AMD vs. Intel, Will the Best CPU Please Stand Up?

Once again it's time to get into the boxing ring for another battle of AMD vs. Intel! And despite the strong opinions this editorial is likely to stir up, I always appreciate hearing back from you. I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with my take on the processor industry, but hey that's why I'm the tech analyst!

With that in mind, it's time for some up to the minute commentary on the state of the computer world. The AMD vs. Intel battlefront has changed dramatically over the last three years, and like you, I have gone the path that most enthusiasts have. I want the best performance for my hard earned cash, so I choose the fastest available hardware without really considering who manufacturers the parts... after all, does it really matter who makes the fastest CPU?

Age has mellowed my thirst for speed, and my upgrade schedule has slowed to a yearly pace, but that doesn't mean I'm settling for any less. To fit into this leisurely schedule I've had to focus a bit more on evolving technologies, and do my best to avoid the lemons (hello RDRAM!?) and technological evolutionary branches which aren't going anywhere... say for example ATI's Crossfire.

Here's how it all plays out in five easy steps.

Step 1: It's the Performance, Stupid!

There's little doubt that AMD's K8 Athlon64 processor is currently the fastest architecture available. The Athlon64 architecture is superior to Intel's Netburst (the architecture that drives the Pentium 4) in every which way, and Intel's band-aid fixes have not been enough to keep up with the perpetual underdog from Austin. It's true that Intel does have a real winner with its Pentium M and Pentium III pedigreed Core Duo, but these are primarily mobile CPUs, and consequently beyond the scope of what I'll be speaking on.

What was it that happened to so dramatically shift the position between Intel and AMD's processors?Why is Intel faltering on the desktop front and AMD winning the hearts and minds of geeks world wide? It certainly isn't for lack of advertising, but that's another story.

The real reason for all of this upheaval and change is Intel's Netburst architecture. It was supposed to last for 10 years when it was introduced in 2000, however that lifespan was cut short in 2003 when Intel struggled so publicly with the Prescott core. The initial product was full of kinks, its performance was lousy, it suffered from voltage leakage, and it was pretty obvious that many of its faults were due to the way Intel "improved" its processors from one speed generation to the next. The days of the good old die shrink and ramp up are certainly dead now.

After some initial questions to the necessity of a 64-bit processor in a 32-bit world, AMD's Athlon64 processor was well on its way to becoming the sweetheart of computer geeks. It's efficient core architecture allows the Athlon64 to handle more work per clock cycle than the Pentium 4/D (which was also the case with AMD's previous generation), so more gets done with less so to speak.

Intel's wildcard has always been its special CPU SSE series instructions, but that advantage has also dwindled away. While AMD's parts often do not support the latest Intel instructions at the time of introduction, the company does tend to integrate them in time to coincide with the release of software that uses these new features. In fact, if you look at the enhanced instruction sets in the latest AMD Athlon64 processors, you'll notice that it supports more instructions than an equivalent Intel Pentium 4 processor!

Perhaps Intel's one saving grace is that the Pentium 4/D can still overclock quite well, with a little inventive cooling it will achieve frequencies that AMD users can only reach with extreme cooling. Realistically though as nice as the round numbers are, these are empty goals. An Athlon64 may be clocked a whole gigahertz slower than a Pentium 4, but it still performs much better in benchmarks; the correlation between frequency and performance is pretty much dead.

On the horizon, Intel's upcoming 'Conroe' core is starting to look like it might give AMD a run for its money, but it's not available yet so comparing it with current technology is not appropriate.

Step 2: Heat and Reliability

Cooling has always been the one major area where Intel processors were always considered to be far superior to AMD's offerings... remember the days of AthlonXP's going up in smoke? While the Socket 775 Pentium 4 heatsink architecture offers more room to grow, allows for larger heatsinks to be installed, and a bit more scalable in the long run, AMD's not totally out of step either.

AMD has dramatically improved the shape, size and quality of heatsinks that it uses to keep Athlon64 processors running cool and quietly. With the de-emphasis of OEM processors, the company has better control over the retail heatsinks that come bundled with its Athlon64 processors, and hence the end user experience. So far, this generation of 'K8' heatsinks have been quiet running, and well designed so temperatures remain at acceptable levels.

To make things easier for the end user, heatsinks can be installed in any direction without damaging the processor. Back in the days of the socket A Athlon and AthlonXP CPU, if the heatsink was installed in the wrong direction you'd end up with a dead chip in under 4 seconds. In the unlikely event that the heatsink fan fails nowadays, that little tiny Athlon64 processor below will not cook itself to death. All current AMD processors employ thermal throttling which lowers the speed of the processor automatically should the CPU temperature rise too high.

On the whole, AMD and Intel are pretty even in thermal loads this year. From the consumers point of view it makes no difference if one processor or the other is used as both will operate reliably and quietly.

Step 3: Navigating Between DDR and DDR-2

Here's a little secret, on the whole DDR-2 RAM has been a bit of bust. Touted as the memory of the future, able to leap small buildings in a single bound for everything from videocards to motherboards.

It promised a lot and delivered little in the real world. Yet since the entire computer industry is shifting towards DDR-2 RAM, we're all resigned to the fact that it's here to stay until FB-DIMM and DDR-3 RAM break out in 2007/2008.

Of course DDR-2 memory isn't all bad, it offers a greater level of bandwidth between memory and processor, and that's a good thing. It's just that single-core Intel systems (the current largest segment consuming DDR-2 RAM) aren't very inspiring, and the wonderfully low timings associated with DDR memory have been cast aside for a pointless frequency game. There's a difference between PC2-6400 with high lanencies, and PC2-6400 with low latencies when it comes the benchmarks, and so far the latter has been sadly overlooked for far too long.

By the end of May, AMD's Socket AM2 Athlon64 processor will be running along on DDR-2. The socket AM2 Athlon64 isn't expected to demand a ton of bandwidth from the get-go, but rather benefit more from DDR-2 memory with tighter CAS latency timings. Unfortunately at the moment these types of parts are missing from the DDR2 memory equation so it's hard to offer commentary on where this will all be headed.

It's very likely that initial Socket AM2 Athlon64's will perform no better, or no worse than equivalently paced Socket 939 counterparts. Between now and then, perhaps AMD will have tweaked the memory controller to utilize more memory bandwidth, or DDR-2 memory latencies will have dropped somewhat. Like you, I'm still waiting to see.

The saga isn't yet written, and pre-release glimpses of Socket AM2 performance by way of Engineering Sample CPUs are only telling half the story. It will be interesting to see what happens, but certainly the prevalence of DDR-2 RAM is unrelenting.

Step 4: The Forgotten Factor is the Chipset

For the longest time chipsets from Intel were the companies "ace up its sleeve." No other processor manufacturer could match Intel's performance or stability in the area of desktop motherboards and core logic. It was one of the primary reasons why AMD has had a very difficult time upsetting Chipzilla.

It probably wasn't the best move on AMD's part to state that it would never get into the chipset market, after all it does not have the expertise to devote to this area, and a processor without a good chipset isn't much. Relying upon companies such as VIA, ULI, and SIS to come up with really powerful core logic has been hit and miss... at least that was the case until graphics giant nVidia came into the game.

The emergence of nVIDIA as a chipset power house is exactly what AMD needed, and now the Athlon64 has a legitimate partner that has an excellent track record in both performance and stability. I think persistence of the nForce 4 chipsets will continue to thrust AMD based computers against Intel strongholds (such as the workstation PC) like rain in the middle of a monsoon. With great chipsets, and a very capable processor there's little Intel can do to stand up to a better chip.

The only question that I'm left dwelling on is the little stickler of nVIDIA also producing Intel chipsets; will the company devote more resources here at the expense of its K8 solutions? Considering how much market share Intel has, and in corporate terms it is monumental, it would be beneficial for nVIDIA to try and increase its stake in Intel based systems more than promote AMD. I think AMD offers a better desktop processor right now, and is just breaching the hill on the server processor front with its Opteron CPUs. Time will tell, and as VIA seems to be the lame duck in this race for the last year and a bit, there doesn't seem to be much on the horizon pre-positioned to upset nVidia's apparent dominance.

As anyone weighing the pros and cons of AMD vs. Intel computers will tell you, it's dangerous to depend on what-ifs. It's dangerous for AMD to depend so significantly upon a single significant third party chipset manufacturer for the majority of motherboards in demand, and it really needs to even things out with the other core logic vendors. AMD may not be interested in chipsets, but you've got to wonder why it keeps holding out when just about every company and its uncle is vying for space in the chipset biz - ATI, ULI, nVidia, SIS, VIA, Intel, etc.

Step 5: Twice the Number of Cores, Add Another 32-bits for 64

Dual core processors are another area where AMD wins hand down with respect to performance I think, but on the flip side Intel sure busts out the most prevalent marketing. There is little doubt that AMD's Athlon64 X2 series of processors is superior to the Intel Pentium D in virtually every which way. Although, I'm compelled to acknowledge that no dual core processor is going to ruffle any feathers versus the single core alternative unless the software or game is specifically coded for symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) - both AMD and Intel somehow forget to mention that so very often. Anyhow, the biggest stumbling block with the dual core Intel Pentium D (aside from heat) is that both cores are starved of memory bandwidth.

Let's look back into the crystal ball of tech-time and mull over how all this came to be.... You'll recall that with Netburst on life support, the Intel Pentium D's sudden introduction reeked of a band-aid fix, at best. Slapping two Pentium 4 cores together into one slab of silicon is a bad idea; the architecture isn't designed to handle two bandwidth hungry cores. It just... isn't.

Here's an example of what I mean. Consider if you will that an Intel Pentium 4 CPU running on an 800 MHz Front Side Bus (FSB) requires 6.4GB/s of bandwidth. Therefore an Intel Pentium D with two CPU cores requires 12.8GB/s memory bandwidth. The dual channel memory controller within the Intel 945P chipset (not to mention the 955X, 975X, nForce4 SLI Intel Edition, etc) only provides between 50% to perhaps 66% of this. The rest is simple math; without sufficient bandwidth, the processor has to pause, if however momentarily. It's almost as bad as the i845+SDRAM days of the socket 478 Intel Pentium 4. Shudder the thought.

AMD's Athlon64 X2 processor suffers from a memory bandwidth crunch too, yet its dual cores do not rely as heavily upon pure memory bandwidth. Rather, the Athlon64 X2 reacts to a mix of tight CAS Latency memory timings and memory bandwidth. This is why on AMD systems, loosening up the memory timings to increase memory frequency may actually have a negative effect on overall performance of the system.

Despite this technical advantage, I think Intel has walked away with dual core processor sales because it has a better marketing team. Marketing has always seemed to be AMD's achilles heel. Whenever I walk into a large electronics store I always see oodles of Intel Pentium D paraphernalia everywhere. Enthusiasts might discount TV advertising, but hey if you've got Frodo shilling that new Core Duo you're going to be swayed on some level. "AMD Me" by comparison is a pretty flat call to arms.

There once was a world of two desktop processors

In the last few years I've witnessed a lot of fan hardware sites pop up and primarily praise one manufacturer while vilifying the other. I don't see much of a point to this since every company has its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses. In the computer world, brand loyalty is useless; there are no frequent buyer points or discounts for returning customers after all, now are there? Now it's not my job to tell you what to buy, but rather try and give you enough information to make an informed decision on what's probably going to be the best solution for your situation.

As it stands right now, AMD's Athlon64 architecture is better than anything that Intel has to offer, plain and simple. The current Intel platform simply runs too hot, too slow, or is considerably more expensive than its AMD performance equivalent. The direction Intel is headed certainly looks promising considering the mud is licking its fenders right now, but those processors aren't available yet. As enticing as early 'Conroe' samples appear, let's not rush to judge. After all delays can pop up anywhere at anytime. Remember 90 nanometre!?

All of Athlon64's success cannot be attributed to AMD alone, and I have to give credit where credit is due. nVIDIA has done a fairly phenomenal job at making the transition from a VGA company to motherboard chipsets. Of course this partnership can disintegrate at any time now that nVIDIA also spits out chipsets for Intel. Will this spell doom for AMD's success in the long run, and will ATI ever decide to issue an attractive K8 chipset of its own? These are the questions I'm left wondering.

AMD has dramatically improved the quietness and reliability of its retail heatsinks, and durability of its processors from just over two years ago. Intel has tried to make the best of a bad situation; with the Netburst architecture essentially stalled it has moved towards parallelism (multi core) for more performance. Intel's large enough to suffer the financial impact of such problems, and it's reassuring to see its next generation processor is not being rushed out the door. Intel's 'Conroe' core looks like it may be a force to contend with, but it's way to early to call that fight. We'll see next year.

So where does all of this opinion leave you? You're struggling with a decision and I'm talking about a bunch of seemingly unconnected issues. The question should be simple; AMD or Intel, Intel or AMD?

So, which will it be?

I think if you need to buy a computer in the very near future, gravitate towards a PC based on AMD's Athlon64 processor. It's simply superior to Intel's current Pentium 4 or Pentium D or Pentium XE processors. The Athlon64 trails a little when it comes to multitasking, but it's not behind by much.

Now, if you're planning on a new computer in eight months to a year's time from now, then I don't recommend Intel, or AMD. The way things are going now, both companies are involved with massive changes to their computing platforms, and there isn't a clear winner to side with right now. You'll be better of waiting and see how the next AMD VS. Intel war turns out... Just remember though, it's an eternal struggle and you'll need to choose a side at some point. Right now AMD simply kicks Intel's offerings out of the arena.