Quote:
Originally posted by propaganda
It's always nice to see the cheaper products with good quality beating out the ones that cost more. Just one more instance that shows paying more doesn't mean anything at all.
Can anyone give me some real details on why AMD is better at gaming when they have lower clock speed? I know its probably been asked before but trying to search it on TFP would be hell and searching through google only finds specific CPUs.
I get the whole idea of why Intel CPUs are good for speed related programs but not why AMD is so good with gaming and so damn cheap...
|
A good generalized answer is "better architecture." Not many people know this, but increasing the CPU speed of a processor can make limitations on the design of the CPU. AMD chose to make brilliantly designed internal chips, while Intel chose to win the CPU speed war. Obviously, average consumers will buy the "faster" processor, thus leading Intel to sell a hell of a lot more than AMD.
To further explain, there is an aspect of processors called "L Cache," which is memory built into the processor. More L cache is always good. There are multiple levels of L cache with levels 1 and 2 counting the most in gaming.
Athlon XP's have 64kb+64kb L1 cache. Pentium 4's have 12k+8k L1 cache. Athlon XP's have 256kb of L2 cache, and the higher-end Barton-core Athlon XP's have 512kb L2 cache. Pentium 4's have 512kb L2 cache as well.
As you can see, the Athlon XP has more L1 cache and the same amount of L2 cache in most cases.
The Athlon 64 is even more impressive. Starting at the Athlon 64 3200+ and above, the Athlon 64 series has 1 MB of L2 cache. This explains their extreme performance in games despite having a lower clock speed. None of Intel's chips have any more than 512kb L2 cache, and all still have 12kb+8kb L1.
In a nutshell, more cache = good, and Athlon XP's simply have more onboard L cache while comparing the same P4 with CPU speed. That, combined with incredibly intuitive internal design is what makes AMD's CPU's compare and even beat out Intel's.
Don't get me wrong, Intel makes some damn nice processors; I've simply explained why AMD's work so well at lower clock speeds. If you want to do rendering or multimedia intensive programs, the higher clock speed of Intel's chips is always favorable. For gaming, I'll always have to go with AMD. It just seems that their chips are designed for gaming, and gaming period.
-Lasereth