Intel Q9450 vs Phenom 9850 - ATI HD3870 X2

[JumpingJack]

Don't you think his spamming of forums is all related to his AMD fanaticism?

Everything he has been posting has been about trying to portray AMD in a better light.

There is nothing wrong with preferring AMD CPUs, and it is not fanaticism to argue AMD's strength. I don't see Gosh so much an AMD fanatical, rather I seem him utterly ignorant of the general workings of computer architecture (his assertion of being a world class programmer is meaningless, program code != architectural execution, and does to provide any specific insight into the behavior of a two different CPUs -- architecturally -- to execute that code).

Gosh truly believes in how he things things work, though it contradicts all the empirical benchmark data available as well as all the source material from both industry and academia that have been written on the topic.

If there is a measure of fanaticism in his approach it is his inability to accept what is currently true, Intel makes the better CPU -- IPC is better, clock speed is better, thermals are better ... he seems to see this as a dish against the quality of the Phenom -- which he shouldn't, the CPU is a fine CPU and an engineering accomplishment on many levels... it does not change the fact that Intel renders the computational result faster in this particular segment in time.

It was not long ago, of course, that the competitive positioning we see today was not true of the P4 vs A64 era a few years ago... and there are reasons for that situation as well. Myself, it is most about delving into the details of each architecture, be it P4, A64, Core, or Phenom because without a comparative analysis for sake of contrast, the salient details of the device do not shine through === for example, Intel currently being better with gaming code and the strength of the branch predictors as a result.

There are plenty of points of Intel's current implementations that are inferior to AMD's (Gosh loves to harp on the FSB, following along the AMD PR lines), which is true -- but not generally true, other architectural implementations remove the deficiencies (manifested in large, fast L2 cache for example) and only make it an issue in select applications (which is not gaming code as Gosh would want to believe).

AMD knows they have an inferior performing product, and have adjusted their pricing to hit a price to performance ratio that keeps them competitive, otherwise we would still be paying 650 bucks for a 5000+. Intel was in the same boat through most of 2003 to 2005. Unfortunately for AMD, their cost structure and revenue stream do not support profitability at these levels, and something has gotta give ... one of those things is AMD appears (based on rumor) ready to carve itself up to shore up capital and strengthen the balance sheet.

Jack