Can AMD Ever Beat Intel?

PC World - Let's be frank: AMD's processors aren't as good as Intel's, by and large. Intel's processors have offered better total performance and better performance-per-watt ever since the days of the Core 2 Duo, with few exceptions. If we set the way-back machine to 1999, the story is different. Intel's dominance was seriously challenged when AMD released the Athlon, which crushed the latest Intel chip (the Pentium III) in just about every performance test you could throw at it. This kicked off a major speed race, but AMD held its own and generally outperformed Intel through the introduction of the Athlon 64.

Now, AMD seems almost hopelessly behind. Don't get me wrong, Phenom II processors are by no means bad. They run all the apps people care about at a respectable speed, and AMD has really priced them aggressively. You get decent "bang for the buck" from the latest AMD stuff, but it still falls well short of Intel's current chips in overall performance, and performance-per-watt. AMD based laptops suffer considerably worse battery life than their Intel counterparts, especially if you compare against Intel chips that offer similar performance.     Read More