The CPU Poll

I selected AMD simply because since the debut of the Athlon, AMD has had a superior desktop architecture. I've also never had stability or overheating problems. If you know how to build systems and use properly selected parts, it shouldn't even be an issue.

Now that Intel is really taking advantage of its leadership in process technology and has resurrected the Pentium 3/M in the form of Core 2 Duo, they will have power and performance leadership in a few months. There will be some lag before AMD manages to catch up again through their K8L core which, despite the name, appears to be a heavily reworked K8 core. The new co-processor architecture that AMD is quickly maturing (where you can plug a dedicated microprocessor specialised for your particular needs in a spare CPu socket, directly accessing the same Hypertransport bus as the CPU), is a very exciting divergence from usual trends. Also remember that the Core 2 Duo architecture is aimed squarely at 1P-2P systems. They still have a big problem using an ancient bus architecture that doesn't provide these great cores they've desiged with enough data past a certain point. No doubt nVidia will help them out with that though someday.

For the last few years AMD has been more innovative and better at following through with their promises than Intel; hopefully they won't waste their hard-won gains.

Jam it back in, in the dark.