It's the epic, age-old battle that just keeps being resurrected. Chip-giant Intel and the underdog Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) go head-to-head for desktop dominance. So what will 2008 hold for desktop processors? We've uncovered both company's plans for 2008 to allow you to decide just which purchase will suit your home or small business. The harsh reality for AMD is that over the past two years, Intel has absolutely dominated the market in terms of performance. But that's just one half of the price-performance ratio, and AMD's willingness to slash prices and aggressively pursue the low- and midrange tiers of the desktop-computing market cannot be overrated, despite the company's technological lag.
Intel's current CPU road map is a continuation of the company's "tick-tock" strategy. According to this approach, each year the company alternates its emphasis between shrinking its CPU fabrication process and implementing a new micro architecture.
AMD has been surprisingly candid about its issues and is hopeful that 2008 will tell a different story. At the end of 2007, AMD bid its Athlon series of CPUs adieu and finally released its next-generation Phenom processors, a product line that included the intriguing presence of a triple-core line of processors. One of the biggest advantages AMD has been able to claim over Intel is that Phenom processors are the first native quad-core CPUs on the market, meaning all cores are integrated on to a single die. A shared L3 cache and improved power management were also touted as key features in this new micro architecture.
Courtesy: PC World.com
AMD has been surprisingly candid about its issues and is hopeful that 2008 will tell a different story. At the end of 2007, AMD bid its Athlon series of CPUs adieu and finally released its next-generation Phenom processors, a product line that included the intriguing presence of a triple-core line of processors. One of the biggest advantages AMD has been able to claim over Intel is that Phenom processors are the first native quad-core CPUs on the market, meaning all cores are integrated on to a single die. A shared L3 cache and improved power management were also touted as key features in this new micro architecture.
Courtesy: PC World.com
