Would AMDcpu be even better if Intel hadn't messed up so badly

madmickey

Member
Nov 21, 2001
48
0
0
Remember the first 3/4 of year 2000 when AMD processor speed almost doubled. Since then, the main Intel product (pre-Northwood Pentium 4) were so inferior, it appears to me that AMD has slowed it speed of development. What are other people opinion and are we about to see a banner year for AMD development because the Northwood with DDR will be decent competition. Northwood are competition in power not in value.
 

FatMan42

Senior member
Aug 17, 2001
219
0
0
AMD do release chips that respond to their competition. They've set out a timetable for releasing Thoroughbreds, but thereafter they say that they'll make releases "as the market demands". They keep using that phrase. That means relasing Barton-cored chips depending on what Intel is up to. Unfortunately they don't just make chips to satisfy us tech-heads, they're a business. And that means releasing products that gives them the optimum cost vs benefit (i.e. market position) at any time.

The Inquirer put out a new story today about up-coming AMD chips here and also show new roadmaps here.
 

Swanny

Diamond Member
Mar 29, 2001
7,456
0
76
I don't think AMD slowed their R&D department, but they certainly slowed how quickly they were ramping speeds.
 

madmickey

Member
Nov 21, 2001
48
0
0
It also looks like that there will be no socket A with 333 MHz bus so buying a KT 266a chipset motherboard will have a decent CPU upgradability path (go from XP 1800 to XP 2600 or 2800). Intel chipset motherboard will be useless for P4 in 3-month times. SIS 645 may work with 133/533 speed P4 but you may be able to overclock a KT 266a motherboard to run at 166/333 MHz bus.
 

FatMan42

Senior member
Aug 17, 2001
219
0
0
...you may be able to overclock a KT 266a motherboard to run at 166/333 MHz bus.
Yes, many KT266A mobo's can do that. If the Inquirer article (above) is correct, then you won't need to. Not if you're going to run at stock settings - as the chip will use... Socket-A, 133-FSB, 1.60V core. That means many current boards will happily run T-breds. Exactly as AMD was reported to have claimed. Certainly looks possible.

For myself - the lowest V-core that can be selected in BIOS (EP-8KHA+) is 1.65 V. That's with an XP chip. Does anybody know if the voltages that the BIOS provides as options are preset values, or are they offsets from whatever default V-core the chip that's present demands? i.e. V-core (def) is 1.75v. Lowest available v is v(def)-0.1 volts. Does that mean if you slot in a T-bred the lowest V-core available would then be 1.60-0.1=1.50 volts? Or would it still be the same 1.65v ?

I gather that the hardware voltage regulators on the mobo are a limiting factor, but how? Any ideas...? 1.65v may be OK, especially if T-breds are as overclockable as we're hoping. Let's just hope that AMD don't make them any more difficult to unlock!
 

nealh

Diamond Member
Nov 21, 1999
7,078
1
0
I would bet in most cases abios update will allow for lower voltage....
 

christoph83

Senior member
Mar 12, 2001
812
0
0
Where exactly did intel mess up so badly? Besides having a product that was inferior performance wise, I dont see where they screwed up. Intel still owns 75- 80% of the microprocessor market. A BIOS update should allow lower voltages,hopefully.
 

Sid03

Senior member
Nov 30, 2001
244
0
0
"AMD do release chips that respond to their competition. "

and you are very naive. both amd and intel release their high-end chips as soon as they are able to. pm and wingnut have both explained that there is absolutely no benefit to sitting on a higher end cpu.

so amd is sitting on .13 micron... i see. so it would be a bad idea for them to produce a cpu that was not only cheaper to make, but would outperform the competion. now, why would this be a good idea to not release?

 

madmickey

Member
Nov 21, 2001
48
0
0
AMD may not have intentionally slowed progress, strong competition forced the U.S. auto industry to come up with better products that they would have without strong competition. AMD has been gaining market share from Intel that is why there have been price wars in CPU. Intel profits and share price have been down drastically in last few years.
 

yodayoda

Platinum Member
Jan 8, 2001
2,958
0
86
the vaulted clock speeds, cut throat prices, and bush recession of year 2001 really wore out both amd and intel in the cpu market. now they are each catching their breath, licking their wounds, and doing a little profit taking. i think intel knows that the inferior design of the pentium 4, the whole rambus fiasco, and self-castrated celeron really bit them in the ass. the itanium (did someone say itanic?) is headed down the same shallow grave as the pentium pro--i just can't wait until amd busts the little intel-IT circle-jerk with the hammer line of chips. what was craig barrett's quote last month: "consumers don't need 64 bit processing?" that sounds a little reminiscient of another famous prognostication, the infamous gates assertion: "who will need more the 640K of memory?"

man, if moore and saunders were just closer buds at fairchild back in the day and ol' jerry had never founded amd, you would see intel and mac slugging it out at 400 MHz right now. thank God for amd.
 

christoph83

Senior member
Mar 12, 2001
812
0
0
AMD may not have intentionally slowed progress, strong competition forced the U.S. auto industry to come up with better products that they would have without strong competition. AMD has been gaining market share from Intel that is why there have been price wars in CPU. Intel profits and share price have been down drastically in last few years.

And AMD's hasn't? AMD is in the red right now, intel is profitable. But its not really because of the price war ,but the overall demand for processors has been down this year.
 

FIFO

Member
Dec 15, 2001
114
0
0
FatMan32, you have it right for the8KHA+.

The voltage is always relative to the default setting of the CPU up to a max of 1.85v. I have a duron 600 that is a default voltage of 1.5 and the highest setting was only 1.6 or so. When I reconnected all of the L7 bridges, the voltage only went to 1.85 (which is the result of connecting all of the L7 bridges)

In another post (I can't remember where), the question was posed to EPOX about getting higher voltages and the answer basically indicated that this can only be fixed by a new revision of the mobo. This makes sense after seeing the hardware voltage mod for the 8KHA+.
 

Sid03

Senior member
Nov 30, 2001
244
0
0
"Intel profits and share price have been down drastically in last few years. "

not "years". the general high tech economy went in the crapper in 10-2000. prior to that, intc was doing very well. if you compare that to amd then you'll see that they've had their share of problems that past year. and as christoph said, it's been much worse for them (and practically every other high-tech corporation). intc has actually been more profitable then most every other high-tech corporation.

i guess i don't get the entire point of this thread. you think that amd has slowed down their innovation (r&d) because you feel as if the p4 is "so inferior"? that really doesn't make sense.
 

FatMan42

Senior member
Aug 17, 2001
219
0
0
Sid...
No, I didn't mean to imply that they develop technologies that they sit on and release at arbitrary points. That would be a very poor business model. Instead I meant that they're competitive and as such their products releases are always with one eye on their opposition. Further, I was thinking of AMDs comments that Barton chips would be released "as market requires" - quoted straight off their roadmap. Interpret that as you choose.
 

gerrick

Senior member
Apr 10, 2000
263
0
0
AMD has slowed because the current core is reaching its limits. This is compounded by the fact the new (.13) core is not ready. They are trying to hold their wad and not blow the speed limit off the current core too soon. the P4 clock increases by hundreds. The AMD clock increases by tens.

The P4 is not inferior at all. AMD has you all doing what you hate Intel for wanting you to do. AMD has people thinking the chips actually run at 2.0 GHz. The chip is designed to ramp up clock speed very quickly. Consumers have always and will always look at clock speed. Really not too far from horsepower in a car. With the insane speeds the chip is able to overcome any bottlenecks. It may be slower clock for clock but who the hell cares. At the current speeds it is hard to find software that is held back by the chip clock. Remember you can only see 32 or so frames a second. Don't forget Intel also mates to higher quality chipsets. Since AMD has not released a decent chipset recently you are stuck using a crappy VIA chipset.

Intel chips do cost more. They have better R&D and that costs money. Now since most of you will say Intel R&D sucks here is my proof. What company hit .25,.18, and .13 first. How about MMX, SSE, and SSE2? I could go back further with research. In my opinion Intel also has a higher quality chip. I can't unlock the multiplier with a hardware hack. Now I don't think the High end Intel chips are necessarily worth it. Intel has always set the high end prices pretty much the same. Intel has the best performing, most stable combination out there. If you doubt that what do most businesses buy? They don't just buy them because of Intel name. Intel has a rep of quality just like Honda or Toyota. If you look through these forums you will see more ATHLON issues then Intel issues. Most of these issues are chipset issues.

AMD may be faster and cheaper. The platform is also more unstable. I hear the AMD chipsets work well. AMD just does not seem to update them very often. So people are stuck with VIA chipsets that are bad. Not a single VIA chipset meets PCI spec. VIA also seems to release a lot of patches. I saw today that a major flaw exits in some/all (not sure) Athlon chips with Linux Kernel 2.4. I have yet to hear anyone rag on AMD because of it. If it was Intel damn sure would have seen some already.

None of this was to start a flame war. I know Intel has done stupid things. I also think if it was not for the Athlon we would just now be reaching the gig barrier. With no real competition Intel would have just held it all back. AMD really needs to get better. They have yet to reach the same overall quality level as Intel. IF they release a new chipset they will get closer. The heat issues should be resolved with the next core. I hope hammer works out. They seem to be betting on 64 bit. I hope they did not put all their eggs into one basket with it. We all need them around to keep Intel honest or vice versa. all of that is just my opinion and no personal attacks don't make you smart.
 

madmickey

Member
Nov 21, 2001
48
0
0
Intel 4th quaters profits are down 77% from last year. If you used different accounting rules they profitability may be reduced further. Intel is also reducing its capital investment.
AMD went from 700 mHz athlon to 1200 mhz Atlon during 1st 10 months of 2000 when Intel had a product the PIII that was a inferior but not badly inferior. The early PIV were inferior to AMD and to the old PIII. AMD rush to put out new processor slowed as well when the PIII 1133 MHz came out.
 

madmickey

Member
Nov 21, 2001
48
0
0
"AMD may not have intentionally slowed progress, strong competition forced the U.S. auto industry to come up with better products that they would have without strong competition. AMD has been gaining market share from Intel that is why there have been price wars in CPU. Intel profits and share price have been down drastically in last few years.

And AMD's hasn't? AMD is in the red right now, intel is profitable. But its not really because of the price war ,but the overall demand for processors has been down this year. "

Oil company profits are down from last year because crude prices are down. Are you saying that price has nothing to due with profitability.
 

christoph83

Senior member
Mar 12, 2001
812
0
0
Ofcourse price has to do with profitability. But as demand for something goes down so does the price to meet equilibrium. Oil profits were down because there was a ton of excess oil supply out there thus causing the price to go down. Anyway, If you use the same accounting rules on AMD's loss it would mean an even larger loss,same logic. AMD was profitable and then went into the red, much worse than a 77% drop in profits. Intel still made 1 billion dollars this year. These are all just numbers. Really overall AMD did not fair as well as intel did in a down market. Anyway....your also wrong about the intel chipsets out now being useless in 3 months. Intel is going to continue releasing 400mhz FSB versions of the northwood past 2.6ghz lasting atleast until the end of this year. And this is without an official announcement that the 533FSB versions wont work on current chipsets even though some websites claim certian motherboards will run 533FSB versions.
 

Degenerate

Platinum Member
Dec 17, 2000
2,271
0
0


<< AMD went from 700 mHz athlon to 1200 mhz Atlon during 1st 10 months of 2000 when Intel had a product the PIII that was a inferior but not badly inferior. >>

Just to clarify, AMD released the Athlon AFTER the P#, so you would expect it to be better.



<< Intel chips do cost more. They have better R&D and that costs money. Now since most of you will say Intel R&D sucks here is my proof. What company hit .25,.18, and .13 first. How about MMX, SSE, and SSE2? I could go back further with research. In my opinion Intel also has a higher quality chip. I can't unlock the multiplier with a hardware hack. Now I don't think the High end Intel chips are necessarily worth it. Intel has always set the high end prices pretty much the same. Intel has the best performing, most stable combination out there. If you doubt that what do most businesses buy? They don't just buy them because of Intel name. Intel has a rep of quality just like Honda or Toyota. If you look through these forums you will see more ATHLON issues then Intel issues. Most of these issues are chipset issues. >>



I totally agree here. It always see that INtel is the one who inovates and AMD rides the waves created by intel. There are by far more instances where intel releases a technology and then AMD waits to see the response before making a decision
 

imgod2u

Senior member
Sep 16, 2000
993
0
0
Asside from 3dNow! and the ideas of the upcomming Hammer design, I don't really see anything AMD uses that Intel hasn't already. Which is kinda the reason why I'm actually excited about Hammer. Although I do hope it will die in the 64-bit market, simply because I'd like to see x86 go. Time to let the past be the past and move to the future, EPIC.
 

SniperWulf

Golden Member
Dec 11, 1999
1,563
6
81
I don't think x86-64 will die. If anything EPIC will die first. I mean, how long has Itanic been in development? some 6, 7 years? The current design architechure just isn't practical. If it were, Intel would be pushing Itanics instead of P4s right now. If anything, I think we'll see intel counter with an x86-64 design of their own and THEN, EPIC will follow after that.
 

Damascus

Golden Member
Jul 15, 2001
1,434
0
0


<< With the insane speeds the chip is able to overcome any bottlenecks. >>



Call me crazy, but I'm going to have to disagree here. A faster CPU won't be able to
overcome hard drive bottlenecks, video cards, etc



<< I saw today that a major flaw exits in some/all (not sure) Athlon chips with Linux Kernel 2.4. >>



I saw that on Slashdot yesterday. Something to do with AGP video causing crashes
if you compiled the kernel for Intel chips (actually should that be surprising?). To
use the Intel term, errata was issued for this thing back in September 2000. I still
don't know what the problem is exactly... I have an AGP video card and I've been using
Linux 2.4.x kernel on my Athlon machine for more than half a year now and its
never crashed my box.
 

madmickey

Member
Nov 21, 2001
48
0
0
"<< AMD went from 700 mHz athlon to 1200 mhz Atlon during 1st 10 months of 2000 when Intel had a product the PIII that was a inferior but not badly inferior. >>

Just to clarify, AMD released the Athlon AFTER the P#, so you would expect it to be better. "

AMD's R&D budget is a small fraction of Intel. You would have expected Intel to still offer a better product especially because Intel products are higher price.

 

christoph83

Senior member
Mar 12, 2001
812
0
0
AMD's R&D budget is a small fraction of Intel. You would have expected Intel to still offer a better product especially because Intel products are higher price.

Who says their product isnt better, althought its definatly not the best. Majority of box makers continue to use intel. Just because another processor can beat it by 15 FPS or smaller percentages doesnt mean its better. Performance isnt the only thing a cpu has to offer. Some of intels cpus are a bit pricey ,but people continue to buy their processors despite the price.