Mobile Platform Wars: AMD vs. Intel
by Jarred Walton on October 5, 2007 9:10 AM EST
AMD vs. Intel
We have no doubts that the Intel system will be faster in overall performance. The question is how much faster? Also note that while the TL-60 is priced similarly to the T7300, the same cannot be said for the TL-66. In fact, not even Intel's fastest mobile Core 2 Duo - the 2.4GHz T7700 - costs as much as the TL-66. Since we only had the T7300 on hand, however, we will stick with that as our baseline comparison.
Performance wise, things are unfortunately not very close for AMD. The T7300 is an average of 26% faster than the TL-60 and 15% faster than the TL-66. Battery life does seem to favor the AMD platform a very small amount, but considering the different display size plus the fact that the 6515b battery has 17% more capacity, and we would tend to say Intel wins here as well. Power requirements at load definitely continue to favor Intel, as we'll see later.
We expected Intel to win the performance comparison, but the margin of victory was a bit larger than we anticipated. Realistically, AMD is going to have to compete on price in order to attract buyers, but in order to get the price down where it really needs to be (about 15% lower with the TL-66 and 25% lower with the TL-60 if we go by performance differences) they would almost need to sell the processor at a loss. It's not that the AMD Turion X2 processors are "too slow" but rather that you should be able to get faster performance from Intel for roughly the same price. If you can find a good deal on an AMD laptop, we feel that the HP 6515b is still more than fast enough for typical use, but if what you depend on is processor performance Intel wins this round quite easily.
The other option of course is to come out with a new product in the mobile space, and AMD will almost certainly do that with the Barcelona architecture at some point. How soon that will occur and whether it will be enough to make them competitive on the mobile landscape remains to be seen.
Of course, the above statements are focused primarily on the CPU, and depending on what sort of application you're running that might not be as important as other features. In most areas, modern laptops are pretty much equivalent. They all come with wireless networking (many with draft 802.11n now), DVD playback and recording, and the ability to run Windows Vista with the Aero Glass user interface. The vast majority of laptops also come with integrated graphics, however, and that's one area where AMD might be able to come out ahead of Intel. Let's find out....
We have no doubts that the Intel system will be faster in overall performance. The question is how much faster? Also note that while the TL-60 is priced similarly to the T7300, the same cannot be said for the TL-66. In fact, not even Intel's fastest mobile Core 2 Duo - the 2.4GHz T7700 - costs as much as the TL-66. Since we only had the T7300 on hand, however, we will stick with that as our baseline comparison.
| Performance Comparison | |||||
| HP dv6500t T7300 | HP 6515b TL-60 | HP 6515b TL-66 | T7300 vs. TL66 | T7300 vs. TL60 | |
| DivX 6.6.1 (FPS) | 7.34 | 5.10 | 5.71 | 28.6% | 43.9% |
| QT 7.2 H.264 (FPS) | 43.07 | 31.82 | 34.41 | 25.1% | 35.3% |
| WME9 (FPS) | 38.73 | 32.10 | 37.11 | 4.3% | 20.7% |
| iTunes 7.4.2 MP3 (MB/s) | 6.76 | 4.90 | 5.58 | 21.1% | 37.8% |
| Cinebench R10 | 3870 | 3189 | 3556 | 8.8% | 21.4% |
| SYSmark 2007 Overall |
87.25 | 75.25 | 80.25 | 8.7% | 15.9% |
| SYSmark 2007 E-Learning |
91 | 77 | 82 | 11.0% | 18.2% |
| SYSmark 2007 Video Creation |
79 | 71 | 75 | 5.3% | 11.3% |
| SYSmark 2007 Productivity |
79 | 69 | 71 | 11.3% | 14.5% |
| SYSmark 2007 3D |
100 | 84 | 93 | 7.5% | 19.0% |
| MobileMark 2007 Productivity Performance |
183 | 125 | 140 | 30.7% | 46.4% |
| MobileMark 2007 Productivity Battery |
155 | 156 | 156 | -0.6% | -0.6% |
| MobileMark 2007 DVD Battery |
124 | 127 | 131 | -5.3% | -2.4% |
| Average Performance Difference | 14.8% | 25.8% | |||
Performance wise, things are unfortunately not very close for AMD. The T7300 is an average of 26% faster than the TL-60 and 15% faster than the TL-66. Battery life does seem to favor the AMD platform a very small amount, but considering the different display size plus the fact that the 6515b battery has 17% more capacity, and we would tend to say Intel wins here as well. Power requirements at load definitely continue to favor Intel, as we'll see later.
We expected Intel to win the performance comparison, but the margin of victory was a bit larger than we anticipated. Realistically, AMD is going to have to compete on price in order to attract buyers, but in order to get the price down where it really needs to be (about 15% lower with the TL-66 and 25% lower with the TL-60 if we go by performance differences) they would almost need to sell the processor at a loss. It's not that the AMD Turion X2 processors are "too slow" but rather that you should be able to get faster performance from Intel for roughly the same price. If you can find a good deal on an AMD laptop, we feel that the HP 6515b is still more than fast enough for typical use, but if what you depend on is processor performance Intel wins this round quite easily.
The other option of course is to come out with a new product in the mobile space, and AMD will almost certainly do that with the Barcelona architecture at some point. How soon that will occur and whether it will be enough to make them competitive on the mobile landscape remains to be seen.
Of course, the above statements are focused primarily on the CPU, and depending on what sort of application you're running that might not be as important as other features. In most areas, modern laptops are pretty much equivalent. They all come with wireless networking (many with draft 802.11n now), DVD playback and recording, and the ability to run Windows Vista with the Aero Glass user interface. The vast majority of laptops also come with integrated graphics, however, and that's one area where AMD might be able to come out ahead of Intel. Let's find out....
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zsdersw - Monday, October 8, 2007 - link
I'm not going to call you anything, nor am I interested in doing so. I just find it curious that the only thing you think is important just happens to be the one bright spot for AMD in the article. That's all. Read into it what you want.yyrkoon - Tuesday, October 9, 2007 - link
It would be important, because unlike all the Core2 vs AMD Fanfare, it has not been covered 5 million times already.
zsdersw - Thursday, October 11, 2007 - link
The number of times something is covered or reported has no relevance to how important it is or is not. Just because you don't want to hear the same thing "5 million times" doesn't make something else you want to hear more important.JumpingJack - Thursday, October 11, 2007 - link
You are losing this argument.JumpingJack - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
That tends to be the ticket, and, oh yeah, don't forget -- performance doesn't really matter, it is how it feels and the user experience.... :) It cracks me up.JarredWalton - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
I'm not sure what the complaint is - that I actually talked about all aspects of the platform (well, not *all*, but most), or that I wrote an article that shows that AMD's CPUs on notebooks are still slow, but their IGP tends to be better. Quite a few people have complained to Gary/Anand that we haven't looked at Intel IGP performance with X3100 (G965), so this article addresses that to a large extent. The result is a LOT better now than it was three months back, incidentally - when I first looked at an X3100 laptop, it couldn't run the vast majority of games (at least under Vista).For what it's worth, X3100 on XP may diminish AMD's "bright spot" even further. But of course, any discrete mobile GPU is still an order of magnitude faster. Results so far with X3100 XP drivers have it besting AMD's X1250 in most games. It even manages to run Bioshock (which requires SM3.0) - sure, it's only moderately playable at 800x600 minimum detail settings, but it runs. Now if Intel can just get the Vista drivers up to that level.... We're also waiting for some IGP updates, as X1250 isn't really all that new anymore.
yyrkoon - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
That was not a complaint Jarred, that was a suggestion, and one that was not meant as a personal attack on you. I know I am not the only one getting bored of reading the same old things time, and time again.Now, as far as the how-to suggestion, you guys are of coure going to do whatever you think you need to do. However, I find it kind of strange, that anandtech would give all kinds of details as to how you did things, without actually saying anything that leaves your readers feeling like they have learned something. I can honestly say that I haave never learned a thing here, other than when something new came out, and how it performed, etc. For instance, if I only read your site for various things, such as overclocking, I would not have the first idea of how to go about doing so myself. To me that is sort of like saying; 'look what we can do that you cannot'. Now, my main point with this example would be that not everyone out there feels comfortable reading through forum posts on various web sites for insight on how to do these certain things, and would rather look to you, the anandtech technical writters for guidance on these matters. Is that really too much for your readers, and in this case me, to ask of you ? Give us DETAILS !
There are plenty of things I like about your web articles, but as far as actually learning anything technical . . . this has not happend for me here in quite some time, if ever.
And once again please fix your comment section timeout error . . . gets really annoying.
JarredWalton - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
I should also point out, if you weren't aware, that most of us focus on specific areas. Right now, I'm primarily looking at laptops and displays, with an occasional buyer's guide or system review. SAS might interest some of you, but that's not even remotely interesting to me and hence it's not in my area of expertise. SATA port multipliers also don't concern me, as I rarely use more than two HDDs in a system. Personally, I think a look at how the mobile platforms from AMD and Intel compare to each other is going to be far more interesting to a larger audience than a look at something like SAN, SAS, or what have you - not that someone from AT might not cover the other areas, but I can pretty much guarantee it won't be me.Overclocking is something we've also covered in the past, and pretty much every motherboard article provides a reasonable amount of information on the subject. given that OC'ing is pretty BIOS/platform specific, it belongs there more than in a separate article. I think there will be some additional information on the topic in some upcoming reviews, but I don't know that anyone is planning on a separate "How To" article. (We haven't done many of those.)
--Jarred
yyrkoon - Sunday, October 7, 2007 - link
Also, I think it would be good, if while covering different products, that it would be good if anandtech would list the pro's and con's of each aspect of a subject. If anyone is like myself, 'we' do not bothing reading most of he article, because it is either boring, obvious, or is just otherwise not nessisary to read. This last aspect has nothing really to do with anandtechs ability to write an exiciting article(except perhaps that I personally find some to be long, and drawn out), and has more to do with the different aspects of the subjects mentioned.ltcommanderdata - Saturday, October 6, 2007 - link
Well, I guess as you point out the Vista drivers for the GMA X3100 are still immature. I'm not even sure the 15.6/15.6.1 Vista drivers even enable hardware DX9.0c support like the XP drivers does since the Vista release notes have never mentioned it being added. Anyways, I'm definitely looking forward to those XP results with the GMA X3100. I hope you will use the 14.31.1 drivers since it fixed the hardware/software acceleration toggle problem with the 14.31 drivers.