If you walk into any computer retailer to pick up a new desktop or laptop, one of the first questions you should be asking yourself is “Do I get a computer with an AMD processor or one with an Intel processor?”
But even before you can even ask yourself that question, you would need to know the benefits to siding with one processor over another given your specific computing needs. Some people are going to tell you it doesn’t matter, and others might say Intel is better because they are number one in sales and have been around the longest (assuming that’s a viable answer). Neither of those however even resembles a thought out decision.
Let us compare AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 4800+ to Intel’s Pentium Extreme Edition 840 Dual Core in five different benchmark categories; Gaming, Photo Editing, MP3 Encoding, Multitasking, and Day-to-Day tasking.
Gaming: In testing Half Life 2 on a screen resolution of 1024×768, it was found that the AMD was performing at 140.6 frames per second while the Pentium was only clocking in at 106.3 fps. This is unfortunately a 10% difference that Intel needs to play catch up on.
Photo Editing: For this one of the most common tasks done was tested, Cropping. For this Photoshop was used and was tested to crop a relatively large image file down to a size appropriate for websites. Once again AMD took the prize finishing its task in 146 seconds leaving Intel to come in ten seconds later. Now a lot of us might think 10 seconds isn’t that big of an issue, but it will matter to the person who is making a living out of it.
MP3 Encoding: This is another common task that is possibly even more common these days than photo editing. For this test Apple’s iTunes was used because it is a multithread application programmed to utilize multiple processor threads. This could be a little embarrassing for Intel given their chip is ripping an album in 2 minutes and 12 seconds while AMD had already finished in 1 minute and 50 seconds, a good 20% faster than its competitor.
Multitasking: For this test two relatively rigorous processes were used. First McAfee was set to do a virus scan on 40 gigabytes of data. At the same time (of course) the computer was told to encode 85 megabytes of video to DIVX. Much not to my surprise AMD finished up in 3 minutes and 15 seconds while Intel dragged its proverbial fat ass at 3 minutes and 31 seconds. Not the biggest victory for AMD, but things are starting to look clearer.
Day-to-Day Tasking: Last but nowhere close to least is the run of the mill Microsoft Office and web browsing that every Dick and Jane is going to do. I’m actually sorry to say AMD takes this test as well. I would have liked Intel to have something to show for itself. But according to BAPCo SysMark ratings just gets things done a little bit faster than the Pentium.
Now there are a lot more selections the Athlon 64 and Dual Core families have to offer, but if you were going to be choosing between these two processors, you read something like this and then you see the price tags: AMD $725 and Intel $1175, what would you choose?
The bottom line is there are going to be minor differences here and there with any competing chips, unfortunately all the differences here are in favor of AMD which leads me back to believe what I always have, Intel is overpriced because they have the top spot. There’s no other real way to justify a $450 dollar difference for chips that do the same thing. This could be the reason why you now hear rumors of Apple in talks with AMD so quickly after putting Dual Cores in their machines. But until that’s official its mere speculation, but it would be a logical move given the stats. So whether you are buying a new computer or building one from scratch, I’d suggest going with AMD. It’s going to perform better and cost you a lot less. Win-Win.
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