AMD: Fighting the unbeatable foe

[Idontcare]

Intel,AMD battle it out in 45-nm CPUs
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbook...08/index.php?startid=8

AMD: Fighting the unbeatable foe
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbook...8/index.php?startid=22

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: Idontcare
AMD: Fighting the unbeatable foe
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbook...8/index.php?startid=22

Sad, but true. I doubt Intel will ever again permit what happened during the Netburst years. AMD won't retake the performance crown in CPUs, imo. They best they can hope for is a solid platform with components that are economical and "powerful enough".

This message typed on my main PC, running an AMD X2 4100+ oc'd to 3 Ghz.

 

[frostedflakes]

If they can focus on solid, budget-oriented platforms, they'll keep getting my business. I purchased my X2 a few years back because I didn't need the extra performance C2D offered and the AMD platform was a good deal cheaper. Even now they have some good things going for them. The ATi cards are doing well, and 780G is great for budget HTPCs.

 

[eternalone]

I dont believe all this gloom and doom. This too shall pass.

 

[JPB]

I believe some of it. Intel may be just too far ahead by now.

But I will reserve and hold all my judgments until I see what Deneb actually does. And if it does overclock to 4.0.

Interesting times ahead for sure.

 

[Nightsilencer]

AMD can't can't perish. Even though I now own an Intel CPU, the reason I bought it so cheap is because AMD is on Intel's ankles.

If one of these companies died, that would be the end of the mainstream market.

But I think AMD will recover and eventually take the lead... it's a cycle, now Intel's ahead, next it will be AMD and so on, and so on...

 

[taltamir]

the interesting thing is that intel is an american company.. AMD is also an american company but it is rapidly being bought out by saudi arabia. And china is getting there with their own x86 CPU, the dragon3 chip. (the first two dragons were non x86).
AMD cannot die because other countries realize the absurdity of letting the USA own their tech market, heck I would expect more countries to make their own CPUs ASAP.

 

[Martimus]

One thing they seem to have realized again, is that they are one of only two x86 makers (Via would be three, but they have almost no market share), so they should be able to do something better than Intel. Whether that be the best server chip, or the best budget solution, or the best performing solution, or the least power-hungry solution, or the best integrated platform. They should be able to make a profit if they streamline what they are doing and focus on one or two of these things. It seems that server has been the push for them, along with the integrated platform. We will see if they can truly focus on a few parts of the business to start making a profit, and then expand from there. That is my take on it, at least. Intel can't be the best at everything, unless AMD also tries to be a jack of all trades and a master at none.

EDIT: I just got my 1,000th post, I really must have no life

Also, I am pretty sure that ATIC is out of the United Arab Emirates, not Saudi Arabia.

 

[AdamK47]

If you looked at AnandTech 2+ years ago you would see how AMD centric this site and the forums were. Times have changed and those AMD fanboys seemed to have dropped off the forums. There were times on here if you had an Intel CPU you would be deemed a heathen.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: taltamir
the interesting thing is that intel is an american company.. AMD is also an american company but it is rapidly being bought out by saudi arabia. And china is getting there with their own x86 CPU, the dragon3 chip. (the first two dragons were non x86).
AMD cannot die because other countries realize the absurdity of letting the USA own their tech market, heck I would expect more countries to make their own CPUs ASAP.

There was an article on /. about the dragon3 chip, lots of informed responses from people who have looked all into it, apparently it's a huge joke plagued with problems.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux

Originally posted by: taltamir
the interesting thing is that intel is an american company.. AMD is also an american company but it is rapidly being bought out by saudi arabia. And china is getting there with their own x86 CPU, the dragon3 chip. (the first two dragons were non x86).
AMD cannot die because other countries realize the absurdity of letting the USA own their tech market, heck I would expect more countries to make their own CPUs ASAP.

There was an article on /. about the dragon3 chip, lots of informed responses from people who have looked all into it, apparently it's a huge joke plagued with problems.

The national security angle is always over-rated by the public domain. Dragon is not a national security item for China, its a PR piece.

Were China to have their own MPU for national security affairs then to be blunt we humble folks in the public domain quite simply will never hear of it. (as damaging as that may be to our desire to want to believe we know everything about everything)

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: Nightsilencer
AMD can't can't perish. Even though I now own an Intel CPU, the reason I bought it so cheap is because AMD is on Intel's ankles.

If one of these companies died, that would be the end of the mainstream market.

But I think AMD will recover and eventually take the lead... it's a cycle, now Intel's ahead, next it will be AMD and so on, and so on...

Unfortunately, the CPU industry has not demonstrated that it runs in cycles [insert CPU techie joke here]

Intel pretty much dominated - with a few exceptions - the CPU "horsepower" wars up until AMD's K8. At that point, Intel's Netburst was basically marketing-driven to provide the highest mhz possible, because that was apparently what "typical" consumers noticed most when comparing CPUs. The allowed AMD's superior K8 architecture to take a leadership position in several categories, including games. However, even at the height of K8's "performance leadership", AMD never dominated Intel the way C2D has dominated K8/K10. Because of the high clockspeeds, Pentium 4 did just as well in many non-gaming applications as AMD, and better in some media-centric applications. AMD still had to depend on a pricing advantage to compete with Intel.

As frostedflakes pointed out, as long as AMD can provide "solid, budget-oriented platforms", they should still do OK, if AMD can reach profitability.

Originally posted by: frostedflakes ...and 780G is great for budget HTPCs.

780G has, unfortunately, failed in the HTPC market because of the issues of delivering multichannel audio over HDMI. IMO.

 

[Nemesis 1]

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20081024-05712.html

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20081024-05710.html


http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20081024-05683.html


http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20081024-05684.html


http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20081013-05589.html

http://www.spec.org/cpu2006/re...06-20081013-05593.html

 

[pm]

An interesting article, IDC. Thanks for the link. There's not a lot of "meat" to it and it seems a bit skewed, but it's an interesting perspective.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: AdamK47
If you looked at AnandTech 2+ years ago you would see how AMD centric this site and the forums were. Times have changed and those AMD fanboys seemed to have dropped off the forums. There were times on here if you had an Intel CPU you would be deemed a heathen.

No they are still here. They moved to "Video Cards and Graphics" though.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: pm
An interesting article, IDC. Thanks for the link. There's not a lot of "meat" to it and it seems a bit skewed, but it's an interesting perspective.

Skewed is putting it rather kindly.

I was rather astounded by the graph shown in the unbeatable foe article...the one showing Intel's revenue growth versus AMD over the past decade or so.

The resources available to Intel's executive management are quite astounding relative to those available to AMD's management.

But so too are the responsibilities to their shareholders, great wealth brings expectation of great stewardship, and great performance brings expectations of even better in the future.

The underdog has the built-in excuse for continued lackluster performance...they were the underdog after all so failure was an option/expectation. Not so when you aren't the underdog, you have no excuse and the glass is always half-empty for your shareholders.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: AdamK47
AMD fanboys seemed to have dropped off the forums

No, they just found something else to be a fanboy of, such as another brand CPU, whatever brand video card is in their system, the brand of deodorant they use, etc.

*SIGH*

Some people just have to be a fanboy of something or else they won't have fulfillment in their lives.

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: AdamK47
AMD fanboys seemed to have dropped off the forums

No, they just found something else to be a fanboy of, such as another brand CPU, whatever brand video card is in their system, the brand of deodorant they use, etc.

*SIGH*

Some people just have to be a fanboy of something or else they won't have fulfillment in their lives.

I never thought they were fanboys....back then AMD did have the best processor.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: AdamK47
AMD fanboys seemed to have dropped off the forums

No, they just found something else to be a fanboy of, such as another brand CPU, whatever brand video card is in their system, the brand of deodorant they use, etc.

*SIGH*

Some people just have to be a fanboy of something or else they won't have fulfillment in their lives.

Hence the man-made construct of religion and supernatural deities, complete with the willingness to kill in the name of, or die in the name of, said theist values.

To understand the root-cause of fanboism requires understanding the root-cause of ten thousand years of cults IMO. They are both symptoms of the same disease.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: AdamK47
AMD fanboys seemed to have dropped off the forums

No, they just found something else to be a fanboy of, such as another brand CPU, whatever brand video card is in their system, the brand of deodorant they use, etc.

*SIGH*

Some people just have to be a fanboy of something or else they won't have fulfillment in their lives.

Hence the man-made construct of religion and supernatural deities, complete with the willingness to kill in the name of, or die in the name of, said theist values.

To understand the root-cause of fanboism requires understanding the root-cause of ten thousand years of cults IMO. They are both symptoms of the same disease.

Heh, that's an invitation to go WAAAY off topic, isn't it?

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Flipped Gazelle
Heh, that's an invitation to go WAAAY off topic, isn't it?

Yep. Although casting business entities as "unbeatable foe", "david vs goliath", and "Empire strikes back" are common so suggesting a commonality to fanboism, psychology of acceptance of religion, and fictitious battles between corporations kinda fits in with our entire genre and this thread

 

[AdamK47]

Anyone remember the Conroe performance preview posted on this site two years ago? Look at the comments section.

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: AdamK47
Anyone remember the Conroe performance preview posted on this site two years ago? Look at the comments section.

I like this comment:
"I don't know why anyone is finding this surprising. Haven't you all seen OCed Pentium M benchmarks? In many tasks a Pentium M is 10-20% faster than a comparably clocked A64. So now that we basicly have an optimized, die shunk Pentium M on the desktop that runs at comparable clock speeds to an A64, why is anyone surprised that performance is ~20% better on average? "

This is so true...I ALMOST bought a whole system around a Pentium M but decided it wasn't worth the extra cost over an Athlon64 at the time.

 

[imported_msatchmo]

I used to be an AMD fanboi starting with my AMD 2500 XP that overclocked like a dream even in my little shuttle box.

My next computer was a AMD 64 3800x2 which is what I still use today.

I went out to build a new PC because the old one is becoming slow in games and guess what I bought?

an Intel e8400 C2D E0 Stepping from microcenter for $149.99 3ghz , 6meg l2cache and it will OC to 4ghz on air...

you just can't beat that price/performance.

p.s. on 10/10/2005 I bought the manchester AMD 64 3800x2 for $227.74 and that was a good deal at the time...

just goes to show you how times have changed.

2gb of crucial ballistix DDR 1 memory was $300! i just bought 4 gig of corsair DDR2 for $20 the other day!

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: AdamK47
Anyone remember the Conroe performance preview posted on this site two years ago? Look at the comments section.

It's golden, like reading AMDzone forums all over again:

RE: Amazing. by Doormat, 987 days ago
K8L could ship this year. It wouldnt surprise me to see AMD push the K8L out to all segments intead of just the server segment if they are in fact that far behind Intel's Conroe on the desktop.