH faster at those clocks. In fact, even if we look at the fastest processor that you can put on a 486 socket, it's not AMD's, it's still Intel's. Intel even offered a Pentium Overdrive processor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_OverDrive for the 486 socket [although not all motherboards could support it]. It was a true Pentium processor at 83 MHz, complete with the superscalar architecture with the U and V pipelines, the large caches and the massively improved FPU. I've actually used it in my home server for a few years, running FreeBSD.

That's pretty much the story of AMD all around. Usually their CPUs were a generation behind, and also their manufacturing process was usually one node behind that of Intel. In fact, the entire success of the Athlon architecture is partly due to them being a generation behind. While Intel moved on to the Pentium 4 aka Netburst architecture, AMD was still working with an architecture that was closely related to Intel's P6 architecture, as used in the Pentium Pro, Pentium II and Pentium III.
Netburst didn't quite work out, and as a result, Intel had never killed off their P6 architecture completely. They used it in the Pentium M line for mobile devices, as the Pentium 4 just drew too much power [even the Pentium 4M derivative was useful for desktop replacements at best]. Overclockers already knew it, and Intel must have known as well: If you overclock the Pentium M (or later the Core Duo), you get performance very similar to that of the high-end Athlons and Pentium 4s.

The biggest thing I got out of reading that author's articles is that he is obviously trolling. He also wrote a similar piece about how he thought Linux fans were idiots as well, which was just as much of a troll as this article was. He doesn't even have his facts all straight:

1. He conveniently forgets that AMD designed some of their own ICs in addition to being an x86 second source. Do the Am2900 and Am29000 RISC processors ring a bell? They should as AMD used a lot of the ideas from the Am29k when they started making their own x86 CPUs, which is why you saw them do things like x86-to-RISC decoding in the core.

2. He also ironically praises the P5 Pentium's FPU. Yeah, it was faster than the Am486 and Am5x86's FPU clock-for-clock, but it was also notoriously buggy. For all of his "the fanboys were too young to have lived through the time period," this comment sure sounds like it came from somebody who never lived through that time period and wouldn't have known about the Pentium FDIV bug. It was probably the biggest public embarrassment as they had to famously recall a bunch of CPUs, but he makes absolutely no mention of it.

3. The original Pentiums were ridiculously expensive, which is why far-less-expensive 486s remained popular for a few years after the Pentium's initial introduction. It doesn't really matter if somebody has a CPU that is far faster than anything else out there if few can afford it.

4. The author saying that the Athlon succeeded because AMD was behind Intel in process and microarchitecture technology is absolutely insane. Calling the K7 "old" in comparison to NetBurst and saying that the K7 was similar to the P6 is equally ridiculous. The K7 was about one year old when the first NetBurst units showed up and the K7 is not all that similar to the P6 other than having a similar number of pipeline stages. The decoders are different, the FPUs are different, heck, even the buses are considerably different. If the author can't tell the difference between the P6 and the K7, he has no business writing technical articles.

5. NetBurst was hardly an anomaly- Intel stuck with it for about six years, which is about as long as they initially used P6 CPUs before the Israeli team resurrected the P6 into the P6+ Pentium M. The P4 underwent four die shrinks, one major revision, and encompassed their entire product lineup at certain points in time. If Intel had released the Willamette and then said "oops, my bad," then yes, it might have been an anomaly. But no, they kept with it far too long to call it an anomaly. They intended to stick with NetBurst until an unforeseen thermal barrier hit them head-on and they scrambled to find a successor.

6. The author noted that the P6+ Pentium Ms could be overclocked to compete with the K7s and K8s and had much better thermal characteristics than the NetBurst chips. Why Intel didn't simply release higher-clocked Pentium M Dothan cores in LGA775 guise when it saw that the Prescott was low on performance and high on power consumption is beyond me. I am surprised that the author didn't even attempt to analyze the question I posed is odd, since it is a question that was asked numerous times during the days of the Pentium M Dothan and P4 Prescotts and is a question that even hard-core Intel fans asked numerous times.

7. Saying that the Core 2 put Intel "back to where they always were, a generation ahead of AMD" is wrong. He must have been like Rip van Winkle and slept through most of the time period from late 1999 to mid-2006. The only time during that period that Intel was actually ahead of AMD was about a year between early/mid-2002 and mid-2003 when the Northwoods edged out the Athlon XPs before being beaten soundly by the Athlon 64s. Before that, the PIII lost to the Athlon and the Willamettes lost to not only the PIIIs but to the Athlons and Athlon XPs.

8. His comment about the integrated memory controller was equally funny. He forgot about the debacle known as the Timna that did use an IMC but it was dependent on RDRAM and also buggy, so it was stillborn. He also summarily dismissed Intel's lower performance in server setups with a mere couple of words. The Opterons slaughtered anything NetBurst-based in server usage and kept the pace with many Core 2-based Xeons that had more cores and much higher clock speeds.

9. He failed to mention Intel's RAM debacles. Intel had tried not once but twice to force expensive, hot RAM on the market with RDRAM and FB-DIMMs and has failed miserably both times. They really botched the RDRAM introduction as their remedy was to go back to PC133 and even then they ran into some trouble with the MTHes. AMD plays it much more conservatively with RAM and hasn't had any of those issues, but this is overlooked by the author.

10. I would say by far the biggest omission of his article is that he completely fails to mention the transition to 64-bit computing. Intel tried to make the transition with the Itanium, which is Intel's biggest flop of all time, but of course it gets no mention in this article because it's a whole gross of eggs in Intel's face. AMD made the transition with the Opteron and it was met with huge success and Intel now has to use the AMD-developed x86_64 ISA in their chips rather than their own IA64 Itanium 64-bit ISA.

So all in all, this article is nothing but a troll rant and this guy is the real idiot. Yes, Intel is doing a decent job right now, but to call out all of AMD's missteps while failing to acknowledge very many of Intel's own missteps and not acknowledge very many of the important advances AMD has made is absolutely ridiculous.

 

[Upendra09]

well said

 

[Cryslayer80]

I couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[BadTrip]

I couldn't have said it better myself.

I seriously doubt you could have even came close.

 

[Upendra09]

hey badtrip what is your problem? we don't even talk to you and you come after me and cryslayer for no reason

 

[BadTrip]

My problem is ignorant people like you. You post advice when clearly you are not informed enough to do so. Cryslayer80 is just a flamebaiting troll.

 

[uncfan_2563]

That was beautiful MU_Engineer.

BadTrip what makes you so "informed" that makes YOU able to post advice huh? What do you do for a living? I didn't realize you were a head cpu engineer, oh wait, you're not?????

BeginRant()
{
this is a forum and not a place to start telling people to shutup cuz they don't have a degree or w/e. If you wanted to discuss this with "qualified people", then I suggest you do something with your life and get a job in the industry.
}

 

[Upendra09]

i am not ignorant ask anybody here they will tell u i am not ignorant,and even if was ignorant i atleast want to learn

And if i were you I wouldn't go around following this one person who gives bad advice, i would tell them the right thing and give the other guy a chance to learn and not look stupid next time

hoever, u boviously have some sort of and ego problem where u were poved wrong by someone else and u are trying to show ur superioirity on a person who joined only 8 months ago is probably half ur age, yeah theis really shows how smart u are

what u are doing is basically me going up to a 3 year old who thinks 2+3= 4 and saying it actually equals 5 just to put down the little kid and make myself look smarter

 

[uncfan_2563]

and updendra09, in your defense, i didnt catch anything that was very obviously incorrect.

 

[Cryslayer80]

My problem is ignorant people like you. You post advice when clearly you are not informed enough to do so. Cryslayer80 is just a flamebaiting troll.

And you are an ignorant moron. And yes, I mostly am trolling as I always get angered by the stupidness of people on these forums. And Upendra09 is certainly not the best reviewer you can find, but at least he is not a troll like you.

 

[BadTrip]

That was beautiful MU_Engineer.

BadTrip what makes you so "informed" that makes YOU able to post advice huh? What do you do for a living? I didn't realize you were a head cpu engineer, oh wait, you're not?????

BeginRant()
{
this is a forum and not a place to start telling people to shutup cuz they don't have a degree or w/e. If you wanted to discuss this with "qualified people", then I suggest you do something with your life and get a job in the industry.
}

For your information, I have 10+ years in the IT industry. I work at a hospital, everyday there are lives that depend on my equipment. So I take great pride in my job.

 

[uncfan_2563]

Right but the IT industry doesn't make you qualified to talk about cpu architecture, just enough that you know the parts and what not.

 

[Reynod]

That is true - most of those in IT are so obsessed with the network and the user problems they have little time to look what is inside the box.

There are helpdesk calls to follow up.

Poor buggers.

/toasts the poor time flogged minions in IT ...

 

[BadTrip]

Right but the IT industry doesn't make you qualified to talk about cpu architecture, just enough that you know the parts and what not.

And what qualifies you? I see that you are 15 years old.

Edit: Scratch that, arguing with teenagers is becoming tiring.

 

[uncfan_2563]

Hay! no crossthread information citing! lol, i never said i was qualified, just said you weren't

 

[Upendra09]

and updendra09, in your defense, i didnt catch anything that was very obviously incorrect.

thanks

And you are an ignorant moron. And yes, I mostly am trolling as I always get angered by the stupidness of people on these forums. And Upendra09 is certainly not the best reviewer you can find, but at least he is not a troll like you.

I agree, i am not the best by far, in fact i am not even good just average, but i can help those who know less than me.


And how can u tell any of our ages? And if u know so much, why don't u correct us instead of making urself look cheap and lowly?

 

[uncfan_2563]

thanks



I agree, i am not the best by far, in fact i am not even good just average, but i can help those who know less than me.


And how can u tell any of our ages? And if u know so much, why don't u correct us instead of making urself look cheap and lowly?

in another thread i leaked the info that im 15

 

[demonnn]

Intel does have a better arch.

Buuuuuttttt... they don't have 3D Now! 😉

oh god like that helps in any shape or form. intel has better cpu and that's that , no matter what amd does intel is way ahead

 

[uncfan_2563]

oh god like that helps in any shape or form. intel has better cpu and that's that , no matter what amd does intel is way ahead

she was being sarcastic, no reason to bash her for it.

and i'd say Intel isn't way ahead, just simply ahead.

 

[demonnn]

she was being sarcastic, no reason to bash her for it.

You may be right, I apologize

and i'd say Intel isn't way ahead, just simply ahead.

Intel is one generation ahead of ati. Ati's high end cpus are competing with last generation of Inte's quads.

I wtf ahahaha ati

I'm such a *****