Attention: This review has some innacurate results, please read our most recent review for more accurate results.

According to our tests the answer to the big question, “who was the best dual-core CPU, Intel or AMD?” is “It depends on the kind of application you are running”.

Amazingly enough comparing apples to apples it seems that AMD has better CPUs for multimedia and  3D applications, while the new Core family achieved a better performance in office-style applications and gaming.

We say “amazingly enough” because several years ago, during K6 times, 3D performance was AMD’s Achilles’ Heel, as they didn’t have a good math co-processor (FPU). It is really interesting to see how AMD was able to improve their CPUs, especially if we keep in mind that Intel is the one pushing and leading multimedia-oriented enhancements such as MMX/SSE. It is really funny to see how AMD has beaten Intel on their own technology.

But on other kinds of application, Intel made AMD to eat dust. On office-style applications – programs like WinZip, antivirus, Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat and web browsing – the new Intel CPUs based on the new Core microarchitecture achieved, on average, at least double the performance compared to competing dual-core CPUs from AMD. We could clearly see this on Sysmark 2004, which runs real-world programs. PCMark05, in a lesser scale, confirmed this tendency.

Even though both AMD and Intel CPUs achieved a similar performance on 3DMark06, Core-based CPUs were faster on Quake 4, probably because of the greater amount of L2 memory cache available. We can only confirm if the advantage of Intel Core 2 CPUs on office-style applications and Quake 4 is exclusively due to the higher amount of L2 memory cache or not when Intel releases versions of Core 2 using smaller caches.

As we mentioned earlier, a good feature of Core 2 CPUs is that they keep using socket 775, so you won’t need to replace your motherboard if you have a newer motherboard compatible with the external bus – a.k.a. FSB – and voltage of the chosen Core 2 model if you want to upgrade your CPU.

So, which CPU to buy? In our review Core 2 CPUs were faster on office-style applications and gaming, confining AMD to a niche market such as multimedia and 3D rendering. However, this conclusion isn’t final, as the reviewed models had 4 MB L2 memory cache and Intel will launch Core 2 Duo models with 2 MB L2 memory cache. As for the high-end models – i.e. the exact models we reviewed – you can follow this advice and Core 2 is, in fact, the best CPU for the average user. However for entry-level models using less memory cache we still need to review them to see how they look like compared to AMD counterparts.

Attention: This review has some innacurate results, please read our most recent review for more accurate results.