AMD scores huge 7-round TKO over Intel in dual-core benchmarks

The news keeps getting worse for Intel when it comes to arch nemesis AMD.  The last time I checked in on AMD's rising star, the company's Turion mobile processor was holding its own against Intel's Pentium M.  In the last month alone:

• AMD served more than 15 companies with subpoenas as of part of its antitrust lawsuit against Intel (as Microsoft just recently proved, all it takes is one employee to make have made a dumb mistake to spark serious legal concerns).  Intel has to be worried that there's a bent needle or two in that subpoena haystack.   To make matters worse, VoodooPC founder Rahul Sood came forward to News.com to say that Intel was using strong-arm tactics to influence the Canadian PC manufacturer's AMD vs. Intel balance of offerings.
  
• AMD reported big financial results.  According to News.com's Michael Kanellos, "Advanced Micro Devices saw sales jump 23 percent and net income rise by 72 percent in the third quarter, thanks to increasing demand for PCs combined with greater acceptance for its products." In addition, AMD surpassed Intel in sales in the US retail channel and announced that it expects 2006 to be a banner year.
  
• News surfaced that AMD's newest fab should go a long way towards wiping out shipping delays that have dogged the company while allowing it to participate in segments that the company's current manufacturing capacity simply couldn't service.
• Dell  became a channel for AMD's chips.  Although the chips are not yet included in any of the Austin-based PC-maker's systems, the company claimed it that it started to sell AMD's chips because customers were demanding it.  Well, if customers are demanding it, and the AMD-Dell relationship now officially involves cash flow, the next logical step if that cash flow proves to be signficant (and considering the aforementioned retail sales data) is pretty obvious.

But if that news isn't bad enough for Intel (and good for AMD), now comes this: AMD's 7-round clean sweep technical knockout in ZDNet's comparative review that benchmarked the two companies' dual-core offerings against each other.  When I saw how the review was going to be a 7-round test of sorts, I completely expected AMD to win a round or two.  As I paged through the review and AMD won one round after another after another, I thought for sure that Intel would eventually get on the scoreboard.  But it never did.  In this David and Goliath matchup, the gloves have clearly come off.  And David is winning.