Remember when computers always got faster and cheaper

[SickBeast]

There's also the dual core Atom which obliterates a P4.

 

[taltamir]

Originally posted by: firewolfsm
Atom is barely faster than processors from FOUR generations ago. It's ridiculous and will hold back software development a lot.

And tech forums should all help start a movement to encourage people to buy AMD over Intel. It could make a noticeable impact.

yes... but at 0.4 - 2 watts (depending on clockspeed) it can afford to be as slow as a processor that took 2 orders of magnitude more power.

 

[taltamir]

computers are still getting cheaper and faster across the board, they are just doing so slower because intel no longer has any real competition except their own previous products. so they only release better products when they saturated the market with their previous ones.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: taltamir
computers are still getting cheaper and faster across the board, they are just doing so slower because intel no longer has any real competition except their own previous products. so they only release better products when they saturated the market with their previous ones.

Remind you of anything historical?

 

[Insomniator]

What a joke!

So intel is evil for offering a 1000 dollar CPU? The fact that they also offer a ~230 CPU (i7) that is faster than everything else before it and nearly as fast as the 1000 when overclocked? I guess the fact that they did this 3 years ago with Core 2 makes them even more evil?

DAMN them for making the 200 dollar e6300 faster than than the 1000 dollar Pentium 4 at the time!! And for making a low power chip that is the center of millions of netbooks!

Oh don't forget about the e5200 at ~$60 (!) that is far far far far faster than any 60 dollar chip from previous generations. (What 60 dollar Pentium 4 was there again?)

 

[apoppin]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Topic Summary: not anymore, thanks to Intel

Intel's decisions makers have a fiducial responsibility to their shareholders, not future would-be customers.

Are you honestly trying to argue the position that a for-profit business should have decision maker's at the helm who willfully ignore their fiduciary responsibilities?

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
I guess what I'm trying to say is, say goodbye to the days of relatively unified platforms, in which both the high-end and low-end shared the same architecture, in which the joe-six-pack people effectively subsidised the R&D necessary for the enthusiast-class machines.

So it's good news for the millions of joe-sixpacks who have, until now thanks to Intel, been disproportionately footing the bill and subsidizing the top-5% enthusiast market with cheap(er) leading edge CPU's than they would have otherwise been.

Sounds like joe sixpack owes Intel a thank-you going forward, and we all owe joe six-pack a thank-you for the past 20 yrs.

We don't owe Intel anything except a big F-YOU!
--they are a dirty monopolistic company that cheated its way to the top

 

[Fox5]

I'm surprised AMD doesn't have a true Atom competitor.
People regularly undervolt dual core AMD's to 1Ghz and achieves TDP's of around 10W. Around 20W for AMD's quad core. The Neo has a 15W TDP, come on AMD, but some effort into your binning and find those processors that will run at 1.1V. The dual core neo is a bit better, running at 1.6Ghz still but with a TDP of 18W.

 

[aigomorla]

Dude u guys crack me up.

if the 920 goes bye bye... get a the W3520 and call it a day.

There trying to group the enterprise sector with the gaming and seperate the normal sector. Normal people dont overclock.

Originally posted by: Fox5
I'm surprised AMD doesn't have a true Atom competitor.

did u forget the geode processor?

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Conne...,,50_2330_9863,00.html

Originally posted by: apoppin

We don't owe Intel anything except a big F-YOU!
--they are a dirty monopolistic company that cheated its way to the top

tell the enterprise sector who managed to get almost 2x power in the same U2 space with lower power draw thanks to the X5500 series processor and taylorsberg board.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
Dude u guys crack me up.

if the 920 goes bye bye... get a the W3520 and call it a day.

There trying to group the enterprise sector with the gaming and seperate the normal sector. Normal people dont overclock.

Originally posted by: Fox5
I'm surprised AMD doesn't have a true Atom competitor.

did u forget the geode processor?

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Conne...,,50_2330_9863,00.html

Originally posted by: apoppin

We don't owe Intel anything except a big F-YOU!
--they are a dirty monopolistic company that cheated its way to the top

tell the enterprise sector who managed to get almost 2x power in the same U2 space with lower power draw thanks to the X5500 series processor and taylorsberg board.

The Geode isn't available in most of the same form factors as the Ion, and it way out of date. As far as I know, it's still 130nm and Athlon XP based for the high end geode, and the low end geode is ridiculously underpowered.

 

[aigomorla]

heh.. its still an AMD processor which did go in competition with the ULV series processors like the intel ATOM and transmeta.

 

[GEOrifle]

By releasing lower end CPU INTEL is catching several "RABITS" "
1. All high end CPU's will be sold in a month for same price without any loses(SONY did with PS3 same thing when released NON EMOTION CHIP installed console)
2. Many of us just will go with low end CPU because of ECONOMIC CATHASTROPHY in the USA so over the world too.
3.Price cuts on CPU's will be ended...
4. AMD will lose his marketshare even more.

 

[s44]

This is why Intel fanboys are idiots.

 

[amenx]

Not any more than AMD fanbois, esp the type who say they buy AMD on moral grounds.

 

[NA1NSXR]

What bugs me is not Intel, it is the fact that children who know nothing about computers can create a ruckus nowadays. The comment about gamers driving technology is pretty funny too.

 

[hans007]

the atom is smaller, and uses less power than cpus from 4 years ago.

and its cheap especially if you consider inflatoin etc. a 1.6 p4 and an atom 1.6 are fairly close in performance, but when a 1.6 P4 came out 6 years ago it cost $500+. an atom chip costs like $20.

And it uses way way less power. the fact tht this option even exists is an example of competition and whoever is saying it has to be faster and cheaper is insane. it is better than what you could get for $20 4 yeras ago (which was nothing , brand new with this level of power use and speed).

Intel had to compete. Competition is what brought the atom out. Intel wouldn't have brought it out if it was a monopoly as tons of people are foregoing muhc more expensive and thus profitable core 2 duo mobiles for atom. They put this out because they saw smaller cpus like arm chips and especially the VIA c7 chips coming to compete.

So yeah basically I completely disagree with the OP on this. The atom is a sign of competition. If you dont like atom, buy a via nano or c7 or an amd neo or an arm chip.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: apoppin

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry

Topic Summary: not anymore, thanks to Intel

Intel's decisions makers have a fiducial responsibility to their shareholders, not future would-be customers.

Are you honestly trying to argue the position that a for-profit business should have decision maker's at the helm who willfully ignore their fiduciary responsibilities?

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
I guess what I'm trying to say is, say goodbye to the days of relatively unified platforms, in which both the high-end and low-end shared the same architecture, in which the joe-six-pack people effectively subsidised the R&D necessary for the enthusiast-class machines.

So it's good news for the millions of joe-sixpacks who have, until now thanks to Intel, been disproportionately footing the bill and subsidizing the top-5% enthusiast market with cheap(er) leading edge CPU's than they would have otherwise been.

Sounds like joe sixpack owes Intel a thank-you going forward, and we all owe joe six-pack a thank-you for the past 20 yrs.

We don't owe Intel anything except a big F-YOU!
--they are a dirty monopolistic company that cheated its way to the top

Even if we assume there were abuse of monopoly involved, you might be over-estimating the impact of that activity in determining whether it materially benefited Intel.

I speed, go over the posted speed limit just a tad, not enough to warrant being pulled over and given a ticket even when I pass by police watching traffic with radar guns, but nonetheless I am breaking the law. This crime is hardly of the same caliber as speeding 100mph thru a school zone at 8:30am. Both actions are speeding though, but severity is relevant too.

Did Intel cheat its way to the top? Or did it get there by shear virtue of having 5-6x the R&D budget as AMD for the past 20yrs and yes there were some hooligan side-activities by a handful of otherwise aggressive salesmen striving to snag that stretch goal bonus for themselves?

I don't personally know whether Intel cheated or is a dirty monopolistic company, in fact I bet 99% of its employees wouldn't know either (take Enron as an example)...executives weave a tight "circle of competence" and people outside are outside regardless whether they are employees or non-employees.

But I do personally know the firsthand impact of R&D budgets in determining the maturity, feature-set, and value of its product (be it a node or a cpu), and I'd argue AMD's situation today was a foregone conclusion that could have been made shortly after 1993 when Intel released the Pentium and they were already 5x the size of AMD revenue-wise.

Check out this EETimes article - AMD: Fighting the unbeatable foe - and pay particular attention to the data in this graph, also notice there are five pages to the article, its an interesting read.

 

[exar333]

Originally posted by: taltamir
computers are still getting cheaper and faster across the board, they are just doing so slower because intel no longer has any real competition except their own previous products. so they only release better products when they saturated the market with their previous ones.

I don't agree with this statement. Intel's tick-tock release plan is still in full swing, and hasn't slowed too much.

Intel released Nehalem last fall for the desktop when C2Q was still trouncing anything AMD had to offer. If your opinion was right, they would not have released this. To go even further, Intel released their new chips at a pretty affordable price (the 920 and 940) even though they were generally much faster (and very overclockable) than more expensive C2Q options.

 

[exar333]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
This post was inspired by this Hot Deal.

It seems that due to forced market segmentation by Intel, computers are going in two directions. It used to be that computers, from all market segments, got cheaper AND faster at the same time.

Now, computers are getting cheaper and SLOWER (look at the Atom system mentioned above, slower than a Pentium 4 of yesterdays bygone era, while not much cheaper).

They are also getting faster and MORE EXPENSIVE. Witness Intel cutting off lower-end Core i7 CPUs, forcing you (in september, when Core i5 launches) to purchase an "Extreme Edition" CPU, if you want to move to the Core i7 platform (for multi-way CrossFire/SLI support).


I guess what I'm trying to say is, say goodbye to the days of relatively unified platforms, in which both the high-end and low-end shared the same architecture, in which the joe-six-pack people effectively subsidised the R&D necessary for the enthusiast-class machines.

Your own signature flies in the face of your argument. How expensive was your E2140? $50? $60? I bought my E2160 at the end of 2007, and I sold my whole single-core A64 setup for more than I bought a new platform with.

There are plenty of sub-$100 processors from Intel and AMD that are great, along with plenty of affordable (sub $75 motherboards) to build a cheap system.

Atom wasn't meant to be faster, it was meant to fill a niche that needed ultra-low power and ACCEPTABLE performance. A comparable Atom uses less than 5% of the power of many P4's for comparable performance, thats pretty impressive.

Do you have any proof that Intel will be cutting the low-end i7's at the time of the i5 launch? That sounds like a lot of FUD to me.

 

[Scotteq]

Originally posted by: Idontcare

Even if we assume there were abuse of monopoly involved, you might be over-estimating the impact of that activity in determining whether it materially benefited Intel.

I speed, go over the posted speed limit just a tad, not enough to warrant being pulled over and given a ticket even when I pass by police watching traffic with radar guns, but nonetheless I am breaking the law. This crime is hardly of the same caliber as speeding 100mph thru a school zone at 8:30am. Both actions are speeding though, but severity is relevant too.

Did Intel cheat its way to the top? Or did it get there by shear virtue of having 5-6x the R&D budget as AMD for the past 20yrs and yes there were some hooligan side-activities by a handful of otherwise aggressive salesmen striving to snag that stretch goal bonus for themselves?

I don't personally know whether Intel cheated or is a dirty monopolistic company, in fact I bet 99% of its employees wouldn't know either (take Enron as an example)...executives weave a tight "circle of competence" and people outside are outside regardless whether they are employees or non-employees.

But I do personally know the firsthand impact of R&D budgets in determining the maturity, feature-set, and value of its product (be it a node or a cpu), and I'd argue AMD's situation today was a foregone conclusion that could have been made shortly after 1993 when Intel released the Pentium and they were already 5x the size of AMD revenue-wise.

Check out this EETimes article - AMD: Fighting the unbeatable foe - and pay particular attention to the data in this graph, also notice there are five pages to the article, its an interesting read.

Thank You Kind Sir, for your well reasoned and grounded assessment of the current situation.




For the OP: Personally, I don't interpret Atom's existance as indicative of the PC market in general; rather as a Niche product aimed at a very specific, and low end segment. In that context, the fact that it's a different chip/chipset is simply a function of the role it's intended to fill. In short - It's a lighter and simpler (commodity), and a poor basis for comparison. For example: If we substituted "MP3 Player" for "PC": Would it make sense to decry an iPod Nano because it's a lighter, cheaper, and shares few (if any) parts with a 3G 160??

At the risk of giving the Fanbois grist for further asininity: I highly doubt a C2D(Q), Neha, or Phenom chip/chipset could be made to fill the same role as an Atom.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Originally posted by: ExarKun333

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
This post was inspired by this Hot Deal.

It seems that due to forced market segmentation by Intel, computers are going in two directions. It used to be that computers, from all market segments, got cheaper AND faster at the same time.

Now, computers are getting cheaper and SLOWER (look at the Atom system mentioned above, slower than a Pentium 4 of yesterdays bygone era, while not much cheaper).

They are also getting faster and MORE EXPENSIVE. Witness Intel cutting off lower-end Core i7 CPUs, forcing you (in september, when Core i5 launches) to purchase an "Extreme Edition" CPU, if you want to move to the Core i7 platform (for multi-way CrossFire/SLI support).


I guess what I'm trying to say is, say goodbye to the days of relatively unified platforms, in which both the high-end and low-end shared the same architecture, in which the joe-six-pack people effectively subsidised the R&D necessary for the enthusiast-class machines.

Your own signature flies in the face of your argument. How expensive was your E2140? $50? $60? I bought my E2160 at the end of 2007, and I sold my whole single-core A64 setup for more than I bought a new platform with.

Quite the opposite. My E2140s and Q6600s were the fruits of a unified platform, the 775 socket. The benefits being multifold, but more importantly, I could purchase a cheaper CPU, and overclock it to reach the performance of a higher-end CPU from the same platform, saving me money. This simply isn't possible any more with a divided platform that Intel is now pushing. I would never purchase an Atom-based system, and Core i7 is going to shoot up in price substantially in a few months.

Originally posted by: ExarKun333
There are plenty of sub-$100 processors from Intel and AMD that are great, along with plenty of affordable (sub $75 motherboards) to build a cheap system.

Atom wasn't meant to be faster, it was meant to fill a niche that needed ultra-low power and ACCEPTABLE performance. A comparable Atom uses less than 5% of the power of many P4's for comparable performance, thats pretty impressive.

But the desktop PC market has always been driven by performance for price. And up until now, that has always increased. Until Atom. Now performance took a major step backwards.

BTW, it seems that everyone has missed the point of my link in my OP - it's an ATOM DESKTOP. Say what you will about Atom, that it's mobile, low-power, not intended to compete with other desktop CPUs or whatnot... but what the important point is, it's being used in desktops now! Meaning that it is going to offer substantially lower performance for the (slightly lower) price.

Originally posted by: ExarKun333
Do you have any proof that Intel will be cutting the low-end i7's at the time of the i5 launch? That sounds like a lot of FUD to me.

It was documented in several threads here.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Scotteq
At the risk of giving the Fanbois grist for further asininity: I highly doubt a C2D(Q), Neha, or Phenom chip/chipset could be made to fill the same role as an Atom.

Now THAT is sig worthy wordsmithing right there folks :thumbsup: Me likes!

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Quite the opposite. My E2140s and Q6600s were the fruits of a unified platform, the 775 socket. The benefits being multifold, but more importantly, I could purchase a cheaper CPU, and overclock it to reach the performance of a higher-end CPU from the same platform, saving me money. This simply isn't possible any more with a divided platform that Intel is now pushing. I would never purchase an Atom-based system, and Core i7 is going to shoot up in price substantially in a few months.

...

But the desktop PC market has always been driven by performance for price. And up until now, that has always increased. Until Atom. Now performance took a major step backwards.

BTW, it seems that everyone has missed the point of my link in my OP - it's an ATOM DESKTOP. Say what you will about Atom, that it's mobile, low-power, not intended to compete with other desktop CPUs or whatnot... but what the important point is, it's being used in desktops now! Meaning that it is going to offer substantially lower performance for the (slightly lower) price.

...

It was documented in several threads here.

1st. You seem to be complaining that intel changed sockets. That shows a blatant ignorance of the past. Both Intel and AMD have gone through phases where they introduced several sockets in just a couple of years.

Why is intel doing this? Are they trying to make you buy a new Intel motherboard? Well, somewhat yes, but there is a good technical reason for it. Its called and IMC. i7 has it and you can't get around it. When you make a CPU with an IMC your chipset and socket HAVE to change. i5 doesn't have an IMC, so there is no way to plug it into the i7 board.

I swear, everytime Intel or AMD change sockets, even with good reason, you get this audible whine "Oh NOOS! We have to change our motherboards and our rams! Its a conspiracy"

Next. AMD Geode, Via Citrix, ect, they where being used as desktop cpus LONG before the Atom was, Heck intels pentium 4M ULV where also used as desktop cpus, yet you didn't comlain then about "Oh, the Geode sucks, it has half the processing power of the Athlon 64". The only thing that is different is that Intels Atom is actually fast enough to do what people want out of a low power CPU.

But heck, just ignore the fact that we've all pointed out that Intel offers CPUs not marketed for the lower power section for a lower price and higher performance.

For the general public, price / performance has never been the issue, ever. The issue was "Best buy rep tells me that I need to buy this because I want to surf the web!" If price/performance was an issue, then the Athlon XP should have been trouncing the P4, It never did. Sure, enthusiasts knew about it and would recommend that all their friends by AMD because of that. But the general public hardly even knew that AMD existed.

Atom is not a step down. It is an opening into a new market. Its like you are trying to compare the Iphone with a regular cell phone. They are different markets. Why do you think Intel hates that Nvidia Ion? because it eats into their low end PC market share. They want the atom to do well in small embeded applications, but they don't want it to be used as a HTPC. That would dig too much into their lower end CPUs market.

The fact that people are using it as a desktop CPU speaks more about what the consumer wants, and less on what intel wants. The consumer wants a low power CPU that can surf the web. Intel wants the consumer to want a 5.8ghz 50core beast for every PC, because that's where they gain the most money.

 

[s44]

Originally posted by: Cogman
Guess what, when the beloved AMD finally adopts DDR3, you know what will happen? Thats right, a socket change. It is inevitable.

Um, what?

You have some decent general points but this statement is utter fail. AM3 is out, and all the chips are back-compatible with AM2+.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: s44

Originally posted by: Cogman
Guess what, when the beloved AMD finally adopts DDR3, you know what will happen? Thats right, a socket change. It is inevitable.

Um, what?

You have some decent general points but this statement is utter fail. AM3 is out, and all the chips are back-compatible with AM2+.

Ah, crap. I did a quick newegg search to see if AM3 supported DDR3. I thought it did, but didn't see any imminently.

Either way, if DDR tech changes significantly, AMD will have to change sockets.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: soccerballtux
This does not bother me. AMD's current quads are fast enough for anything anybody currently wants to do. I do not see a quad core being necessary for gaming any time soon. By the time it is, AMD will have octo's out.
I, for one, am glad software cannot get much more bloated. Cpus will keep increasing in power exponentially, but it is exponentially more expensive to write software that grows exponentially bloated.

Software can ALWAYS get more bloated. There is no upper bounds in the amount of bloat a software program can have, and it will continue to increase as resources continue to grow. If you can make a template that includes all the major functions you may need, and it will actually run on your hardware, then it is likely that template will be used regardless of if those functions are even needed in whatever specialty application that component is used for. It just makes programming easier, and more cost effective.