Saturday, August 30, 2008

AMD Athlon 64 X2

Intel Pentium dual core CPUsYou may recall a few months back when AMD took out full-page newspaper ads to challenge Intel to a dual-core server duel. Intel declined to take up AMD on its offer, but the challenge got us thinking: what would the results of a dual-core desktop CPU fight look like? Many people equate Windows PCs with Intel Pentium processors (and soon will likely be doing the same with Macs), but we've seen dual-core CPU AMD systems power ahead of dual-core Intel-based PCs on more than one occasion.
To answer the question once and for all, we circled up a bunch of cars in an abandoned parking garage and set ourselves to a no-holds-barred dual-core desktop CPU fistfight. AMD submitted its five dual-core CPUs, and Intel matched with its lineup of four. We built two test beds as