How about we have a debate about the AMD64 Vs. the Prescott.
Who likes which, and why?
I've always been an AMD fan since the old Duron 750MHz I had in my third computer. I upgraded to an AthlonXP 2000+ almost two years ago... and wow, did I ever feel the difference. I then did a minor upgrade and got another AthlonXP 2500+ Barton.
But I want to know... how holds the leader in the 64-bit area? AMD, or Intel? I've heard so many good things about AMD recently, programmers raving how the new AMD64 Assembly is 'perfect, clean, and a godsend', but is that actually true? I also remember an article on Slashdot about how Intel 'borrowed' (e.g: reverse engineered) the AMD64 assembly for 'Compatibility' reasons, and that the Prescott is basically an AMD64 ripoff. Is this true?
Anyhow, list your favourite, why, or other things. :D
A64>>>Prescott. Even with the new i915/925 chipsets with pci-e and ddr2, A64 pwns Prescott.
And for the other question, no the Prescott isnt a A64 ripoff, its a completely different architecture. To put it in laymans terms the Prescott P4 is even MORE inefficent cpu when compared to Northwood. That is the reason why Intel is now turning away from Netburst and to dual core.
The actual chip layout or whatever isn't a ripoff of the a64, Cich, the 'ripoff' is the emt64 extentions, which are only about as much a ripoff as AMD had done to intel for years, making your chip compatibile with the leader. Its not so much reverse eng. as I understand it, because the amd64 assembly, register layout, etc. were pretty well-documented, and intel set up a chip that implemented the spec. Although, they probably did need an A64 to test it and see if it worked the same, so there was probably some 'reverse engineering' but I wouldn't say that was the real effort intel had to put into the new emt64 extentions. Not supporting N^X out of the gate is crap, though.
in addition, as an owner of both an A64 (2.2 socket 754) and a Prescott (3.0 LGA (are there non-lga Prescotts?), without the emt64 jazz), the fan attachment on the Prescott is neat, but unfortunately, I can't seem to find any fan for LGA775 that doesn't sound like a jet... but my A64 is quieter than my old Athlon.
So, really, other than having PCI-express and um, I really can't think of another reason to want the new intel chips. And nforce4 should have PCI express, right?
The prescott is retarded. Why?
EMT64 is completely implemented with emulation. Which makes it nearly useless except as a novel way to avoid PAE. The big win for x86_64 are double-wide registers and more registers available for a slightly larger cache footprint. The EMT64 versions of said instructions are slower than IA32 counterparts, which makes any such optimizations moot (thereby making SSE3 "better").
And of course the new NVidia chipset and VIA chipsets, you could go either way to get PCI-express.