Posted by
Mark Pipkin in Tuesday, December 23rd 2008
I really feel sorry for AMD. In my personal opinion, they have really built a great processor. I feel that based on the way that programs and operating systems are built, they are not fair to the AMD.
The Phenom II is out now. Over at engadget they have the benchmarks up for the processor. This processor scores lower than the Intel of the same speed.
The speeds posted will not hold well for hard core gamer. These gamers will rip AMD to shreds about this. Now, I’m a gamer, and I also love AMD. I think that they took longer to make the first “True Quad Core” processor, because it was built to recover core failure.
In the AMD TQC you can have a core fail and you are left with the ability to keep running with 3 cores. I do not think that Intel offers such a feature. Also, looking at the way that Intel did their quad core, it does appear that much though went into the processor.
This can all be argued until people are blue in the face. it is also understandable why people would argue such a case. Back in the day when you had a quad processor computer, games didn’t run well on them. you loaded a gig of ram on the computer, if you were that lucky, and all 4 processors shared the same ram. Games were not built, and still are not built to take advantage of a TQC system, they are just not.
The hyper-transport was nicely built. Pairing that with 2 cores, as Intel did, was great as well. I jumped from a single core to a quad core. I can tell you that there is a difference. With at Intel did by sticking 2 dual cores on a single dye and calling it a quad-core, well it flat out is cheating and miss leading in my opinion.
Here is the problem. AMD gaming runs on 1 of the cores in the quad core system. This allows all of the systems processes to move off of that core to the other 3. You have a core just for the game. I can’t speak from experience on the Intel side, because I don’t have an Intel quad core. Maybe someone will comment about it.
With the game running on just one core, I’m able to do other things in the back ground. Music on a core, watch TV on another monitor while gaming, and sure there are other thing that you could be doing like compiling code and still killing your friend on CoD with out any lag. That is a major advantage if you ask me.
So when you look for a system that will function for more than just one thing I would go with AMD. I’m sure that in the future AMD will come out on top. Why? Because they have built something that can grow exponentially. I fear that Intel sold themselves short by taking a short cut. AMD in my opinion is high-end right now. There is just not much that supports what they built. There is Linux, Windows Server, and some of the software that is written for multi-CPU computers that will really take advantage of this type of setup.
I personally will continue to buy AMD, not because I like sub-par products, but because I feel that they are so much better than Intel in so many ways. I guess that makes me an AMD Fanboy.