Intel Corp (INTC)

[Windsock]

Strike 3 for AMD hypocrisy on benchmarking

Check out the charts in the link for a graphic that speaks louder than any words.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=463

AMD swung hard at Intel for what it deemed as ethics violations, but since then, it has pulled the same stunt it's been criticizing Intel for three times in a row. I called out AMD's hypocrisy on strike one; David Berlind called it out on strike two; and now AMD is doing the same thing by cherry-picking the benchmarks and omitting superior Intel scores. Intel's Nick Knuppffer was rather upset with these omissions today and called AMD's benchmark postings "rubbish."

AMD, in this latest round, showed three sets of benchmarks comparing three products. It shows the latest AMD Opteron 2222 SE, which was released only this month, going against an Intel 5160 from mid-2006 and against an Intel 5355 released November 2006. The problem is that AMD omits the scores on two of the benchmarks and shows only the Intel 5355 in its worst light with SPECompMbase2001, which is a relatively obscure and less often cited benchmark to begin with. AMD selectively omits Intel's 5355 numbers for the more common SPECint_rate2006 and SPECfp_rate2006 benchmarks and then claims victory on all three sets of benchmarks. Here is the chart reconstructed with the best available scores posted by AMD, but I've also included the omitted 5355 scores highlighted in yellow.