Chipmakers admit: Your power may vary

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Tack on Northbridge power consumption to Intel CPU's

There are some other differences not mentioned in the article.

In AMD's designs have a DRAM memory controller integrated right into the CPU chip.

Meanwhile Intel still uses a power hungry (~20 watts) NorthBridge chip to perform a similar function.

2nd item..

Intel optimized their design for stand alone benchmarks by using a large unified (shared between multiple CPU cores) 2nd level cache.

Intel's ~4MB unified 2nd level cache is backed up by a somewhat slower DRAM memory interface. Verses AMD's smaller but separate 1MB 2nd level caches, one for each CPU core, combined with higher performing DRAM memory interface.

Intel's optimization performs nicely in benchmarks which squeezes into that cache.. but little else.. I.E. Add a Network stack for multi player game (or other tasks which flush&reuse the 2nd level cache) and the advantage switches back to AMD. (Big time.)

So next time you here Intel make another claim, just remember these little tidbits of info before making your next purchasing decision.

Posted by: thetruth_z   Posted on: 06/09/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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