What the heck is happening to AMD?

[seoultrain]

*flashback to around 2 years ago*
AMD beats Intel to the gigahertz mark, and is much cheaper at the same time

Then, AMD's 1400 thunderbird Athlon is faster than anything Intel has to offer until the Northwood 2.0A P4.
AMD brings out the XP and keeps the lead in performance, and the +ratings (ie 1600+) work.

*end*

However, AMD then starts to fall behind the giant, who suddenly gains speed and is gets in front of AMD in the performance race.

anandtech and tom's hardware all have their benchmarks for the AMDvsIntel battle, and right now, it's not pretty... It looks like AMD's rating system has caught up with it, and a 2.13GHz XP just doesn't run like 2600 Mhz...

However, AMD always had the upper hand in value, but now it's not so clear cut.

2.53GHz P4 $234
Athlon XP 2600+ $297
2.4 GHz P4 $189
Athlon XP 2400+ $202
2.2 GHz P4 $187
Athlon XP 2200+ $144

Yes, i know that the higher speed XP's just came out, but AMD never had that problem with new chips. It seems that the only thing that keeps AMD afloat in the price wars is that it doesn't require expensive RDRAM to get it fast (from what i've heard, the P4 DDR boards aren't too impressive)

With every new chip that Intel introduces, all their lower speed chips get cheaper. With every new chip that AMD releases, Intel has one to retaliate with.. it seems as though Intel is finally ahead and now pulling away.

Intel has now become faster, runs cooler, is not much more expensive than AMD, and overclocks better (in most cases, probably due to the lower temperature).

AMD's only hope right now is its Bartons and Hammers, but even that is becoming problematic. AMD execs are lying left and right, and the users have no idea what's going on.. While this happens, Intel's got developments of its own...

I hate to see the big company triumph, but AMD's future isn't looking so good... what do u guys think?

[DodgeViper]

I still would not buy an Intel chip though. The P4 are junk and can not hold their own.

[Silver]

I just can't figure out for the life of me why their market share is increasing. Tis truly a puzzling situation.;)

[Skiing Squirrel]

Well intel had the lead, then amd, now intel. Amd will take it again. I hope.

[seoultrain]

yea, i'm just sayin that this is the worst it's ever been for AMD since like the AMD K5s...

[Starfoxer]

they are just now being released. give it a couple weeks and watch the prices DROP! when a new p4 is released the prices
are like 2 millions times to the PI of what they are after a couple
weeks.

[seoultrain]

like i said, even if the price drops, the performance won't rise... AMD used to beat Intel's prices AND performance.. AMD can't survive just selling low-end chips.. they need to sell high-profit, high-performance chips too (which they have been doing till recently)

[Emericana]

AMD 1600+. $50 1.4 Gig Chip that will overclock to 1.8-2ghz. Now if that is not bang for the buck than i dont know what is.

[xMephistoNx]

True, the xp1600 is the celeron 333 of today... But lets face it, the overclocker crowd won't keep AMD afloat.

I really think AMD is in worse shape than they let on.

[Mark099]

Originally posted by DodgeViper
I still would not buy an Intel chip though. The P4 are junk and can not hold their own.

I like AMD better myself at this point, but the say the P4 is junk is far from the truth.

[DodgeViper]

Intel is being taken to court because the chip does not perform better than the P3. Go check out the folding@home pages at O/C and see how the P4 is liked. Many Intel users are complaining.

[Mark099]

Originally posted by DodgeViper
Intel is being taken to court because the chip does not perform better than the P3. Go check out the folding@home pages at O/C and see how the P4 is liked. Many Intel users are complaining.

You mean to say that Q3 and UT gamers would rather have a P3 at 1.4Ghz compared to a 2.53Ghz P4? I have seen the lawsuit details. It seems pretty baseless to me.

As for folding@home.... I am not too familiar with it. BUT, I can guess what's going on. Let's see... AXP's get higher ratings than P4's leading to higher point totals/rankings for those running slower AXPs. Am I close?

The same thing happens with United Devices (UD). I switched from P4s to AXPs as a result.

[Tamasha_Strife]

The problem with AMD has never been on the technology side. They produce great chips! Sometimes they're better than Intel's sometimes they're not but they're always close.

What they were NEVER able to do was market the chips. I honestly believe that AMD's marketing dept is run by idiots. Most computers are sold by OEMs but AMD has never went after that market very forcefully. Also AMD hasnt had any intelligent ad campaign. I dont care if Intel saying the P4 accelerated the internet was dumb, it worked.

AMD should try and steal Intel's marketing execs ;)

Also AMD desperately needs to hike up their price. Hopefully they'll be able to charge a premium "a la Intel" for their Hammer.

[Emericana]

For me AMD's are much more fun to play around with than intels. i built my dad a Intel P4 2.0a system and it was not fun at all it was too easy that any newb could do it. It takes some skill to build a effective amd cpu and that is what makes it so much fun. you need to learn to attach a heatsink without destroying the core, how to correctly apply the paste, and how to unlock the cpu in under 5 mins (my personal fave :-) )

by havin all of the mults to play with you have much more possiblilities and you have complete control over what bandwith you want and completly reduces bottleneckks you may have.

for example. if you have 2100 DDR ram using it on a intel board will completly restrict how high you can overclock. However, if you unlock your amd you can just up the mult to a point to which your 2100 ram can support.

or if those nforce 2 boards turn out to be any good and the 1:1 lock actually works correctly, then you can go and get some high end 3500 ram and drop the mult to around 8 and put the FSB to 233mhz.

not to mention there are more amd mobos to screw around with and more cooling products to tinker with.

for the enthusiast, which everyone who visits these boards obvioulsy is, amd's are just more fun to play around with than intels. i mean look at ithe intel 1.6a. True, its a great ocer. it is too skilless tho. just stick the cpu in the board, put paste on. drop the stock heatsink on, and put 133mhz as the fsb. there you have a rock stable 2.1ghz cpu. Way to easy dont take any skill.

[The Coolest]

Originally posted by Mark099


You mean to say that Q3 and UT gamers would rather have a P3 at 1.4Ghz compared to a 2.53Ghz P4? I have seen the lawsuit details. It seems pretty baseless to me.

As for folding@home.... I am not too familiar with it. BUT, I can guess what's going on. Let's see... AXP's get higher ratings than P4's leading to higher point totals/rankings for those running slower AXPs. Am I close?

The same thing happens with United Devices (UD). I switched from P4s to AXPs as a result.

You see the P4 perform so well in those applications strictly cause it has the upper hand on the memory bandwidth, stick a P4 in an DDR mobo and it won't be any faster than a similarly rated AXP, actually the AXP will rip it to pieces in some tests.

AMD's chip are very powerfull CPUs, if you compare AMD vs. Intel in ONLY CPU power AMD is much more powerfull, that's why AMD folds way better than the P4, besides having a supirior FPU, it is much more efficient than the P4, a P4 might fold upto twice slower than an AMD chip, I heard a P4 2ghz does 15 minutes per frame on a specific protein, my 1.2 GHz Tbird does 12 minutes per frame on the same protein. That's why Intel, and specially the P4s are very disliked in the F@H section of the forums, they just can't keep up.

[AMD-Inside]

personally .. i don't see a problem ...
dell has ridden of its royalities with intel ... opting to use the 64bit opterons when they come out ...
and nforce2 is just around the corner ... ddr400 is coming soon ...

amd are just playing it quiet IMO. its only a matter of months before amd will be back on top

[OC-Master]

What is happening?

Simple,

AMD is preparing Hammer. AMD's third world parties are also preparing Barton to fill the gap between the consistant prospons that AMD is going to give us to give them more time to get hammer ready.

At the current rate, hammer wont be here untill summer next year. With 333FSB Athlons and no Prescott competition untill next summer, it only seems logical for AMD to make such a move.

I truly believe that Barton will be a great success and will allow AMD to close the gap between the high speed Pentium4s and AthlonXPs.

The Thoroughbred B cores are also good but in the future will not be able to stack up against 3.06GHz+ Pentium4s.


DS-Master

[Reverend]

In my opinion AMD needs to step back and get the Hammer right! Dont try to rush it out to keep pace with intel they need to make sure it is right so they can come out and stomp intel. We all know that the Hammer is most likely going to be at least good unless AMD rushes it, and then they are going to fall in that embarrasing trap that intel fell in with the initial release of the 1.13 P3 (having to recall all of them because they were full of problems). I dont know about you guys but Im willing to wait awhile for the hammer so as that it is released in near perfect condition. To show my support for AMD (and because the stock price is so low) Im going to invest in AMD because I beleive the Hammer will rock!

[Wommalong]

AMD need to get their act together... if they set a release date then they need to stick to it. How much longer for the barton chips? I do not mean for them to release a chip with faults just to be more realistic in what they can achieve. They will have to work on getting higher speeds from the FSB cos 266 just wont last for much longer;)

[KiKaL]

2.53GHz P4 $234
Athlon XP 2600+ $297
2.4 GHz P4 $189
Athlon XP 2400+ $202
2.2 GHz P4 $187
Athlon XP 2200+ $144

Hmm I could be way off here but I was thinking Intel's mobos cost more then AMDs. I could be wrong though.

[Silver]

I figure them to be on time as I have a 2.3Ghz AMD, now if they would just hurry up and release the 2.7Ghz I would be a happy young man.;)

[tbirdkiri]

OMG....

grrr you people sometimes bother the hell out of me.....

amd hasnt rushed anything in the last 2 years.. and everything they have made was quality (aside from the tbredA's, there is a story about that.. but thats another thread). Dont forget it was Intel who rushed the first gen p4, and pushed it for many months before replacing it. the Willamets are some of the junkiest cpu's in existance... Also.. look at the itanium for example.. they cost a fortune... they have for an entire year... there prices wont drop because no one wants to pay that much for one...