More "unfairness" in AMD/Intel processor face-off

OUR PUBLICATION of some benchmarks AMD produced to show how megahurtz don't matter and it's performance that really counts were unfair, a man at Van's Hardware pointed out, since the Nvidia Nforce chipset the AMD chips were running on is generally quicker than the 845G chipset Intel's chips were on.

Barely an level playing field, Nils Dahl suggested, over here, for comparing chip performance.

Anyhow, to further cloud the issue, add entrails to the stew and toss a one-legged cat amongst the blind and wingless Trafalgar Square pigeons, it seems that as far a price comparison may be concerned, AMD's offerings are plenty 'nuff cheaper than the comparable offerings from Chipzilla.

Here's our findings:

Motherboard and RAM for AMD System
MSI K7N420-Pro* £104.46
256MB of DDR 266** £48.00
Sub Total £152.46

Add a Duron 1.3GHz at £48.00 and you get a

Total cost of £200.46

Add an Athlon XP 1600+ at £54.00 and you get a

Total cost - £206.46

Seeking out an Intel system, we found:

Motherboard and RAM for Intel System
Intel D845GBVL* £107.45
256MB of DDR 266** £45.00

Sub Total £152.45

Add in a 1.7GHz Celeron at £70.00 and you get a

Total cost of £222.45

Add in a Pentium 4 1.7GHz at £120 and you get a

Total cost of £272.45

Hmmm.

Prices are in GBP and taken from computerprices.co.uk (motherboards), Dabs.com (processors) and Scan (memory).

Other components excluded on the basis that they are the same for each system (e.g. heatsinks, hard drive, etc.)

*It should be noted that we were able to find a heavily-discounted MSI board for £81.00 but as we could not find a similarly-discounted Intel board we used computerprices.co.uk lowest quote -- the same source as the price on the Intel.

**RAM in the AMD system is assumed to be 2 x 128MB for better performance; this costs more than a single 256 for the Intel system. µ

See also:
AMD Intel "benchmark comparison unfair"
AMD's basis for its P4 Celeron attack
AMD makes all out attack on Intel P4 Celeron