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AMD Launches Counterstrike Against Core 2 Duo
DigitalDame2 writes to mention a PC Magazine article about the AMD 4x4 enthusiast platform, which is meant to counter Core 2 Duo. The article observes that AMD is now facing many of the same business practices it used in its war against Intel. From the article: "While imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, improvement can often be a slap in the face. Intel's C2D was designed with both low power and performance per watt in mind, two key design metrics that helped AMD cut into Intel's market share with the Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 X2. And, as preliminary numbers have indicated and final performance reviews now show, the C2D has learned its lesson well: its performance now tops AMD's Athlon 64 architecture by a substantial margin."
is wasteful. I'm glad to see Intel back in the mix with some good offerings. I think those of us whom are fickle come out on top: you buy what makes sense. Fanboys step back!
This smacks to me of AMD realizing Intel had actually landed a well placed shot into thier gut and needing a fast "get positive attention back on up" spin.
So we'll have to buy TWO processors to compete with what Intel is doing with one? If they're aiming for the Enthusiast market they have to remember that "enthusiasts" have price constraints (usually referred to as "wife")
I could be wrong. But I really don't think I am.
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It does not matter how much these processors cost today, nor whether AMD's 4x4 is real or a maketing ploy.
What matters is that AMD has captured sufficient marketshare over the last years to become a real competitor to Intel. Opterons have become the CPU of choice for large servers, the niche that Itanium was meant to capture.
Now Intel's comeback means we're seeing the start of a new growth of CPU power, this time into multi-core land, a nice solid metric on which to compete. You can fudge the Ghz but you can't really fudge the number of cores. This means we have the perfect conditions for an explosion of growth, until the numbers get into meaningless territory. Within 3-4 years, common desktops will have 8 to 16 cores, and high-end workstations will have 128 or more.
I'm just very glad my company made the move to writing multithreaded code so we can get the best from this new landscape.
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People are forgetting though that its not just desktop CPUs that AMD took such large pieces of marketshare away from Intel.
There have been a few benchmarks (I believe one was on Anandtech's site) that have shown Intel Xeons running in 64bit mode performed slower than the same processor running in 32bit mode. Now, I know, we're talking about copying larger data segments around, because the address space is larger, so a bit of a slowdown in some areas are expected. But when they're talking 5% slower, thats a bit.
We replaced 3 Dual Intel Xeon servers (2.8GHz Xeons) with 4G of RAM each, with a single AMD Dual Opteron server, running in 64bit mode for MySQL. This system is immensely faster than the old Xeon systems. MySQL shows upto 23% performance increases in SELECT commands on 64bit vs 32bit on the AMD. On the Intel, it was a performance loss.
As far as heat output, the air coming out the back of this server feels cooler, not to mention that it replaced 3 servers with one.
People need to focus on the server market, and not the desktop market to see the real king in the (x86) CPU wars. Lets not forget hypertransport, and seperate data paths for memory and IO, whereas the Xeon has a shared 800MHz FSB (now 1066 with the newer rendition).
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...us Intel fanboys get to see AMD scrambling to polish a turd, the same way Intel had to with the P4 core for the past 4 years.
AMD CEO to Marketing: "Attention marketing team: Full Steam Ahead with the scrambling and spinning in place!"
I'm going to take a few moments to enjoy AMD's panic. Because: a) its been a long time, and b) it probably won't last long.
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The point was that Intel is hyping the new processor for gaming but you really don't need the best processor for gaming. Might as well drop $180 on a good processor instead of $800 on the best because it won't make a difference.
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There doesn't seem to be any AMD counterstrike yet other than hot air. It would be a shock if AMD spokespeople said anything other than that they were 'supremely confident.' What else can they say...that they are facing several quarters of deep price cuts, low margins, and they're scared to death about their stock options? The original P4 delivered a pretty big smackdown on AMD that took them two years to come back from and the Conroe Core 2 Duo looks like it's going to do the same thing. AMD still has the better fundamental architecture, though, just like they did against the P4 with its 26 pipeline stages and power-sucking 'netburst' architecture, so in the long run the AMd direct connect stuff should win out but that's not going to put food on the table for the next year or so.
AMD is in a much better situation than they have been in the past.
Their server chips will continue to sell well. Opteron is still very competitive in multiprocessor systems.
There will still be people buying AMD processors based on price and past performance. If you've got some market share people will come back to you for upgrades.
AMD has other sources of income than just CPUs. Their flash memory is the most obvious one.
AMD made a name for itself as being a low cost alternative to Intel years ago. This trip into the high end is a new thing and it made them a nice pile of money to invest in the next generation due out next year.
All of that being said, I'm still going to be buying a Conroe. But your predition of the company going under is a major exaggeration. They will most likely be back and strong around a year to a year and a half from now.
It depresses me that innovation in the processor market is adding additional cores. The geek in my loves it, but the consumer in me isn't impressed. What I (and I presume most other regular users) want is the ability to double-click on my Word/Evolution/Eclipse/Firefox/IE/etc icon and have it instantly display on the screen. What I don't need is to be able to run multiple programs just as slow as I could run one program 2 years ago. What's the holdup? Is it bus speed? Hard drive speed? Memory speed? Will I ever have zero (apparent) latency between running apps and seeing the result? The problem with PC makers is that if they ever do reach the holy grail of zero (apparent) latency, then they will have to decrease the life expectancy of their products in order to continue to make a profit. Maybe I'm slightly off topic and maybe I'm just bitter, but the latest and greatest PC today just doesn't seem to massively outperform the latest and greatest 3 years ago in any way meaningful to the end user. My compile times are faster, but for the most part, users simply can't/don't tax their processor.
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I would have been a whole lot more impressed if they had actually made a "four by four" machine, instead of just making up a nonsense term for what's nothing but a regular dual-socket, dual-core setup. At most, I'd call that a "2x2." Four-by-four? It doesn't have four of anything in it, certainly not four of anything by four of anything else. That's just misleading.
Two cores per processor times two processors ought to be called a 2x2, and a 4x4 ought to mean a four-socket mobo with four quad-core processors, for a total of 16 cores. Similarly, what they're calling an "8x8" ought to be called a 2x4, or maybe a 4x2, since it's four processors times two processors per core.
For an 'enthusiast' product -- which they're apparently hoping to sell to people who have a clue -- that's a stupid way to name it. Plus, as multi-processor, multi-core systems become more prevalent in the future, it would be nice to have some clear nomenclature to describe them. AMD is just starting everyone off on the wrong foot by calling their dual-core/two-way systems "4-by-anythings".
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