When we compared AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 and the new Phenom 9000 quad core processor last month, we forced Windows to utilize only a single processing core, in an effort to understand the real performance differences between the AMD64 architecture and the Stars architecture of the Agena/Barcelona core. Depending on the particular benchmark, the results made clear that Phenom is indeed up to 20% faster than Athlon in a core to core comparison, thanks to its optimizations and the L3 cache. In addition to these performance gains, Phenom’s unified quad core design and smart cache architecture should provide more benefits under heavily threaded conditions. We haven’t looked at the performance difference using all processing cores, as you will find this information in our launch article “Phenom 9700, AMD’s 1st Quad Core CPU”.
(Full article ‘Phenom vs. Athlon Core Scaling Compared’)

Tom’s Hardware was one of the first publications to not only criticize ridiculously high heat dissipation, but also excessive power consumption where it’s totally unnecessary. AMD and Intel have been in the news for years because their products either weren’t efficient enough, or because of the advances they both made in reducing their power requirements. Measuring minimum (idle) and maximum power requirements of components, or of the overall system at the plug, is a good way to determine whether or not a device is thrifty. However, these measurements leave an important factor out of the equation: performance. The delay of new processor products Phenom X2 and X4 forced AMD to shift its focus from “look at how fast our products are” to “look at the value we provide”.
(Full article ‘The Truth About PC Power Consumption’)

Intel’s Core 2 Duo processor has prompted a positive response among users and international media since its introduction in July 2006. The Core 2 Duo outperforms AMD’s Athlon 64 X2 clock for clock in most benchmarks, and it even consumes less energy than AMD’s offerings. Intel is finally filing away its Pentium 4 past, which suffered from the painful decease of the NetBurst microarchitecture. The firm had to start from scratch, it did, and it came up with the best product. Although AMD has begun shipping 65 nm products, its answer to Core 2 Duo isn’t expected before the middle of the year. Until then, Core 2 Duo is it. The amazing part about Core 2’s success story is the impact that it has had since it was introduced: from one day to the next, many people switched from AMD to Intel.
(Full article ‘500 MHz FSB? Core 2 Duo Overtakes Core 2 Extreme’)