Why are AMD so fast?

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I am a big fan of both AMD and Intels products. My desktop workstation is dual Opterons, but my server is a Prescott P4. My laptop is also a Prescott P4.

These arguments are pointless, they each have their strengths. I will add, though, that people who have zero understanding of processor microarchitecture should stay out of these debates. It just makes you sound stupid saying things like "AMD can do things in one clock cycle and then the Intel has to wait while it processes". Seriously, its ok to have a preference, but don't say things you have no clue about.

EDIT: If you want a very fair and succinct explanation of the differences, see gaara's post.
 
Yeah I agree TheHeadFL ... by the way!

Whoa that computer looks exspensive!

Regged RAM, server CPU's what do you use it for? ..... hows it run games?
 
I actually got a good deal on the processors. I got both the Opterons for about $100.

It runs games about as well as a 3200+. Maybe a bit slower. The real nice thing though is that I am running in NUMA mode (in WinXP x64) which allows me to have nearly 9gb/s of memory bandwidth.

I use it for application development/programming and general use.
 
Ahh okay then ... I have Win x64 but swapped it to Home!

Not many drivers. :(

Still I love it when you fresh install it ..... boots up in seconds. :)
 
My motherboard has a grand total of 2 legacy PCI slots anyway, so all I've got in my box besides the video card is a SB Audigy2 ZS. It supports all the drivers for everything but my printer currently. And yes it is *lightning* fast compared to XP.
 
This is not true. 64 bit mode adds a lot of general purpose registers to the CPU, not to mention being able to accept two wider instructions in a single clock cycle.
I was refering to a 64 bit CPU running in a 32 bit software enviroment since you won't find any desktop 64 bit OSes that are decent now, and I doubt most want to play with Linux kernals.
 
In that respect, you are correct. There is some speed improvement in some 32bit apps on the AMD incarnation of x86-64 however, but its almost negligible.

However I would say that I think XP x64 is pretty decent for a desktop OS ;)
 
I suppose in actual terms of processor power it's negligible, but the memory bandwidth over the K7's is what really gives you the noticeable speed difference in your apps
 
silence782 said:
I've always heard that AMDs were faster because they could do one instruction per clock cycle, whereas INTEL chips had to perform an instruction, and then idle for the next clock cycle while the instruction was processed. Thus making the AMD chip more efficient.

AMD64 can do 2 Flotating point operations per CPU clock. :)
 
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