BWAHAHAHAHAH!

This is the single most short-sighted comment I've seen in regards to processor architecture. Intel started with an arguably clean slate with the design of the Itanium. All the command paths were restructured to be more optimal to modern operating systems and executables. Shorter paths == less cycles wasted on loading opcode.

AMD built yet another layer on the old-as-dirt x86 command set. Instead of making a clean break with that mess, they've added more (really long) paths. In addition, they've resuscitated the x86 arch for another five+ years. Thanks, AMD, for being stuck in the past.

And thank you, the Athlon64-happy consumer, for letting another promising architecture go to the grave in favor of a shoddy half-assed processor. Instead of purchasing a better piece of engineering, you favor crap simply because it's "cheaper."

I'm done venting. Thanks guys.

wow...
owned.

dude, lok at the fucking heat coming off one of those. intel sucks, they can't even figure out how to contain all their heat in their "better enginerd" chips. they can barely do 90 nanometers without a huge heatsink.

Thats nice and all but my AMD64 still runs faster AND cooler then an Intel. I'm not a fanboy, I just go with whatever is better, AMD just has the better chip right now.

I'd still say that the 754's aren't as fast as a 478 with a good overclock and good RAM. Bandwidth is far superior on the P4. Now the 939s are a different story, and will destroy a P4 in nearly every bench.

My 754 is running on stock settings at 40C. I think I can OC it far higher than they highest P4, plus I can run WinXP 64-bit. Which means an even bigger performance gain.

Don't forget that Intel's HT, allows them to utilize some really awesome features that would otherwise slow programs. When I render a timeline from Adobe Premiere 6.5 (for MP systems) it uses one Virtual processor to encode/decode and the other for frame processing. There result, around 90% CPU ussage vs 65-70% on my AMD. End result, Intel wins the single physical processor render race.

Now when you go to multipitle physical processors, Intel gets owned once again.

Also, lets not forget the optimizations most of the industry makes for Intel products, thus the average consumer would have a better experience with Intel.

Do you have Sandra? What are your CPU Arithmetic and Bandwidth scores? I haven't really seen very many numbers about 754s, so I'm just curious. Here are mine:

as much as i respect castroite... i have read more than i should when it comes to processor architectures, here's the important stuff, so all of us can get educated: they are pretty well detailed (7-10pages), and it will make more sense to you if you've taken cpe 213. i haven't seen stuff like this at anandtech, if there is, let me know.
PC Processor Microarchitecture
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,17414,00.asp
64bit cpu's
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,231,00.asp

if intel really wanted to replace x86, they really should have marketed the itanic differently, and not make it worth an arm and a leg. x86 is a commodity, intel and amd are treated like commodity companies on wallstreet, PE (stock Price/real Earnings of company) ratio's for both are the same as clorox's which is about 20, compared to google which has a PE of 90. when so much software has been written for the x86 market, you HAVE to provide a transition, intel surely learned that lesson. you see sun/hp/ibm trying to hold on to their sparc/pa/alpha/power customers, when x86 is getting cheaper by the minute, especially when you can buy x86, and transition to amd64, these benchmarks mean something: http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2213&p=7

AMD has made the first processor which without emulation understands two instruction sets, which is the right thing to do while transitioning, they make the fastest x86 processor today, the fx-53, and they are 1/10th the size of intel.

people should buy computers according to what they're going to use it for, mainframes/grid/apples all have their niche. i wanted something for school, video encoding, and occasional games. why pay $1200 for an imac when i can get the same performance out of an athlon64/opteron for half that, now, if i was a big time photoshop junkie, then i'd want an imac over anything else. is there a one size fits all solution? i doubt it.

now then, back to picking which one out 3 linux distro's to put on an ipaq.

I totally agree. Get a computer for what you need.
My humble opinions:
Windows laptop – intel P4M, speed step is awesome.
*nix laptop – powerbook – small easy to back up, difficult to break.
Windows Desktop Enterprise – P4 hyper threading is great for multitasking… productivity.
Gaming Desktop – Athlon 64 – on die memory controller is worth every penny.
Normal Desktop – Athlon/Duron/Sep… just much better bang for the buck.
Render/Encoding – Grid, latency is not an issue, let many machines deal with it, not an issue at all if you have a good high speed network.
Mobil Critical high power computing – sun, awesome hardware monitoring, have a little computer making sure the main computer is hauling ass in ever machine.
High Power Grid (dual CPU’s)– older P4’s are better no extra cost like with the athlon MPs.

lotw: Thank you for a well-thought out reply. It was much more thought-provoking than "lok [sic] at the fucking heat coming off one of those"

I stand corrected in regards to pipeline length. It's been quite a few months since I'd looked over the specs to both processors. I'll admit I didn't reference my articles, but that was only because my last post was a spur-of-the-moment deal.

For saturating the consumer market, I agree. The problem is, I don't think that's Intel's goal at this point.

It seems like Intel is working a "top-down" strategy by having vendors adopt the chip for servers and high-end workstations in the hopes that the big iron of today will become the peecees of tomorrow. This makes sense if you think about it. Most workers take home the technology they're comfortable working with in the office. That's why x86 became popular and something more obscure didn't.

The two main selling points of any 64-bit architecture are more precise numeric processing and more accessable memory. My suspicion is that Intel is holding back on mass production until just before the requisite factors become an issue. High-end PCs today house around a gig of RAM. When we start regularly hitting the 4 gig barrier in a year or so is the time Intel will start cranking out the chips.

AMD, on the other hand, seems more end-user oriented. They've focused on building a fast processor wrapped up in shiny packaging to be sold in bulk. (The higher powered Opteron, from what I've read, is just a pumped Athlon/Ath64.) While this is great for those looking for a cheap, fast processor, it's not doing much for advancing processor technology.

Therein lies the reason why I don't care for AMD's direction: they're casting a false impression of what 64-bit "should" be. I'll grant that the Athlon64 makes Joe Consumer more receptive to purchasing a 64-bit machine, but AMD should have done it properly. There's no reason why "64-bit" should equal "really fast processor." All it should mean is "able to handle large data sets." The Athlon64's speed came from tweaking the x86-32 instructions. The 64-bit instructions were just icing on the cake, not the whole cake itself.

Do I like AMD as a company? Sure. They make cheap chips. I've got a K6/2 in my server. I've got a LANCE chip in my SparcStation. They keep Intel on their toes, resulting in a better overall processor no matter what you choose. I just don't care for the marketing hype and the drooling masses yelling "fastar is bettar. moar bits is bettar." There's so much more to consider.

I disagree. I think the transition should be sufficiently painful to wean people off of the old stuff. Emulation provides that compatibility with a speed hit. Natively compiled programs, obviously, run much faster. When you've fully transitioned, you can kiss the emulation layer bye and not have to worry about wasted transistors and opcodes coming back later to bite you on the ass. This is analogous to the Mac OS 9 compatibilty box in OS X. It's there if you have to get at the old stuff, but once you've got the newer editions you can hit delete and never have to deal with it again.

Benchmarks are one thing, server reliability and redundancy are another. Those other architectures have incredible amounts of failsafes and fallovers built-in, and have had them for years. The x86-compatible systems are just recently beginning to get it right. Proven reliability and enterprise-grade customer service is why SPARC/et al. customers keep coming back.

I agree.

The temporary performace hit way of transitioning might have worked for mac users, but i doubt it would have worked for the masses, intel added sse, sse2, sse3, and now there's amd64. VLIW and risc is better than x86 at most things (less addressing modes, processor spends time processing, and not figuring out how to process), but someone needs to market those two the right way.