I'd love to see AMD get back in the game, customers would win...

I would honestly love to see AMD get a good jab in at intel sometime in the near future (they are poised to with this tigrus platform, but is it too small of a jab and too late in the game?). Not because I'm an AMD/ATI fanboy or anything (I run all intel and Nvidia actually) but because it can only help the customers in the long run. I wouldn't say Intel is price gouging in the least, but a little bit of competition can only do two things: 1. Drive both companies to produce better, faster, and more efficient products 2. Drive prices down!

It's possible I'm missing some obvious fact XD but I'm curious on your thoughts?

 

I'd like to see AMD get back in the game, but if it weren't for HP shoving their jokes of laptop cpu's into most of their laptops - AMD would have been out of the game ages ago. I hope that the 45nm chips make up for some of this, but it doesn't help when intel is a generation ahead in the laptop arena which is currently the biggest market and only going to continue growing. At a certain point, such incredible power will be available in most laptops that only the smallest amount of consumers (and maybe even businesses) will go with desktops... Hopefully the quadcore laptop chip this year they produce will show some potential, I love the products intel have shipped - but by god they do a lot of anti-competitive things...

 

AMD's Opteron, Athlon II x2 and Phenom are quite good for desktops. But it is true that AMD has fallen a lot behind Intel in efficiency per watt.

Strangely enough, ATI on the other hand, is doing quite well.

I hope this new platform will be good. Possibly like C2D from the latest gen, but at dirty cheap (as usual) and performing just well.

But it is true, in the laptop world, if it wasnt for HP, AMD would be almost forgotten lol. On desktops and servers, AMD is not going bad in fact...

 

Yeah, I feel as though if AMD could just keep pushing through in the desktop market, and really get itself paired (be that in name, or in the actual machine) up with ATI's new EyeFinity platform then we'd have a STRONG alternative in the desktop market. What would REALLY be awesome (and a nice movie and AMD's part) would be to give some incentive to go with an AMD/ATI setup. Possibly some sort of combo deal, or put out some nice utilities that work together with them.

 

They do that already.
If you go for AMD/ATI, you normally get the 3200HD and now the 4200HD as an option. The DM3 from HP offers switchable if you go AMD, and AMD for netbooks (Neo) offers the x1250 as IGP, which smokes the GMA950.

The thing about AMD is that they have the rep of killing the battery and running hot (well, they are dirty cheap...so no complaints)

 

See now that's what I'm talking about! Yeah that's true though about having a bed rep. I think a lot of people could live with it killing the battery (many people have their laptops constrained a desk 24/7 anyway), but most can't get over the heat issues.

 

That is what holds AMD back in the mobile market. Heat generation is too high, and the reputation does not help either.

How many times we see posts here where members say "dont go with AMD unless you want to return posting on how to lower your temps" or the "if you go AMD you will not get battery life and have a very hot laptop" and the such?

AMD is not seeing as a good mobile CPU, but on the Desktop and Server market, AMD is cheap, powerful and fast.

Also the typical comment "AMD runs slower and performs worse than a C2D similar CPU"...that does not help.

 

So more or less they have the groundwork layed for a decent desktop CPU, just a terrible rep. What they need to do is ride the ATI gravy train that's about to role in.

Well that's another problem solved! Me and serg, solving the worlds problems one at a time! *high five*

 

I think another thing is lots of the times people get products that aren't often needed. One might call it "headroom"(in this case the headroom is to be able to have it more mobile), even though they might never use the headroom at all.

 

AS said before, on desktops, AMD performs quite well as they provide adequate performance for a dirt cheap price. The heat output and effiency matter little on desktop rigs more or less.

On the mobile front though, it seems AMD has been holding back a bit.

What IMO would make it a good jab would be this:
if AMD's tigris CPUs can provide adequate(read the word adequate, not super) performance and be paired with a good ATI GPU for a fraction of the cost of an Intel+Nvidia/ATI combo, then they'll have something going for them.

As it stands, CPUs are rarely bottlenecks for games and AMDs can perform well enough so if they can manage a much better price/performance ratio than Intel(say 1/2 or 2/3 of a price of an AMD/ATI platform vs an Intel one), they'll be able to gain a fair share of market IMO.

 

The first one is true -- the rest... not since the advent of Nehalem. AMD simply doesn't have anything that matches Core i7 or even Core i5. It's most powerful processor is roughly equal to the Intel's Core i5 750, but the TDP of the latter is only about two thirds of the TDP of the former (and the 750 is cheaper). This has relegated AMD to the lowest price points, where Intel does not (yet) bother to compete except with obsolete architectures. The good thing about that for AMD is that most people just buy the cheap stuff, but the bad part is that the profit margins on those parts can't be much.

AMD suffers greatly from being half a year or more behind on the reduction of process size. It has 45nm products now, but Intel is going to 32nm ones very and these will be hard to beat in any measure except price (the smaller process allows for either more powerful products or products that run cooler or some combination of the two). This is most apparent in laptops because they're unforgiving where heat management and power consumptions are concerned, but to some extent it applies to desktops and servers as well.

 

Actually, IIRC the AMD Opteron still performs very well(and sells among the most for Servers) so his comment about Server CPUs is pretty true.

 

amd's desktop line is competitive, they just released a $100 quad core. cheapest intel quad is $150.

 

Tigris? IMO, I think its a gimmick.

Here's something interesting.

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=233565

12 cores, 12 threads for 24 threads of powa!

 

I would say you're insane.

 

What's interesting is that AMD chips currently holds the world overclock record for quad-cores at 7.1 GHZ: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Phenom-II-Overclocked,7747.html

But in terms of the consumer market, AMD has been about a year behind Intel in terms of the nanometer and pure synthetic bench power. And while for gaming mid-high end offerings from either company are more than enough, Intel still has the king title. I do hope AMD is just waiting to surprise us with something quite awesome!

 

I actually agree with him. Not until Conroe came out you had to pay $300 min for an Athlon X2. IMO when AMD was dominating with the X2 series, they were price gouging.

Overclocking records doesn't really mean much except just for show. Especially since most those top CPU's are cherry picked and aren't even stable.

I think AMD has been more than a year behind and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Looking at both Intel's and AMD's roadmap, I don't see AMD catching up not until a few years from now, if not more.

You have to remember that Intel has a crap ton more money than AMD. Intel can afford the R&D and run the fabs they own. Where Intel is working on 32nm process AMD is still stuck on 45nm.

 

Well AMDs at one point did technically thrash Intel's Pentiums. Really, they started going more and more downhill when their research for multi-core started lagging behind Intel's(due to smaller funding).

Like I said, AMD shouldn't be working on "new and high tech", because let's face it, chances are they won't make it with that strategy. They should aim for "cheap and performing". CPUs out today already have enough power for 80% of the population with computers. Only a small proportion of people with PCs(not counting servers) use that much CPU power on a day to day basis. At this point, what's most concerning is to make it worth the money.

AMD/ATI managed to get Nvidia to lower prices so I figure they can do it with AMD CPUs. Sure, ATI had good technology vs Nvidia, but remember the main price lowering wasn't done in the high end department, but the mid range which is what I think AMD should do.

At this point, if you can make an AMD+ATI combo cost a significant fraction of an Intel+ATI(or Intel+Nvidia) and still perform decently(say their new CPUs are up to par with older generation Core 2s), then they'll have own over a portion of the market.

The main reason we need AMD back is so Intel doesn't get to the point where they control so much of the CPU market that they can impose any price they want and we'll be forced to pay it.

 

Just to provide a second opinion . . .

Intel clearly does have a perpetual lead in process technology. For AMD to break-even, it must have the better design. Which, back 2003-2005, it did in the desktop arena, where the Athlon clearly smoked the P-4.

Can AMD do it again ? I don't know. But they have beat Intel before.

 

A QX9300 is more expensive than an i7-975.

 

I still don't believe Intel is price gouging. Never before have we seen this sort of pricing for Dual and Quads.

ATI was quite smart in releasing the 4000 series, which was the turning point for ATI.

Their strategy was that since they cant build a monolithic graphics card that can compete with Nvidia's, they decided to go the route of combining two weaker cards together.

A 4850/4870 may not beat the top GTX 200 series card, but the 4870 X2 comes close or even beats Nvidia's top card and is cheaper. This was how ATI became successful and erased the thought of $500 GPUs. Now you can get a 4850 for ~$100 which is almost UNHEARD of with that kind of performance compared to last gen GPUs.

In the CPU world for AMD, I don't think they can use this same strategy, but they can use price to their advantage. We are seeing this now with the release of the Athlon X4 Quad for $100.

 

Well, the problem with lagging behind in process technology is that it probably costs AMD more to build a given processor than it does Intel (i.e., Intel's 32 nm process means more cores per wafer).

So while AMD competes on price, they do it because they have to.

 

Well yes they're forced to, that's what they have to do. Intel beats them on performance and newer tech. Unless they come up with a miraculously new and powerful(yet efficient) CPU architecture(could happen I suppose), then beating Intel at price/performance is their best option.

AMDs are still being sold quite well in the desktop world simply beacuse they offer decent performance and cost dirt cheap compared to an Intel platform(even Intel mobos cost significantly more money than AMD mobos).

The problem with their notebook lineup is that those aren't too efficient(the current ones) and that's not good for a laptop.

So really, their options aren't too many:
- either they manage to get their CPUs to work just as good(if not better) than Intel's in which case it'll become a price war
- they decrease their prices significantly while steadily increasing their performance/efficiency so that the general public(those that care more about savings than pure performance) can slowly migrate to the cheaper platform.

Basically, I honestly hope AMD does something to hinder Intel. As much as new technology is nice, as I've said before, if Intel becomes the only CPU manufacturer, they'll be able to charge astronomical prices and we won't be able to do squat about it.

This actually reminds me of the phone service here in Quebec where Bell was pre-dominant and charged an arm for service. Then a Quebec native company(Videotron) started giving local service at lesser performance, but much cheaper price and other companies eventually followed. Now Videotron has become more popular than Bell basically.

 

Equivalent performing Pentium Ds weren't exactly cheap either.

You can pretty much say that about anything except for gas prices. Never before have we seen $500 laptops. Go back a few years and you'll find a $1000 laptop an amazing deal. Prices just go down with tech, it's just the way it is. It's not the responsibility of any one company or anything.

 

There is a huge amount of R&D and equipment costs that contribute to the overhead involved in moving to a smaller manufacturing process. It probably outweighs the slight advantage of more CPUs per wafer, especially when silicon isn't exactly a rare commodity.

 

While AMD is currently somewhat competitive on the desktop front, would anyone actually put their faith in Fusion beating or even being competitive with Calpella? Not only is Calpella launching months before Fusion is, it's also been shown on the desktop that Nehalem is much faster than K10.

I agree that a little competition would be good in the notebook CPU space (the Q9100 and QX9300 would probably be a lot cheaper if AMD actually had anything comparable), but I just don't see it happening unless AMD can pull off a miracle and push a Phenom II X4 965 BE down to a 25-35W TDP within the next 6 months.

 

Ok, how many of you do have AMD CPUs inside your laptops?
I do have one, a very OLD and UNDERPOWERED Sempron SINGLE core at 2.0GHz .

Yes, you heard me, I have a single core, one, not two (to make it even clearer) and to be honest, for music-listening, web-browsing, chatting, word-processing, running a scan, it performs quite well, and my laptop stays VERY cool and quiet, the fan is off, and the only slightly warmer part is my HDD and the RAM. My palmrests are even cold!

That said, yes, my AMD eats my already worn out 4-cell battery, and I get around 2 hours the most (backlight almost killed, wireless on, surfing the web, chatting, USB camera hooked up, if I add music at full volume I get 1.30-1.45 THE MOST). Whats my point? My point is that AMD is highly underestimated, but HIGHLY. I have used a laptop using a 5 years old Turion single core, and that things still runs well, even AutoCAD using a X200, and it could even render using V-Ray!!

On a note, when I stress the CPU, either gaming or doing something that really requires the power, it does warm up, but what CPU doesn't? Intel ones reach astronomical numbers when stressed too...

So, now, yes, clock-to-clock, Intel beats AMD, and in efficiency too. But do not come and tell me that AMD CPUs cannot keep up with Intel. Basically what screws AMD is the reputation people gave it. Saying "NO dont buy AMD unless you want to return posting on high temps!!" or the "whatever you do, do not buy AMD, they kill your battery life and dont perform well" AMD's rep is quite low compared to Intel.

No, I am not AMD biased, I think that an Intel would work better for me, but my point of this post is to let you know that (even with my 100% usage at idle [some software problem what appears]) my computer stays quite cool and lap-friendly and does what I ask it to do, opens the programs, runs everything a normal usage is. So AMD CPU's do perform well, not as good, but good enough for more than 70-80% of the computer users.

 

On a different topic, AMD is dirt cheap, just take a look at HP DM3, which supposedly with AMD Neo+switchable 4200HD and 4330HD (IIRC) comes out more than 100 bucks less than Intel+NVIDIA.

Another reason why AMD heats laptops is not all AMD's faults, lets face it, HP is not known for doing good venting systems. Intel HP's good very warm too. So, more or less, this is also fault of HP (the major promoting AMD CPUs on their laptops).

In the desktop arena, where cooling system is not as crucial as in the mobile world, AMD performs quite well, and Athlon II, Phenom II and Opteron, and Dragon I think is the best one, offer a great performance for the money, or bang-for-the-buck. On Cache they might sound less, but is different architecture, on bandwidth they using a different method, and comparing via clock speeds does not work (it would be like comparing number of shaders in ATI 4850 and NVIDIA GTX280M by raw numbers...it is illogical).

Luckily for someone building their own computer, AMD offers quite good CPUs for around the 100 mark, which is quite cheap for what you are getting, for example the Athlon II x4 at 2.8GHz for desktops that just came out is 100 or a tad more.

And lets take in consideration that AMD sells quite cheap, where profit margins are A LOT smaller than when selling at high price points like Intel, so AMD to get the same amount as Intel, needs to sell a lot, and that invest in R&D...so basically this is a matter of cause -> consequence -> cause -> consequence and so on...

 

One other thing people fail to realize. Perhaps AMDs are less powerful than Intel, but as Serg just said, most people don't need that much power. It's all marketing. A single core can pull off basic computer uses and honestly, having an i7/i5 is overkill for 80% of the general population. Heck, even a Quad Core is overkill for more than half the general population.

Fact of the matter is, we're all being sucked in the void in thinking that we'd need a Quad Core for multitasking or whatnot and that an AMD cannot provide this because Intels are better. But really, an AMD core is more than enough for most uses.

When I built my desktop, I had a choice to go with an AMD or Intel platform. Going Intel would've cost me +200$CAD more, and that's 200$ I wouldn't have been able to put on my graphics card(which basically cost me 175$CAD at the time). For my uses, I knew an AMD would've been both cheaper and more better value than an Intel and I'm happily using my desktop now without any sign of being unhappy of going AMD.

What's happening is that people need to smarten up and look past marketing as to buy what they need. Value would be the best term, yet a large margin of the world doesn't grasp this concept too well.

 

You know with HP stuffing AMD chips into their laptops, well if they could get just ONE laptop manufacturer that has more of a reputation for performance/gaming to have a decent AMD lineup at a reduced price, it might really help AMD. I look at it this way, I remember a day and age when AMD was synonymous with gaming and overclocking (well, your 'pros' would recommend that at least). If you could get a mid-range and a high end gaming laptop, a couple hundred dollars cheaper, maybe a better ATI graphics card (or two, haha), and the only trade off was an AMD chip, your "budget gamers" might think twice. Theres a large number of people who never move their gaming laptop off their notebook cooler, battery life becomes a null issue for them. As far as heat goes? Well like someone previously said HP doesn't know what the heck they are doing there, if someone devoted just a SMALL amount of time to a half decent design, things could be kept in an aceptable range.

How often in the "what notebook should I buy?" threads do you see individuals who are looking for something to just play modern games on, but don't want to pay more than a grand? I feel like when I suggest a notebook, well the only ones to suggest have mid range GPUs and a CPU that far out performs it (relatively, I'm saying the GPU will be the bottleneck). It would seem like there's a market for the converse, a high end GPU, with a cheaper CPU.

 

The CPU has gotten so powerful now a days that most consumers probably don't need much more.

I would say most could probably survive off a Athlon X2 3800 for a very long time. I still have it in my desktop when it first came out and I have no reason to get rid of it.

But as for myself when doing actual work, an 8 core workstation simply rocks my socks.

 

Before a brew of Windows Updates and Avira made my desktop pathetically unstable within Windows XP, I've been able to do most "normal people" tasks with an AMD Athlon XP-M 2400+ overclocked to 2.4GHz (~3500+ PR) as my desktop CPU. If it weren't getting sporadic BSODs with a STOP message that has little to no documentation to be found on the Web, I'd probably continue to use my desktop with a CPU from 2004 instead of building a new one, but I could use a new system anyway. I want to install Windows 7 and I would like a motherboard that can support technologies and interfaces that have come out since 2004.

Graphics editing and photo post-processing are the most CPU-intensive work-related tasks that I do on a regular basis, but these days, many people are content with netbooks for their day-to-day computing. I built my parents a complete new desktop last year with a $65 AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ and it's way too much for them.

AMD keeps Intel at least semi-honest. I'm getting an AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE and overclocking it for my new desktop, which I realize is far more CPU than I need for most things, but it's only $190. The most CPU-intensive application I could envision myself using would be Dolphin emulator. However, Dolphin only supports two cores, and even if you do use a Core i7 overclocked to 4GHz, Dolphin still can't emulate multiplayer Mario Kart Wii and Super Smash Bros. Brawl at full speed in 720p, so what's the point?

 

Some people are missing the whole point that AMD's Fusion platform is not merely competing with Intel in terms of CPU power and efficiency; AMD is appealing to the consumer by offering a better rounded package in their laptops. AMD's Fusion platform appeals by supposing that an average performing CPU along with a strong IGP or discrete graphics solution will be more attractive to consumers than a more powerful Intel CPU paired with a P.O.S. IGP, which we know is often the case. AMD doesn't have to make a superior CPU if they do better in other areas, which they inarguably are.

Personally, I find AMD's selling points to be very attractive, and they will be for some time. Too many times I have found a great Intel-based laptop that fell short of expectations simply because of the underpowered and incompetent graphics solution. With ownership over ATI, Intel is at a significant disadvantage in terms of developing competitive GPUs or GPGPUs. In fact, both ATI and Nvidia are working on the latter and they're putting Intel in a difficult position to compete in the long-term scheme of things.

 

AMD has that over Intel, if you ask me, AMD owns ATI, and ATI IGPs and GPUs are FAR better than Intel! And if you get an AMD, you get (normally) switchable with a GOOD IGP and a regular or powerful GPU, and both support hybrid, this for less than Intel+NVIDIA comparable cinfig, so that is quite attractive IMHO.

 

Ahh yes yes! Perfect! That's what I was saying. +1

 

Just how good is Fusion's IGP, anyway? Most people fall into one of the following categories when it comes to gaming needs:

A) People who don't game at all (Intel integrated graphics is fine for them)
B) People who just play Minesweeper and web-based Flash games (Intel graphics is also fine for them)
C) People who want to max Crysis @ 1920x1200 with at least 30 fps (if Fusion's on-CPU graphics card can do this, I'm sold)

There's really no in-between category when it comes to gamers. Either they don't game at all, or they want to be able to max out everything on the market with no compromises. And I really doubt that any IGP in the near future will be able to deliver C).

I just don't see the value here. People should either go with Calpella for more CPU power if they don't need GPU power, or they should get a discrete card and still go with Core i5/i7 for more CPU power and more GPU power.

 

In the laptop market, AMD has almost always been behind. They were ahead when they had their mobile Athlon 64 which creamed the Pentium M in terms of performance. After that it went downhill with the sempron and turion lineup.

In the desktop market, they were all high and mighty from the K5 days at 100Mhz up until there FX-60 at the end of the Socket 939 era. Afterwards Intel took over there standing as king, with there first core 2 duo models.

In the server market, AMD has actually almost always been the best. With the coming of Socket 940, they had been king, and quite frankly they still are. The six core Istanbuls are better than the 6 core Intel Xeon's. The downside of Intel in the server market has dawned when they switched over to Fully Buffered dimms, which are not only extremely expensive, but they suck almost 10X the wattage as standard ECC DDR2 SDRAM which the AMD's use

K-TRON

 

Where would I classify then>
I like playing on rare occasions...
But, yes, a gamer wants to get the best possible performance. The only thing that is not quite good on your post is a little detail. Games are not CPU-bound on regular basis, and AMD offers enough performance for games to run quite well, and ATI is more than powerful enough to play games. So I slightly disagree with you, AMD Fusion is more than enough if you have a good GPU, so AMD offers a very good solution for gamers, it is cheaper, it is powerful, and ATI performs great.

 

While we can argue statistics on average computer-usage all day, the bottom line is that the difference between a CPU and GPU is becoming an increasingly blurred line with the advent of general purpose GPUs.

The long-term trends are really stacked against Intel for this reason; many applications are beginning to tap into the vast computing power of the GPU. It's not just games that are making use of the GPU; major multimedia programs such as Adobe Photoshop are starting to use the GPU's untapped computing power. High definition movies also depend heavily on the graphics card.

The implementation of GPGPU functions in Direct X 11 (as well as CPU graphics rendering) also point to the fact that a quality GPU is beginning to matter more and more because it is playing an increasing role in various applications.

You are abitrarily setting standards that favour your argument; if those are your expectations of Fusion, then you're going to be disappointed. There are very very few people who have such expectations, and if there were, AMD would not appeal to them with the Fusion platform. Fusion isn't meant for heavy-duty gaming.

 

If I wanted GPGPU, I'd go NVIDIA. CUDA has been available for a good 3 years now and real-world applications have only just started to make use of it. On the other hand, ATI only very recently fixed Stream's major problems so I don't expect any programs to actually use it anytime soon.

What sort of standards should I set? Just to run Crysis (or really any modern game) at playable frame rates, you need a fairly powerful GPU. Would Fusion even be able to match a GTX 130m?

 

Fusion is what AMD is. Their slogan is The Future is Fusion. I think you are talking of the Dragon Platform.

Check this out!!
I find it cool, the vids...

http://game.amd.com/us-en/landings/dragon.aspx

These are sold as cheap alternatives, with same performance, and FOR GAMING.

 

Wow, I think I was underestimating AMD as far as thier plans to create a kind of synergy between AMD/ATI, they seem to already be on track for that. Why don't they market this stuff more, I've never seen half of it?

 

Logical argument. But flawed. I will still bet on Intel, for the following reason (from a different thread):

And the people who don't understand the importance of a video card will also tend to choose Intel, simply for name recognition.

 

I run an ATI video card and intel processor. At the time they were both the best of the best. Generalizations in this case should be avoided.

AMD really didn't have a solid answer to the original Core 2 Duo processors. The E6600, in fact, was so amazing that when overclocked rivaled even intel's $1100 cpus.

Smart buyers looking for performance read the benchmarks. They don't buy anything based on brands or gimmicks.

 

what about gamers who are looking for a midrange system?

 

a minority unfortunately.

 

Gamers understand that games rely primarily on the GPU, not the CPU. If you make a small compromise on the CPU in order to get a great IGP or discrete solution, then you get a well-rounded package. That's what AMD offers, and it's why the Centrino platform (the platform that AMD is pitting Fusion against) doesn't have a chance with gamers.

My argument isn't flawed because people are ignorant.

 

I would hope that almost everybody reading this thread falls into that minority.

Why compromise at all? It's not like you can't get discrete graphics with an Intel CPU.

 

Most people compromise because of cost. Another reason is that Fusion is not really much of a compromise when you realize that it's competing with Centrino, which consists of an Intel CPU/wireless/ GPU package.

 

centrino is intel cpu+chipset+wireless module. so it could have a ati or nvidia dedicated graphics.
but i think intel recently announced that they are dropping the centrino brand name.