haha, you are very misled, intel's fastest cpu is ONE GHz faster (probably what you meant) than amd's fx-53
but just remember, a processor isn't all ghz
you, my friend, have succumbed to the megahertz myth, the beief that Mhz or Ghz = performance
but it doesnt equal performance; its just a contributing factor
there are a lot factors in a processor :
Frequency (Mhz)
pipeline stages
# on functional units
and the cache design
the first 2 are closely related
the intel pentium 4 features a 20-stage pipeline, while the athlon 64 has a 12-stage. What it means is that because the P4 has more stages, it can run at a higher frequency
But it still has more stages to complete, which is why, say a 3500+ is faster than a 3.0Ghz P4. The AMD only needs 12 steps (hehe) to complete the program, while the P4 needs 20.
So basically :
AMD : 1->2->3->4->5->6->7->8->9->10->11->12
INTEL : 1->2->3->4->5->6->7->8->9->10->11->12->13->14->15->16->17->18->19->20
in a perfect world, the P4 would work 50% faster (because of frequency) than the Athlon, eventually catching up
then again, its not a perfect world - while completing an instruction, little "bubbles" show up in the chain
think of this as shooting a water gun - you shoot a water blast every 1 second, take a break for 1 second, then start shooting again, at the same rate
the "break" is the "bubble" (every processor has this)
when the bubble reaches the 12th or 20th step, its an "empty instruction," and the chain has to start all over again
but this time, the athlon needs only 12 steps, rather than 20 steps required by the intel p4
so the reason the p4 has a bigger frequency is because it has more pipeline stages
WOW, that computer class i took in 7th grade really worked!!
hope you liked my little tutorial