Re: I assume when you say "kick their butt" in benchmarks you are talking about a product that in performance terms is greatly in excess of its competition than the say 0 - 5% "noise" levels.........
I've said before that I consider 0-5% to be in the "noise".
Re: Oh and just to clarify what exactly will you be comparing say the top end Woodcrest and Clovertown to?
Let's see... in Q3 2006, I am expecting Woodcrest at 3.0GHz/1333 against a 90nm DC Opteron 2.8GHz, and an average benchmark performance gap of ~20% in Intel's favor.
In Q1 2007, I am expecting Clovertown at 2.93GHz/1067 (slower to compensate for the added FSB load, unless I am mistaken) against a 65nm QC Opteron 2.66GHz, and an average benchmark performance gap of ~15% in Intel's favor.
I think AMD has a chance to leap frog ahead later in 2007 with K8L, but soon after that, Intel will have 45nm parts. Unless Intel or AMD meet some some very bad execution in 2007-08, I see more of a traditional game of leap frog, as opposed to the past couple years, where AMD has enjoyed a sizable performance advantage. I do not expect them to get that again in the near to mid-term future. Of course, there's practically zero information about the end of the decade, so it's anyone's guess.
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