Slagging AMD off

[clarkey01]

I?m getting a little sick of how every time I go on overclockers.com that they?re bashing AMD.

This week they?re saying how AMD are struggling and selling a fraction of what Intel does. But how does that IF true, affect the overclocking community???????????

http://www.overclockers.com/articles1014/

Even though AMD actually out sold Intel ?AMD pulled ahead in retail sales numbers for the week of April 18-24. AMD's retail sales took 52% of the desktop market, leaving Intel with 47%?

http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2004May/gee20040504024988.htm

They seem to rip every move AMD makes, and talk as if they could run the thing better then Hector is at the moment. I?m not a fan boy by a mile but at the moment I?d say AMD is making better strides then Intel is, A64 is a great CPU, and I cant wait till they hit 90 nm so they cam ramp up speeds, BUT EVERY WEEK, its ? AMD SUCK?, ? AMD ARE FAILING?.

I wonder what they would say to Hector Ruiz , ? Gee, why don?t you extend the pipelines of the A64 from 12 to 31, devalue the Mhz even further, increase heat and name the chip after a failed British politician called prescott??. Everyone seems to forget AMD is the only reason why Intel actually bothers to lower prices and to make a small effort in R&D, if AMD was not around Intel would be making us all use 450 Mhz Celerons, ? Yeah cutting edge stuff, runs word great?, but put in a 3d dimensional game with something called ?polygons? and the thing dies. Somebody hit Sad But True by Metallica.

He states AMD has never ?won? over Intel, and never will, well you only have to look at the top of this post and the news on geek.com and other sites that AMD actually outsold Intel on a week by 5%.

1Ghz T-bred thrashed a 1.5 P4

The early Xp range beat anything Intel had untill around 2.2 (northwood), granted I myself don?t think the 3000+, 3200+ deserve its name.

Intel wanted to shove RDRAM down everyone?s throat, AMD backed DDR, and what are the majority of RAM users are using ?

A64 beats practically all Intel northwood & presccot models at the same model number in games, however loses some on encoding, but hey what turns you on ? gaming or encoding?(unless you don?t play games)

Cut AMD some slack?.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

AMD has had very few profitable quarters in their entire history as a company so much of the criticism is warranted. They have traditionally had terrible marketing and until several years ago, not a single really solid chipset to support their CPUs, that has changed. Now, take their entry into the server and workstation markets, the most profitable sector for sales, combine that with their restructuring, diversification, and partnerships with other tecnology companies such as IBM and Fujitsu, and the future of the company doesn't look so bleak anymore. Particularlly given that they have a well structured debt and some cash on hand for layouts.

Where the desktop market is concerned, AMD will have to fire the idiots they call the marketing division and hire a bunch of visionaries who can sell AMD to the masses. Intel and the Pentium brand name are household words, say AMD or Athlon and most people say "who? what?"

The CPU wars are heating up again and Intel is still dominating because of resources and the fact that they exclusively own the "mind share" of most computer shoppers. AMD's marketing clowns and lack of advertising budgetis such a terrible crutch that odds are Intel will steal AMD's 64bit thunder when they release their 64bit desktop processors. Most consumers will think Intel is the company that is on the cutting edge of the technology and carved the path to 64bit goodness because Intel's marketing machine will spoon feed it to them.

To conclude my musings I liked to agree that AMD deserves some props for righting a sinking ship and setting sail for the horizon, but let's not forget they have walloowed in the shallows without a navigator far more often than not

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: clarkey01

A64 beats practically all Intel northwood & presccot models at the same model number in games, however loses some on encoding, but hey what turns you on ? gaming or encoding?(unless you don?t play games)

Cut AMD some slack?.

most people on here love AMD, for the reasons you mentioned...

I'm personally switching from Intel to AMD as soon as my stuff comes in this afternoon. (can't wait...)


and don't forget the Mobile, AMD's gift to the overclocking community.

 

[Falloutboy]

AMD makes great stuff they may not always be top in performace but almost always offer the best performance but they always have the best performance to price ratio for us people who can't shell out a grand for intels best offering

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Falloutboy525
AMD makes great stuff they may not always be top in performace but almost always offer the best performance but they always have the best performance to price ratio for us people who can't shell out a grand for intels best offering

Now, now, let's not start that nonsense. The FX and EE are both overpriced and there's parity between the 2 companies on pricing and performance in the mid and high-end. It's the $100 and below market where AMD is the undisputed king at the moment.

 

[ponyo]

Ed over at Overclockers call them as he sees it. He's not anti-AMD. Far from it. He's not pro Intel either. He gives credit when credit is due to companies. I've been reading him since '99 and yes he can come off as harsh. But it's because the companies deserve it.

Everything he said about AMD is pretty much correct.

 

[Wingznut]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
I?m getting a little sick of how every time I go on overclockers.com that they?re bashing AMD.

Maybe it would be more constructive to complain over there, instead of here?

 

[orion7144]

Originally posted by: Wingznut

Originally posted by: clarkey01
I?m getting a little sick of how every time I go on overclockers.com that they?re bashing AMD.

Maybe it would be more constructive to complain over there, instead of here?

 

[exar333]

Yeah, but Intel has been creeping lower and lower in the desktop market, in terms of price. Intel, IMHO, is king of the 100-200$ processors....buying a 2.4 or 2.8C is really nice right now...AMD slacked off a little in there 2700 and higher XP's....and the A64 2800 falls just under 200, but the boards are more for those and they really arnt as good as the Northwood, especially in terms of OC'ing...Intel is getting smarter in their pricing....if they got a really well performing Celeron....watch out AMD...

 

[Sahakiel]

Hm... a few things I noted (not everything)

1. The article is talking about server and workstation processors. Last I checked, Xeons, Itaniums, and Opterons are not desktop CPUs. They could be, but so could a PA-RISC proc.

2. AMD will more than likely never beat Intel. It would take something on the order of business blunder of the century. Just because sales are up one week doesn't mean they're beating Intel. It's like calling the Spurs playoff champs because they took out the Lakers in one game.

3. If Intel were the only x86 manufacturer, we would still be running Pentium 4's. Why, you ask? Well, one simple reason : upgrades. Intel would have to find some incentive to get consumers to buy more computers (and the processors in them). Selling only celeron 450's is great until one day you realize nobody is buying computers because they last over 10 years and no one has any reason to buy a new one. Strangely enough, that's the situation today with AMD in the picture.

4. Intel backed RDRAM and paid for it. If AMD hadn't been a major player, the gamble might have worked. Not only would we be using technologically superior DRAM, but Intel would have effectively locked out its competitors for years. On the one hand, it's too bad for Intel they were forced to use DDR. On the other hand, it's too bad for us we're stuck with DDR and it's descendents for decades.

4.1 Oh, and AMD backed DDR for only one reason: AMD had no other option. They couldn't afford to develop RDRAM chipsets, those chipsets would have been late to market, none of their partners were willing to do so, and DDR required 0 (absolutely none) R&D funding. AMD didn't do it solely to cater to the consumer. It could be seen as a pure business decision. If AMD had more money or if the chipset manufacturers were willing to invest in RDRAM, or maybe if more DRAM manufacturers would wake up and get out of a losing business, then we might be singing a different tune.

 

[clarkey01]

Well sure, but that doesn?t make it ok for AMD to get slagged off every week

AND can you please tell me why shipment of AMD?S processors affects overclockers?

Considering the state Intel are in at the moment (technology wise , not sales wise), shouldn?t they be getting the brunt end of the stick ?

Unless, you wanna stand up and say Prescott is a huge step up from the northwood ?,, unless you plan to BBQ your dinner on the thing.

AMD in the last year or so have been trying hard to push Intel and its paying off, Overclockers.com keep saying ? AMD only sold this many xxx?, yeah what?s your point ? REALLY ? does?nt AMD?s new products help keep pressure on Intel to innovate ? , does it keep pressure on them to lower prices? Yeah you dam right it does. If AMD has a bad strategy and is losing the plot, maybe they could explain why it?s the 1st time in two years that they turned two consecutive profitable quarters????

Technologically, IMHO AMD 64/ Opteron is leaps and bounds ahead of Prescott/Xeons at the moment.

To Say AMD has never won, or ever is a little extreme?.Think about it

Well, pls, some of you Intel fans, define ?win? for me ?

Like the 1ghz T-bred ripping a 1.5Ghz P4 ?, an obvious win for the Intel camp there?..

 

[MichaelZ]

1ghz T-bred ripping a 1.5Ghz P4

hmm, u know some of those early pentium 4's got out paced by the Pentium 3. are you going to hold onto that forever and use it in every single argument? please...

Unless, you wanna stand up and say Prescott is a huge step up from the northwood ?,, unless you plan to BBQ your dinner on the thing.

ok... this is quite simple, Intel likes to test its new generation cores publically. It's being said many times why can't people just remember it. It's pretty obvious if you knew both sides of the story. Socket 423 is kind of the like where the current Prescott is at. Prescott if I'm not mistaken already has 64bit paths. Intel simply locked them as it won't work properly using socket 478 and right now it's more a case of throwing the Prescott out there like the s423 willamettes and then develope a better motherboard interface for the future revision. Oh and not to mention the s423 P4's were also hot and didn't meet all if any expectations. Prescott I would say is doing quite well since it has more potential with development. The encoding performance leap the s478 prescott had over northwood was even a supprise for me. I myself would not be buying a s478 prescott but hell... if this is rev 1, rev 2 is gonna be better for sure.

And aren't you forgetting something? The Athlons and XP's are not the coolest running CPUs last time i checked.

Well, pls, some of you Intel fans, define ?win? for me ?

Aren't you taking this whole AMD vs Intel thing a bit too personally? People whom support the underdog team shouldn't get so worked up over a bit slandering by the fans of the most pop team in the game. It's rather sad that you have to make public your disapproval of the lack of AMD support on some other forum. If you wanted to vent, vent it where you originally got so worked up, not here where you seem to be picking out things wrong with intel and an argument with any intel user with a comment like the one I quoted above.

Seriously, who da hell cares? If the roles were reversed, Intel is where AMD is, you wouldn't see me whining about how OCer.com doesn't approve of my choice of CPU :disgust:

 

[clarkey01]

Ok, my original argument was that AMD was getting unnecessary criticism for where they are today and that Intel was more in for it then AMD is.

If you know your tech then you?ll know that opertons are better chips then current xeons, and the gap increases when you to go 4 way, to 8 way etc, A64?s are faster (in games, some business apps) then Prescott and northwoods.

So, why does it matter to overclockers HOW many CPU?S AMD sells ?or is it just another reason to have ago.

Like I said in my last post ?If AMD has a bad strategy and is losing the plot, maybe they could explain why it?s the 1st time in two years that they turned two consecutive profitable quarters??

I used the 1ghz t-bred against the 1.5 p4 as one of the times when AMD had ?won? over Intel on a product. Intel to use IAMD64 or whatever they calling ?their? 64-bit extensions, does that no validate AMDs work ?

The price/performance ratio is far greater then anything Intel offers, perhaps the 2.8C which my friend and many of you on here have overclocked, but If Intel was ?doing badly? like AMD are supposed to be doing , would you still buy Intel chips ?

Overclockers.com quickly put up another article about AMD outselling Intel for a week and squashed it, BUT HOW DOES SALES AFFECT OVERCLOCKERS ?

Yeah, they don?t, so the article has no relevance to how chips overclock or will in the future, just another attempt to put down AMD

 

[MichaelZ]

The price/performance ratio is far greater then anything Intel offers, perhaps the 2.8C which my friend and many of you on here have overclocked, but If Intel was ?doing badly? like AMD are supposed to be doing , would you still buy Intel chips ?

i'm a pretty big intel fanboy. Judging from past experience, I would say yes. I bought the s478 P4 1.5 when at the time everyone was going on about how much better the AMD Athlon was and they were also cheaper. Still, I opted for the brand I like and that's all.

Overclockers.com quickly put up another article about AMD outselling Intel for a week and squashed it, BUT HOW DOES SALES AFFECT OVERCLOCKERS ?

Yeah, they don?t, so the article has no relevance to how chips overclock or will in the future, just another attempt to put down AMD

That's how the world works my friend. Users of one particular brand sometimes feel the urge (in the case of OC.com, all the time) to attempt to disreguard anything the competition has to offer. I can understand why you don't like it but come on, do you really care if other people don't agree with your choice of CPU?

I bought a socket 478 P4 1.5 (despite being much faster than the 423 version, it was still slower than athlons at the time) Did I go find reviews and complain when I didn't like their views or results? I think some of the comments made at the time was something around the lines of: "The P4's price / performance is quite sad really." That was when big time Intel slandering was going on and people claimed AMD is going to overtake Intel as the market leader and how Intel sucked blah blah blah. Did I feel the need to vent my disapproval of what's going on? Hell no. Just sit down and get on with your life. Others disagreeing with you and "dissing" your CPU maker is hardly something to get worked up about.

 

[clarkey01]

Do you think they deserve the criticism there getting? in the last 12 months have been doing ok to the level of good .For a company which iv always bought my cpu?s from., I cant afford to spend £1000 on a Intel rig and tell myself I got the best bang for buck. Im not taking this personal I just wanted to hear opinions to see if anyone else has noticed.

My main beef was with overclcokers.com slagging off AMD weekly, I could of emailed them but I felt like brining this up in anandtech

I don?t see the logic of the time buying a slow 1.5Ghz chip when the cheaper AMD 1Ghz beat it. Sure you like Intel but ??????

I?ll ask again

Do sales of a cpu company affect the overclocking community that much they have to post 5 articles in the space of two weeks moaning about it?

In the defence of overclcokers.com they slammed the Prescott for being the BBQ that it is, part of me likes Intel, I even have one of them toy engineers on my desk with a old PII 350 Mhz chip next to it ( he built it just for me , wink), I even have "Nehalem_2005 ...." as one of email addys, so before i get labbled as a fan boy , think about it

 

[MichaelZ]

Do you think they deserve the criticism there getting?

Call me selfish, but I don't particularly care. Indifference is your friend. I take the same view if the situation were reversed and Intel was on the recieving end.

Do sales of a cpu company affect the overclocking community that much they have to post 5 articles in the space of two weeks moaning about it?

No, not the slightest. I've pretty much answered it already in my previous post. I didn't give u a literal answer but come on, it's there... The main thing I was tring to say was since it's so insignificant, who cares? Obviously it doesn't make a bit of difference, "OMG OC.COM disses anything AMD... something needs to be done!!!"

Not to mention they're hippocrites. Prescott bashing so they don't look like fanboys. Ironic no? Talking up the company while on the other hand bashing their future product just so they don't look stupid :disgust:

so before i get labbled as a fan boy , think about it

I'm not labling you as anything. Quite frankly if you were one of them arrogant ones, I wouldn't be replying. Chill out, relax and that is all.

 

[Zebo]

AMD will always be small until it has a distribution channel like Intel has. I bet DELL advertises more for Intel than Intel does.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by: exar333
Yeah, but Intel has been creeping lower and lower in the desktop market, in terms of price. Intel, IMHO, is king of the 100-200$ processors....buying a 2.4 or 2.8C is really nice right now...AMD slacked off a little in there 2700 and higher XP's....and the A64 2800 falls just under 200, but the boards are more for those and they really arnt as good as the Northwood, especially in terms of OC'ing...Intel is getting smarter in their pricing....if they got a really well performing Celeron....watch out AMD...

While Intel may be the king of the $150-200 processors, they'll NEVER get a well-performing celeron that can keep up with a $77 Mobile at 2500MHz. AMD will always be the budget king.

Intel COULD be the budget king...but they make plenty of money selling Celerons which perform badly, so why make less money selling Celerons which perform better?

 

[Soulkeeper]

AMD, Intel, transmeta, IBM, and even via all rock in my book
keep up the good work

i just hope amd and intel start making chips that run cooler and take a page from transmeta's and via's book

 

[Sahakiel]

AND can you please tell me why shipment of AMD?S processors affects overclockers?

Where else do overclockers buy AMD CPU's? Mars?
If you need to ask that question, might I suggest a little study in economics. Go run a business or take a CC course, it doesn't matter.

Considering the state Intel are in at the moment (technology wise , not sales wise), shouldn?t they be getting the brunt end of the stick ?
Unless, you wanna stand up and say Prescott is a huge step up from the northwood ?,, unless you plan to BBQ your dinner on the thing.

Obviously, you've never tried designing CPU's before. Williamette was a huge leap forward from the P6 design. If you ever keep up with technical publications, you'd know why.
Prescott is an advancement above Northwood, no doubt about it. Whether or not it's an advance in the right direction remains to be seen.

AMD in the last year or so have been trying hard to push Intel and its paying off, Overclockers.com keep saying ? AMD only sold this many xxx?, yeah what?s your point ? REALLY ? does?nt AMD?s new products help keep pressure on Intel to innovate ? , does it keep pressure on them to lower prices? Yeah you dam right it does. If AMD has a bad strategy and is losing the plot, maybe they could explain why it?s the 1st time in two years that they turned two consecutive profitable quarters????

Two things to point out here:
1. It seems you completely ignored my previous post.
2. AMD lost money for the last two years due to economic slow down. Once again, please try to pay a little attention to economics.
However, AMD is trying to start a new strategy with K8's. Whether or not it's working is still debatable, but as far as I can tell, K7's are still on the old strategy.

Technologically, IMHO AMD 64/ Opteron is leaps and bounds ahead of Prescott/Xeons at the moment.

Technically, no, they're somewhat even. Hammers have their roots in ten year old technology. They are built around K7's which were released in 1998. Prescotts are in a similar boat in that development of the Williamette core began around 1995-1996. If you look at them from a technological standpoint, both are pretty even, which is why neither has a clear advantage over the other. Intel's design gambled on clock speed and process technology whereas AMD's design bet on pure process technology.

If you know your tech then you?ll know that opertons are better chips then current xeons, and the gap increases when you to go 4 way, to 8 way etc, A64?s are faster (in games, some business apps) then Prescott and northwoods.

That is actually a result of a decision made by Intel about 15 years ago. Xeons use the shared bus topology because it has worked so well for P5 and P6 generations. Shared bus architectures are traditionally cheaper and more cost-effective than a cross-bar or network design. They provided good performance at the lowest cost and were good enough for non-scientific applications for a long time. The Pentium came with multi-processing capabilities on-chip; no other logic required. Intel simply continued that trend.
AMD, on the other hand, used multi-processing technology from Compaq's Alpha (later bought by Intel) in the K7 design. I'm sure you're familiar with how well that went. As for the K8, it uses a network interconnect topology. The reason it is doing so well is primarily due to advances in hardware and software technology over the last ten years. Intel dropped the ball from a technology standpoint. How businesses and system designers look at it is unknown to me.

Intel to use IAMD64 or whatever they calling ?their? 64-bit extensions, does that no validate AMDs work ?

In a way, yes. However, it has nothing to do with technology; only dumb consumers.

I don?t see the logic of the time buying a slow 1.5Ghz chip when the cheaper AMD 1Ghz beat it. Sure you like Intel but ??????

This is probably and indication of the reason you're getting so worked up over this. You need to understand marketing, technology, and the end-user. Some people will buy Intel only because of name, others will buy it because it works better for them.

Do sales of a cpu company affect the overclocking community that much they have to post 5 articles in the space of two weeks moaning about it?

I really don't see anything wrong with that. As far as I can tell, overclockers.com covered the more interesting news bits from the last two weeks. You've conveniently left out mention of Intel, ATI, nVidia, and others.

Not to mention they're hippocrites. Prescott bashing so they don't look like fanboys. Ironic no? Talking up the company while on the other hand bashing their future product just so they don't look stupid

No offense, but I wonder if there really is anything new with which to bash Prescott besides the longer pipeline and power use. Everything else was pretty much covered when Williamette and Northwood were released. Sort of makes me wonder what the next generation will look like.

While Intel may be the king of the $150-200 processors, they'll NEVER get a well-performing celeron that can keep up with a $77 Mobile at 2500MHz. AMD will always be the budget king.

That is probably the main reason AMD lost so much money the last few years. Hopefully, they'll be able to earn enough money in the coming years to cover losses and R&D.