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GeForce versus Radeon, Athlon versus Pentium.... Different chip architectures, but in the end, performance seems to wrap around the software. If the code is optimized for the instructions available in the chipset, the code executes faster. Intel looks like they're real fast if popular applications rally behind Intel instruction sets. The same can be said of AMD, if popular applications support the AMD instruction sets.
What's faster, GeForce or Radeon? Again, it depends on how the software makes use of the available instructions. This is why the drivers are so critical to performance.
Before you bombard me with flames regarding benchmark scores, please note that I am well aware of the benchmarks on Tom's many reviews. I understand that GeForce tends to beat Radeon in the benchmarks, and that Athlon tends to beat Pentium. I am simply stating that I believe the reasons for the better performance are primarily that the instruction sets available in Athlon are written for popular applications. I believe the instruction sets used by GeForce chips and nVidia drivers are better adapted to popular applications, thus producing faster task completion.
The future of chips may very well depend upon manufacturer's ability to adapt chip architecture to take advantage of popular compiliing methods, but performance will also hinge of the compiler's willingness and ability to take advantage of enhanced instructions. Who knows, perhaps soon we will have a whole new instruction set, and abandon the now-ancient x86 set entirely.
<A HREF="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=PS+17:7-9" target="_new"> PS 17 </A>
What's faster, GeForce or Radeon? Again, it depends on how the software makes use of the available instructions. This is why the drivers are so critical to performance.
Before you bombard me with flames regarding benchmark scores, please note that I am well aware of the benchmarks on Tom's many reviews. I understand that GeForce tends to beat Radeon in the benchmarks, and that Athlon tends to beat Pentium. I am simply stating that I believe the reasons for the better performance are primarily that the instruction sets available in Athlon are written for popular applications. I believe the instruction sets used by GeForce chips and nVidia drivers are better adapted to popular applications, thus producing faster task completion.
The future of chips may very well depend upon manufacturer's ability to adapt chip architecture to take advantage of popular compiliing methods, but performance will also hinge of the compiler's willingness and ability to take advantage of enhanced instructions. Who knows, perhaps soon we will have a whole new instruction set, and abandon the now-ancient x86 set entirely.
<A HREF="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=PS+17:7-9" target="_new"> PS 17 </A>