By Tony Smith for The Register. This story was
reproduced with permission.
The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) said today it had
received seven complaints after Intel began broadcasting its latest
TV ad for the Core 2 Duo, the one that invites you to "multiply
your possibilities", in October 2006. The essence of the grumbles:
Core 2 Duo chips are not the world's best processors. Some punters
reckoned AMD's chips are better, others that Intel chips are well
behind the processors found in super computers.
According to the ASA, Intel's defence against the complaints
centred on the fact it and AMD control 99.3 per cent of the
processor market, and it supplied the ASA with SPEC benchmark
numbers that show the bottom-of-the-line Core 2 Duo E6300
out-performing AMD's Athlon 64 FX-62, which it claimed was its main
competitor's highest-end processor at the time of the
complaint.
"The data showed the Intel processor had a higher score for both
types of benchmark, with a baseline SPEC integer score of 1939 for
the Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 and 1923 for the AMD Athlon FX62. It
also showed a baseline SPEC floating point result of 2048 for the
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 and 1945 for the AMD Athlon FX62," the ASA
wrote in its adjudication notice.
The company also maintained the Core 2 Duo consumes less power
than the AMD chip: a TDP of 65W to 120W. Intel told the ads
watchdog SPEC benchmarks and TDP were both standard measures of
processor performance, the ASA said today.
The chip giant also said the ads would be viewed by consumers
who would assess the claim in terms of products relevant to them,
and not servers, super computers or other more advanced
systems.
On the basis of which, the ASA decided not to uphold the
complaints, ruling that "the claim 'Intel Core 2 Duo, the world's
best processors' had been substantiated and was unlikely to
mislead".
More than seven months on from the complaint, AMD's FX-62 is no
longer the company's fastest consumer processor, now long replaced
by the FX-72 and FX-74. Do Intel's Core 2 Duo ads still claim
they're the world's best processors? Well, its website said as much
today when we checked, and its print and broadcast advertising may
still do too.
If it receives fresh complaints, the ASA will "reconsider" its
adjudication, the organisation told Register Hardware today.
© The Register
2007
