AM2: AMD Reinvents Itself

Memory Speed: AMD Vs. Intel

In comparing the practical memory bandwidth value against Intel's Northbridge solution, AMD appears to have made a blunder. Intel's memory interface is clocked at a constant 200/266 MHz and scores, no matter what the CPU speed, almost always the same values of 6.3 GB/sec (200 MHz) and 8.4 GB/sec (266 MHz).

The memory interface in AMD's CPUs, meanwhile, is clocked much higher in order to produce this performance.

The bottom line is that the introduction of DDR2 erases the advantage of the faster memory interface in the CPU.