5 Differences between Intel & AMD processors

Replies

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  Saandeep Sreerambatla

  Re: Guys I need some help related to processors
  
  Check this link it has lot of information.
  
  #-Link-Snipped-#
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  icehari

  Re: Guys I need some help related to processors
  
  thanks for the links..
  can i have any few words of your personal opinion.
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  itchap

  Re: Guys I need some help related to processors
  
  There were always a tug-of-war between AMD and Intel as it will always remain. Each company comes with their latest processor ranges and beats their rivals with either price or performance. We have always been more concerned about the name and the product rather than delving deep into the underlying technology that separates them. What makes people rely on Intel Core 2 Duo? What are the answers from AMD’s side? All these questions are answered in here. Take a look and the battle of processors won’t ever be a thing of Mars to you.
  
  Design Differences
  
  Intel Core 2 Duo Processors are a complete redesign of its former processors. The engineers took elements from the Pentium D NetBurst architecture and added ingredients that made the Pentium M and Core Duo mobile processors successful and made the Core 2 Duo Processor.
  
  AMD’s processors were delivering better performance per Watt of energy at a stage when Core 2 Duo Processors did not launch, and the public was complaining about unreasonably high power consumption and cooling requirements for Intel platforms. So, key design goals of Core 2 Duo processors were an ideal relation between processing performance and power consumption.
  
  Let us take a look at some of the key design differences.
  
  
  1. Cache
  
  On the AMD side, only the FX-62 sports 1MB of L2 cache per core. The rest of the product line offers 512KB of L2 cache per core. You can still find the Athlon 64 X2 4000+ CPUs, which clocks at 2.0GHz (same as the 3800+) and has 2 × 1MB of L2 cache, but that product isn’t being manufactured currently. Since the 4000+ is being phased out, we didn’t include it in our roundup.
  On the Intel side, the two lower-end CPUs—the 1.83GHz E6300 and 2.13GHz E6400—offer only 2MB of shared L2 cache, while the E6600, E6700, and X6800 have 4MB of L2 cache.
  
  2. CMOS Technology
  
  AMD Athlon64 X2 processors are built on the company’s 90nm SOI process. All of Intel’s Core 2 Duo products are currently manufactured on 65nm technology. This figure is the size and spacing of the transistors on the chip which is measured in microns (1micron = 1 / 1,000,000 meters).
  
  3. Memory Controller Chips
  
  AMD Athlon’s memory controller is built into the CPU while in Core 2 Duo it is not.
  
  
  
  Price Differences
  From this table, you can have an idea of the pricing of different models of processors of Intel and AMD in this range
  
  Intel Core 2 Duo Frequency Price AMD Athlon 64 X2 AM2 Frequency Price
  
  ———E6300 1.83GHz $190 3800+ 2.0GHz $152
  
  ———E6400 2.13GHz $230 4200+ 2.2GHz $187
  
  ———E6600 2.40GHz $360 4600+ 2.4GHz $253
  
  ———E6700 2.67GHz $559 5000+ 2.6GHz $346
  
  Core 2 Extreme X6800 - 2.93GHz $1,075 FX-62 2.8GHz $825
  
  It’s worth pointing out that each increment in core clock frequency occurs in 266MHz jumps, while AMD’s steps are 200MHz.
  
  Performance Differences
  
  1. PC Mark 05 Benchmarking
  
  PC Mark is a very popular benchmarking tool that is widely used. It will measure the performance of your PC and assign each component a score which is intended to give you relative performance of an entire system.
  The AMD’s 5600+ was able to compress and decompress files up to 15% faster than Intel’s E6420.
  Both processors were able to encrypt a file at the same rate, but Intel’s E6420 was able to decrypt a file about 15% faster.
  As for the image and audio compression and decompression, AMD’s 5600+ was able to perform 10% faster.
  
  2. Super Pi Performance
  
  Super Pi is a very basic program that calculates pi at different size intervals, then records the data of pi to a file and also tells you the time that it took to achieve the value. You are able to select sizes from 16kb to 32mb and will range in times according to the amount of data you want it to accumulate.
  The Intel E6420 was able to perform better at each and every different size interval. But after the 256k interval there was no real world noticeable differences. At 32M though the difference is sizable at more than 3 and a half minutes.
  
  3. Synthetic Benchmarking
  
  Let us see the results using SiSoft Sandra. Sandra is an acronym for System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant. Sandra is a very useful program for determining component performance as it has several other results stored for many other processors, so it is easy for you to compare your computer to others.
  AMD achieved a higher ranking Processor Arithmetic, Memory Latency, and Power Performance. Intel did better in Processor Multi-Media, and Cache & Memory. Once again the integrated memory controller in the AMD 5600+ allows it a sizable lead over the E6420 in the Memory Latency benchmark, while the E6420 pulls out a win in the cache and memory with its new Core 2 microarchitecture.
  
  Source : techwarelabs.com, extremetech.com
  
  
  
  Conclusion
  
  As the battle between these processor giants is going on from hard to harder every day, the winner of this battle is us, the consumers. We can get a much more powerful computer for less money than we had to spend if there were no competitor to Intel.
  
• 

  icehari

  Re: Guys I need some help related to processors
  
  sorry, itchap..
  i just want your personal words..
  anyhow thanks for the reply..
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  Aashish Joshi

  Re: Guys I need some help related to processors
  
  I'm no expert, but from what I've observed over the years here in India, people are hesitant in buying AMD processors. This is because they think that they'll explode or something due to over heating!! I can assure you, that's all a lot of hogwash.
  
  The overheating problem has been addressed successfully by AMD a long time ago. So no need to worry about that.
  
  However, having said that I must say that AMD has only recently switched to the 45nm manufacturing process, which Intel has been using for quite some time now. Intel will release chips manufactured using 32nm technology later this year or early next year. These will offer more power at reduced power consumption.
  
  So as of now, I think Intel rules the roost.
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  Ashraf HZ

  The high end AMD chips are pretty good for their cost. I'm pretty eager to get my hands on the Phenom II X3 720 😀
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  Aashish Joshi

  I've also heard that AMD processors are at par with or even better than Intel ones as far as server applications are concerned.
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  faizaan

  hi ,
  
  amd processor's performance is much good when application demand's high graphic's amd processor's have hyper transfer bus 3.0 technology which enables it to give this high performance .if you are a gamer than you can surely see this diffrence when you play same game on amd and intel platform.
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  icehari

  ya, i to heard that amd supports graphics better than intel..
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  Mr.Don

  1.AMD performance is much faster than intel at same configuration..
  
  2.Intel provides latest technology than AMD..
  
  3.AMD suppourts high resolution graphichs along with graphic cards updated its also has high pixel shader values..
  
  4.Intel provides more compatability than AMD.
  
  5.AMD has slightly upperhand for more applications running at a time and even for games..
  
  These are differences i have noticed on my own as my father is a dealer..but this difference is quite little as they both are almost same..but Intel is also good..
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  Kaustubh Katdare

  dileep k

  1.AMD performance is much faster than intel at same configuration..
  
  2.Intel provides latest technology than AMD..

  I'm not sure what point #1 means. Could you please explain a bit in more detail?
  
  Point #2 - Again, I'd appreciate if you could provide examples & explain it further.
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  Aashish Joshi

  Point # 2 could refer to the manufacturing technology used. Intel uses 32nm technology while AMD uses 45nm...this means Intel is able to cram more transistors, etc in the same space as compared to AMD
  
  I would like to know about point # 4 though...as far as I know, if you shift from an intel based processor to an AMD based one, all you need to change are the motherboard and the processor and vice versa. everything else is compatible, RAM, HDD, graphics card, etc
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  saurabh2486

  yaaa but also i would like to tell u that intel's new core i7 is unbeatable by amd and also the amd chips are hotter than intel's
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  sirijagan

  I will tell you one major positive point I know about AMD:
  
  AMD processors have better floating point units, so are well suited to number crunching applications. Intel chips cater better for multimedia type applications. Where the difference can be lower is with small applications like Seti, this is because they can get better use from the Intel chips larger cache sizes.
  
  They are EXCELLENT for 64 bit processing and video editing, high end editing, design etc.
  
  I really love AMD. 😀
  
  I use Intel for personal computing...just not my high end and high end servers...I really notice a difference with high end applications.
  
  You would suffice with Intel for your purposes.
  
  this question is best answered by the professionals at cnet.com
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  Ashraf HZ

  Well, sometimes applications are optimized for certain types of CPU instruction sets. for example, MATLAB runs a little faster on Intel than AMD due to the use of the Intel MKL. Doesn't matter much for general purpose student use, but for calculative intensive processes might make for a difference if time is of essence. Of course, other applications might work better with AMD's ACML.
  
  Who knows, it could very well depend on the whims of the programmers. We know it happens in games when certain developers favour one company over the other.
  
  All we could rely on is the benchmarks of the applications we care about, not about every single one.
  
  What is consistent though is that AMD performs better at the same price point. Not many people realise this though, so AMD's low cost strategy almost backfired themselves into bankruptcy. Intel's superior marketing engine is working on all chains of distributions.. from consumer to distributor.