Quote:
Originally posted by Greg McCoy
Yeah, but I think (I'm not sure) that the current AMD clock speeds are a lot lower than the current Intel clock speeds. However, the AMD processors for whatever reason seems to run faster so they turn out to run about even.
Sorry if I offended any AMD owners out there 
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Yes, Intel recently ramped up to 2.2 Ghz, while AMD has jsut released the 2000, which runs at 1.67 Ghz. The 2.2 P4A has a slightly diffrent archetecture (hence the 'A'), and doubles the L2 cache to 512KB. But the AMD chip still outperforms in Office performance as well as Linux Kernel compiling. That is efficency making up for the 32% difference in raw speed. In gaming, the new P4A has a slight edge over the Athlon XP, but is still loads more expensive. Here is a link to becnhmarks.
Tom's Hardware Benchmarks
I have an Athlon XP 1700.. It runs at 1.43 Ghz. It will outperform the Intel P4s because of the prefetch. Basicly, the data to be processed is run through a set routine. Both chips will guess ahead as to what will be needed next, and run that data. If it is found not to be needed, it is thrown out. You have wasted time. AMD not only has a better guessing ability, but it also hasa shorter pipeline, meaning that a wrong guess dosn't cost as much wasted time. So AMD went and built a much more efficent core, while Intel's Willamette (current P4 architechture) design is geared towards seeing how many transistors they can fit on the chip, thereby increasing the number Ghz. My 1.43 Ghz (actual) Athlon XP will outperform a P4 1.7 Ghz in every benchmark no sweat, everything else being equal. Intel is going away from using RAMBUS ram, which should bring the costs down somewhat, but AMD is still a better performer.
Also, by adding all those extra transistors, it generates a whole lot more heat, requireing bigger heatsink/fans and shorting the lifespan of the chip.
AMD chips are also easier to overclock, but thats an entirely diffrent matter.
Also, Cyrix made chips for a while that were really cheap, but a POS product. They stoped at the K-6II level I think...
But they
were a cheap clone.