AMD and Intel have been battling in the PC market for years. Before AMD gained in popularity, Intel was the only mainstream CPU manufacturer with a significant market share, but AMD began to take some of that market share by producing CPUs at a lower cost. Since then, the companies have leap-frogged each other a few times, but there are still pros and cons to choosing one type of processor over the other. Let us look at a few of the major factors.

Price

One of the ways that AMD has usually had an edge over Intel is price. AMD chips tend to be less expensive than Intel chips, and AMD offers a broader line of budget-priced chips that are popular with manufacturers such as Dell when designing low-cost machines. Intel generally offers more performance for an equivalent price, but the overall low price of AMD processors makes them appealing for budget shoppers.

Speed

When the early battle between AMD and Intel began to heat up, the companies were competing for the fastest speeds, generally measured in megahertz. At that time, whichever manufacturer could boast the fastest speed in megahertz would sell more chips. This is less of a factor today as multiple cores and caches tend to affect the performance more than the rated speed of a processor.

Cores and Architecture

Most modern processors contain more than one core, and each core can run its own processes, acting like multiple processors in one. Both AMD and Intel offer multiple cores, but Intel’s new Sandy Bridge architecture and processors that can support up to 16 cores take the lead in innovation. AMD tends to be somewhat behind the innovations that Intel creates.

Summary

Overall, both AMD and Intel processors provide a solid computing experience. Buyers who wish to save money may opt for the lower price of AMD processors, but they will sacrifice some performance. Buyers who want the fastest performance and the newest technological innovations may opt for Intel, but they will pay a premium.