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Why AMD Is Still In The Race
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Oct 16, 2006 08:35 AM
from the chariots-of-fire-theme-song-cued dept.
from the chariots-of-fire-theme-song-cued dept.
Steve Kerrison writes "Despite a woeful inability to provide some of its most loyal customers with stock, and a range of CPUs that, currently, loses out to Intel's Core 2 processors in both price and performance (and who would I be not to mention the diminishing AMD fanboy numbers?), AMD's still got enough tricks up its sleeve to retaliate against Intel in due course. HEXUS.net has an opinion piece on why AMD isn't up the creek. From the article: AMD has been showing off its 65nm wafers for a few months now, which means the Rev G core is on its way. Even if the DDR2 memory controller which arrived with the Rev F only had a small performance benefit, Rev G has a few more improvements than just the die shrink. The latter will enable higher clock speeds and a lower price, plus allow AMD to compete on an equal playing field to Intel, which has been manufacturing 65nm processors since the Pentium XE 955 at the end of 2005."
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Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Athlon 64 is bullet proof in the server market.
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Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
Athlon 64 is bullet proof? Core 2 has already trumped AMD's highest end Athlon 64 in benchmarks.
The GP was talking about reliability, your response addressed performance.
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Re:Sure... (Score:5, Informative)
There AMD is the clear winner. It has managed to bring IBM and possibly Sun onboard of the hypertransport bandwagon along with a list of smaller specialized players. Power7 is rumoured to be hypertransport (even pin compatible with future AMD CPUs). Sun is also looking at the tech. So are a few ASIC players. The comparable Intel effort is very late and is largely ignored by everyone. Nobody has said that they intend to use it at the last IDF and it looks like a dead duck anyway because it has too many hacks put in with the only purpose of compensating for design failures (no memory controller, etc). As a result porting an existing design to it is a nightmare.
So in about 2 years from now Intel will be sitting and banging its drums about how good are its CPUs on general purpose tasks without shipping them. At the same time smiling ASIC vendors will be shipping in quantity specialised parts that go into Opteron slots. It will start with the high end, go down to the enterprise and database load and even further all the way down to "physics" CPUs for gaming platforms, "security applications" and the like.
Intel may have won this years battle, but they are clearly losing the war through lack of long term thinking and loads of panic actions all around. Quite entertaining actually.
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Re:Sure... (Score:4, Interesting)
It wouldn't be so hard, theoretically, to have one proecessor load all the coee from disk into memory, and hand off execution of any code written for the other processor for it to execute. The big deal would be marking which bits of code are meant for which processor. At the ELF executable level, this is already done. So it'd be possible to have an OS and applications installed with each applicaiton compiled for the processor better suited to that application. On the downside, the optimization, installation, and adminsitration of that OS and its applications could be a logistical nightmare. On another downside, or maybe on the upside actually -- we'd have to have firmware that supported both kinds of chips and prepped the sytem for them to run side-by-side when it boots. Bye, bye PC BIOS. Hello OpenFirmware or some equivalent.
If one platform came together that always used one socket for Opteron/Athlon64 and one for Power7, and someone writing to that platform could count on those two chips both being installed when someone referred to that platform, it'd be somewhat like the hardware of the Amiga with its semi-standard bevy of specialized processors. A high-end workstation that has two dual-core or quad-core Opterons, one Power7, and one really killer graphics adapter using a 4-socket board would be sweet. Maybe one of the Opterons and two Power7 chips? A base system of at least one Opteron and at least one Power7 processor with room to grow on either front would make either option feasible. And yes, it'd run Linux. In fact, Linux would probably be the first OS that could be made to run on it.
After thinking about this, I really want one. Substitute UltraSparc anywhere you see Power7, and if I'd want that, too. The strengths of all three might be nice, but in the long run it's probably better if just two that are good at different things become a platform together. Now someone just has to figure out who can and would build it. I'm not a hardware design guru, so I can't do the nuts and bolts on it. IBM could. Sun probably could. AMD probably could given enough rescources. Surely AMD and one of the others together could get it done. I hope someone does. The secret would be to either have it be a platform spec, or to have enough boards like it shipped to kernel developers that it becomes a solid option that way.
Opteron + Power7 + ATI GPU = killer workstation, and hopefully there's enough market for that to get it made.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So what if intel have finally produced a chip that beats AMD in speed/price/watts, next year AMD will produce a chip that beats intel (or not).
You should look at the specs (and supplier reliability) before buying whatever suits your needs. Dont just sign up to one brand forever for fear of appearing to have made
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Incidentally, AMD won in the non-theoretical past because intel did sit still. The quickest road to the #2 spot, when you're in the #1 spot, is to act like you're in the #1 spot. You can't quit trying hard simply because you're ahead; other people try harder when they're not #1, and they will eat your lunch.
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't bought an Intel CPU since the Pentium75 back in 1995, have since bought K6-2, K6-3, Duron, AthlonXP and Athlon64, and will continue to buy AMD going forward (providing they don't suddenly become the dominant player) - OK, so I might loose out on a few FPS in some games, but then my GPU is probably the limiting factor in the majority of games I play - and I want to help ensure that competition continues.....
If I were a large PC seller (Dell, HP etc) I would be thinking the same thing....being able to trade off two companies against each other gets me a better price. If Intel were the only CPU provider you probably wouldn't be able to buy a PC for less than $1500.
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Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a little confused by your logic. It seems to me that always buying the products of the second largest supplier in a market does not really guarantee competition or at least not the benefits that should come from competition.
Surely you should be buying the products that give you the best value, no matter which supplier that may be. If we assume for the puposes of discussion (and not claiming any facts) that the current Intel range offers the best value (which may well be independent of market position) then by refusing to switch from AMD to Intel, you are artificially inflating the value of AMD products. This should in effect result in the type of market that would be more akin to a monopoly or cartel, rather than real competition.
Basically you could be shooting yourself in the foot, and you're definitely acting irrationally from an economics stand point (although maybe not from a marketing point of view).
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if only things would also work like that on th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, what really matters is that there are now two stable, reliable providers of X86 parts throughout pretty much all market segments that should be around for the forseeable future.
In the past, K6 days, AMD competed only in the desktop space, and survived only because their parts were very cheap and had good price/performance -- maybe not the best, but good price/perf wit
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing in my comment implies that I believe that the president is elected via popular vote in this country.
This has really gotten bad lately, people are constantly responding to things I didn't fucking say and then when I complain about it I tend to get modded down for something. I think it's reasonable for me to be angry with people who don't care enough to read my comment before replying to it.
This is precisely the opposite of what happened. Florida was attempting to perform a recount - the very fucking definition, in this case, of "settle this internally and come back with your answer." The recount was in fact already underway before the SCOTUS said anything about it. Then, while they were attempting to figure out who won, the recount was terminated.
No, no it wasn't. The Jist of it is that the results said Bush won, and a single supreme court justice took unilateral action to halt the recount because they wanted Bush to win. But, you can go on believing any kind of bullshit you like, whether it's true or not. If you had bothered to actually read and watch analyses of what precisely happened down there in Florida, you would know that the recount was stopped for one reason, and one reason alone: they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that a recount would name Al Gore the president of the US.
And, mind you, within this process nearly no military absentee ballots were counted... As usual.
This isn't a democracy; it's not even really a republic. It's a kleptocracy, in which those who are most adept at theft rise to the top, because it's a system that exists only to perpetuate graft.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We should all know by now that it isn't necessarily technical prowess that leads to market dominance. If Intel is shown to be a monopoly in this case, it would mean that AMD was somehow prevented (illegally) from competing in the marketplace.
Consider this: You and your friend Timmy are trying out for the 7th-grade basketball team. You can ei
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They've got the licensing on ZRAM, which I think is by itself enough to build a better processor.
Oddly enough, though, I really wish ARM would beat out a high-frequency chip (something in the multi-GHz range). For some reason, my Pocket PC with a measley 624MHz processor can run Playstation One games faster and more reliably than my 933 MHz Dell; I don't know how that counts as a benchmark, but I've seen similar things happen with ARMs; pound for pound, they always seem to be a faster chipse
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Bull. Shit.
Your attempt to tell me what does or does not make me a hypocrite is not assisted by y
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. That is precisely what you have done. This is why it is called a straw man, and why saying it ain't so doesn't make it not so.
Let us look at what I literally said:
Read what I literally said: I said that I am willing to sacrifice a little money in order to get a more ethical product.
Now, tell me where I said that I exhaustively research every aspect of every company, and I'll give you a dollar.
Your assertion is that I must do more, in fact, than I do. This is a ridiculous assertion. Simply being willing to change your purchasing habits when you become aware of wrongdoing is more than sufficient support for the statement which I actually made. You were trying to change my statement into one I did not make, and refute that - again, the very definition of a straw man argument is one in which you are attacking some point not actually maintained by your conversational opponent.
Allow me to, once again, quote your comment (which quotes mine) in a more complete fashion:
Now, if we do a little work with the dictionary, we can see that Willing to pay a little more is not equal to an absolute requirement to perform extensive research. I know this this may be complicated for you, which is why you have your whiny little complaint at the end of your comment about how I'm making supposed Ad Hominem attacks - but what I was attacking when I went after your prior comment was your apparent inability to comprehend English, which I still maintain is the cause of the problem. I am not making unfounded or irrelevant personal attacks - they are both founded (you do not know what a straw man is; you do not know what "willing" means) and relevant (this conversation is in fact about your inability to make a rational attack upon my position without resorting to the utilization of a straw man.)
Those readers who are still following this crapfest note that you are continuing your attack on the straw man here in point 2. In point 1, why would I say 'the chip industry' when I meant all industry? See, i
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Chipsets.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then the finger pointing starts, and we're stuck in the middle. I'm upgrading for the first time in 3 years, hopefully I can wait all this mess out. It'll be an AMD chip though. If I had to pick, I'd go with whatever platform Nvidia supports in the future. Their commitment to driver quality deserves to be rewarded and won my loyalty - and interestingly enough, I have never purchased another ATI product after their little opengl driver fiasco.
Why doesn't AMD have a chipset, anyway?
Re:Chipsets.. (Score:4, Interesting)
As for NVIDIA driver quality, I'd have to disagree. I think ATI is currently better off on the driver front. Look at vista. NVIDIA's drivers only work for 2d and business applications. I can't even run ET or WoW. Day of Defeat Source runs at 30fps with the stock driver and is unplayable with the latest beta driver. ATI users are reporting working games online. The ATI All in wonder series still has software issues, but the basic video card driver works fine. I think NVIDIA doesn't know what to do right now. Many ATI motherboard chipsets were taken off the roadmap as were new card releases. Its possible ATI will play the NVIDIA game and not sell any cards themselves anymore. Its possible ATI will be exclusive to AMD systems. Its hard to say.
My personal preference has always been for ATI video cards and intel chipsets. Intel has slow chipsets, but they are stable. For AMD systems, I always buy nforce chipsets.
I just built a new system last weekend with an Intel DP965LT motherboard, Pentium D 805 (yes its hot but i had a small budget), and an NVIDIA Geforce 7300 GS PCIe. My old system was a Dell Precision 650 dual 2.0ghz Xeon with an ATI AIW 9600xt. So far, my new system is much faster with disk io and cpu bound tasks. (expected with sata and faster processor) The video framerate is poor with the NVIDIA card. I expected to do about the same (60fps in ET and 30-45fps WoW). I did buy a budget card, but I find it interesting the latest generation can't even keep up with ATI's 9000 series. With ATI gaining AMD's fabrication facilities, this could be a final blow to NVIDIA. I bought the NVIDIA card because there are FreeBSD/MidnightBSD drivers.
On a side note, anyone looking at that intel motherboard should google it first. There are some serious bios issues intel is working on and its very picky about memory chips.
I was under the impression AMD and NVIDIA collaborated on the first nforce chipset.
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Re:Chipsets.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Protip: The 9600XT was an upper midrange card in its day. The 7300GS was *never* meant to be more than a minimum-cost budget solution. ATI's current budget solutions are more or less comparable to a 9600, as well. Really, you're choosing a poor psuedo-comparison to prefer one brand over another.
The last several years, NVidia's offered a better price-to-performance ratio in the midrange of the market and been very competitive in the upper range. Compare a 6600GT to the X700 Pro that was its direct competition in terms of both performance and cost. With product offerings like that, NVidia won't be going away for a long time.
They have on every NForce chipset. AMD's already very much gone out of their way to say that that won't be changing because of the ATI buyout.
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Numbers are everything. (Score:3, Informative)
A GeForce 7300 GS has 6.5GB/s of memory bandwidth onboard. That is your main bottle neck on modern cards. My GeForce 6800, which has 12 hungry pipelines, has 22.3GB/s of bandwidth onboard. The only time I run into issues with it is when I run out of RAM onboard for textures (forcing me down to AGP's much slower speed), or when rendering complex scenes (the GF 7 series executes some shaders
Re:Chipsets.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know why AMD chose ATI outside of being cheaper. Nvidia practically saved AMD with NForce, especially in the corporate sector, where most companies wouldn't touch AMD with a ten foot pole because of os stability problems the other chipsets would cause. I don't think ATI is even close to making a chipset remotely competitive to Nforce Stability wise. At least their current graphic drivers don't suck as bad as they did in 99.
I remember having my K7N420 and nothing could compare to it in stability wise during it's day. it blew my older KT7A completely away when it came to uptime, in fact it's still is used as my secondary today. It needed a capacitor replacement at one point but MSI took care of that out of warranty a few months ago. Both My Shuttle sn41g2's have been rock solid as well.
If I had to make an honest guess what is keeping the AMD fanboys away, it's the sockets. I know it's my big reason. One thing I could trust about AMD is that they would support a socket until the cows come home. Look at Socket A, or even Socket 7 for example. the only time before AMD64 that they stopped supporting a socket prematurely was when they did Slot-A. and they definitely made up that mistake with Socket A.
In the Socket A Athlon Period, Intel had socket 370, 423, 478 and LGA 755. Now with AMD64, you got 740, 939, 940, AM2, and the upcoming 1207 pin socket, with talks about yet another socket revision for AM2. in the AMD64 period, Intel was phasing out 478 and was moving towards 755, and hasn't changed since.
When I used to upgrade my Athlon systems, I would start motherboard first, then processor a few months later. you could do this with no problem outside of going PC133 to DDR, now, the next architecture could be completely pin incompatible with what you buy today, that coupled with shifting RAM technologies make it a very hard sell to go AMD outside of opteron.
Hopefully, 4x4 will change this, but time will tell.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Paired with an Athlon 1.4, and filled with the Gainward Geforce2 (and then 3) as well as miscellanneous stuff, it was the most reliable computer I've ever had. As a matter of fact, it's still humming with no issues whatsoever in my ex-gf's machine.
P.S. Actually gotta give credit where it's due, it's tied with my old P3 733 on a Tyan board for reliability. That one is still powering my parents
you mean (Score:5, Funny)
One Generation (Score:5, Insightful)
ebb and tide. (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems they still have enough customers (Score:4, Interesting)
Otherwise, yes, Core 2 Duo is superior at the moment. I wonder if this will last when AMD goes to 65 nm.
Re:It seems they still have enough customers (Score:4, Interesting)
True. But very frustrating as a VAR. To paraphrase Barabara Mandrell, we were AMD when AMD wasn't cool. We used to take a beating from customers who were Intel brainwashed, and now, now that AMD has begun to enter the mainstream consciousness, I can't get them.
Ingram Micro is the largest distributor, and they are almost always out of stock on nearly every AMD processor. So, I either have to buy them retail or use Intel.
I'm glad for AMD, but sad for me (sorry about the cheesy rhyme).
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Long enough, and demand vanishes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes but buyers can only wait so long, and if enough buyers are forced to go elsewhere then the demand will vanish too.
Having something in demand is desirable but in the long term you have to eventually meet demand for a majority of customers or perish.
I don't think AMD is anywhere near perishing of course, but the supply of these chips seems tight enough that it's not a healthy level of demand at the moment.
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Need to up the ante (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if AMD goes back to their old copy-Intel ways, the value they have brought to the average is immeasurable. Intel would still be stuck on their old single core processor, instead of making plans for 80 core chips that top out at 1 TeraFlop in 5 years. AMD pushed them to get there. AMD needs to focus on creating something far better, and they need to do so quickly
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
All you can (somewhat) rely on in this business are the things that are already close to rollout. For instance, I'm pretty sure that AMD will get their quad-core released in 2007, Intel maybe sooner. Anything beyond that is speculation.
Give Them Time to React (Score:5, Interesting)
And please include a 'value' analysis in your report on 'ass mastering' because the lower range Athlon 64's are much closer to my price range [newegg.com] than the lowest priced Conroe [newegg.com]. You know, there's a vast market out there for people who just want CPUs that run a word processor and connect them to the internet. Vast.
No way. Intel made a comeback? You mean that whenever one side comes out with a newer chip, they are beating the other side? This completely blows my mind. Completely.
Look, give AMD time to react. I don't think many people have considered them out of the running even for a second. And don't forget about the AMD/IBM alliance [edn.com]. IBM's research (and that is a lot of $$$ & research) backs AMD.
I find your opinion article to be largely unecessary and fear mongering -- who said AMD was in trouble in the first place?
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Iram (Score:3, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRAM [wikipedia.org]
Performance/price (Score:5, Informative)
Last I heard they regained the lead in performance/price in the low-end segment with their latest price cuts.
It might not be where the glory is, but it certainly is where the (OEM) money is.
Editor? Editor? Anyone? Hello?! (Score:5, Funny)
CPU is only 1/3rd of the equation. (Score:5, Interesting)
A. mid-range Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB DDR2 RAM, and a decent motherboard
B. mid-range AMD Athlon X64, 1GB DDR RAM, and a decent motherboard
Odds are very good that you will save $50+ going with AMD. That may not seem like much, but if you skimp just a little across a whole system you can save $200+. If you want to go SLI then it gets a little trickier. I have had bad experiences with ATI, so I go with nVidia. There are VERY FEW Intel nVidia SLI boards (in fact, maybe like 5 at the max), so there is not much choice there. There are a lot of ATI SLI boards, though. AMD has nothing but nVidia SLI, so there is a large range of options. Also, the increased bandwidth of DDR2 vs DDR doesn't get you any performance boost at all right now; maybe it will in the future. I would have loved to go with Core 2 Duo, but I felt that AMD's platform just had more options.
Self-adjusting? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, that requires AMD to stay in business...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm glad Intel has start pushing ahead again. Competition keeps the fire lit under their butts and is good for the consumer.
Flamebait Submission (Score:5, Informative)
No, AMD have a range of CPUs that lose in terms of performance only, however AMD's prices have been adjusted so they aren't losing in terms of performance/price. Barely, admittedly.
And in terms of price only, AMD are winning there. The cheapest Core 2 Duo, the E6300, is $180. The X2 3800+ is $150. Beneath that are tonnes of single core Athlon 64s and Semprons that make Intel's cheap P4 offerings look lame. If you are spending under $150 on the CPU on your system, then AMD is your best choice still. That probably accounts for the vast majority of computer sales.
Intel win out when it comes to the high end, because AMD don't have a competitor there. Of course, if you like buying >$500 CPUs then I'm very happy for you, and you will enjoy the vast performance of an E6800 and know it beats everything else out there. Personally I think it is a poor investment to buy cutting edge.
Kentsfield vs. 4x4 will be six of one, half a dozen of the other. We'll find out halfway through November.
It's amusing how people think that AMD are going to die because for a year Intel finally will have a better product. For these people AMD has been dying for years and years, yet AMD has only got better and stronger, in markets that matter such as servers. AMD have a superior platform, and that matters here. Who cares about a slightly faster FPU when you can plug in a SIMD co-processor that is 10 - 100x faster? The future? No, they're already available.
65 nm is key (Score:3, Insightful)
Just the decrease in size alone will give AMD's processors a boost, and might well propell them past Intel again; at least from what I've seen, the FX (90 nm) already consumes less than the Core 2 Duo (65 nm) in power save mode, whereas the advantage that the Core 2 Duo has in performance mode is nothing that a die shrink wouldn't overcome.
And that's at the high end. At the low end, I see Intel still selling 32-bit CPUs, where AMD's offerings are 64-bit enabled. I recently helped somebody pick a laptop, and I noticed the biggest differences between Intel-based and AMD-based systems in the applicable price range were slightly better game performance for Intel and 64-bit support for AMD. I recommended AMD, because (1) the laptop wasn't for gaming anyway, and (2) I expect AMD64 (especially the extra registers that come with it) to eventually offer better performance; and at least you can run 64-bit software on it. These benefits aren't so obvious now, but I expect they will be.
High-end is not everything (Score:4, Interesting)
#1 To create the fastest product. It makes people talk about it and therefore a lot of people end up buying that particular product, just lower-end.
#2 Media exposure. It's simple and we all know it works, but it's also expensive.
Some of you may disagree about #1, but think about it for a second. A majority of all reviews online and offline first and foremost cover the high-end products even though only a few of us can afford it. This is why the market offers products like Crossfire, SLI, FX and Extreme.
You can't buy processors in a vacuum (Score:5, Interesting)
The last Intel processor I had was a Celeron 700, years ago. I've been an AMD man for a while now. I was considering advocating, if you will, the new Intel chips until I got motherboard sticker shock.
In then end, I'd go with an AM2 motherboard and whatever processor you can afford. You're still going to need DDR2 ram, but AM2 looks to have some staying power and it accomidates the whole gambit of processor options.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
http://store.irobot.com/family/index.jsp?category
Good 'ol Yogi Berra (Score:3, Funny)
Who's a Fanboy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Show me the Money (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's take Dell for example - one of AMD's big wins of the last year, and the one everyone is saying looks stupid now Intel is back. As a business customer, you can either buy the Dimension E521 for £499 + VAT (with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+), or the E520 for £50 more (with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6300). They're both dual-core, and the performance difference is essentially irrelevant to a business customer. But if you're buying 100 of them, you'd save £5,000 by going for the E521. That's a fairly easy decision for a financial director to make.
It's not always about the power, but rather the sock to the wallet, and when finances factor into decisions, a cheaper previous generation proc for a competitor will always win out over the current generation of the leading vendor. I would tend to agree with this assessment. Business decisions are most often made based on cost, not performance, and in IT, it seems more the case that long term consequences are not the predominant factor considered prior to making final decisions. it's always about the money...
Don't Laugh, Intel helped create the shortage (Score:5, Insightful)
Here are the causes
1. By hyping Core 2 so early, it eroded confidence in Netburst, now no one wants a P4. (so the choice is Core 2 or Athlon x2)
2. Intel cannot produce enough Conroe's. So those who cannot get Core 2 look at Athlons.
3. AMD had to cut prices in half to match Core 2 (because Intel actually priced Core 2 a little too cheap*) it created more demand than AMD could handle until 65nm and all the Chartered product comes into the channel.
4. Intel started kissing up to Apple instead of Dell, forcing Dell into the AMD camp.
Yes, maybe AMD should have turned Dell away, but the real truth is that there is a shortage of everything but the netburst chips! Because Intel made/makes so many P4's the market will be this way for a few more months.
* if Intel had priced Core 2 duo's 25% higher, it would have helped them clear out the netburst chips. It seems they were more interesed in stopping AMD than they were in making a profit.