How many people buy AMD products...

...because they want to promote competition and help see AMD/Ati through this downturn?

I paid a premium price on my 3870, and while its a great card that fits my needs I know I could have gotten a better performing Nvidia for about the same price.

At work (university IT) I have begun to order only AMD processors for our desktop boxes - that and they are usually cheaper than a C2D!

My next chip *will* be a quad or greater AMD.

I am not a fanboi, I could care less about Hector (all CEOs are trash), and I recognize that a similarly priced Intel chip will beat the same AMD. However, you won't see another Athlon64 and now C2D war of performance and price if everyone gives their money to one side. Same with Ati and Nvidia. Does it really hurt so bad to spend 5% less for 5% less performance (theoretical)?

AMD is still competitive in price versus performance, but only at the low-end of the spectrum. Still, if I were building a new rig for my mom starting today, an AMD system would be perfect for her -- both in terms of price and performance.

As for AMD video cards, I just purchased a pair of 3870's. Why? Not for competition sake, but because these are the only complelling multi-GPU purchase you can make if you despise NV chipsets like I do. You can't do SLI 8800's on anything but a 680i or 780i board, but the former doesn't support 45nm quads, and the latter comes with a RIDICULOUS price tag. So Crossfire is my answer.

If I were to build a bargain basement system for a friend with decent performance, I'd use AMD X2 and an AMD2 board.

For my self I'd go with Intel as they just flat out out perform anything AMD has now and in the next year or two (providing AMD survives it's financial trauma).

Audioaficionado said:

For my self I'd go with Intel as they just flat out out perform anything AMD has now and in the next year or two (providing AMD survives it's financial trauma).

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Which is the point I am making, too many swing to one side and...well you have chips that don't compete against anything or promote a market full of collusion.

Put this into another market. Toyota and Ford (and soon GM). Ford and GM have been trying to survive on that "made in America" bs, you should bleed for us for too long. Long-time domestic buyers kept hearing "Toyota is better", "Honda is better", etc etc and now look what has happened. Chrysler is a broke joke, Ford is following suit, and GM is making stupid decisions just to remain the "paper king". Once the competition is over innovation will only come when mandated by Federal law.

I just bought a 9600BE myself...

Though I applaud your intentions, the idea of buying AMD to 'help them through this downturn' seems a little odd (as I have said previously).

It doesn't hurt too much to pay 5% more for 5% less performance, but why bother when your purchase goes 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005% of the way to solving AMD's problems.

A widely publicised consumer embargo can occasionally yield a positive result, but this isn't the kind of situation where the press will write bleeding heart stories (a la Japanese whaling or Chinese child labour) and result in a measurable proportion of consumers changing their buying habits (if only for a little while).

The problem with your suggestion is that at best only a few thousand people would be likely to boycott Intel, something that would make any boycott irrelevant.

I want things fixed up at AMD, but nothing anybody on these forums is likely to do will achieve that. They need new money and new management.

I can care less about if they suck at running a biz. My wallet does not care. Now what it does care about is the parts offered.

Not long ago. A machine I had burnt up. I was looking around for a new one. You betcha I peeked at Intel. How can Intel beat what I paid and actually enjoy right now. (The wife actually,she is happy, so am I.)

I got a new AM2 machine for under $120. it is doing fine and actually right now is transcoding DVD's. Slowly, but it is quiet and does the task all day. I got a good deal.


As hard as I looked. Even a Celery could not beat this. Not my favorite machine, (I hate it actually.) But works good for the price.

>HyperlogiK< said:

Though I applaud your intentions, the idea of buying AMD to 'help them through this downturn' seems a little odd (as I have said previously).

It doesn't hurt too much to pay 5% more for 5% less performance, but why bother when your purchase goes 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000005% of the way to solving AMD's problems.

A widely publicised consumer embargo can occasionally yield a positive result, but this isn't the kind of situation where the press will write bleeding heart stories (a la Japanese whaling or Chinese child labour) and result in a measurable proportion of consumers changing their buying habits (if only for a little while).

The problem with your suggestion is that at best only a few thousand people would be likely to boycott Intel, something that would make any boycott irrelevant.

I want things fixed up at AMD, but nothing anybody on these forums is likely to do will achieve that. They need new money and new management.

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I think "boycott" is going a little too far, and definitely further than I ever meant to insinuate. If you are doing computing where only the best will cut it, time matters, etc etc then by all means definitely buy an appropriate Intel!

By the same token, some like to save as much energy as possible and you would be silly to pick something that does not conform to what you need.

Here is what it boils down to, if what's inside the box doesn't make a difference to the warm body outside the box -> AMD.
My grandparents -> AMD
My wife -> AMD
That coworker that can barely check his/her email -> AMD

Do you think Intel got rich by selling Extreme Edition chips? Nope, it was all those years of paying off Dell and other resellers to push and use only Intel on everyone. If AMD produces half the chips that go into Dell, Gateway, HP, Sony, IBM, Toshiba, etc etc resellers in 2008 they will be doing very well indeed! And would even 5% of these end-users care? No. Same on the server side and across other segments. By this line everyone registered on this forum could probably be called an AMD or Intel or whatever fanboi simply because we know what is in our boxes and care about how it performs. The truth is we mean very little in shaping the direction of hardware, certainly its a market but how many Nvidia 8500's get sold versus 8800 Ultras? Giving your grandma that Sempron tower instead of a Celeron just gave AMD R&D money to hopefully offer that new FX chip somewhere down the line that will beat Intel's best.

I plan on purchasing an Ati Tv tuner card soon, does that count?

Well, I'm getting ready to build 2 systems for my kids and and after pricing c2d systems, I'm going with AMD. With AMD I save about 250 dollars total on the systems.

I go where i feel at the time. Right now, imo,your insane to go amd for cpu's especially when low end c2d's can wup most equivelent amd's at competetive price points.

Gpu's are another kettle altogether atm, the 3850 is so well priced that buying any other mid range gpu is just silly, the 3870 vs 8800gt is different, although the 8800's are still priced £15-20 higher they do offer better performance but as said above somewhere your hands are tied to nvidia chipsets for sli, so crossfire becomes a cheaper and viable alternative and in my experience the 3870 is only a 100-500 3dmark06 points better @ stock and when oc'd. Gaming is better for nvidia but not b as much as some people would have you believe.

Oc1Kenube said:

Gpu's are another kettle altogether atm, the 3850 is so well priced that buying any other mid range gpu is just silly, the 3870 vs 8800gt is different, although the 8800's are still priced £15-20 higher they do offer better performance but as said above somewhere your hands are tied to nvidia chipsets for sli, so crossfire becomes a cheaper and viable alternative and in my experience the 3870 is only a 100-500 3dmark06 points better @ stock and when oc'd. Gaming is better for nvidia but not b as much as some people would have you believe.

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Quoted for truth!

as the proud owner of a shiny new 3850, I think that this line of cards will be something of a liferaft for AMD, the performance for price is unbeatable, they overclock really well and xfire is now becoming more the multi GPU solution of choice. The fact that the retailers can barely keep the 3870's in stock due to extreme demand makes me worry slightly less about the future of AMD

Not me . I was buying AMD stuff for 5+ years and well they just fell behind in price vs performance . power consumption and the constant wait and see .
with all this going on with AMD there is no need to go with a low end product as well even Intel has them . So till AMD can focus on there CPU's and not just the video cards ( that are not really all that TO me the 8800GT and SLI are far better any way ) . I am sticking with Intel and Nvidia !

Tbh, I think right now is really about trying to keep their stock price up for AMD. If they don't stave off their declining stock price you can bet there will be a buyout once a certain number is reached and then who knows what the future of AMD/Ati will be? Maybe good, maybe they sort of piddle out and move into another market.

I was going to buy a nice 3850 512mb version, but its a long story! Ok. I got in on the Dell deal for a 3870 @ $188. They screwed everyone. I canceled and ordered an expensive 3870 from ClubIT (at like 4-5pm PST), changed my mind to a cheaper 3850 and canceled the order the same evening. They said it had already shipped out! Wanted to charge me for the shipping etc, so now I have a 3870.

I agree the 3850 is an awesome pricepoint card, I just hope that Ati is making some money off of them and not just trying to undercut to hurt Nvidia and keep their name going.

I'm contemplating a 3870 because overclocked it's a lot closer to nVidia's 8800GT G92 than stock specs would indicate.

However right now I just don't have the money to support either camp as I'm struggling to support myself and family while going to college full time.

My son wants me to build him a gaming rig so maybe DAAMiT will have a chance at his bux if they can give us the best bang for the buck this round.

Otherwise Intel and nVidia might get 'em LOL.

eh if, AMD wants to keep my business, then let them build a better cpu. If I had stock in AMD, then I guess I'd want to support them.

The way I see it, AMD had the performance crown for 3 years or so, until C2D was released. What the hell did they do for those 3 years besides dream pie-in-the-sky native quad core procs and keep botching their 65nm conversion? When they make a competitive product I will buy it in a heartbeat. But right now they are sucking hind tit to Intel in performance with no end to this in site on the cpu front. Their video card end is looking a little brighter and if I was shopping for a new vid card I would give serious consideration to the 3870.

As for them biting the dust, I don't think that Intel wants that to happen any more than we do. If AMD goes under, then the spotlight will be brightly focused on Intel's business practices even more than they are presently. There are already several investigations going on world-wide on their business practices right now and there also is the AMD lawsuit too. I'm thinking that in the worst case scenario, you would see Intel doing something along the lines that M$ did for Apple several years ago and give them some kind of cash infusion. And if AMD does go bust, I imagine the SEC would put heavy pressure on Intel to not cancel any licensing to whoever would buy the dead bones of AMD.

AMD bugged by bugs, B3 on the way to becoming B4

muddocktor said:

What the hell did they do for those 3 years besides dream pie-in-the-sky native quad core procs and keep botching their 65nm conversion?

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Well folks, AMD just keeps shooting off their feet

This is the Inquirer but they might be right this time.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/01/10/foot-shot-day

WOW this is not looking good for AMD if you know what I mean . they REALLY need to step up it is now or never to get this stuff worked out !

DAAMiT's Steamy love affair is over.

Potentially more bad news for the red team.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/01/10/daamit-loser-love