Place your bets: Sandy Bridge/Gulftown v.s. Zambezi

[Intel17]

So, what do you guys think?

i7 970/980/990x 6C/12T v.s. Zambezi 8C/8T
i7 2600k 4C/8T v.s. Zambezi 6C/6T

Personally, my money's on AMD edging out Intel's current offerings. Why? This is AMD's last chance to be taken seriously in this market, if they fail they're doomed. If Intel loses the performance crown, they'll still be mega-profitable.

Originally Posted by Intel17

So, what do you guys think?

i7 970/980/990x 6C/12T v.s. Zambezi 8C/8T
i7 2600k 4C/8T v.s. Zambezi 6C/6T

Personally, my money's on AMD edging out Intel's current offerings. Why? This is AMD's last chance to be taken seriously in this market, if they fail they're doomed. If Intel loses the performance crown, they'll still be mega-profitable.

I remember reading that exact statement prior to Phenom's launch.

My money is on Intel though. That's what I'll be buying end of the year.

[Moshing]

AMD will do well this round, even without taking the top honors. AMD and Intel have something of a balance achieved that both are actually benefiting from, neither will chance it destabilizing in either direction now. AMD no longer guns for the very top, but provides a solid and realistic alternative to Intel's CPU's, working a specific price range that Intel leaves a bit of a performance gap in, I would go so far as to say intentionally.

Intel needs AMD as much as AMD now needs Intel. They are wed-locked in a union of convenience that protects both of them from Big Brother scrutiny, and from smaller upstarts trying to muscle into the x86 market.

AMD isn't doomed at all. In fact, last time they hit a particular low financial point, Intel miraculously agreed to a settlement that boosted AMD into the black at a crucial moment when creditors were sniffing at their heals.

Edit: And if nobody's noticed, Intel and AMD have an obvious research agreement. AMD tests the more "potential pitfall" techs now and work the bugs out for Intel, then Intel whips out the same thing after it's been working for AMD for a bit but shinier, prettier, and more marketable. And if it doesn't work for AMD, Intel avoids it. AMD = Intel's guinea pig. A role AMD plays happily, and with often good results for both. Examples include, CISC/RISC encode/decoding, x86-64, Hyper Transport Tunneling/Quick Path Interconnect, Integrated Memory Controller, SATA3/USB3 (and many more examples, these just come to mind the quickest), every one of these Intel could have EASILY beaten AMD to, and Intel just seemed "uninterested" at the time with various BS marketing excuses. Be clear on this, there was NO lack of interest, quite the opposite. Intel was being kept in the tight loop with AMD's R&D teams, don't even doubt it.

Edit 2: So my bets are on Intel for top honors, with AMD for top value honors, again (and again, and again, etc., etc., ad nauseam). And even more stable of positions this time, well entrenched in both's advantages, once again locking out any real potential x86 competition from Via or anybody else and the FTC's hands completely tied to do anything about it. "AMD's an innovator! They beat Intel to many technologies, fair competition is in play!" So, my vote says "SnB-E will be the fastest x86 CPU you can own in late 2011/early 2012 unless Ivy Bridge hits in that time".

Edit 3: Possible issue for last edit statement. Ivy Bridge may launch as nothing more then a die-shrunk, socket 1155 chip with little real IPC improvements and not really compete with SnB-E at first. IvB-E may come later, like SnB-E did.

Edit4: Reference to CISC/RISC above, AMD's failed 5x86 was competing with the pure CISC original Pentium classic and losing badly. AMD bought NexGen and integrated the RISC core with a CISC encode/decode stage (first attempts were not pretty) well before Pentium Pro existed. Pentium Pro is Intel saying "good boy, chimpzilla, you found another path through the jungle!" And then blazing it's bloody trail through the IT world. Ever since, the Chipzilla/Chimpzilla monster combo have eaten any and all competition up and reign dominant over the whole jungle.

[Viral]

I don't think there will be a clear winner, AMD will likely do better at threaded tasks though. For price/performance, AMD should pull ahead by a good margin. Hopefully the performance will still be at least on par with Intel's offerings though in just about any meaningful application (not synthetic benches or calculating pi with an outdated program).

Unless they very much underwhelm, I can see myself going with an 8 core Zambezi sometime in the 2nd half of the year.

[frenchy2k1]

@Moshing, you realize that the x86 market is a close one, as it requires an x86 license to be compatible? Intel is the only one that doles out those and they have no interest to allow more competition.

The only 3 companies with those licenses are Intel (Duh...), AMD and VIA (bought it through Cyrix). So, no need to keep anyone from entering, the door is closed anyway.

[ViN86]

Originally Posted by Intel17

So, what do you guys think?

i7 970/980/990x 6C/12T v.s. Zambezi 8C/8T
i7 2600k 4C/8T v.s. Zambezi 6C/6T

Personally, my money's on AMD edging out Intel's current offerings. Why? This is AMD's last chance to be taken seriously in this market, if they fail they're doomed. If Intel loses the performance crown, they'll still be mega-profitable.

I doubt its this generation when AMD will become performance king. But their acquisition of ATI puts them in a much better position than Intel.

I think Zambezi will top the 2600K. But the Sandy Bridge E's will beat it later this year.

[Intel17]

You think 6C/12T SNB-E will beat out 8C/8T Zambezi?

[Intel17]

Originally Posted by slaWter

Yeah the 8 Core advantage might change a lot of benchmark results if the general performance is also good. Kinda similar to the 2GB VRAM per GPU route AMD used with their current generation of cards - very smart move, especially for demanding tests.

But this will be the first time I'm not going to be onboard with another core count increase. I just don't want an AMD chipset in one of my main systems.

But why would you buy SNB-E if the performance delta is not likely to be appreciable?

[wheeljack12]

Originally Posted by Intel17

You think 6C/12T SNB-E will beat out 8C/8T Zambezi?

isn't snb-e supposed to be 8 core too when it comes out? or at least some of the chips will be? if so, intel gets advantage back later this year. Until then, zambezi has the advantage until then.

[Dazz]

SB-E is 6 core, at the moment i think intel are not intrested in 8 core in the personal cosumer department only servers and workstations.

[Ninja Prime]

**EDITED BY DD**

[Rollo]

**EDITED BY DD**