Thought I’d help out.

I like Intel; really I do. But they have dropped the ball so badly the last couple of years I really don’t have any computers using their stuff anymore. Why pay for a premium that isn’t really there? AMD had much better products.

Key word there ‘had’. The new Intel Core 2 Duo is a great product; and surprisingly Intel didn’t price it out of the ballpark. So its all clear sailing now; Intel will finally crush AMD and take over the world.

Not so fast. Intel’s biggest problem is they tend to rest on their laurels. They get ahead, and then start believing their own press releases. And here is why AMD is going to kick Intel around again in a couple of months. As good as the Core 2 design is; its duel and quad designs are hacks. They just glue two (or four) CPU together across the L2 cache. While this allows you put multiple CPUs together they aren’t independently processing. And independently processing is where you get your multiple CPU speed from.

Does Intel know this; yes. Do they care? I guess not; here are two quotes from Intel’s CEO

"This is a multichip package, but so what? I think you'd be misreading the market if you think people care about the packaging,"
- Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO

“Intel's first quad-core processor, the Core2 Extreme, will be shipped in November, targeted at gamers and content creators.”
- Paul Otellini

Let me be the first to just throw this out there: Gamers are the only people on the face of the planet who care about the packaging.

AMD’s quad processor with have 4 independent 4way SMP, and quite obviously kick the heck out of the Intel version in performance. Just stay cool.

Just playing games.

I was reading another Blog, when I realized not everybody knows about MAME. (M)ulti (A)rcade (M)achine (E)mulator. And the wonders of being able to play just about any arcade game ever invented. And these are the authentic games, not a conversion. Some very dedicated people create emulators for the CPU’s and the video systems of the classic arcade machines. Then they ‘get’ the game ROMs.

Sometime the company that owns the game will allow the ROM’s to be copied; sometime not so much. Its best not ask too many questions. My collection of games is in the 100’s and about 9Gigs of storage. It’s a wonderful way to preserve these classics; and it’s free.

http://www.mame.net/

Now go play PacMan!