Excelling At Second . . .

I sit here bemused by the reviews of the HD3850/HD3870 I’ve seen. They all seem to be written by dual-core processors. Not with duallies, but by duallies.

What do I mean by that? It seems like two people wrote the articles, and unlike a silicon dually, they’re not quite in sync.

If I had to summarize these reviews in one sentence, that sentence would be:

“These AMD video cards are really great,but nVidia does better.

It’s pretty clear one of those processors might as well be called, “AMD PR,” and it is doing the bulk of the work. Yet there is a second processor in most of these pieces undoing much of the work of the first (at least for careful readers). It’s almost like the second processor is having fun deflating the PR balloon.

Sometimes it gets pretty funny. I saw one piece where the most of the page, complete with two graphs, essentially says, “These AMD GPUs scale really well,” but then it’s followed by a much smaller chart and a few sentences saying, “But nVidia scales much better, and don’t count on Crossfire actually working.

Very subversive, if you ask me.

There also seemed to be a bit too heavy emphasis on relative value. Yes, these cards will be cheaper than the 8800GT competition, but they only look like a bang-for-the-buck bargain compared to the current inflated prices for the GT. This will be a fleeting advantage.

Once the GTs settle down to the $199/$249 price points, AMD’s $179/$219 prices will look more like “You get what you pay for.” Indeed, if that $250 price point ends up more like $200, AMD is going to have to do some pretty stiff price-cutting to match that.

And that means unless you’re a Santa zombie drooling, “Buy by Christmas or die,” you ought to save a good chunk of money waiting until early next year, no matter which company gets your cash.

Ed


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