Intel Conroe Preview

I'm impressed with the almost unbelievable turn-around in Intel processor design, and I only wish they ran some 3D rendering benchmarks too, such as Cinebench. I invested in a rather expensive AMD solution about a year ago and even if I upgraded now i'd already be able to double the performance of my current system, so i'd rather upgrade at least once before throwing it out and building a new one from scratch, regardless of how great the new Intel CPUs turn out to be.

I still think that AMD is the more innovative company of the two and if anyone can pull themselves back into contention it's them. They've been making steady progress since the Athlon and I doubt they'd be so foolish as to lose the position they have fought so hard to gain.

Ultimately though it all boils down to price and performance. I like AMD but i'm not a "fanboy", and will go with whatever does the most for the least money. The P4-era is still fresh in my memory though. Regardless of how good Conroe is, i'd feel a little uncomfortable buying expensive products from a company that seems lately to have been rather incompetent.

EDIT: On second thoughts, I recall that even early Pentium Ms had a better IPC performance than Athlon 64. I can't remember what page that was on but it was there. So maybe the performance difference isn't so shocking.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I think Cyrix was absorbed by VIA, who just released a processor at 3W TDP >_<. And RDRAM isn't necessarily a bad thing, it was just a huge mistep for Intel to have selected their technology at the time they did. Note that RDRAM is going to be used in the next-generation consoles for a good reason.

There's nowhere I can't reach.