AMD Desktops Outsell Intel 468
prostoalex writes "For the week ending August 21st AMD managed to capture 54% market share among new desktops sold. Intel's share during the week was 45%. While Intel leads the U.S. CPU market with 82.7% market share, folks from AMD are proud to announce this is the second week this year - they also outsold Intel on the desktop market one time in April 2004."
Including businesses? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Including businesses? (Score:2)
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Insightful)
The more work a person is willing to do to buy a computer, the greater chance they will purchase AMD. Someone who is just picking up a box with 'everything in it' might be more likely to see the 'Intel Inside' sticker on that new computer stacked 10 high at Best Buy.
Then again, my purchasing department doesn't seem to understand that there are computer makers other than Dell.
But what if I was in Italy- and buying from Dell was a pain in the ass? The chance of purchasing AMD just went up about 200 times.
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Informative)
The AMD > 50% figures are specific to US Retail sales, so they are totally uncomparable numbers.
Re:Including businesses? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's quite likely that your company has some kind of contract with Dell where they purchase exclusively from Dell in exchange for a better deal on those purchases
I believe it's relatively common for companies to do such a thing
Re:Including businesses? (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't actually seen an exclusive contract -- perhaps that's how it happens at larger companies, where I have less experience (and certainly less management experience). The way I've seen it work at smaller companies is your Dell rep calls you (or your IT Manager/Director/
Re:Including businesses? (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not. That's why Dell is so successful. No matter who you are or what you need, you call them up, and they ship it to your doorstop.
Dell is very good at what they do: taking Intel parts, slapping them in a box, and shipping them out the door. Dell was the first company that realized that succeeding in the PC business had nothing to do with having the best PCs. Succeeding in the PC business means undercutting everyone else in over
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Funny)
s/run\ faster/have\ higher\ clockspeeds
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Including businesses? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've been brainwashed by Intel. In almost all applications, a similarly priced Athlon 64, without 64-bit, wipes the floor against Intel. And in 64-bit compiles in Linux 64-bit, the Athlon 64 gets an extra 30-40% boost. Now obviously we won't get that in Windows, as most companies won't come out with 64-bit compiled versions. But hey... who uses Windows anyways?
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Informative)
Raw CPU speeds are fairly meaningless.
Its like the RPM guage on your car. Lets say that a Corvette has a lower RPM per mile per hour than a Porche and it also costs less. Now lets pretend that they both top out at 165 mph. If all you're worried about is how fast you get from point A to point B (and what else is there when talking about CPUs?), then the Corvette obviously gets you more bang per buck. Who cares if the Porche has higher RPM per MPH (its actually a bad thing!).
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Interesting)
The advantage of higher-revving engines is that you can generate the same power (not torque) with a smaller sized engine. Notice that Formula 1 cars have extremely high-revving engines--usually over 10,000 rpm. In race cars like that, engine size and weight is extremely important. In F1, in fact, the engine size is actually critical in determining the shape of the body, and severely affects aerodynamics.
Higher-revving engines, properly engineered, also allow better fuel economy because of their smaller frictional loss. This is important if you only use the peak power output capability of your engine very rarely, and spend most of your time cruising at a normal speed in high gear. With variable valve timing and variable cam phasing technologies, you can build a smaller engine that gets excellent fuel economy at low rpms, and very high power output at high rpms; the best of both
worlds.
The only big disadvantage to higher rpms is, of course, durability, but modern mechanical engineering, metallurgical, and manufacturing practices easily make up for this.
With CPU speeds, however, the raw clockspeed is only one variable in how well the chip performs, but is also directly proportional to how much power the chip consumes. So if you engineer a crappy CPU which has a high clockspeed, but doesn't use those cycles effectively, you'll only succeed in wasting more electricity than the lower-MHz competitor which has a more efficient architecture.
Re:Including businesses? (Score:3, Informative)
You can't just choose an engine based on one measurement, there are an assorment of features: horsepower, max RPM, torque, gear ratios, fuel economy; same with CPU you have GHz, cache size, memory controller, power efficiency.
A well engineered product will maximize all these features, or emphasize certain features over another depending on application. For example Pen
Re:Friction is proportional to surface area. (Score:4, Interesting)
That rule would seem to be inverted for CPUS.
Actually, it's not.
Power consumption in CPUs is dictated by clock speed, die size, and feature size (90nm, 130nm, 180nm, etc.).
If you were to take the old Pentium II design, and re-engineer it for the modern 90nm process (or better yet, the upcoming 65nm), you'd be able to shrink it down to a smaller die size. This would yield both a smaller physical chip (which would be cheaper to produce because it's using less silicon), and lower power consumption, assuming you ran it at the same 300 MHz or so that the old P2s ran at.
The problem is that chip companies and consumers don't care about lower power consumption; they want faster performance, or more precisely, they want bigger numbers so they can brag to their friends and feel like they're doing better than the Joneses. So while going to smaller feature sizes helps reduce power consumption, going to a higher clock speed more than makes up for it, so the actual power consumption is continually rising.
Even worse, with transistors becoming ever smaller, the heat they produce is being concentrated into smaller regions, which causes localized heat problems on the chip, necessitating more engineering solutions to keep those areas from overheating. If you look at a thermal map of a CPU in operation, you'll see that a very small part of the CPU is generating the majority of the heat--the ALU and execution units, which are constantly utilized, produce most of the heat, while the SRAM cache produces very little even though it probably accounts for a majority of the die real estate.
Re:Including businesses? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Including businesses? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bullshit. A 1.6GHz Athlon will slaughter a 2.2GHz pentium 4 at most applications. The top-end Intel chip and the top-end AMD chip have roughly the same performance.
HP's computer line is a joke everywhere. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Including businesses? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe for enthusiast and home gaming PCs, but if you include business desktops I'd venture to say that Intel still carries somewhere around 75%.
The blurb itself says that despite AMD's share of new CPUs, Intel have 82.7% of the US market. Which is close enough to 72%.
The article itself admits that AMD's market is 'constrained' such that these results are very impressive. Intel indeed makes AMD a clear underdog for businesses and (at least up until very recently) notebooks.
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Informative)
All of Dell sales are direct.
Most of HP sales are direct.
Most of IBM sales are direct.
Most of Intel sales are direct.
I am referring to desktops in the gov, and corp market, as well as direct to customer sales.
So yes, AMD sells more retail.
Retail sales overall are a decreasing percentage of the desktop sales figures.
Makes for a great headline, but it is not true at all, not even close.
AMD does not have anywhere near the production capacity Intel has, and both are cranking out full steam ahead.
So do the math yourself.
if AMD has 20% of the capacity of Intel, and both are maxed out, who sells more?
Re:Including businesses? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is true. However, it is also highly misleading, but that doens't make it false.
Re:Including businesses? (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell me how you figure most of Intel sales are direct? Last I checked, I can't go and buy a chip from Intel. Show me an invoice from Intel for one processor, I'd love to see it. Again, your full of shit.
Notebook sales (Score:5, Interesting)
Duboise continues: "promotions continue to be the driving force behind retail PC sales and AMD's successes. In fact, $699 notebook promotions have been the driving force behind three incidents this year when notebook sales were able to overcome desktop sales. As long as Intel continues to place more emphasis on the more lucrative and successful notebook market, it leaves the door open for AMD's desktop wins."
I wonder if they believe that they can eventually drive notebook sales upward to the point that they outsell Intel more often than a handful of times a year?
Cheers,
Erick
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article says that AMD's desktop successes are partially a result of Intel's tendency to emphasize notebooks. If "they" (Intel, I hope you mean) drive notebook sales upward, and assuming that damages desktop sales, Intel's sales would increase because of their notebook dominance and AMD's would decrease because of their desktop interests. Overall the desktop market would shrink (or grow less), while AMD's share of it might grow marginally as a result of the notebook market distracting Intel from pushing its desktop CPUs as aggressively. We might then have more "AMD Desktops Outsell Intel" stories, but it would definitely not be good news for AMD.
Re:Notebook sales (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah, totally... except on yours. It would have been helpful if you provided your fucking name at the end of your fucking Slashdot messages so we know who the fuck you are next time we fucking see you. Fuck?
Re:Notebook sales (Score:3, Funny)
Sweet. Irrational term of warranty. But then again, no one will ever be annoyed that something failed in the last possible moment.
However, e years is not the best warranty, as I am certain I have seen 3 years at least.
Good to hear! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good to hear! (Score:5, Informative)
ATI mainly outsold Nvidia because of Nvidia's shoddy manufacturing of early Geforce 5 series cards - poor drivers, drivers that lied [geocities.com], and late to market hardware that looked distinctly weak by the time it was public. This was a direct mirror of the emergence of Nvidia over 3DFX as a major graphics card force a few years ealier, with the exception that this time around, Nvidia had a lot greater cash reserve than 3DFX ever did, so could actually afford to make the mistake.
As it is, I'd be very surprised to find out that the ATI share was more than 55/45 in their favor (remember - a LOT of people outside of hardcord gamer circles are still using early Geforce / TNT cards - I have even seen Geforce 2 *MX* cards still being sold as low cost no frills acceleration) and with the new 6600 cards coming out, this is going to be a firm kick to the nether regions of ATI. There just isn't a card on the market that can hold a candle to it, and when you combine this with Nvidia's far superior Doom 3 performance, I'd certainly not bet against Nvidia becoming a dominant 3D acceleration force over the next few years.
Re:Good to hear! (Score:3, Interesting)
not just that, but nVidia also has more than that going for them.
They diversified in the industry. They're not just manufacturing video cards, they're also making mainboard chipsets as well as other multimedia pursuits. Not exactly a wide, sweeping
Re:Good to hear! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Good to hear! (Score:3, Interesting)
That's more a driver issue than anything else. I wouldn't infer anything about Mac OpenGL performance from Windows OpenGL or DirectX performance.
Re:Good to hear! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great to hear! (Score:3, Insightful)
Almost always, competition means lower prices. It does not always mean better products, unless you mean better product for the dollar. If a product were a third less reliable for half the cost, then I suppose that is a win, if you don't consider environmental impact of each respective product.
As for better product, it doesn't always seem to be the case, at least as often. Sometimes there is some corner cutting on the part of all competitors, note the qu
A Long Way from "AMD is Dead" (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel let its marketing people get caught napping. Intel pushed the Itanium and said it will never make a 64-bit chip that is x86 compatible.
AMD came out with the 64 bit chip that was compatible with the x86, and it got rave reviews. And, it gets sales!
Now, AMD outsells Intel again. Did you see that -- the article said "again."
Not bad for a company that was being written off a couple years ago.
Re:A Long Way from "AMD is Dead" (Score:5, Insightful)
To the contrary. Intel let its marketing people tell the engineers what to do. So they basically said, "we want a 3GHz chip, because consumers are stupid and they only look at GHz figures". P4 is a result of this. It's only real feature is that it can be clocked insanely high. Clock for clock it's not only dumber than AMD chips, it's also dumber than some of Intel's own processors (Pentium M for example).
Re:A Long Way from "AMD is Dead" (Score:3, Interesting)
The grandparent post mentioned Pentium M, but Pentium III counts as Pentium M is true successor to the P6 (Pentium Pro, II & III) heritage, but with a FSB speed (400MHz vs 133). They have larger caches available as affordable consumer chips, 1MB & 2MB are available in Pentium M when those were available in PII, PIII Xeon, but not cheap.
All iterations of Pentium IV (Willamette, Northwood, Prescott) have a lower IPC than Pentium III.
Not that I
Figures (Score:5, Interesting)
There is no way I could have done that with an intel chip and motherboard and still get the same performance.
Ah, that explains Intel pimping a new Internet. (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey, Dell !!! (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you listening?
Re:Hey, Dell !!! (Score:2)
Loud and clear I would assume - Lets see AMD has a 50% share of the retail (Desktop) market and a 16% share of the overall market. Guess where Intel is selling ?
Why I love AMD (Score:2, Interesting)
Bad comparison... (Score:4, Informative)
What's more, the more processors, the better. Hypertransport gives each processor it's own bus.
That said, comparing an FX-53 to a 3.8 GHz Intel would also be a more fair comparison. And while it's true that the Intel wins it's share of benchmarks, keep in mind: You are comparing a 3.8 GHz Intel chip to a lousy 2.6 GHz processor (the FX-53). Theoretically, the Intel should totally kick it's ass - but it doesn't. That's some good chip design there my friend!
I just got a 3800+ last week. All I can say is: WOW!
Re:Why I love AMD (Score:2)
Re:Why I love AMD (Score:3, Informative)
where are all those intel favourable benchmarks?*
lots of amd [anandtech.com] favourable [tomshardware.com] ones [tomshardware.com]
in my personal experience, Intel's always have a small lag that is quite noticeable. Although this is comming from the same person who can tell a 85hz refresh rate from a 75 so its probably not something most people have to worry about.
and THEN there is the huge price
Whether you like Intel or AMD or neither (Score:5, Insightful)
Cheers to AMD for not giving up and dying. And cheers to that chairman of theirs who looks like he oughta be out selling chicken.
Re:Whether you like Intel or AMD or neither (Score:4, Insightful)
And, of course, they noticed the rising market share of laptops and realized that the same technology they use to make A64 machines not sound like leafblowers can also provide decent battery life on a laptop.
The Athlon 64 laptops don't have battery life like a Centrino, but they're much better than Intel's P4-based laptop line, and they blow the Pentium-M's out of the water in performance for hundreds less.
The Athlon 64 may have started out as a niche product, but now it's the preferred performance-processor for many enthusiasts and a decent processor for both performance and low-price laptops (you can get an Athlon 64 laptop for $1150).
Then they realize that Intel has been neglecting the low-end foreign markets: *poof*, Sempron.
The Athlon XP-M chips are still wonderful in laptops--they're Fast Enough for almost anyone, don't drain that much power, and are cheap.
AMD gets credit for doing marketing the old-fashioned way: find an area that Intel's not up to par in, and design something that beats Intel's current offering in that area. This is the sort of marketing I benefit from, the sort of marketing that gives me cheap, fast hardware. I like that.
Makes Sense To Me (Score:2, Interesting)
Coincidence?
Re:Makes Sense To Me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Makes Sense To Me (Score:4, Insightful)
No wonder (Score:2, Interesting)
what I'd like to see from Intel (Score:3, Interesting)
Is that too much to ask? *sigh*
Re:what I'd like to see from Intel (Score:2, Funny)
Re:what I'd like to see from Intel (Score:4, Informative)
Get an MSI K8T Neo motherboard with an Athlon64. It can automatically vary its CPU speed from 800Mhz to its full rated speed (2Ghz+). So if you have its throttling control turned on, you don't worry about the Athlon64's maximum power consumption because it rarely runs at max speed. Best of all, although you turn this on or off in the bios, its controlled on the motherboard, so it works in either Windows or Linux (no software drivers).
Intel says WWW will RIP (Score:2)
Hot On Their Heels (Score:5, Informative)
(hint: they're actually innovating)
Clarification on figures... (Score:4, Interesting)
The figures for Intel's total share are worldwide, not US. (I should know, my company is the source cited in the link.) Meanwhile the AMD weekly share data (from another company) is for US Retail system sales. So the two data points really aren't comparable on any basis.
I know the figures I cite are exclusive to x86 CPUs. Someone mentioned PowerPC in this thread, and Apple provides sales figures as part of their financials -- based on Q2 data, PowerPCs in Apples comprise about 1.8% of the market if you included them in the calculations.
One company placed a big order (Score:2, Troll)
Yeah, but who's sold the most (Score:4, Funny)
global warming (Score:5, Funny)
Coincidence? Naah...
Re:global warming (Score:5, Informative)
Re:global warming (Score:3, Informative)
It's gotten so bad that the P4's performance is getting hurt... Some of the newer processors they introduced don't perform any better than the older/cheaper ones, because when they are at full-speed, they output too much heat, and the CPU has to slow down to keep from burning up.
Now, AMD has some power management issues [slashdot.org], but even with that, they aren't any worse than Intel.
They are the big guys now..... (Score:4, Funny)
Intel is partially to blame for this (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Intel secret plan (Score:4, Funny)
Intel is planning to release a 10.000 MHZ cpu and kick AMD poor lame ass.
Watch it, in several European countries (and a bunch of non-European ones) that truly does mean 10,000 MHz :)
Re:Intel secret plan (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Intel secret plan (Score:3, Interesting)
The Z80 CPU was so stable that we could actually hook a potentiometer up to the timing circuit and scroll the system clock speed up or down and it just went on about its business of running happily. As I recall, it maxed out about 1 megahertz, but you could reduce it way down without trouble.
Re:Intel secret plan (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who would buy intel? (Score:3, Informative)
It is also cheaper.
Anything Intel blows goats compared to a decent Nforce 2 board.
Re:Who would buy intel? (Score:5, Interesting)
Via needs to change something, because the NForce chipset is kicking ass all over their offerings for only a few dollars more.
I was kind of wary when I heard that NVidia was releasing a mobo chipset, I thought that since they were a "video card" company that they wouldn't be able to make a good chipset. I am so glad I was wrong. Now, I'd like to see what ATI can do.
LK
Re:Who would buy intel? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Who would buy intel? (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who would buy intel? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, there's always the 64-bit thing to take into consideration (and the no-execute extensions in Windows XP SP2).
Intel themselves admit that the only way they could make 64-bit desktop chips was by copying the AMD 64-bit extensions.
Re:Who would buy intel? Who would use onboard... (Score:3, Informative)
Professional Audio applications aren't running with onboard AC97. You'll have added a high-end card, or two, to your system. The only way the N/S bridge chips could add crackles would be if they weren't exchanging data properly, in which case nothing would be running correctly on your computer.
Re:Who would buy intel? Who would use onboard... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who would buy intel? Who would use onboard... (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if you have a pro audio card that does a/d conversion, the data still has to get from the card to HDD fast enough. The system is probably way more than fast enough on average, but you get pops anyway if some other process keeps
Re:Who would buy intel? (Score:2, Interesting)
Last time I checked I used AMD for pro audio applications. In fact, I've won more awards than many other audio producers I know (not that it has anything to do with AMD... or doesn't or whatever). My 700 mhz PC worked fine. I still use a 1.2 GHZ AMD PC as well too. I've done some corporate video work on both PCs as well.
Unless Intel gets better and cheaper, I'll be sticking with AMD.
Re:Who would buy intel? (Score:2)
Yet Intel still holds a lions share of the market. Weird.
Also if you do video encoding Intel beats AMD.
Huh.. Ain't that a corker... (Score:3, Interesting)
Last week I purchased a NEO2 board (NFORCE 3) and a 3800+ Ath
Re:Who would buy intel? (Score:2, Informative)
" I'll never buy another VIA-based mobo due to all the problems I've had with audio."
Soooooo, , don't buy another Via based mobo then. It's quite simple really.
What has this to do with AMD CPU's again?
Re:Amazing. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Amazing. (Score:2, Informative)
While AMD's x86 stuff is better than Intel's x86, its a bit sad that Itanium has lagged so far behind Opteron. Itanium's architecture is vastly superior to Opteron's, as it marks a break from the 20-year accumulation of old designs and legacy crap. It would be nice to see people embracing a new architecture for once.
Or course I can't claim superiority, having purchased Opterons myself. I guess software availability will a
Re:One monopoly down (Score:3, Interesting)
Therefore, behind a monopoly, there's always another monopoly watching and waiting in the shadows, looking to take over from the popular and dominant market force. For example:
Microsoft (Apple)
Intel (AMD)
Nvidia (ATI)
iTunes (Napster)
IBM (Sun)
Gnome (KDE)
They'll tell you that they would
Re:One monopoly down (Score:4, Informative)
*I don't like KDE all that much either, but then again I'm also not a big fan of GNOME
Re:HT -- MultiCore (Score:3, Interesting)
AMD is going HT one better by putting two Athlon 64 cores on one die next year. Much better performance bump than HT provides in a single processor core.
Re:HT (Score:5, Insightful)
The purpose of HT is to make up for Intel's crappy super-long pipeline (something like 32 stages!? Someone correct me if I'm wrong). Whenever it does a jump, many instructions are wasted. AMD's pipeline on Barton was something like 12 stages, so there's much less wastage going on. All HT does is allow the wasted cycles to be used for another thread. Since AMD's processors don't waste so many instructions, HT wouldn't really help that much.
Re:HT (Score:4, Informative)
No. Branches generally do not cause a pipeline flush. (This is why branch prediction is a hot topic.)
HT does not exist to operate only in pipeline stalls. HT exists because analysis demonstrates that most x86 programs do not exhibit enough parallelism to fully utilitize all of the multiple execution units in a modern Pentium. You've got a lot of silicon devoted to peak performance that isn't used all the time, because you don't happen to have (for example) a bunch of full-width add instructions going on at the same time. HT allows a second thread to use those chip resources.
HT is cheaper than building two processor cores, as lots of the instruction fetch and decode logic is shared. Putting two complete cores on the same die does not increase the efficiency of utilization of the resources in either core. Dual core is much more of a brute force solution to the problem (a complaint AMD fans usually lodge against Intel). In this case, execution units in both cores will often be idle, as neither thread alone happens to need the full capability of a single core.
Since you've spent more silicon on the problem, dual core can have performance advantages -- specifically whereever you actually need that duplicate logic that would be shared with a HT design. Often, however, that extra fetch/decode logic is going to waste as well.
HT is an elegant optimization for a modern superscalar processor. It is not, however, the same thing as a dual processor, nor does it solve exactly the same problem.
Re:HT (Score:3, Interesting)
Damn.
They may not have a choice (patents).
Re:HT (Score:5, Insightful)
Due to the P4's incredibly long pipeline (30-odd stages?) and very high clockspeed, if the branch prediction goes wrong, the chip will stall
HyperThreading is a clever hack that runs two simultaneous threads on the same die. In this way, if one thread stalls, the other can execute in it's place while the other thread waits for the pipeline to redo itself, hence being a very clever way of making up for the design "faults". AMD's typically run at a lower clockspeed, and have a much shorter pipeline, so even when their piplines stall, the chip does not waste as many cycles - in short, they;re not really designed to take advantage of SMT. Hence AMD not having SMT support is a bit of a non-issue.
(Disclaimer: I'm not much of a buff on chip architecture, this is just stuff I've picked up from reading
Re:HT (Score:3, Informative)
That's not shallow.
I saw a graph based on HT simulations, it was CPU utilization versus degree of hyperthreading. Utilization didn't start to level off until you have something like 6-8 execution contexts on the chip (that's assuming you have work for all of them, of course.)
That's probably geared towards an Intel-styl
Re:HT (Score:3, Informative)
Dual cores won't give you 200% either, even with the Opteron arch it'll still be 190% at the highest.
Re:and with pointless time-wasters like EPIC (Score:2, Interesting)
I feel bad for Intel and HP though. Sunk quite a bit into making sure Linux could run on the Itanium from the very start, getting little for it. Really, the Itanium and Opteron are like apples and oranges.
One major problem is gcc. GCC just can't handle EPIC stuff yet. The compi
Re:and with pointless time-wasters like EPIC (Score:5, Funny)
"All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"
64-bit CPUs (Score:4, Informative)
I have a bigass thermaltake fan in there now, which I can turn down when the weather is cooler. The computer is still rather noisy.
My point to all this is not AMD bashing however. Apparently the 64-bit CPUs do much better for heat dissipation. The CPU die is much larger (the actual die is small on an 32-bit Athlon), so heat dissipates much more nicely into the heatsink due to the increased surface contact area. When I do upgrade, I'll be going AMD64... more power (in 'nix anyhow) and cooler running than my current CPU.
Re:64-bit CPUs (Score:4, Informative)
I have an XP2600+ with a normal heatsink and fan. I live in Sacramento, California where it gets pretty hot in summer (including inside my apartment), and I've never seen the CPU temp exceed 40 C.
Re:I don't (Score:3, Insightful)
I am very doubtful that the actual CPU was the cause of any instabilities.
Re:don't forget.. (Score:4, Informative)