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Intel IT Technology

Intel 6xx Series Reviewed and Benchmarked 240

Posted by Zonk from the now-comes-in-sour-cream-and-onion dept.
sebFlyte writes "It's been a long time coming, but Intel's first 64-bit desktop chip (the 6xx series) is here now, and thanks to ZDNet it has been thoroughly tested. The article has the full specs of the new family, explains the benefits of the changes, and also the results of tests on the new chips to establish perfomance boosts for games, photo manipulation and video work, among other things."
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Intel 6xx Series Reviewed and Benchmarked More

Intel 6xx Series Reviewed and Benchmarked

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  • Naming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fembots ( 753724 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:36PM (#11849285) Homepage
    Looks like Intel's really moving away from marketing its GHz. Its Pentium M has been using 7xx, and this 64bit is on 6xx.

    • Re:Naming (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pbranes ( 565105 )
      Considering that Intel has been at 3.6GHz for quite a while now, it is no surprise they are focusing on processor power instead of just raw GHz. Apple, Motorola, IBM, and especially AMD have all been doing this for years - time for Intel to join the future.

      What's interesting is that on a new computer box, the processor type is mentioned in bold lettering, but the GHz is now in really tiny type - it used to be the exact opposite. Moore's law will have to be fulfilled in new, unique ways.

      • Re:Naming (Score:5, Informative)

        by GeorgeMcBay ( 106610 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @07:30PM (#11849644)

        Moore's law will have to be fulfilled in new, unique ways.

        Moore's Law was never about speed in gigahertz, but rather about transistor counts, so it'll continue on as it always has, since more cores means more transistors.
      • Considering that Intel has been at 3.6GHz for quite a while now, it is no surprise they are focusing on processor power instead of just raw GHz.

        Actually, Intel released a 3.8Ghz part not too long ago when no one was looking. Considering the current state of the P4, I can hardly blame Intel for not making a big deal of it.

  • Intel plays catchup (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dmf415 ( 218827 ) * on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:38PM (#11849303)
    Intel has fallen behind as the mainstream CPU manufacterer. I wonder how long consumer will pay a premium for slower Intel CPUs

    Analysts' assessments came after Intel announced last week that it was scrapping plans to develop a 4-gigahertz version of its Pentium 4 chip. On Tuesday, AMD unveiled a pair of advanced new chips, the Athlon 64 FX-55 and the Athlon 64 4000-plus, which analysts believe will be more appealing at the high end of the PC market.

    more here:
    http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story _title= Analysts--AMD-Beating-Intel-in-Chip-Design&story_i d=27767&category=hardware
    • I would think that intel is "the mainstream" maker. Maybe not the best, but most common. What do Dell and Gateway use? Intel and NOT AMD. So what is the mainstrem maker then?

    • Slower? Says who? You? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:53PM (#11849432) Journal
      While I agree with you that Intel is playing catch-up in the desktop 64-bit arena, if you had RTFA then you would have found that it concludes with a performance summary that suggests that Intel's 64-bit CPUs more than hold their own:
      As far as performance is concerned, the 3.6GHz Pentium 4 660 can hold its own against its main competitor, the Athlon 64 4000+. The Intel chip performs particularly well if several tasks are running at the same time; under these circumstances, the Pentium 4 can outpace its AMD rival even if the latter is quicker at performing the tasks on their own. Thanks to HyperThreading (HT), the Pentium 4 distributes processing tasks across two virtual cores, resulting in more efficient utilisation of CPU resources. Such scenarios are found ever more frequently in the real world. For example, no-one should venture onto the Internet without firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware protection. These services are constantly active and need appropriate resources. Likewise, operations such as data encryption or hard disk defragmentation can load the processor, while the user compresses streaming video or audio data. Under such usage patterns, the advantage of HT is particularly apparent.


      With the 6xx-series Pentium 4, Intel has ensured that important functionality such as protection from memory overflow, power management and 64-bit support on the desktop is no longer an AMD domain. And with HT support and SSE3 instructions, the new Intel processors offer additional benefits. One change will annoy Intel, however: on the installation CD for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, the most important operating system files are no longer in the 'i386' folder; Intel systems must load the installation files now from the 'AMD64' folder. Although that might hurt the industry leader, Intel may draw comfort from the fact that it has already sold more 64-bit chips than the inventor of the x86-64 architecture, AMD.
      Now, I have no doubt that Intel's 64-bit offerings will fall behind their AMD equivalents when it comes to bang-per-buck but that conclusion seems to suggest that Intel's chips will still have plenty of bang, as much as if not more than AMD's chips.

      Remember, Intel's chips are just getting to market, whereas AMD's have been out there for at least 12 months. Who's to know who'll be lording it over who in a year or two when the 64-bit market is finally more than a tiny subset of the market as a whole? It might be AMD, it might be Intel, or it might be neither.

      And before the accusations start, no, I'm not an Intel fanboy or shill who's interested only in running down AMD: this post is being typed on a AMD Athlon-based PC, my last PC had an AMD CPU, and my next one almost definitely will too. What I am interested in is a fair and accurate comparisons of the processors of the future, regardless of who they are made by.

      • Re:Slower? Says who? You? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by i41Overlord ( 829913 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @07:00PM (#11849480)
        That is just damage control going on at Ziff-Davis. Intel used to be a big investor in ZD, I don't know if they still are.

        I remember when I worked at a mobo manufacturer back in the late 90's, ZD WinBench was the major benchmark used to measure the performance of chips/motherboards/PC's. This was during the time that AMD came out with the K6 processor, and had a lead in most benchmarks. Next thing you know, Intel's investing in ZD and ZD comes out with an "updated" version of the program. I test it out and suddenly AMD's chips seem to be choking on the benchmarks, while Intel's chips got a nice speed boost. Very shady tactics.

        I dealt with Intel and I'll tell you that they're a very dirty company to deal with. They use the same tactics as the Microsofts, Walmarts, and other big companies that use their current power to stifle competition.

        • Hey, perhaps it is and perhaps it isn't. But I'm not the one jumping to conclusions about who's 64-bit desktop processors are going to be faster, am I? That accolade belongs to the person to whom I originally replied.

          I'm the one who's saying don't count your chickens before they're hatched. And, I thought it went without saying (but I guess it doesn't nowadays), that you should canvas a range of opinions, benchmarks and analyses before making your own conclusions, too.

          Bottom line (again): only time will t
        • I remember a few years ago, when my dad and i both upgraded our computers at the same time. We got chipsets both by SiS, motherboards both manufactured my elitegroup, only I got a Celeron 400 and he got a K6-2 450. Not only did my Celeron run faster, it ran cooler. Now, that was a Celeron. I'm not even sure how much faster a P2 of a similar speed would be. The gist of this is: I doubt that ZD, being a huge company with many investors, would sway so easily. Having used both chips, the Intel ones were faster
          • Actually the ZD of the nineties whas whoring out left and right. I can remember the OS/2 half of an operating system campaign by Microsoft, which tried to badmouth the preemptive multitasking as an unnecessary feature. ZD basically was one of the press whores of this campaign, I can remember articles in various ZD publications where they tried to badmouth the obvious advantages of OS/2 back then. Many ZD articles often only have been copied press releases or rewritten ones. Microsoft has to thank a good dea

      • Re:Slower? Says who? You? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Glock27 ( 446276 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @07:14PM (#11849560)
        Such scenarios are found ever more frequently in the real world. For example, no-one should venture onto the Internet without firewall, antivirus and anti-spyware protection. These services are constantly active and need appropriate resources. Likewise, operations such as data encryption or hard disk defragmentation can load the processor, while the user compresses streaming video or audio data. Under such usage patterns, the advantage of HT is particularly apparent.

        This is basically BS. Firewally, anti-virus, and anti-spyware are either 1) dedicated hardware or 2) run sporadically without being CPU-bound. How many people defragment their disk other than at 3:00 AM Sunday morning? And "data encryption" is a non-starter for most except for SSL encryption.

        Nice try, though...

        That said, dual core and/or regular timeslicing will work for all this as well anyhow...

        • I wholly agree with you that the examples used are poor, but have you never wanted or needed to get something done whilst something else processor-intensive was happening in the background?

          Like playing a game or watching an AVI, MPG or DVD whilst compiling, ripping a audio CD or burning a data CD-R in the background?

          • Re:Slower? Says who? You? (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            Perhaps it's your choice of OS, or a lack of proper support/configuration for your chipset.

            I can quite easily burn a DVD over NFS, while streaming video from the same NFS, chatting in a few apps, browsing, and compiling. Not that I recommend doing all that all the time, but it's a matter of _how_ the applications are executing. If your machine is barely capable of servicing one of those applications, you either need to fix or upgrade your hardware and/or OS... or get something that better manages it.

            Havin
          • Playing a game while a page containing a flash video is playing in the background does the trick already (firefox/flash plugin, why not renice when run in background, thank you).

            But I am not sure that these tasks won't still mess up your HT pentium as well; there is the issue of caching/memory and more importantly, IO to worry about, next to CPU cycles. On current systems the harddisk will be the main problem, since there is only one head position.
          • If you're stuck with XP and you simply MUST do something else while ripping a CD in the background, launch Taskmanager and show the running tasks, then select the one for the CD ripping program, right click on it and change it's priority to low... that way, the foreground program doesn't slow down while the ripping is going on and remains fully responsive to your keyboard and mouse inputs.

      • Re:Slower? Says who? You? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jollyeugene ( 230857 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @08:02PM (#11849813)
        This article also compares Intel's announced CPU's with AMD's CPU's that you can actually buy. This is just a fluff piece-- same as the "Extreme Edition" that would overheat and that no one could buy for around 6 months.

        If you look at yesterdays news, you will see that AMD is releasing dual core chips soon. So when both of these new chips actually are available in quantity-- then lets do a review. Hyperthreading will not look so good then.

        Hyper Threading is an engineering solution to try and fix the problem created by Intel's marketing department-- when the company let them design the Pentium 4 to scale on Megahertz and not on performance. After that fiasco, Intel got its butt handed to it on just about all benchmarks by the Athlon. Intel management then panicked, and Intel's engineers salvaged the long processor pipeline with "Hyper Threading".

        Dual cores (SMP) are the better solution. When dual cores come out, hyper threading looses most of its advantage.
        • Except Intel will have dual core as well, and unsuprisingly they will have two cores with hyperthreading. Hyperthreading is by no means a hack, it is a very sensible performance enhancement that has been waiting in the wings ever since processors started having the current grab-bag of mixed execution units.

          Don't start with "Intel dual core is just a hack" now, while it is true that AMD's approach is more cleanly executed it is far from obvious that it will yield any significant advantages over Intels.

          The

        • Hyper Threading is an engineering solution to try and fix the problem created by Intel's marketing department-- when the company let them design the Pentium 4 to scale on Megahertz and not on performance. After that fiasco, Intel got its butt handed to it on just about all benchmarks by the Athlon. Intel management then panicked, and Intel's engineers salvaged the long processor pipeline with "Hyper Threading".

          You have a very narrow view of the world. There are other chip companies than Intel and AMD, you
        • These are actually on sale. I am supposed to be getting some on Monday.

          Whats most odd is the variableness of Intels 64 bit performance. I suspect it may not be such a good implementation as AMDs (who after all got to design it, Intel had to modify their P4 to fit into it as an afterthought. No IOMMU either, although 64 bit DMA is starting to arrive which makes it unnecessary, though sounds cards and USB and suchlike probably wont have it for a while.
      • While I agree with you that Intel is playing catch-up in the desktop 64-bit arena, if you had RTFA then you would have found that it concludes with a performance summary that suggests that Intel's 64-bit CPUs more than hold their own:

        You complain that the parent should have RTFA, then you quote a subjective summary.

        I did RTFA and found that the AMD was almost always faster. This has been the case for a long time and when Intel does pull ahead, it is short lived. You mention that Intel is just coming to m
    • Intel has fallen behind as the mainstream CPU manufacterer

      Uh? Did I read well?

      Quoting from http://news.com.com/IBM+extends+lead+in+server+ma r ket+-+page+2/2100-1010_3-5587722-2.html?tag=st.nex t [com.com]:

      AMD pioneered the addition of 64-bit extensions to x86 in 2003 with its Opteron. Intel followed suit halfway through 2004. Despite AMD's earlier arrival, more revenue came from servers using Intel's 64-bit Xeon chips, McLaughlin said: $1.3 billion for Xeon servers, compared with $838 million for Opteron s

    • Intel has fallen behind as the mainstream CPU manufacterer. I wonder how long consumer will pay a premium for slower Intel CPUs

      The price difference really doesn't exist anymore. At any particular price point above the bare minimum, Intel and AMD costs about the same. I just bought a $220 Intel processor from NewEgg, a 3.2 GHz P4. For the same price, I could have gotten a retail AMD 3400+. The P4 is faster in some tasks (such as video editing), but the 3400+ is faster in others (such as gaming). It's prett

    • So true, unfortunately Intel has 80% of the world market and AMD barely reaches 16%.

      But AMD keeps growing, it needs to keep investing in more manufacturing plants and production could soon match levels for mass distribution.

      It shows how hard it's been to steer Intel's big hull around to fight the waves of change. AMD is more like speedboat.

  • Not impressed (Score:3, Funny)

    by NRAdude ( 166969 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:41PM (#11849322) Homepage Journal
    From the article

    {

    Pentium 4 660 3.6GHz 2MB yes / yes / yes $605
    Pentium 4 650 3.4GHz 2MB yes / yes / yes $401
    Pentium 4 640 3.2GHz 2MB yes / yes / yes $273
    Pentium 4 630 3.0GHz 2MB yes / yes / yes $224

    }

    You can buy a well-built complete DEC Alpha computer on eBay for the cost of the cheapest single Intel 64bit CPU. And worse, same on eBay you can somtimes buy a API Networks 1U CS Dual 800MHz Alpha system for the most expense single Intel 64bit CPU. And Alpha 21264 still outperforms Intel per watt. I'm not impressed.

    • Re:Not impressed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:47PM (#11849370)
      And Alpha 21264 still outperforms Intel per watt. I'm not impressed.

      That's a silly comment, it's like saying "my wristwatch calculator outperforms any Intel processor per watt". But wait... can I do heavy-duty image processing and 3D stuff with my wristwatch calculator??

      The real question you should be asking yourself, with regard to such processors, is whether one is more powerful than another, period. Because power consumption is hardly their main selling point, although it can be a plus.
      • If all you care about is performance then you should buy the EE and slap 8 gigs of memory in there.

        You can probably fit 200 hd's if you use your usb correctly.

        Performance/Price + Heat + Noise + Reliability issues + Missing Features (let's face it people ) + etc.

        I think Intel is still losing in all these areas but AMD hasn't released a chip this year, they just haven't been motivated to innovate, and the gulf isn't big enough that intel fanboys are just "Total Morons!", amd needs to hit with a 4500+ fo

  • Hopes (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Masq666 ( 861213 )
    Just hope they'll discontinnue the Pentium 4 series.

    • Just hope they'll discontinnue the Pentium 4 series.

      Hope in one hand and crap in the other... see which one fills faster. These chips are still too hot and eat too much power for use in laptops, so I'm sure the p4/pM series will hold out for a few years, especially since traditional desktop pc sales are dropping while portables are on the rise.

  • AMD64 Inside (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
    however: on the installation CD for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, the most important operating system files are no longer in the 'i386' folder; Intel systems must load the installation files now from the 'AMD64' folder. Although that might hurt the industry leader, Intel may draw comfort from the fact that it has already sold more 64-bit chips than the inventor of the x86-64 architecture, AMD.

    Ha, like Microsoft will leave that called AMD64. Expect some diplomacy and a renaming. Not that anyone bu

    • Re:AMD64 Inside (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:58PM (#11849468)
      Ha, like Microsoft will leave that called AMD64. Expect some diplomacy and a renaming. Not that anyone but techies care.

      Why would they care? When Intel invented the i*86 line, everybody software manufacturer called any Intel-compatible CPU "i*86" somewhere or other, and neither AMD, Cyrix,... complained about it. Now the situation is reversed: AMD took the lead on that particular 64 bit design, and Intel is just a follower here. It sounds rather normal and deserved that any AMD64-compatible chip should generically called "AMD64" after all.
    • "unless you count the d00med itaniums."

      A great many of which were never sold, but rather given to Big Tin customers in the hopes that they'd purchase some.

  • heating (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Coneasfast ( 690509 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:41PM (#11849335)
    how is the heating? have things gotten better, or can i still cook an egg on my box?

    i couldn't find any references in the article.

    maximum power consumption: 230W vs AMD's 64 4000+ of 203W

    isn't really a complete indication of heat though

    • Re:heating (Score:3, Informative)

      by tmasssey ( 546878 )
      Unless you have unique processors with moving parts, 100% of power consumed by a processor is converted to heat. 100%. So, yes, that *is* an indicatin of heat.

      The only small caveat is that those are, according to you, max power consumption. Typical power consumption may be different. However, the proportion of typical to maximum is most likely comparable between the AMD and Intel chips. Assuming that it is, then the numbers are *still* indicative of heat... :)

      • Re:heating (Score:5, Funny)

        by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @07:01PM (#11849494)
        100% of power consumed by a processor is converted to heat. 100%.

        So I guess the amount of electricity that flows out of the CPU to the different busses comes from the hamster pedalling inside the CPU?

        • Re:heating (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Bun ( 34387 )
          So I guess the amount of electricity that flows out of the CPU to the different busses comes from the hamster pedalling inside the CPU?

          Power is not distributed in series on a motherboard. There are separate rails for the CPU, PCI(X) bus, etc. The CPU power rating is the amount of power CONSUMED by the processor. It has nothing to do with the other elements in the system.
        • Even if there were a net output of energy from the CPU along the I/O buses, where does that energy then go? It's converted to heat at some point in peripherals.

          It's a simple energy balance. Draw an imaginary box around your computer. You have AC voltage going in at around 200W+. The only outputs of energy are heat from internal components and a tiny amount of sound which is converted to heat in the air, plus maybe 25-30mW of radio energy from your wireless card.

          Assuming the computer is at steady-state tem

  • XD bit (Score:4, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:42PM (#11849338)
    From TFA: he new chips also offer improved [...] memory overflow protection (XD bit).

    I think they should call it the XP bit instead: it'd be an accurate description of the problem, and it would ring a bell immediately in consumers' mind...

  • Go AMD (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Stevyn ( 691306 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:43PM (#11849345)
    On most of the benchmarks, AMD seemed to perform a little better. On a side note,

    "Intel's EM64T architecture can implement Windows' x86-64 mode"

    I thought this was called amd64.

  • mostly 32-bit benchmarks... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Master Bait ( 115103 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:43PM (#11849347) Homepage Journal
    I'm not impressed. All those 32-bit benchmarks to benchmark their 64-bit CPU. Last week Linux Hardware benched [linuxhardware.org] the new Pentium against Opteron with real 64-bit apps on a real 64-bit OS.
    • Best of all in that review, the Athlons smoked the P4s, and even the P4s smoked the P4s (The pentiums overheated! The author had to take the cover off of his case!).

      Even though Intel is the market leader, AMD has produced some really impressive chips (faster _and_ cooler than P4).

  • I love this statement (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dot_borg ( 751877 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:47PM (#11849376)
    "...although there is, as yet, no shipping 64-bit Windows operating system, which is necessary to make the most of a 64-bit CPU."

    I've been using 64 bit Gentoo for like a year now, but I guess that doesn't count.

    • That's what I love about Gentoo... it adapts quickly, but never so quickly that it's broken. I'm running it on my laptop and I love it.

      Among Intel's chips, the one I'm really drooling over and looking forward to is the dual-core Pentium-M coming out in Q1 2006. It's really going to be awesome--667 MHz FSB, DDR2 (of course), and the graphics chipset that comes in Centrino bundles is getting better too.

  • Its murky in here... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tiger4 ( 840741 )
    The trouble with Intel products is trying to know what they're good for. In the rush to be something for everybody, they have saturated their own market and it is very difficult to tell the real benefits of one processor over another.

    Why would I want a 540 over a 530 over a 520 ? I assume price, but is there something else? And the same goes for the Centrino and other lines. Not that they are useless, but there is no clear statement, "you need an M processor for that problem".

    AMD has been better about
    • Why would I want a 540 over a 530 over a 520 ? I assume price, but is there something else? And the same goes for the Centrino and other lines. Not that they are useless, but there is no clear statement, "you need an M processor for that problem".

      Intel normally doesn't sell directly to consumers. The computer companies do. (Home built systems are rare). And the computer companies DO try to say, "you need this to do that." Dell will say, if you do only email, you need this processor, but if you also do vide

    • AMD isn't working on HyperThreading. They are working on multi-core CPUs. Very difference beasts.

  • That article reads like a typical ZDNet article. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by i41Overlord ( 829913 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @06:54PM (#11849439)
    ZDNet tries to be slick about it, but there's no mistaking who has influence at Ziff-Davis.

    When AMD comes out with something, it usually doesn't make the news or is seriously downplayed. However when Intel fires back a few months later, it's suddenly big news, worthy of headlines.

    When Intel releases a CPU that is faster than any of AMD's offerings, there is usually a big story that accompanies the event, praising Intel and their engineering prowess. However, when AMD releases a CPU that outpaces the Intel offerings, the fact is heavily downplayed. You can tell there's some damage control going on at this "objective" media outlet.
  • I've been circling, waiting to update my box. I waited for the 939 boards to show up - finally they did, but the CPU's were priced in the same range as my PII 400 was in the day. No worries, with a few processors out there 3500+ and better, it was just a matter of time before the costs dropped back down to what I expect to pay.

    A year later a 3500 is only marginally cheaper....

    They added a few slower processors to cover cheap skates like myself rather than change any of the higher end prices. I am so looking forward to Intel finally releasing some reasonably fast x86-64 chips so these CPU's return back to what I'm willing to pay. God help us all if they ever works out there is only one vendor option.

    Course the real price drop is probably waiting for only one thing - that I buy my kit today.

  • Intel is expensive? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by slackmaster2000 ( 820067 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @07:34PM (#11849668)
    Last time I looked (just now!), Intel processors are only $20-40 more expensive than comparable AMD processors. The big price difference isn't so big anymore.

    I'm no Intel fan...I find it silly to be a "fan" of a corporation. In fact two of my three current systems are AMD based, including the one I'm writing this on. However, I must say that buying a machine with an Intel chipset is considerably more idiot proof than buying AMD - mostly because there are just too many AMD chipsets to choose from, many of which (esp. from VIA, SiS) turn out to be pretty quirky. I'm glad that I've found at least some consistancy from nVidia (nforce2 and >).

    It's fun to hate Intel because they're the giant, but I for one still have not forgiven AMD for the K6-x processors and all their marketing BS that amounted to outright lies in my opinion. I also think they're stretching it a bit right now with their current "intel comparable" numbering scheme.

    Good, fast, reliable systems can be made with both AMD and Intel at this point, and the total cost difference is really minimal. I certainly find strange that anyone would be bashing either company in this regard at this time.
    • Except for that the Intel-comperable numbering scheme, at least on the Athlon 64, is about the same as the CPU benchmarks to. An Athlon 64 3000+ benchmarks about the same as a P4 3.0. And so on.
    • I personally do think AMD is hurting themselves with the price raise. It seems to me that if they can (maybe they cannot, hence the price raise) make a profit and undercut Intel's price by $100 that would be necessary to keep growing. They need to beat Intel in the Price/Performance ratio, not be equal to them.

      I also think processors in the $600+ range are pretty much a dream for marketshare. Gamers usually look at $230 processors, either through building it, or via Alienware etc...

      Everyone else is gettin

    • Re:Intel is expensive? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Shanep ( 68243 )
      Last time I looked (just now!), Intel processors are only $20-40 more expensive than comparable AMD processors. The big price difference isn't so big anymore.

      If the two latest Intel and AMD CPU's are both $100, but the AMD is 10% faster, which are you going to buy? All other things being equal?

      Now make that situation worse by making the slower CPU more expensive by ANY amount.

      Money is money. Who would knowingly choose less for more?

    • Re:Intel is expensive? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Bnonn ( 553709 ) <bnonny@gmail.com> on Saturday March 05, 2005 @03:08AM (#11851255) Journal
      So you find it silly to be a fan of a corporation, but you don't find it silly to hold a grudge against one? You haven't forgiven AMD for marketing BS, yet you have chosen to ignore entirely similar BS from AMD? And you think that $20-$40, which amounts to around what, 10%-20% of a CPU's price, is a minimal difference? Where did you get that figure from anyway? I just checked the cheapest prices listed [pricespy.co.nz] in New Zealand (where I live), and Intel offerings are over $100 more expensive than equivalent AMD ones.


      Very consistent logic. Well done. Fanboy.

  • Intel 6xx heat is still a problem... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dtjohnson ( 102237 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @08:02PM (#11849814)
    The Intel 660 reviewed in the article has closed the gap quite a bit with the Athlon 64 4000+ but it looks like heat is still a problem for Intel, even with the new 6xx 'prescott' cpus. The Intel 660 has a thermal design envelope of 115 watts vs only 89 watts for the Athlon 64 4000+. More significantly, the Intel 660 has hardware and software mechanisms to automatically reduce the core voltage and clock speed when high temperatures occur as described in this review [tomshardware.com]:

    • Thermal Monitoring 2
      TM2 is overheat protection, controlled by the processor's PROCHOT signal (processor hot). This signal is activated if the CPU's thermal diode detects critical temperature levels. TM2 will dynamically reduce core voltage and clock speed in order to cool down the CPU.
    • Enhanced SpeedStep
      SpeedStep does exactly the same as TM2, with the difference that it is initiated by the operating system. Whenever the system load is low, Windows XP SP2 will cause the CPU to lower the clock speed in 200 MHz increments by using ACPI mechanisms. Again, this is performed dynamically, which means that executing a demanding application will cause the system to speed up again.

    These sorts of protective mechanisms mean that your "3.6 Ghz" Intel processor might not be operating at either 3.6 Ghz or the core voltage that you have selected when either the motherboard or the Windows XP operating system determine that the thermal situation is getting out of hand. The original idea behind the early implementations of this stuff was to protect your cpu from catastrophic damage when the cooling fan failed, or some similar catastrophic event. Now, however, the stealthy way that Intel is implementing these mechanisms in both the hardware and the OS suggests that they have moved into the realm of selling performance that the system may not thermally be capable of delivering on a sustained basis. Will the user see any indication that their system is slowing down or that the voltage has been decreased? In effect, the Intel systems are becoming more like 'dragsters' that are capable of short periods of high acceleration and speed but perhaps unable to operate at speed on a sustained basis.



    • Oh my, what a load of crap. While it's true that Intel probably puts out more heat, those features like TM2 and SpeedStep are good things.

      OK, read this well... Regarding TM2. The Pentium has had hardware thermal protection built right into the the CPU since the at least the P3 days. Go take a look at that old Tom's Hardware article where they pull the heatsink off various CPU's while they are running Quake3. All the AMD's smoke themselves and often the motherboard too, while the Intel chips just slow th
      • I don't think that that's his point, though. He raises the interesting possibility of shipping a CPU that is not capable of sustained operation at its rated speed.

        It's not a problem that a CPU slows down under slow load, or something goes wrong. But a sneaky vendor could ship one that ends up spending most of its time in a throttled condition when it runs all-out.

        hawk

  • Power consumption (Score:5, Interesting)

    by D. Book ( 534411 ) on Friday March 04, 2005 @08:45PM (#11850028)
    IMHO, the area in which AMD has really distinguished itself is in the power consumption of its desktop processors. Generally speaking, non-Intel x86 CPUs (from AMD and Cyrix) historically had a reputation for running extremely hot. The situation has been reversed in recent years, with Intel pushing the upper limits of power consumption with its Pentium 4 (especially with Prescott) while AMD was doing the exact opposite with its Athlon 64. This has resulted in a huge difference in power consumption between the two competitors. Consider the following CPUs which are basically direct competitors (roughly the same price):

    Power consumption at idle
    Athlon 64 3500+ (Winchester): 13.4W
    Pentium IV 640 (Prescott 2M): 35.4W

    Power consumption at full utilisation
    Athlon 64 3500+ (Winchester): 47.5W
    Pentium IV 640 (Prescott 2M): 129.4W

    Source: 90nm Processors from AMD [xbitlabs.com] and Intel Pentium 4 6XX [xbitlabs.com].

    The often trivial differences in performance look rather insignificant in comparison. Also consider that these results come after Intel's best attempts at reducing the P4's power consumption (enhanced idle states in P4 5XX and SpeedStep in the 6XX) and you can see how inefficient the architecture is in this regard.

    This of course applies to desktop CPUs. Intel redeems itself somewhat with its Pentium M in the notebook market.

  • Techreport's test is from feb. 20th (Score:5, Informative)

    by Daath ( 225404 ) <lp.coder@dk> on Friday March 04, 2005 @09:08PM (#11850135) Homepage Journal
    Techreport's test [techreport.com] is from feburary 20th, and shows somewhat the same - AMD64 is king of gaming, and doing one thing at a time - Intel is good at encoding etc, and thanks to HT, doing more than one thing at a time - I would prefer AMD for now (I got a Prescott 550 3.4GHz - I wish I had an AMD).
    Ain't it great with competition?! :D

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