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Guide to the latest desktop processors

Clash of the titans: 2009 and beyond

Intel's new Core i7 processor family currently sits on the top pedestal as the fastest in the market. Not to be outdone however, Advanced Micro Devices has also announced its first 45-nanometer processors, which will hit the market in the first quarter of 2009.

Click for larger image. (Credit: Chip Architect)

The Coming of Shanghai
Following current industry trends, AMD is now moving its chips to 45-nanometer process technology from the older 65-nanometer process. The next family of AMD processors is codenamed "Shanghai" and, according to official statements, is not based on a new architecture but essentially a refresh of AMD's Barcelona Opteron chip. AMD claims Shanghai is 35 percent faster than Barcelona without using more energy.

While the new chipset is initially aimed at servers with multiple sockets, AMD plans to bring Shanghai's 45nm processor technology to the desktop PC market in the first quarter of 2009 using the Phenom II branding. The new range will combine 45nm AMD Phenom II X4 quad-core processors with AMD 700 Series chipsets and ATI Radeon HD 4000 series graphics.

Details of the Phenom II desktop processors have already been leaked on the Internet, of which at least two are due to be launched in January 2009. These will include the quad-core Phenom II X4 920 and Phenom II X4 940, rated at 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz, respectively.

Going head-to-head: Nehalem vs. Shanghai
Interestingly, industry watchers are expecting some confusion among consumers, since both Intel and AMD's top-end processors will share the "920" and "940" model numbers (e.g. Core i7-940 for Intel and Phenom II X4 940 for AMD).

To shed some light on the relative processing power of the different chipsets, CPU enthusiasts were quick to put them to the test straightaway by using the Core i7-920 (2.66GHz) desktop processor and 45nm "Shanghai" Opteron 2.7GHz processor (meant for server systems). Testers from AnandTech used the same test, the LINPACK benchmarks, which has become the industry standard benchmark for High Performance Computing (HPC) and measures a system's floating point computing power.

Generally, the Core i7 posted better overall scores. What's interesting though is that while Intel's Hyperthreading technology gave the Core i7 a big boost when it came to multi-threaded applications, it slowed the LINPACK test inversely by 10 percent.

It should be noted again that both processors are optimized for different computing environments and workloads, and you should wait for AMD to release its desktop equivalents before making direct comparisons.

Processor milestones: Then to now »