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| aLkaLiNE said: Does this suggest that AMD was ahead of their time? From what I understand the FX processor was inefficiently utilized due to having more cores running at a lower frequency but the aim of the new APIs are to increase cross threading performance. Intel = less cores at a higher frequency, AMD = more cores at a lower frequency (from what I'm understanding) |
AMD's CPU's tend to have higher/equivalent base frequencies than Intel CPUs, on average. The problem AMD CPU's have is that they have had very poor per core performance for a while now. A 4 GHZ AMD multi-core CPU just doesn't compare to an i5 at 4GHZ (or even some i3's in certain situations) as far as single-threaded and overall performance goes in most gaming applications. Because AMD has lower IPC (instructions per core) they needed to make up for it by increasing clock-speeds to > 4GHZ as a standard. This in turn increased power consumption and therefore heat produced by the CPU. Overall it made AMD far less desirable for high-performance computing.
For an example of this, look at Dragon Age Inquisition's minimum requirements - a game that benefits from more cores even:
Notice how you only need a 2.0 Ghz Intel quad core vs. a 2.5 Ghz Amd quad core.
Minimum:
OS: Windows 7 or 8.1 64-bit
CPU: AMD quad core CPU @ 2.5 GHz, Intel quad core CPU @ 2.0 GHz
System RAM: 4 GB
Graphics CARD: AMD Radeon HD 4870, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT
Graphics Memory: 512 MB
Hard Drive: 26 GB
DirectX 10
