Are AMD processors worth considering for mid to high end?

[ShintaiDK]

Wasn't it true, that the last few quarters, Intel's desktop CPU volume was down, but ASP's were up?

So was NVidia. Take a wild guess on why. More highend parts sold.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Wasn't it true, that the last few quarters, Intel's desktop CPU volume was down, but ASP's were up?

There is robust demand for higher end chips and not-so-great demand for lower-end stuff so as the high end grows and the low-end shrinks, ASPs naturally go up.

Remember that the high end of the market is healthy because people who value performance will always pay for it and upgrade fairly often. It's the "average Joe" who doesn't care about performance that Intel and the rest of the PC industry are having a hard time convincing to upgrade.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Its also quite clear on Steam. GTX970 being the best selling NVidia GPU. People in that segment is willing to spend more.

 

[MrTeal]

I'm not in corp. IT, but I was under the impression that this was already the case, that PCs were replaced when the warranty or lease was up, because of downtime concerns due to potential reliability issues.

But then, if they blow their 20% improvement in one go, what are they going to do for their NEXT chip?
You had better believe that they're 'pacing' their improvements, in steps.

Continue to innovate? Your point presupposed that they can't maintain larger improvements YoY, and so they're holding it back to dole out slowly. That is effectively admitting that large improvements aren't sustainable and that the true rate of performance increase is slower.

I would buy that Intel could be holding back improvements that would increase performance at the expense of perf/watt, or negatively impact their margins, but the argument that Intel is holding back because AMD isn't competitive is silly. They just aren't competing against AMD in any meaningful sense right now.

 

[BurnItDwn]

I Love AMD and have been buying mostly their CPUs since the K6 era. But, they are really not offering anything in the mid or high performance segment of the market. They offer great price/performance ratio, but, they offer too low of single core/single thread performance to compete in mid/high end range.

I think over the last 20 years, I have purchase about 50 AMD CPUs for my own PCs, or for family or friend builds. K6, K6-2, Athlon, duron, Athlon Socket, fancy low power mobile Barton Athlons, Athlon 64 Athlon 64x2, Phenom, Phenom 2 ...

During that same 20 year process, I have had 5 "new" Intel CPUs. (Celeron 300a, celermine 533@896, celeron 1.8 cheap server, i5 2400, i5 4690k )
I did buy a $5 used CPU , a 2.4ghz p4

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

Your understanding of the semiconductor business really leaves much to be desired, MiddleOfTheRoad.

LOL, I actually worked in the semiconductor business for about 8 years (ATi, then Apple). So I'm pretty confident you have no idea what you're talking about. I may have been out for about 10 years now, but not a lot has changed.

 

[Arachnotronic]

LOL, I actually worked in the semiconductor business for about 8 years (ATi, then Apple). So I'm pretty confident that you are clueless. I may have been out for about 10 years now, but I'm pretty sure I know more than you.

What did you do in the industry, exactly?

By the way, here's what's wrong with your argument. It makes no sense for Intel to intentionally dribble out performance improvements as long as there are other competitors in the market because by not putting its best foot forward, it leaves opportunity to be disrupted by the competition.

Remember, these CPU cores that you think Intel is being so lazy about are the heart of around $50 billion in annual revenue. If you think that Intel is going to intentionally leave itself open to disruption with so much money on the line then I really don't know what to tell you.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

What did you do in the industry, exactly?

Reference model engineer at ATi Orlando for the majority of the time.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Reference model engineer at ATi Orlando for the majority of the time.

That's pretty cool

ATI was an awesome company that made some damn fine products. It is a true shame that AMD screwed it up

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

So, slightly more on topic here:

Yes, AMD is still relevant at the mid-range. I work for a small independent computer build/repair place in Wisconsin. Most of what we put together is for ordinary use, i.e., not gamers (not more than TF2 anyway...).

At the price point Intel wants for i3-41xx chips, I've found that an A8-7600 or A10-7800 is a much better value overall. For the i3-43xx series, it's even worse, as $150 gets you an FX-8320E, which for me is AMD's sweet spot on the FX line.

Yes, ST performance is crap. But how much ST does grandma need to check her email and watch youtube? How much ST grunt does Facebook and MS Word take when the kiddies are doing (or not doing) their homework?

On the other hand, grandma has a bunch of antivirus and cleaning programs running, very likely forgets to close application windows when done with them, and so forth. For the same or slightly lower price, AMD beats Intel's lower-mid-range in everything except ST and power consumption; this includes total system cost as even Asus and Gigabytes's 760G motherboards will run Vishera chips out of the box.

Most people don't use their machines as benchmark rigs. They want something subjectively snappy. For this, I find A8/A10 + SSD is a better value than a similar system with an i3.

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

What did you do in the industry, exactly?

By the way, here's what's wrong with your argument. It makes no sense for Intel to intentionally dribble out performance improvements as long as there are other competitors in the market because by not putting its best foot forward, it leaves opportunity to be disrupted by the competition.

Clearly not a student of the market dynamics of monopoly power. I guess you never noticed what happened when the Berlin Wall fell down and the world suddenly compared Soviet products (cars / electronics) with those of modern capitalist markets. One of the basics of a competitive market is that it drives innovation -- but without that competition, the product cycles stagnate.

So there is nothing wrong with my argument -- because it is not my argument. But there are thousands of economists that disagree with you.

 

[Arachnotronic]

Clearly not a student of the market dynamics of monopoly power. I guess you never noticed what happened when the Berlin Wall fell down and the world suddenly compared Soviet products (cars / electronics) with those of modern capitalist markets. One of the basics of a competitive market is that it drives innovation -- but without that competition, the product cycles stagnate.

So there is nothing wrong with my argument -- because it is not my argument. But there are thousands of economists that disagree with you.

It is a competitive market though. Do you think Intel is actually counting on AMD not even *trying* to come back into the high performance CPU game?

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

That's pretty cool

ATI was an awesome company that made some damn fine products. It is a true shame that AMD screwed it up

Ain't that the truth. I miss the pre-AMD ATi. A lot of good engineers lost jobs because of a lack of good management.

 

[Arachnotronic]

I miss the pre-AMD ATi. A lot of good engineers lost jobs because of a lack of good management.

Yes. It sucks

 

[MiddleOfTheRoad]

It is a competitive market though. Do you think Intel is actually counting on AMD not even *trying* to come back into the high performance CPU game?

I would say that because Moore's law appears to have collapsed -- it is not as competitive as it was 10 years ago.

 

[Phynaz]

LOL, I actually worked in the semiconductor business for about 8 years (ATi, then Apple).

This explains a LOT.

 

[TheELF]

On the other hand, grandma has a bunch of antivirus and cleaning programs running, very likely forgets to close application windows when done with them, and so forth. For the same or slightly lower price, AMD beats Intel's lower-mid-range in everything except ST and power consumption; this includes total system cost as even Asus and Gigabytes's 760G motherboards will run Vishera chips out of the box.

It's not like we are still in 1999,even a modern celeron has enough grunt for your grandma's needs.

In fact you can stream video while record your screen while having your browser and other windows open and still play a demanding game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFPXTHm4Q1M
ON A CELERON.
And since your grandma won't play any demanding games she won't even have any need for a discrete GPU,so how do the A-8/A10 stack up now?
Yup waste of money for your average granny, just like the i3.

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

AMD isn't truly competing with Intel at the moment. Intel knows this and that's why improvements have intentionally slowed in some areas. Intel's strategy has been to improve on graphics and power efficiency because that's where the real competition is at (ARM). Until AMD brings some real competitive performance to the table Intel will continue their current strategy.

On the topic of buying an AMD FX CPU today, I would only do so if the applications I used really demanded the performance that FX brings for cheap (highly threaded integer workloads). I hear from the distributed compute guys that FX chips are pretty good for that task if you're on a budget.

 

[Ranulf]

It's not like we are still in 1999,even a modern celeron has enough grunt for your grandma's needs.

In fact you can stream video while record your screen while having your browser and other windows open and still play a demanding game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFPXTHm4Q1M
ON A CELERON.
And since your grandma won't play any demanding games she won't even have any need for a discrete GPU,so how do the A-8/A10 stack up now?
Yup waste of money for your average granny, just like the i3.

Bah, that depends on how long you want the system to be truly viable in the modern world of the web. Think of it as the i5 vs i7 debate for longevity these days just on the lower end.

The key point there is the dedicated gpu or better APU for not much more money. My 5 year old Dell laptop, i5@ 2.4 with Intel HD (first gen of HD line?) graphics can barely handle two streams (twitch really seems to kill it) at once with 1-2 browser windows open with 8gb of ram.

 

[TheELF]

Bah, that depends on how long you want the system to be truly viable in the modern world of the web.

Why?What have you heard? Is gmail gonna raise minimum requirements to fullUHQ 3d stereoscopic CGI or something?
There are enough people around who say there is still no reason to upgrade from 1st gen core.

Skylake IGPU has improved a lot.

Besides, cheap systems are disposable,even granny won't mind spending another ~100$ in 2-3 years for a new system or a (better) GPU.

 

[frozentundra123456]

So, slightly more on topic here:

Yes, AMD is still relevant at the mid-range. I work for a small independent computer build/repair place in Wisconsin. Most of what we put together is for ordinary use, i.e., not gamers (not more than TF2 anyway...).

At the price point Intel wants for i3-41xx chips, I've found that an A8-7600 or A10-7800 is a much better value overall. For the i3-43xx series, it's even worse, as $150 gets you an FX-8320E, which for me is AMD's sweet spot on the FX line.

Yes, ST performance is crap. But how much ST does grandma need to check her email and watch youtube? How much ST grunt does Facebook and MS Word take when the kiddies are doing (or not doing) their homework?

On the other hand, grandma has a bunch of antivirus and cleaning programs running, very likely forgets to close application windows when done with them, and so forth. For the same or slightly lower price, AMD beats Intel's lower-mid-range in everything except ST and power consumption; this includes total system cost as even Asus and Gigabytes's 760G motherboards will run Vishera chips out of the box.

Most people don't use their machines as benchmark rigs. They want something subjectively snappy. For this, I find A8/A10 + SSD is a better value than a similar system with an i3.

The i3 wins a lot (nearly all that are not related to igpu actually) of multithreaded benchmarks against the A8-7600, (and even A10-7800) and destroys it in single threaded. Not sure how that makes the APU feel "snappier". bench .

The A8-7600 is a pretty good value because of its price, but the A10 is considerably more expensive. I would not consider it a good value at all, unless you want to do some light gaming.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Bah, that depends on how long you want the system to be truly viable in the modern world of the web. Think of it as the i5 vs i7 debate for longevity these days just on the lower end.

True. escrow4 tested the budget Celeron (Pentium?) Core waters a little while ago. At first he was singing the praises of the budget solution, but then he must have run into some trouble, as he no longer recommends anything less than an i3. Which, in the realm of TRULY budget machines, is actually quite expensive. (Budget builds use $50 CPUs, not $140 CPUs.)

The key point there is the dedicated gpu or better APU for not much more money. My 5 year old Dell laptop, i5@ 2.4 with Intel HD (first gen of HD line?) graphics can barely handle two streams (twitch really seems to kill it) at once with 1-2 browser windows open with 8gb of ram.

Twitch really strains my friend's X4 640 machine too, with NV discrete GT610 GPU.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Yes, this makes my point: the really low end just doesn't cut it anymore. An A8 is about as low as I could stand giving anyone for a new build unless there is a really compelling budgetary reason.

 

[crashtech]

You have to wind an A10 up past 4.5GHz to meet or beat the slowest Skylake i3:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37637569&postcount=5

So it's only selling point is some light gaming, and it really isn't all that great for that. Most budget gaming rigs still get a dGPU if they want to convincingly exceed console IQ.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

I'm talking more about longevity than anything. Most people buying low-end systems also need them to last. Call it a trick of the light if you want (and I don't know how this works since I'm mostly an intel girl...) but subjectively those FM2 machines just feel zippier. I don't understand how or why. And since they outdo the Haswell iGPUs, if not the Skylake ones, they may last Grandma just that little bit longer.

It's a strange, sad paradox that the lower your budget the longer you want these things to live :/ We do a lot of Linux here (KDE Plasma has been a better Windows than Windows for years), and AMD's chips tend to perform better on Linux than Windows so maybe that's it...?