X-bit labs

April Confrontation: AMD and Intel Start the Price War (page 3)

Category: CPU

by Ilya Gavrichenkov

[ 03/28/2007 | 05:18 PM ]

Performance

Futuremark: Synthetic Benchmarks

Now that we have the opportunity to compare the AMD and Intel processors according to their upcoming pricing, the situation is no longer simple. Just recently we have complained about the slow performance of AMD CPUs, and now we have to take our words back. According to the results of the popular gaming benchmark – 3DMark06, the April price reduction will allow Athlon 64 X2 processors to become worthy competitors to dual-core Intel CPUs selling below $200 price-point. Moreover, Athlon 64 X2 become the performance leader in the CPU subtest. AMD processors outperform Intel counterparts priced accordingly (as to the April price-list) during physics and bots AI modeling.

The situation in PCMark05 is slightly different. Core 2 Duo E6600 performs almost as fast as Athlon 64 X2 6000+ priced identically. However, when it comes to cheaper solutions, Intel doesn’t look too good any more. Core 2 Duo processors priced at $100-$150 turn out slower than Athlon 64 X2 with the same price tag. However, we can again see relative parity among the best value dual-core solutions from AMD and Intel.

The CPU test from PCMark05 suite shows a little different results. There are two interesting things here: high performance of the Pentium D processors and good results of the Core 2 Duo E4400 (in relation to its price).