Processor comparison

I'm having an argument with my wife's Nephew about processor ratings. I've always been given the impression that Pentium is the lead dog with Athlon getting close and Celeron bringing up the rear of the three. Does anyone know how they stack up? Is there a web sight to go to?

 

It is not easy to directly compare the two, they work using different systems and need to have their own motherboard. The quality of the motherboard is also just as important. A high powered, fast CPU may run like a slug on an "ordinary" motherboard. They cannot be compared by just taking out one CPU and putting in another, so they compare systems by using benchmarks.

Some of the benchmarks cover different tasks: Gaming, Business Applications and Multimedia.

From what I have read recently a general comment was that AMD were better in the gaming area, Intel in the business and multimedia.

Dual core processors are coming out, so are we talking about 32bit processors, 64bit processors or dual-core processors? Some of the technologies they use are different. Be careful not to compare apples with oranges.

As you can probably understand, some of the new technology cannot even be utililised yet.

Overall, one generally brings out a model that is better than other's, then visa-versa.

Matt

 

Thanks Mattman.

 

That sounds more like the story when the first Athlons came out in '99 (?).

What I read recently...

MaximumPC had its "top-of-the-line" hardware issue recently and wanted to give their blessing (or whatever) to what they determined to be to the best overall desktop cpu and the best dual-core desktop cpu. They gave the dual core honors to some flavor of AMD's X2 processor.

Regarding the overall cpu award, they did not even include an Intel processor as they determined that Intel had nothing that could compete with either AMD's FX-57 or X2 (dual core) processor. Again, this only involved desktop cpus.

In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter? Not really. I use a Pentium 4 at work. I turn it on and it works just fine.

AMD has come a very long way since the days it played second fiddle to Intel. One thing that always has and continues to ring true when comparing AMD and Intel is that you'll get more value with AMD, i.e. bang for your buck.

EDIT: Here's an interesting fact...in two months out of the last quarter of 2005, for the first time ever, AMD unit sales of desktop processors was actually higher than Intel's.

Gary

 

Thanks for the info Gary.