Intel Core 2 duo or AMD Athlon 64x2 ?

[genesis]

Intel Core 2 duo or AMD Athlon 64x2 ?

Which would you choose? Is there much of a difference?

[gunslinger]

yes there is a difference. if you would have asked this 2 years ago i would have said amd, but right now its all intel. intel beats amd in every way at this point by about 20-40% in every test. plus intel is cheaper for the power you get. right now the e6600 i'm running beats anything in amd's line.

[syphus]

I'm not convinced.

The Core 2 Duo is, without a doubt, the best processor money can buy. Per clock, it's more efficient and cooler. However, at price point? Things get hairy...

The Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 core example, a 2.4 GHz 4 MB L2 cache part cost about the same as the AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+, a 3.0 GHz 1 MB L2 Cache (1 MB per core, 2 MB total) part.

Put side by side, The E6600 seems to have the edge, but not in every test. The high clock rate and efficient integrated memory controller gives the 6000+ an advantage in some areas, such as media encoding (although, this is application/optimization dependent). In general, Intel's part will out pace AMD's, but not by a lot.

Of course, it's not at exactly true that the E6600 is better than anything AMD offers. For example, the Athlon 64 FX-74 (quad core version of the 6000+) will beat the E6600 in various things. Once you step up to the E6700, then the for AMD, the battle is truly lost.

[gunslinger]

yep