AMD Undercuts Intel With Six-Core Phenom IIs 361
EconolineCrush writes "As Slashdot readers are no doubt aware, Intel's latest 'Gulftown' Core i7-980X is an absolute beast of a CPU. But its six cores don't come cheap; the 980X sells for over a grand, which is more than it would cost to build an entire system based on one of AMD's new six-core CPUs. The Phenom II X6 line starts at just $200 and includes a new Turbo capability that can opportunistically raise the clock speed of up to three cores when the others are idle. Although not as fast as the 980X, the new X6s are quick enough to offer compelling value versus even like-priced Intel CPUs. And the kicker: the X6s will work in a good number of older Socket AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with only a BIOS update."
Holy crap this is old. (Score:3, Informative)
In short this posting is old and not very accurate. So doubly pointless
Serioulsy ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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So where's that 8P Intel PC? Granted, it's less of an issue now that there are 6 core CPUs out there, but let's not forget that Intel still can't effectively put one together.
Let's look at that Top 500 [top500.org] list. The top 2 are AMD systems, and that the 3 Intel systems are in the bottom 5.
If I want to browse the web and not heat my house at the same time, AMD really does offer the better chip, and cheaper by far too.
If I want to play that FPS and have an extra frame or two, then the Intel chip is a winner. If I w
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Warning! Car analogy comming up.
Very few things even most on /. would utilize a computer for will only see an Intel advantage maybe 1% of the time.
After all - does using an AMD or Intel chip make any difference rendering /.?
My cars spends some 23 hours a day going 0mph. Yet I'm sure glad it can go over a 100mph when I need it.
Your car analogy is lousy, because my 2000 Toyota Yaris can and does sometimes go 160km/h, and in relative terms it cost me much less than my CPU. If I was buying a car comparable to my CPU, I would be driving an SUV twice the size. Hm, on the other hand, thanks for that analogy, it put things into perspective. Maybe next time I shop for CPUs it will save me some money :)
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The key is the probability of a Toyota Yaris exploding while traveling at 100 mph? Wait, what were we talking about?
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Your car analogy is faulty. Let's say you have two cars; an Intel and an AMD. The Intel car cost 50% more and has 25% poorer gas milage. Also it's air conditioner doesn't work as well. It can, however, go 10% faster. Let's say the max speed of the AMD car is 150mph, but the Intel car can hit 165mph. Either speed is well above the speed limit, but it is undoubtedly true that the Intel car is faster.
Which car is better? Unless you have a really good reason to need to go 165mph, I'd rather have the AMD
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Re:Holy crap this is old. (Score:4, Interesting)
Although not as fast as the 980X, the the new X6s are quick enough to offer compelling value versus even like-priced Intel CPUs. And the kicker: the X6s will work in a good number of older Socket AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with only a BIOS update.
So doubly pointless
Indeed as this is the "the" new X6s.
I still like the underdog and hope they do well. The latest and greatest is often overkill.
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Unfortunately for AMD there is little money in being the underdog of PC processors. Intels better process technology and income from high end chips like the 6-core i7* means they can set prices on the low-midrange stuff at a level that is comfortable enough for them while being extremely painful for AMD.
*Which unlike most extreme edition chips (which tend to cost a shitload of extra money for a marginal improvement over thier regular counterparts) doesn't seem that bad a deal to me. Afaict it will get you t
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If I R'd TFS correctly, by about $800 dollars. But you mean purely based on dick-swinging numbers I assume. :-P
See, for a lot of people (ie. non gamers and people not doing CPU intensive stuff) being CPU bound is rarely something they'll encounter. Multiple cores have the benefit of making the operating system more responsive since a busy app doesn't make the whole system crawl. My current Quad cor
I need a new computer (Score:2, Informative)
all these cores and benchmarks...
i still run computer with one core and no modern graphics card
Re:I need a new computer (Score:4, Insightful)
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Recently, I bu
The user ? Or the viruses ? (Score:4, Funny)
Even if you throw in multi-media, including voip and video, I doubt your average user will be able to use all that computing power
...but once you thow into the mix all the dozens of viruses, trojans, spywares and phising systems which the clueless user has collected by clicking open every single e-mail attachment, suddenly you realise that Average Joe's computer has even problems keeping up with simply sitting idle (and spitting tons of SPAM, coordinating DDNS attacks, etc) let alone have enough processing power to run even a browsing session in addition to the rest.
Re:I need a new computer (Score:5, Insightful)
It gives us VM's - lots and lots of VM's. I can reproduce a production app environment entirely on one quiet little box, including the load-balancer, firewall and name servers. It used to take a half a rack of loud, expensive servers all with disks and other stuff that breaks and needs monitoring and replacing. I can't wait for the 8-core chips to become affordable.
Re:I need a new computer (Score:5, Funny)
So why on earth are you even bothering to comment on this article? You clearly have no need for a top of the line system. Good for you! You're just like my mom! Does it make you feel superior to brag about your single core? Are you the computer ascetic of our generation?
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Not *all* posts here on Slashdot are sarcastic, though I can see why you'd get confused.
Indeed. Some are ironic, right? right? ;)
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There is no such thing as PIRACY... (Score:2)
In Zhongguo.
FCE Ultra is FOSS btw.
Re:I need a new computer (Score:4, Insightful)
watching HD porn of course!
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making it WAY more than good enough
I believe we programmers have the magic to make today's 32nm dual core to function like your old processor.
re AMD (Score:5, Interesting)
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Intel's kind of funny like that.
LGA775 was kicking around for like, 5 years before LGA1156, but, Socket 478 was around for about 3 years before *that*.
of course, there's also Socket 7, who can forget those days?
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Not only that, but all that stuff off die is quite frankly, slower.
Although I wish they'd go back to some sort of riser so we can not worry about destroying the motherboard when installing fans onto Core series processors.
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I meant to say was that they seem to do what AMD did, which was float between like, 2 or 3 CPU socket types then settle on one(for the consumer level at least. If you're buying octo-core Xeons you're probably not building it yourself) for a good half decade.
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I don't really care for AMD at all (Score:2)
And yet I still hope they do well. Competition is good for everyone. The better AMD's offerings, the better Intel's response has to be if they wish to compete.
You can really see that back in the Athlon era. Suddenly AMD launched to the top performance wise, they had a chip that was powerful and relatively cheap compared to the P3. What happened? Intel cut prices, but also released a huge speed bump. Whereas previously it was in the realm of 600MHz the P3s topped out at, they started shipping 933MHZ P3s in r
Re:I don't really care for AMD at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel started doing a bit more than "cut prices, but also released a huge speed bump" (BTW, remember P3 Coppermine 1.13GHz? ;p ), as shown by recent record-breaking fine from the EU and settlement with AMD (both almost $3 billion total? Supposedly Intel cheated the market for at least that much...imagine what AMD could've done with R&D and fabs if they would have the funds which were otherwise illegally funelled to Intel). The company for which you presumably do care about doesn't really share your enthusiasm for competition...the way they fought, it kept costs higher and quality lower on AMD side.
BTW, "Ok but they were still plenty good chips, they performed well enough for what most people used" in regards to P4 wasn't quite the case with first versions, which were much more expensive and slower than P3s they replaced. Plus lots of unsuspecting people of "CPU must be from Intel" type got Willamette Celerons, which were very castrated, cache-starved (as far as Netburst was concerned)...making them very slow, and a horrible deal.
Cores vs performance (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cores vs performance (Score:5, Insightful)
Try transcoding some video one time kiddo.
Hell if I could get 24 atoms in one socket that would be fantastic for me.
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Your GPU method only supports certain video types, this method supports far more.
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Re:Transcoding is not common (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand Youtube is filled with people doing HD-video, so I guess it's not such a small fraction of the users anymore, it's very close to mainstream actually.
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So do you think it's only the occasional cinematographer or pirate who uses software based on FFmpeg and X.264
AMD and Slashdot are located in the United States. In the United States, the encoding process that x264 uses is subject to royalty-bearing patents, and royalty-bearing patent licenses are incompatible with the copyright licenses for FFmpeg and x264. So anyone using FFmpeg and x264 is a pirate, except possibly in one or two corner cases that someone is likely to chime in to clarify.
to transcode vids for HTPC or iPod?
Before this discussion succumbs to Layne's Law [c2.com], let us clarify something: Are we referring to major-label video or homemade vide
Depends what you do. (Score:2, Informative)
I have four cores. I run an IDE and an AppServer at all times, which uses up at least two cores. Then there is my bit-torrent app and...
Seems like you can easily use all those cores.
Apps that sleep (Score:2)
I have four cores. I run an IDE and an AppServer at all times, which uses up at least two cores.
The app server uses a core only when someone is using the app. And what does the IDE do for you between keystrokes?
Then there is my bit-torrent app
Network bound, probably sleeping much of the time. Or what am I missing?
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I've noticed some IDEs are annoyingly more CPU hogging than a lot of other applications I run. Code::Blocks, for example, seems to start eating up CPU usage after being kept open with not even a very large amount of files open. It gets worse with more files open, but I've seen it happen with relatively small projects. I've seen the same with other IDEs, also--I've just been using Code::Blocks with one project I've got going lately, so it's most fresh in my mind. I'm not quite sure what it's doing, but some
Re:Apps that sleep (Score:4, Insightful)
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Stop using Azureus for your bit torrent client, and downloading a file will no longer require a fill core with of CPU time.
Or, if you are using a sane torrent client, what the hell kind of internet connection are you using that you are still CPU bound on a file transfer?!?!
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This was common wisdom 5 years ago. Nowadays, there's a shitload of CPU-intensive applications making good use of additional cores. And the trend is towards more and more such applications. This, in turn, means that the architecture that allows for easier multi-core CPUs will win out.
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Re:Cores vs performance (Score:4, Insightful)
Your real-world usage is what exactly? Playing badly designed games?
I want to play badly designed games *while* I am compiling, listening to some music and possibly leaving my browser on with some badly written JavaScript running. I also want my CPU not to melt.
You would need at least a 5GHz CPU to match a current dual-core CPU in this area. The ongoing trend is to have more and more things running and getting updated in real time. An it has been for a long time.
Files getting indexed, illegal files getting downloaded, stupid GUIs getting rendered, music getting played, Interpreted languages getting JIT-compiled ...
Gamers are still stuck in the microcomputer era. The real world isn't. And there isn't really a choice in the first place, the choice is more cores and a better experience or getting stuck at XGHz and having to pipe liquid Hydrogen into your home.
I think we will see more CPUs with more cores and likely more storage units to avoid resource starvation. More speed is just not possible.
Re:Cores vs performance - VMware (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cores vs performance - VMware (Score:4, Informative)
Don't doubt for one minute that Intel gets that too.
That's why intel disables their VT instructions on certain CPU's
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Now it's gone to the other extreme, you've said multiple cores are essentially useless for the avera
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Yeah, if you are compiling your own software you can get things to work really fast with 6 cores
Compiling doesn't provide a multithreading advantage. You have to be writing your own software, too.
but how many applications really take advantage of multiple cores?
Practically all complex games are multithreaded today. Essentially all multimedia applications are multithreaded. Or in other words, any application which needs to be specially coded to take advantage of multiple cores probably is already.
A single fast core can outperform a few slow cores in general usage
Only for legacy or other non-threaded applications. Both groups are dwindling. In addition most of the heaviest lifters have been multithreaded for a very long time, i.e. Ph
Re:Cores vs performance (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost all those processes spend almost all their time idle or blocking on something, though, not contending for a core.
Re:Cores vs performance (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if your load average is always less than 0.10 your computer is likely overpowered.
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Indeed, which is why things like netbooks have gotten popular: modern computers are overpowered for most normal end-user applications.
Re:Cores vs performance (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft has a cunning plan to deal with that ...
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If that prints more than a couple of processes in a running state, not sleeping waiting for I/O, you have quite an unusual workload.
Value for money vs FanboiGasms (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/best-gaming-cpu,review-31857.html [tomshardware.co.uk]
It seems Intel doesn't get even a "honorable mention" until page 3. At $120 price point, Core i3 gets a look in. Oh, they also don't recommend anything above about $160 to quote Tom's: "Best gaming CPU for $190: None".
To add further insult, money saved from AMD motherboards being cheaper (in particular SLI/xfire AMD boards are a good whack cheaper) will let you put money towards more storage, a SSD or a step up in CPU speed.
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Plus the integrated GFX on most AMD boards is a bit more sensible than Intel one, meaning separate card can be more often ignored (or at the least the initial configuration not including it, and the machine will be still sensibly nice)
(yes, there's integrated Nvidia - not with latest Intel arch though; previously not so readily available...and for some reason motherboards for Intel with Nv GFX were consistently more expensive than for AMP CPUs with Nv GFX, at least where I am)
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I am running an M4A78T-E with ATI HD 3300 integrated graphics. It does surprisingly well. I have not doled out any money for new high end games for a while, but it easily handles games that brought my previous graphics card to its knees (it was top of the line in 04). I am eventually going to get a modern graphics card so I can play around with OpenCL, but I really have not felt a pressing need for it with my gaming habits.
Re:Value for money vs FanboiGasms (Score:5, Informative)
It seems Intel doesn't get even a "honorable mention" until page 3. At $120 price point, Core i3 gets a look in. Oh, they also don't recommend anything above about $160 to quote Tom's: "Best gaming CPU for $190: None
and then... you stopped reading.
Best gaming CPU for $200:
Core i5-750
The new Core i5 brings top-of-the-line Nehalem-class performance at a $200 price point. We recently awarded it our Recommended Buy honor after seeing it stand up to more expensive CPUs in games and other demanding apps.
They don't recommend spending more than $200, though.
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There's another reason that I would consider Intel: in every benchmark/testing suite that I've seen, it almost always has lower power consumed. It probably amounts to little cost in the short run, but idle power draw actually is significant over long scales (roughly $1 for each watt over the course of a year of on-time). So after say a year of use, you can save about $15 choosing a i3 instead of an Athlon X4. It could be significant, especially if you plan on using your machine for a long time or with a lot
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Re:Value for money vs FanboiGasms (Score:5, Informative)
Your anecdotal stories are really only relevant to you. You'd be better off on /. presenting some sort of statistical evidence for your claim otherwise it's simply FUD and readers are correct to dismiss it as such. We're all here for conversation so if you have a real point bring it.
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Not my experience. All AMD based mobos and processors I purchased in the last 10 years have lasted many years past their useful life. I'd buy AMD again with confidence.
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Nobody expects you to .... (Score:2)
abuse an AMD processor like overclocking.
I have built 8 machines since the socket 7 era and not a single problem come through. My K6-2 333 can still run as of today (w/ Win98 of course).
ECC Support (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ECC Support (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, but do you really need ECC RAM on a home machine?
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:ECC Support (Score:4, Informative)
To get ECC support from Intel, you need to buy a Xeon, at which point they charge you an extra $800-$1000 for the gates to be enabled.
Boy, when you make up numbers, you really reach deep into your ass, don't you?
Core i7-920 [newegg.com] for $280 and the same-socket, indentical spec Xeon W3520 [newegg.com] for $310.
The only issue might be that you need a motherboard that supports ECC, but $270 for this one [newegg.com] isn't a lot more than the $200 or so you'd pay for a non-server board with equivalent build quality. Unless things have changed drastically since the last time I looked at AMD motherboards, not all of them support ECC, either.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
BIOS Update.... (Score:2)
Does anyone think for a minute they will update the BIOS on a board when they can sell you a new one?
Re:BIOS Update.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes. This is far from the first time a new CPU has been supported on older boards by updating BIOS.
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ASUS/AMD certainly does, they have the most friendly system to upgrade your BIOS, just burn a firmware image on an empty CD, restart and let the computer startup from that cd and all goes automatically.
Don't forget to make a backup of your current bios and burn that on a separate CD.
AMD (Score:5, Funny)
love to see one of those.... (Score:2)
older Socket AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with only a BIOS update.
Isn't that an oxymoron?!? A BIOS update on and older AM2+ mobo?
Seth
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Dunno but you are considered a normal moron if you don't.
I have been waiting for this day! (Score:2, Funny)
includes a new Turbo capability that can opportunistically raise the clock speed
Does this mean I can get my turbo button back on my computer?
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And the 7 segment clock speed display!
But wait, there's more!!! (Score:2)
If you act now, we'll throw in this brand new nose hair trimmer for FREE!!!! Get rid of those pesky nose hairs with our patented root-ripper design that leaves your nose feeling clean for months. Also, if you order within 24 hours we'll include a 29 foot garden hose!
Certain restrictions apply. $19.95 shipping & handling, delivery within continental US and Canada only. ...I love AMD, but COME ON man. Make it a LITTLE less obvious.
Also has nice overclocking prospects (Score:2)
Re:Also has nice overclocking prospects (Score:4, Insightful)
Anandtech managed to get a stable 4.0 GHz overclock [anandtech.com] with air cooling. It makes an already great deal all that much better in my opinion.
How is a $299 6 core/6 thread chip [microcenter.com] at 4GHz a better deal than a $199 4 core/8 thread chip [microcenter.com] that can also be overclocked on air to the same speed, and benchmarks far faster at that point?
Cores is the new MHz (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, any computer organization text will inform you that as the number of cores increase - scheduling amongst those cores becomes an exponentially costly issue in itself. This scheduling/load balancing of course has to be ultra low latency to maintain a reasonable throughput.
Not to mention the fact, that on software side managing threading and choosing instructions to parallelize is a big headache. Many decent programmers cannot get it right so that in itself defeats the presence of different cores.
Secondly - unless you are continuously doing protein folding, calculating eigen values of huge matrices, or are acting as a node for traffic in your part of the world -- most people's processor cores will spend a majority of their time idling or spin-lock. Is it any surprise then that both Intel and AMD are advertising technologies to power down three cores, boosting the power for the other three?? Simply because most end-users will rarely utilize all six of their cores simultaneously. Yes, that is even true no matter if you are doing heavy video transcoding or running multiple servers, and playing games simultaneously - you will still leave your cores without any task simply because unless the bandwidth of the memory bus catches up, your cores will be waiting for data to process.
This is why Intel's i-series architecture is superior to AMDs and likely the fact their processors cost more, because they have addressed the memory bus issue.
You have to realize your computer acts like a chain and it is only as fast as its weakest link.
I have been advising people that any new dual or quad processor will suffice - they should instead spend that extra money on buying a better motherboard, speedier RAM, and of course high-speed HDD.
Trust me when I say that just that approach above will yield systems that are actually much faster than coupling an i7/Mega-core behemoth with an old hard-disk and crappy RAM.
It is an altogether different matter that computers are already so speedy that most users cannot for the love of God discern between the speeds of any recent dual-core and a top-of-the-line processor - and it is not their fault -- the advantages now we are talking about are incremental. The power is present but cannot be harnessed. So any gloating is moot.
Re:Cores is the new MHz (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't know about average joes, but for work, a quad core drops compile jobs from 17 mins to 3.
For home use, I usually pull 40-80% load on 4 cores, so I would say I get good use out it.
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What part of that 14 minutes improvement -- is actually the result of a speedy RAM, improvements to the processor-memory bus interface? If we strip it down to its bare, I have a high confidence that the cores added only a fraction of improvement.
Totally off base. First thing I tried when I got a new quad core dev box at work was to try the standard build with 1, 2, 3, and 4 cores. Imagine my total lack of surprise when the 2 core build ran in about half the time, the 3 core build in about a third the time
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Four is a relative large number though.
The BIG News that the SOCKET stays the same AM3 (Score:2)
Thank you AMD for not playing socket-a-paloozo like Intel!
Oh, BTW, my 3.2Ghz AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition runs stable at 3.8Ghz for $160.
for less than $1000,why not get a 12-core Opteron? (Score:5, Interesting)
For less than the price of Intel's top desktop chip, you can get an uber-1337 AMD Opteron with 12-cores. Beat that, Intel...
Prices start at $750.
Cores and AMD (Score:3, Interesting)
To me the new AMD six core is a little bit of "me too!" from AMD. Not that there won't be people who won't find practical uses, and no buying one to OC it so that you can get a higher folding score does not count imo, for them but it's still as many have pointed out hard to find real world scenarios where people need that type of a CPU on their desktop.
AMD not only has to compete with Intel on the technology front but marketing as well. And again I don't want to take anything away from AMD and the idea behind pushing the envelope on new tech. But when it comes to end users they really don't know and or care what is driving what they do with their computer. I see people's eyes glaze over when I even start to talk about what type of hardware I'm going to set them up with. They simply do not care.
However I have seen where people have been brainwashed by the marketing. People have asked me if their system is Intel Inside. I try to explain to them that at most price points AMD is a better buy and the more brainwashed come back to me with some very clueless lines like, "But if I don't have and Intel I won't be able to run what I need to." I even remember back in the early 2000's walking into a local computer shop, I needed a mobo asap, and one of the sales reps told me that AMD CPU's were, "Garbage. We don't even stock any AMD parts."
I asked if he knew about the, at the time very high end, computing array that was I think setup at GT that was using AMDs and he started to sputter. "Well, I don't know about that." Of course you don't you idiot I felt like saying, but I just left and have since made it a point to make sure that people that I know and do work for look out to be wary of that place.
My main point is that AMD serves many purposes in what our modern computing landscape is. I personally do like them a lot but as someone who deals with many systems I deal with Intel plenty too. And hell I like a lot of Intel's products. They have top notch R&D and blah blah blah. But we would be a poorer group of computer users without AMD even without all of the other reasons to like them.
Re:Cores and AMD (Score:4, Informative)
I even remember back in the early 2000's walking into a local computer shop, I needed a mobo asap, and one of the sales reps told me that AMD CPU's were, "Garbage. We don't even stock any AMD parts."
back in 2003 i ordered a custom built machine at a local shop, they favored intel, but since the northwood 3.0 GHz (only intel chip i cared about at the time) was WAY out of my budget (700 euro cpu, 300 euro mobo), i insisted on an athlon XP. The guy tried to convince me that amd makes unreliable shit and overclocks their own stuff and such, but i insisted.
I got my system, and was happy, but after i while i found out it was running at 100 mhz FSB (as opposed to the specced 166 mhz), they had just upped the multiplier to have the core clock match the specs (yes, my athlon XP 2600+ does not have a multi-lock, none of those chips did until the barton core came about). I asked the guy who built it about this and he claimed that he could not get the system stable at 166 mhz (implicitly blaming AMD). A few years later i found out the stick of ram he had used has errors in it, and doesnt run stable at 166 mhz, causing the instability. Just last weekend i swapped some different ram in there, upped the FSB to spec, and the system is solid as a rock.
moral of the story, people slagging off AMD for stability and such are tools and dont know what they are talking about
This is a Great Chip for Power Users (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This should drive the i7 price down (Score:5, Funny)
Re:This should drive the i7 price down (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, a lot of people waiting for i7 price to drop instead of actually buying nice AMD product will surely result in drops of Intel CPU prices, right?
Re:This should drive the i7 price down (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, a lot of people waiting for i7 price to drop instead of actually buying nice AMD product will surely result in drops of Intel CPU prices, right?
Of course it does. It doesn't matter why someone chooses to not buy a product, it only matters that they make that choice and thus the product doesn't sell. Companies have gone bankrupt because people chose to wait for a better deal.
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Intel will sell lots of CPUs regardless; it was just about this group waiting specifically for price decreases "forced" by potential attractiveness of a nice product from smaller competing vendor, a situation which GP basically subscribed to.
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Thus resulting in a lower price on the new i7 MacBook Pro!
waiting... waiting...
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I have found that it doesn't matter for computer life if you have Genuine Intel, or Authentic AMD.
Want to know the stuff that actually matters?
1: First and foremost a decent PSU. This means the difference between a well made, stable machine versus one where components die of mysterious causes every few months. I have had great luck with Corsairs and Antecs. Just make sure to get one that has significant headroom between the estimated wattage and its rated wattage. Mainly because one of the most reliabl
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Or 7 cores and an aloe strip.