Wantusawa

by: Keith Edwards

For a few years now AMD has dominated the performance PC market, but the latest release of Intel's new desktop chips has changed that virtually overnight. Intel's new Core 2 Duo chips do not simply outperform AMD's fastest chips; they leave them in the dust. Preliminary benchmark testing puts Intel's fastest chip, the Core 2 Extreme X6800, 17 percent faster than AMD's Athlon FX-62 on the World Bench 5. The World Bench 5 consists of a multi-tasking test encoding a file with Windows Media Encoder while browsing the net with Mozilla. Even Intel's more affordable Core 2 Duo E6700 can beat the Athlon FX-62 by 12 percent. This makes a huge difference in the microchip market where gains of 10 percent or less are more common.

Intel's Core 2 Duo line ranges from a 1.86 GHz E6300 to the 2.93 GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800. These chips are already available in Dell's XPS line of desktops, in Alienware's Area-51 and ALX series, and in ABS Ultimate computers. Many of these desktops with new chips are more affordable than you might think.

How did Intel do it? One of the major features Intel improved upon in their new chip architecture was power consumption. While the Pentium Extreme Edition was burning 135 watts, the latest Core 2 Extreme X6800 burns only 75 watts. That is a 44 percent increase in efficiency. This means the new Intel Core Duo chips run a lot cooler. For the hardcore gamers and those needing the ultimate performance, such a low base temperature allows for more stable overclocking, and ABS has proven this with the ABS Ultimate X9. The Ultimate X9 runs the Intel Core 2 Extreme chip overclocked to 3.5 GHz for even stronger performance on the World Bench 5. This decrease in core temperature also means PC manufacturers will be able to build smaller and quieter systems, using fewer fans.

Another major feature of Intel's new chip architecture is the development of multiple CPU cores. This allows the chip to be more adaptable and better able to deal with bottlenecks. A great deal of the increase in performance comes from an extra executable core. While the Pentium D had 3, the new Core 2 Duo has 4 executable cores. That extra core along with some coding have allowed the chip to read multiple sets of instructions as if they are a single set. Intel has also eliminated another major bottleneck with its huge 4 MB cache. Though most dual core chips allocate a specific amount of cache, to each core, the Core 2 Duo is able to share the entire cache across both cores. Amazingly, it is able to distribute that shared cache as needed to the core working on the more complex task. This core might use 3 MB of he cache to complete a difficult task while the other core uses the other 1 MB for a simpler, though necessary, task.

So, these developments beg the question, has Intel finally defeated AMD? It certainly looks that way for the remainder of 2006 and perhaps through 2007. AMD has a new chip architecture for the desktop due out in 2007. AMD is attempting to stay competitive with Intel with some dramatic price cuts. The FX-62 has gone down in price by over $200. They have a CPU package for multisocket PCs called "Torrenza". Torrenza will debut on servers where multi-socket configurations are already common. This will not be their answer to Intel's Core 2 Duo. AMD's next generation chip architecture is due out in 2007 and it has been called "K8L". No one really knows how these and quad core chips will be able to perform. So, while AMD is still in the race for the long run, for the next 6 months to 1 year, Intel is now the unquestioned leader in high performance chips.

About The Author

Keith Edwards is chief technology author for 360 Enterprises Inc. He specializes in high performance gaming PCs such as alienware computers. http://www.gaming-pc.net