Replies

If Intel uses one standard and AMD another, comparison is intentionally impossible. (not unlike other industries where comparison shopping is made next to impossible by playing games.)

It's very difficult to produce meaningful benchmarks for processors, no matter how honest ones objectives might be, because many factors affect performance.

Different processors have different performance strengths, and most if not all have certain performance weaknesses. For example, a certain PowerPC could perform floating-point addition, subtraction, or multiplication twice as fast as a Pentium, but the Pentium was twice as fast at division. IIRC, the approximate time ratios were:

	Add/Sub/Mul	Div
Pentium	2	34
PowerPC	1	66

If a program used a uniform mixture of add, subtract, multiply, and divide operations, the Pentium would leave the PowerPC in the dust (performing one of each operation would take 40 cycles on the Pentium or 69 on the PowerPC); if an algorithm could be written to eliminate division, however, the PowerPC would smoke the Pentium.

So which processor would one say was faster at floating-point math?

[BTW, how well do processors do floating-point division these days? I came up with a good method for fast division a few years ago, but it turned out someone else had beat me to it].

Hello All,
As a Intel Customer and also a employee, I have to say Intel does a good job to balance the needs of computer professionals and the average person. I have been a customer for 15 years and employee for the last 2 years. The 2 reasons I buy Intel products is because the quality is always there, and most programs written are Intel compatible, including games. When I used AMD chips I couldn't run certain games and programs on the AMD chip. But when I bought the Intel chip set, (processors) there was no problems running games and programs.
I pay a little more money buying Intel chips, as a customer and employee, I feel proud knowing that we make outstanding products that we can all buy and the quality is there.
Just in case you guys are wondering what i'm running now adays, It's a laptop that does all my gaming and business needs, Intel Pentium 4 Mobile chip, 3.06 Ghz with 1 Gig of Ram. I never have my computer freeze up or have problems. As far as the Intel Chips go, I will continue buying, even after i'm done working at Intel in the future.
Have a great day !
Fernando