Eric, Yeah, I read your review, and I can tell you hate Intel. Don't forget, Intel is still faster, and still the industry standard, every benchmark I've seen with a 1ghz P3 and a 1ghz T-Bird, the Intel win's. Intel is still #1 in desktop, mobile, server, and workstation. AMD doesn't even offer a CPU that compares to the mobile P3's, and Xeon's yet. While AMD has SMP "in the process", Intel has had SMP support for years, and still to come more. While AMD has the 64bit processor coming out sooner than Intel, Microsoft,the worlds largest OS manufactuer, decides to wait for Intel, and optimize Windows 2000/Whistler for the Intel Itanium. While it will still be optimized for 64bit in general, it will be more optimized for the P3 than the AMD. Games, games in general just seem to have more optimizations for the P3.Adobe, gives Intel SSE optimizations, making Intel CPU's almost 2X faster in benchmarks. 3D Studio Max, a very CPU intensive program, is recommended to run dual CPU's on, AMD just doesn't have a Xeon or SMP support out yet to give AMD the extra boost that it needs so that they will appear in more workstations. RDRAM, yeah, it has its downsides, but the big upside is, it is scalable to 800mhz FSB, compared to the 266mhz DDR-SDRAM. Also while Intel has firm support in RDRAM, they are still making a DDR-SDRAM chipset. Intel machines also just seem to be less picky as far as drivers and firmware, every Intel user, pretty much knows when they download this new video card driver or whatever, if theirs a problem, it most likely isn't going to be chipset/vid card compatibilities or whatever. Unlike with AMD. Also to end it, AMD seems to be doing something wrong here, their ahead and behind of themselves, while they have a 200mhz FSB, they are clocked back down realistically to 133mhz bus, unless you oc the memory to 200mhz FSB. Making the "200mhz FSB statement" false advertising. AMD also has 128k of L1 cache, I don't know about you, but if you have 128k of L1, and 200mhz FSB, I would expect nearly double if not 3x better performance on a AMD than on a Intel, yet with 32k of L1, and 133mhz FSB, Intel's 1ghz still beats AMD's Basically, all I'm saying is, don't make Intel look like shit, when Intel is the industry standard, and is the #1 CPU manufacturer in the world, regardless of AMD's prices or false advertising statements. Ryan Pringnitz Ryan, Thanks for writing. A little disagreement is always good during a good discussion. I will try to hit a few of the high points of your note. First, I don’t hate Intel and I don’t recall ever saying that I hate Intel. Secondly, we can compare the 1 GHz P3 to the 1 GHz Athlon and in many benchmarks the Athlon does not win; however, when you can buy a 1.2GHz Athlon for less than $500 and the 1 GHz P3 still costs over $650, doesn’t it seem more fair to compare the 1.2GHz Athlon to the 1 GHz P3? And in that comparison, the 1 GHz P3 loses every time. (see Tom’s Hardware Guide for the latest benchmarks). Third, you are absolutely right about mobile Athlons and SMP. I’m not so sure about Whistler and Itanium optimizations. I think it is too early to tell. I am looking forward to AMD’s 760MP platform, I think its introduction will improve pricing of multiprocessor systems. And frankly, that’s a good thing. Fourth, your contention about games being faster on the P3 isn’t true (more benchmarks) when comparing the fastest P3 and the fastest Athlon. And neither is your contention about 3D Studio Max - even clock for clock (even more benchmarks). Fifth, RDRAM uses a serial architecture that has significantly higher latency than SDRAM and a narrower 16-bit bus. If PC800 RAM was all it was cracked up to be, then systems based on the i820 platform would always outperform systems based upon the 440BX and i815 platforms. And that isn’t the case. Sixth, your discussion of L1 cache and FSB misses something. The L1 cache and L2 cache run at the same frequency as the processor. The 200 MHz FSB is a double-pumped 100 MHz bus based upon the EV6 protocol. And the discussion is irrelevant anyway, since the important thing is whether it performs as well or better than the equivalent Intel hardware. As for making Intel look like shit. I certainly am not....Intel is doing a fine enough job on their own. I’m merely attempting to point out the problems they are having and the issues that Intel needs to correct to get back to where they need to be. This is certainly not personal. I personally hope Intel and AMD continue to put out processors that just blow me away. I want performance to continue to improve and price to continue its downward trend. Thanks again for your note. If you or anyone would like to follow-up on this letter, please send e-mail to letters@IThell.com. Eric Svetcov
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