Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to AMD .vs Intel; GCC et all

Collapse
Posted by Pascal Scheffers on
I've been running AMD hardware since 1994 or something. The only problem AMD used to have was floating-point speed. Games suffered, so Celerons sold much better than AMD-K5/6's. However, in my experience, I've always had faster 'desktop' (read Word, database, etc) performance. The new Athlon/Duron cores do have very efficient FPUs, so games run excelent on AMD hardware (if that is your poison). A part of the reason for that is the cheaper CPU allows you to buy more RAM. I had twice as much as my friends :)

On the remark on Athlon out performing the P4 at the same speed, that is mainly processor design, the P4 has a 20 steps deep pipeline, the Athlon has 7 or 8. A deeper pipeline gives you higher clocks, but also a higher price when a branch prediction failes.

If you really want to see good writing on CPUs go to arstechnica.com, 'Hanibal' knows what he is talking about.