What has become of AMD (and this section)

[Shiggity]

The GPU market will be amazingly competative for quite some time. Gamers rejoice! Plus it seems like every week they find something that a GPU can do better than a CPU now.

You have to wonder, who even needs a high end CPU anymore with the way GPUs are advancing. A moderately priced CPU can keep a GPU fed fine. I suspect that GPUs will advance to a point where the CPU will just be there to enhance it.

Instead of buying a cpu + mobo with integrated graphics, you'd buy a GPU + a mobo with an integrated CPU. ATI could very well save AMD as a whole and take over as the main profit section.

I could very well imagine an Intel platform with an advanced Atom CPU + high end larabee graphics, with the larabee doing most of the work and the atom is there for support.

Woah offtopic, carry on.

 

[Neuromancer]

Unless you are talking about a build for a true AMD zealot or Intel hater, it's just hard to recommend a Phenom versus a Q6600 for a build. You can get an oem Q6600 for around $180 and even the worst overclocking Q6600 will run rings around 99.99% of the Phenoms made as far as overclocking goes. And be more energy efficient about it too. And the Intel chipset motherboards seem to be more stable with a Q than most boards running a Phenom (except maybe the newest series with the 750 SB) when overclocking. Unlike some of the people here, I don't commit myself to just one processor company, but rather buy what performs best for my purpose for the money. And the last few years it has been Intel for me.

Godd argument. But most certainly has not been "last FEW years"

I want AMD to suceed I prefer their video cards t othe opposition. Although statistically and reading the forums I suppose I shouldnt.

There was a recent probably faked SS of a 4GHz quad from AMD. That would be great. It is definitly doable since the current gen has hit it. Unfortunately the thing is, amd has always been much smarter than intel in actually increasing the quality of their products rather then just releasing a new model number with a better multi. Well not always they tried changing it up with the AM2 series but failed.

OCability doesnt matter to darn near eveyone. Now that I am in my 30's, I certainly do not care about 24/7. I find my stable OC for benches then find my acceptab;le OC. IE , I do not up voltages at all. I ask my cpu to do its business on what it its supposed to give.

For me know that is now intel. a 45nm 3500mhz running speed step enabled cpu that just performs flawlessly. (well would be, except I borked some stuff runnign 500fsb lol gotta reinstall soon)

Intel has always been good at number crunching, the latest chips are just better all around. I wonder hough how much of that is CPU related. I think that intel may have just dumped more money into the chipset department then ATI has recently. And the reason that intel encodes better video as well as gives better gaming perfomrance is not CPU related at all

Lets face it... ever run 2 monitors with task manager open in the second.. ever see 100% CPU utilization at modern resolutions while gaming?

Personally the web is fulll of fallacies. One being HDTV. I run upscaled videos on my 750mhz duron system. no problem. (yet it still has problems with flash.. now is hat a hardware issue or a software one? hmm. Hardware has gotten better but CSci engineers are beingoutsourced and their coding ability sucks. If you cant speak a language how do you code in it? (oh yah, visual XXX. another brilliant disaster )

The GPU market will be amazingly competative for quite some time. Gamers rejoice! Plus it seems like every week they find something that a GPU can do better than a CPU now.

You have to wonder, who even needs a high end CPU anymore with the way GPUs are advancing. A moderately priced CPU can keep a GPU fed fine. I suspect that GPUs will advance to a point where the CPU will just be there to enhance it.

Instead of buying a cpu + mobo with integrated graphics, you'd buy a GPU + a mobo with an integrated CPU. ATI could very well save AMD as a whole and take over as the main profit section.

I could very well imagine an Intel platform with an advanced Atom CPU + high end larabee graphics, with the larabee doing most of the work and the atom is there for support.

Woah offtopic, carry on.

See my previous reply

Are dual cores better then dual sockets? Good argument... historically of course yes, but in reality no. As long as the path exisits for low latency data transmission it sohuld not matter.

S o a dual GPU is = to a dual core gpu. If properlly engineered

 

[dark bishop]

Ive been an amd fan ever sence my dad brought home our first amd computer, its what Ive always used and i have never been disappointed by it performance even compared to my friends core 2 duo.

Im probably gonna stick to amd for any of my computers, I like the fact I can get a phenom for the price of a core 2 and have performance similar to a high end core 2 duo low end core 2 quad. I also have to agree with people when they say the amd just feels smoother when using it.

 

[Dan0512]

I'm still amazed at how competitive 939 rigs can be (like mine for example), ironically the reason being that AMD still relies on K8 chips on the AM2 platform for the dual core segment, so their relative speed is still that one of around 2 years ago. Heck, even the current 65nm chips are slower than my Opty due to the smaller L2 cache and higher L2 latency.

I'm just waiting for the point where my Opty bottlenecks GPU's at 1680*1050 so I can upgrade, but with current games being so GPU dependant, I can still see me holding on to my rig for another year and a half.

Still, I'm sure a lot of guys who bought AM2 setups thinking they'd could upgrade to Phenom are pretty ****ed off, since AFAIK a lot of manufacturers just didn't update the BIOS. So I'd be careful with the future-proof argument regarding current AM2+ boards and whatever CPU's are still to come.

I've also seen several guys argument in favor of AMD saying that their boards have 4 PCI-E slots; I actually find that argument pretty weak, since it probably implies that you're going to buy a Quad-fire setup which would be extremely limited by the current Phenom CPU's, and really not worth its money.

dan

 

[VinnyTAMU]

I like a mixture of AMD and Intell:

• I perfer Intel Chips for laptops (love the T8100 in my Macbook)
• I prefer Intel Chips in my main Desktop rig (I have fallen in love with my E8400)
• I prefer AMD Chips in my servers (The Brisbane AM2 chips have lots of Linux and Unix love)
• I prefer AMD Chips in my HTPC machines (Planning on building a Dual core 780G machine)
• The jury is still out on ultra low power draw chips (I like my Intel Atom and AMD Geode chips)

 

[Particle]

Meh, it's really boring in the AMD section these days. I remember the K8/P4 days where you'd see enthusiasts from both sides pushing their chips to the max and showing off in whatever area they excelled. Those 50% + OCs on Athlons were legendary too.

But nowadays I've pretty much lost all my faith in AMD. It's like they've lost that "special something" they used to have, either be it the game performance or OCability, it's the reason you were drawn to their CPUs.

Their current chips just seem like chicken feed and peanuts to me. Intel offers me everything a Phenom does and the magnitude of the advantage is so huge, it's ridiculous.

But what really makes me sad is that you don't see the competition from both sides like there used to be. From my point of view, AMD just goes around with the attitude "Yeah, we only sell average stuff - if you want something special, go with the competition".

Apart from some members, the complete community of AMD enthusiasts that made us proud of our hardware in head to head comparisons has completely disappeared. All I saw here the last 2 years was wishful thinking about AMD bringing a Conroe Killer, and all I got was, for it's time, a mediocre weld of two dual K8 chips. Phenom was such a disappointment, there is really no word to describe it . IMHO, it seems these chips have found such a deep love with AMD users, that 80% of the threads I see in this section are of guys showing their OCs on K8 retro machines. 10% are of problematic Phenom rigs, and the rest are news of guys getting 20% OCs out of them .

I have a feeling that Deneb is not going to meet general expectations, but we'll have to wait and see that. If we want to see more guys back in the AMD section, then it'd better OC up to 4 Ghz and match C2D performance while Nehalem remains out of reach for desktop users.

From the recent news, it seems the Nehalem release is really close. If AMD doesn't release Deneb soon as weel, then Nehalem will eventually displace C2D from extreme and enthusiast segment to mainstream, and imagine AMD still having to compete with current 45nm C2D mainstream products in the budget market in the future with their 65nm Phenoms... Neha is going to endanger the budget and server segments where AMD still makes some profit now.

If all fails - then "Ati" might take over AMD and keep developing graphic solutions and GPGPU while abandoning general purpose x86.

Sry for the nostalgy guys, but after being idle for so much time, I just needed to get rid of my gripes concering the actual situation of AMD. It just seems to me as if the "Judgement day" were drawing near .

dan

Honestly, your negativity is angering. You claim every skewed "AMD Sucks!" stereotype to be true. Blah. It's not worth getting into. If you were any kind of real overclocker, you'd be loving the battle to get an AMD up to impressive specs. THOSE are the kind of people who are gone--the ones that would overclock anything so long as it would present a challenge, be it calculator, toaster, or CPU. That's where the magic is. Hard core overclockers are the kind of people who overclock a 486 with dry ice to see if they can get it to software render Half-Life at playable speeds.

 

[rainless]

I would absolutely LOVE, for AMD/ATi to reign supreme over the videocard world...

You see the PROBLEM with that is that AMD isn't just in the video card business. They could "reign supreme" over the video card world... and then go under the following week because they aren't selling any laptops, motherboard chipsets, or CPUs. (But they'd be SUPREME!!!)

Their diversification has left them in the s***house. Because now they have to do R&D on a hundred different fronts and fab a dozen different chips at once.

Intel is giving it a shot... then again Intel can afford to. You don't want to be scraping along the bottom of the stock market with the most ridiculous overhead known to humanity. (Is ATI headquarters still in Canada? Are they flying people back and forth between there and AMD headquarters?)

I was quite pleased at what the local wally worlds are carrying AMD LE and Brisbane processors.

I'm pleased that I don't have a local store called: Wally World.

 

[Badbonji]

I've also seen several guys argument in favor of AMD saying that their boards have 4 PCI-E slots; I actually find that argument pretty weak, since it probably implies that you're going to buy a Quad-fire setup which would be extremely limited by the current Phenom CPU's, and really not worth its money.

dan

Also, quadfire still uses 2 slots. You can only use 4 cards if using multi monitors - and most just run them off one or two cards anyway.

 

[benbaked]

I'm pleased that I don't have a local store called: Wally World.

I think he means Walmart, Clark.

 

[Leonardo]

Honestly, your negativity is angering. You claim every skewed "AMD Sucks!" stereotype to be true. Blah. It's not worth getting into. If you were any kind of real overclocker, you'd be loving the battle to get an AMD up to impressive specs. THOSE are the kind of people who are gone--the ones that would overclock anything so long as it would present a challenge, be it calculator, toaster, or CPU. That's where the magic is. Hard core overclockers are the kind of people who overclock a 486 with dry ice to see if they can get it to software render Half-Life at playable speeds.

You seem to have quite an emotional investment with the corporation known as AMD. As to Dan0512's thread-opening comments, I'd say they are fairly accurate. BTW, I'm writing this as someone who began his joy of both overclocking and home computer building in 2000 exclusively with AMD platforms.

If you were any kind of real overclocker, you'd be loving the battle to get an AMD up to impressive specs.

So, do mean that we should spend money on CPUs that have little to no operating frequency headroom so that we can enjoy the challenge? If that's how you spend your money, so be it. As for me, I enjoy both the overclocking challenge and the end results.

THOSE are the kind of people who are gone--the ones that would overclock anything so long as it would present a challenge, be it calculator, toaster, or CPU.

You are partially correct, in that hardcore overclockers will enjoy overclocking anything, including the proverbial 'kitchen sink,' but the excitement in CPU overclocking has always been the greatest with hardware with the greatest overclocking potential, whether an Intel Celeron 300, an Athlon Thunderbird, or an Intel Q6600. Those people indeed are NOT gone, they are simply playing with another corporation's hardware for the moment. They will be back in this thread if and when AMD competes again beyond low and mid-range.

 

[dark bishop]

im hoping that the AMD Deneb's are going to be something to look forwards to, what ive read so far the are looking somewhat competitive.

 

[Dan0512]

Honestly, your negativity is angering. You claim every skewed "AMD Sucks!" stereotype to be true. Blah. It's not worth getting into.

I'm sorry the facts get you so worked up. But honestly, I'm not the one to blame for that.

If you were any kind of real overclocker, you'd be loving the battle to get an AMD up to impressive specs. THOSE are the kind of people who are gone--the ones that would overclock anything so long as it would present a challenge, be it calculator, toaster, or CPU. That's where the magic is. Hard core overclockers are the kind of people who overclock a 486 with dry ice to see if they can get it to software render Half-Life at playable speeds.

Thanks for imposing your definition. I guess I've never been a "real" OCer because I refuse to buy an AMD Phenom and take it to the max. Yeah, now I see it: the problem probably lies in me not being able to develop a platonic love to their current, much attractive processors. I'll make sure to correct my behavior .

/ignores

dan

 

[dark bishop]

would you two shut up, your gonna get another thread closed.

 

[Particle]

I'm just going to have to disagree with you two. I'm not so invested in AMD hardware for AMD's sake as I am that your brand of OC enthusiasm is degrading to me if you're going to insist that it's more true to the real definition. =/ Excuse me for loving the hobby for the process instead of the result.

You should know that I own a 65nm and a 45nm C2D in addition to my two K10s. The Intel chips just aren't as fun for an overclocker like myself because it's too easy to get good results. And even when you do end up with something like 4GHz, you've just joined the same bandwagon as ten million people who did it before you. AMD on the other hand is a challenge to get good performance out of. When (if) you do, you're in rarer territory as well. I'm not out to gain notoriety or anything, but I do enjoy doing something that hasn't been beaten to death already by hordes of other people. For someone like myself who enjoys the process more than the result, that's a lot more fun.

I'm not trying to tell you that your brand of overclocking is invalid, but I do see it as a lesser part of what it means to be an overclocking enthusiast (more of an overclocking consumer, really). Perhaps you should refrain from shutting me out entirely as I don't see why we can't both be correct in terms of what overclocking is about. Sure, we focus on different areas--enthusiast/process vs. consumer/result. Some of your claims about AMD hardware though are rather inaccurate though. That gets to me from time to time because after someone says "LOL AMD SUCKS COMPARED TO CORE 2!!!11pickle" for the thousandth time like it is a fact handed down from God himself I no longer feel like explaining the popular misconception in IPC, inter-core efficiency, and scaling differences between the two. I'd use an analogy here to demonstrate the absurdity, but I've never seen someone actually benefit from one's use.

When (heh, more of an "if" really) Intel chips are a lot harder to get good performance out of, I promise you I'll be all over that trying to get them to be competative. I'm an enthusiast, not a consumer!

 

[Wai_Wai]

Imagine if AMD got shut down finally, what would happen? What would the world be?

So there is one very good reason to buy AMD. Save your future.

 

[netmask]

Imagine if AMD got shut down finally, what would happen? What would the world be?

So there is one very good reason to buy AMD. Save your future.

E8500 will be renamed to something like E8500 extreme edition and will be repriced from 190$ to 350$ close to the prices of northwoods in their times. And the same will happen for every processor.

 

[Neuromancer]

I cut my teeth on AMD systems, they are why I'm an OCF member in fact. Back then I swore I'd never run an Intel system along with many others. Intel got caught napping when A64 released, it didn't take long for their superior R&D and overall business model to make it painfully obvious who had the upper hand. One of the biggest mistakes AMD made was in pricing, during their run and even recently where it could have been a small salvation from the lack of competitive products. It is sad to see really, I have been anticipating running another AMD system, it just doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.

A++++

Totally agree.

Been running AMD since... dang dont know when. I swore when core2 came out. I would never go to the darkside.

AMD fell asleep and i became a sith

Cant wait for another competitive AMD system as I prefer the company.

In actuallity I first came to intel with the c2d and SWORE it was slower then my 4200x2. No longer had the 15 seconds till desktop ... no more 35ns mem latency... all kinds of stuff but I wanted to benchmark. Gah.. what was i thinking.

phenom quads hit 125 and im in.

im hoping that the AMD Deneb's are going to be something to look forwards to, what ive read so far the are looking somewhat competitive.

Ditto



Would like to point out that since I have switched to intel I have had a lot more catatrophic hardware failures. (Including a dead quad). Only thing I killed on AMD was one mobo and a psu. (was a rosewill though)

 

[AlabamaCajun]

We need to start a poll.

What do you think AMD engineers are doing now, working on new designs, reinventing K8 or throwing darts at a neha/intel poster.

I don't think they are doing nothing. Rehashed K8s are more than likely the result of testing different configurations to find ways to make the whole line more efficient, faster and use less silicon. The comp has done this many times over so it's not new. You can by a "what I call a P5" built on revised cores. If these rebrands we mention in the other thread here are effective and cheap to produce, then AMD has made great progress. Overclocking at the top level may just may have to wait a little longer.

 

[QuietIce]

Dan, judgment day isn't drawing near at all. Like everything else the computer world is cyclic. AMD had their good years - a true David vs Goliath story when AMD, only a fifth the size of Intel (if THAT), ruled the CPU world in everything but sales. But cycles don't stop and now Intel is on top. They've got deeper pockets, a bigger market share, and by all standards should have never lost the edge - yet they did. AMD's long success finally lit a fire under the giant and they decided to move - IT'S ABOUT TIME!!!

Now AMD actually has some real competition for the first time in years and that's a good thing regardless of what many people believe. As Alabama hinted, AMD engineers aren't just sitting around twiddling their thumbs (though I suspect there IS a dart board in the break room ). But as before, AMD will come up with a strategy that will work for them - they're not going away. Many people thought the ATI acquisition was a dumb move. I think it was excellent insight into the future of computers.

IMO - AMD is, as usual, taking the long look and trying to innovate - that's why they didn't slap a couple of X2's together and call it a quad. They're headed in a direction that will require native quad technology and when the time comes AMD will have the advantage of more experience with it. AMD's not dead - far from it. But like any business they have certain lulls and this is one of them. Often great innovation comes from such times ...

 

[David]

Computers are not as exciting as they used to be. This may just be my view or it may be a more general trend noticed by everyone. Overclocking doesn't really seem to net you as much as it used to. Reasonably priced, reasonably fast laptops that will do most things people need are widely available.

Big advances don't seem to come as often or as fast now, and I think AMD are struggling to find something to come back at Intel with.

Intel struggled with P3 and went Netburst.
AMDs A64 spanked the P4 quite badly.
Intel came back with Core 2 Duo with good clockspeeds, excellent IPC and low power usage.
AMD .... well what can they do? They need to find a big way to come back and spank Intel BUT the Core 2 chips are really good chips. Even if AMD could sell a chip 10% faster at the same price as the equivelant C2D/C2Q would people buy it or stick with Intel?