How does AMD compare to Intel after price cuts?

by Scott Bicheno on 26 November 2008, 18:02

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), AMD (NYSE:AMD)

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Compare and contrast

HEXUS.channel broke the news earlier today of AMD's latest round of price cuts. By cutting the prices of pretty much all its desktop CPUs by between ten and twenty percent AMD is making an aggressive grab for more mid-market action before Christmas and the New Year release of its next generation of CPUs.

Of course nothing AMD does in the CPU space goes unqualified by comparison with Intel and this case is no exception. So we thought we'd do a quick comparison of three processors from each at equivalent price points to see what you get for your money.

As you can see from the table, AMD has a clock advantage with equivalently priced quad core CPUs, but you get more clock for your money from Intel if you drop down to dual core as well as lower power consumption.

 

Product Price ($) Cores Clock (GHz) L2 cache (MB) TDP (W)
Phenom X4 9950 BE 175 4 2.6 2 140
Core 2 Quad Q6600 183 4 2.4 8 105
Phenom X4 9850 BE 165 4 2.5 2 125
Core 2 Duo E8400 163 2 3.0 6 65
Phenom X3 8650 104 3 2.3 1.5 95
Core 2 Duo E7300 113 2 2.66 3 65


HEXUS Forums :: 8 Comments

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that doesn't really tell you anything.
Jay
that doesn't really tell you anything.

Would have to agree. I would have expected at least one benchmark (PCMark or similar) so we could at least have a quick summary of price vs performance,.
The TDP's are wrong at least some of them the 9950 BE is 125W and the Q6600 is 95W for starters, those I know off the top of my head though.
Webby,

It depends on the particular model - 9950 BE ships with both 140W and 125W TDPs, and the Q6600, whilst predominantly available in the 95W flavour, is also sold with higher TDPs.
Webby, I took the information from vendor's websites, where Intel listed “max TDP”. I concede some indication of that would have prevented confusion. AMD just says “TDP” and has the 9950 as 125W in one place and 140W in another, so I guess I've listed max TDPs across the board.