If so, how do you see it?
In following the benchmarks, particularly the AMD versus P4 competition, there was a period up through the low 2 GHz where the most recent product from each manufacturer would beat the other on some tests and the reverse on others. Even then I noticed, as some pro-AMD authors did not, that the margins of victory for AMD tended to be small while the Intel margins were sometimes significant. As the speeds got up to 2.5GHz, which is about the same time as the FSB speeds jumped from 400 to 533MHz, the P4 jumped ahead on all tests, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. As things have gone on since then, AMD jumps up again at times as they come out with new technologies, but their advantage tends to be in computationally intensive tasks, while those involving moving large amounts of data in and out of RAM significantly favor the Rambus systems. If you compare Intel DDR to Intel Rambus, the comparison is even more clear.
This doesn't mean that as DDR advances it isn't going to cut this margin from time to time, but it seems clear to me that Rambus has a significant edge and, unless they stop advancing, they won't be caught. Does it matter? That depends on the work you do. My 2.5Ghz box with 1GB RDRAM and 533MHz FSB is a stunning contrast to my prior box in applications like CAD and photo editing, but who would notice in Word or a program editor? |
