Are Intel Really the Tops?
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| The pro-Intel lobby is becoming fairly massive: With Intel most likely paying backhanders to media publishers to promote their products at basically any cost, you’ll see adverts for Intel processors everywhere. There are many reviews of the huge variety of different Intel products in many accredited media outlets, such as constructor magazines and commercial guide publications, online and on paper as sold in High Street newsagents. You see very few reviews of AMD products though; and most if not all that I have managed to find hidden amongst the reams and pages of Intel-glorifying glossy advertising pages are fairly demeaning and give AMD much lower ratings than their Intel rivals. I’m trying not to get all technical in this article; so without explaining everything in vast technical detail I’m going to attempt to continue and write a post than can be understood by most people with a basic understanding of the insides of a computer. I want to communicate with my readers rather than blind them with science. I want to write an article based on the title rather than a textbook based upon trying to prove how clever or otherwise I am: I’ll leave the techno-rants to the egotists for now. |
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| Product Superiority?A lot of people would say that Intel processors are superior and more functional compared to AMD’s offerings, also that they are faster and more efficient: My reply to that is yes and no: Intel’s recent processors are definitely much better for overclocking than AMD’s; and quite vastly so - Which is fine if you have enough money to produce a super-douper machine worthy of running at such a pace with enhanced multi-SLI graphics, latest motherboard, etc, including case mod and even gold-plated start button if you like. Also if you’re prepared for a limited processor lifetime because you’re running the CPU faster than it was ever designed to go.AMD’s CPUs are also less adaptable due to their having more circuit components actually built into the processor itself rather than being deployed on the motherboard in updated form with each motherboard revision or different model. AMD’s processors work like “x” and you know that they’re always going to work like “x”: Intel’s are more flexible.In my case I usually build low-to-middle-end computers for the average user and/or for an office, and I find AMD’s chips to be perfectly satisfactory for that purpose. If I were trying to equal the record for the fastest and best PC ever designed I would definitely go for an Intel CPU for its speed and overclockability. Saying that Intel products are superior to AMD products is to my mind like saying duck eggs are superior to goose eggs: Eggs is eggs; and each has its preferred usages.
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| A Brief History of CompetitionBack in time a few years to 2004 and AMD were market leaders with their single-cored Athlon 64: (One of which I have working away happily in an Exel computer in the office.) The first proper 64-bit capable processor, which blew away anything that Intel had to offer at the time. Then came the Athlon 64×2 dual-cored 64-bit capable processor from AMD; which was well developed using AMD’s developing technologies to provide a good and efficient internal architecture on a single silicon wafer. At or around the same time Intel brought their own 64-bit-capable dual-cored processor putting them on a par with AMD. It turned out that the Intel offering was more overclockable than AMD’s equivalent; therefore the power-users and super-geeks started using Intel processors along with water-cooling. AMD were at the same time developing the Phenom series of quad and triple-core processors; but at that point the game became very cut-throat when Intel “cheated” in bringing out a quad-core by stapling two dual-cored wafers together before AMD had had a chance to fully develop their Phenom architecture which had been beset by a situation caused by a bug in the hardware. Both AMD and Intel have brought out 65nm technologies which reduce the power consumption and increase the individual transistor’s switching times considerably. It turns out that Intel have been working on 45nm technology for over 11 years and have perfected it to the point that the first CPUs based on this further miniaturisation are starting to appear …And so for at least the last year or so Intel has been recognised as market leader simply because its products are far more overclockable than AMD’s and therefore are endorsed by the geeks. – Any product endorsed by geeks tends to get rated highly. Now to add to that they will gain an endorsement from the green environmentalist faction for their 45nm and smaller technology’s lower power consumption: They’ve completely and utterly leapfrogged AMD with regard to market domination. |
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| The Big Question Is… Are the geeks being led blindly by market forces? Reality and actual statistics would appear to indicate that there’s no massive performance gap between the respective competitors’ products after all; despite all the bad press AMD may have been getting. OK so company performance, a separate issue to company product, may well be vastly superior in the case of Intel, As we saw with Apple, however, in an earlier post, ( http://kkomp.com/archives/214 ) it’s not necessarily always product superiority that sells product.Addendum:
Another thing is that Intel will soon be facing antitrust charges for allegedly using unlawful methods to keep ahead of AMD in the marketplace. European regulators could bring the charges forward according to the Wall Street Journal. “We are continuing to cooperate and really don’t know what the commission will do,” Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloytold the Journal. “We believe we operate within the law.” Intel was accused by the Europen Comission of illegal practices last year; selling chips below cost and offering huge rebates to customers. The company is also facing a formal investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission. Intel has already been fined over £12 million by the Korean Fair Trade Commission. Intel are set to appeal; but all this litigation can’t be all that good for the chipmaker.
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You know it makes sense.
Link to this pageRelated posts:
- Upgrading to Multi-Core
- AMD Can’t Quite Catch Up On Intel Yet
- AMD Launch 45nm Chips
- Go Fabricate
- Beyond the Wafer
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