Intel and AMD chip speeds??

[curtisbouvier]

I'm sure this has been asked over and over, but I've never been told yet as to why AMD is faster than intel in most games, and yet amd always always has far less in MHZ speeds.....

So whats the deal here?

 

[ECX]

Okay, megahertz is simply a measure of how many clock cycles occur per second with a given CPU (e.g. a 3.2GHz CPU performs 3.2 billion cycles per second). CPUs also do a certain amount of work per cycle.

Intel CPUs (the netburst variants, anyway), sacrifice the amount of work done per clock in order to gain more clocks. Conversely, AMD sacrifices clocks in order to be able to gain efficiency per clock.

Now, don't think that greater clocks immediately equals less efficiency -- process technologies and new manufacturing techniques allow the wizards at AMD and Intel to sqeeze out more clocks, keeping the same amount of work done per clock.

But the reason why AMD can have far lower clocks than Intel and maintain pretty much equal performance is due to their efficiency per clock.

-ECX

 

[bdww00]

um nice copy and paste?

 

[o1die]

Basically it has alot to do with the pipeline length (number of executions per cycle). The newer amd cpus might have 12 pipelines, where Intels have about 31. So the the shorter cycle time of amd means they can run at a slower speed, and still get more work done. And right now, both are comparable in price, except for dual core, which Intel is selling much cheaper. I prefer amd for it's cool and quiet program. I hate heat and noise, which Intel tends to have more of right now.

 

[MacGuffin]

this is no longer relevant with the new Intel Core Duo processors. They perform exactly like equally-clocked Athlon64s.
Though this July, Core 2 Duo might/will change that by a decent margin. What do they say, a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo performs equivalent to a 2.8GHz A64?

So Intel Core 2 Duo will perform 16% better clock-for-clock or so...I think. With K8 and P4, you could say AMD was performing 50-66% better clock-for-clock (as their model numbers suggested).