Was Anand duped by INTEL?

I warned that INTEL will try all sorts of dirty tricks, this is INTEL's character. From the book "Inside Intel" by Tim Jackson, INTEL even tampered documents to defraud the Court and the jury. From AMD's lawsuit, INTEL was accused of rigging benchmarks (remember BAPCo?) and tampering compilers. More recently, we have INTEL caught playing dirty with Skype. The list could go on.

Today, at IDF, the smart INTEL folks left two machines for people to play with, one equipped with an AMD CPU and one with a future INTEL Conroe CPU, both with a bunch of gaming and other benchmarks installed. Curious as our Anand, he hang around them with a lot of interest, an INTEL guy recognized him as the Anand, and granted him 60 minutes to play with the machines. Anand pushed through the crowd, hurriedly yet professionally ran a set of benchmarks, then quickly wrote: "Intel Regains the Performance Crown". He did all that in little less than 59 minutes and 59 seconds, amazing.

Readers of AnandTech were awed by INTEL's performance: 10-30% faster than 2.8GHZ AMD on gaming! Many vowed to hold off buying AMD. I bet INTEL folks are giggling.

But, wait a minute, the Anand! First, INTEL hasn't gained the crown yet, Conroe is still months away, AMD hasn't shown its cards yet. So Anand, be precise, a title of "Intel May Regain the Performanc Crown In Six Months" might be more proper, that is how professional journalists write, you should learn.

Then, pay attention, Anand, INTEL painstakingly arranged the AMD box for a purpose. There might be traps there. Looking at the BIOS screen, it says "Main Processor: AMD Processor Model Unknown", hmm, something fishy already from the beginning, it indicates that the BIOS didn't recognize the CPU at all.

So, let's look closer, "Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PC, Copyright (C) 1984-2003, Phoenix Technologies, LTD". Let's dig deeper.

After googling for a while, we found that AwardBIOS v6.00PC was used on old Athlon XPs.

For an Athlon 64, DFI has updated BIOS here dated 2005 which fixes a lot of problems and added support for FX60. I doubt DFI is shipping 2006 motherboards with 2003 BIOS. Anand, please call DFI and see if they shipped any 2006 motherboards with a 2003 BIOS, that's what professional journalists do: get the truth out and earn credibility.

If not, then INTEL was rigging the BIOS so the dual core AMD64 CPU would act like a unknown CPU without the super duper AMD64 features. Anand, you claimed that the CPU was an FX60 running at 2.8GHZ, but how did you know? Did you remove the heatsink and have a peek? What if INTEL put an Athlon 64 x2 3800+ there?

I never thought Anand could be so gullible, Rahul Sood, CTO of Voodoo PC, was surprised by Anand's apparent naiveness too.

PS: I sent this message to INTEL execs, AMD execs, Anand and media folks, plus a request for INTEL to let Anand take the Conroe machine home for a test. We will see if INTEL can meet that small challenge.

AMD should say something to clarify the situation too, such as the effect of using an old BIOS on a new chip.

PPS: After public outcry, INTEL changed the BIOS on the AMD box, and Anand did the same tests again. This indicates INTEL has complete control of the system and knows what they were doing, Anand was simply reduced to a pawn in an INTEL controlled environment to push the right buttons INTEL pre-arranged. Given the fishy stuff going on with F.E.A.R, and INTEL's Skype CPUID cheat, such INTEL controlled tests cannot be trusted.

Again, I challenge INTEL to lend the Conroe box to Anand for a full test. According to my estimate based on INTEL's PR, Woodcrest will be 10-20% slower than Opteron 280, there is simply no way that Conroe can be faster than the FX60.