Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[alan81]

Intel did have Icomp
I think that was quite a while ago. They had a little graph which compared the performance of various Intel processors using the "icomp" index. Interesting that they dropped this around the time of the P4 introduction!

Also, as an interesting anecdote, I was looking at centrino notebooks at retail outlets recently. The inventory has gone up quite a bit. It does look like Centrino is finally hitting retail with volume and variety. All the P-M retail notebooks are also Centrino, which is good for Intel.

At bestbuy the salesman was telling me that the 1.5Ghz was the speed when on batteries, but when you plug it in the speed goes way up and is competitive with the P4. He said it was really wierd that Intel specified the battery speed rather than the "plugged in speed. He went on to say the Intel rep was just there and explained it all to them. I just smiled and nodded.
At circuit city, they had the right story. "due to the processor design and larger internal memory the 1.5Ghz centrino performs about the same as a 2.4Ghz P4, but uses a lot less power."
It will be very interesting to see how it all shakes out.
--Alan