Dual Core Stress Test: AMD vs. Intel

Logbook: The Stress Test Ends After 18 Days

Tuesday, June 21: THG's most extensive endurance test came to an end today. It was a stress test in all respects - not only for the hardware, but also the THG team itself. Our engineers were put to the test, especially during the weekend when the processes had to be monitored and controlled.

Soon we will bring you a brief but detailed discussion of the entire 18 days of the stress test. This will include our final conclusions about overall performance, stability, power consumption, costs and use. This summary should help users from both the business and enthusiast segments make better purchasing decisions.

Here's a short summary for today: we shut down both systems and ended the stress test today at 9 A.M. PST. Well, we shut down the Intel system, but the AMD system simply refused to be shut down so we had to resort to the main switch on the power supply. It should be noted that when we ran the AMD system for only a short time (approximately one hour) the "Software Power off" feature worked just fine. It was only after a longer operating time that this function failed to work.

Now that we have all the data from the individual tests in the last few days, what can we say about performance? AMD is in the lead for all four applications.

• Data compression with WinRAR: AMD system has 29.5% better performance;
• MP3 encoding of the CD: AMD system has 4.7% better performance;
• DivX encoding of the DVD: AMD system has 28.2% better performance;
• 3D game Farcry: AMD system has 21.4% better performance.