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What Went Wrong for AMD's AM2?
An anonymous reader writes "When AM2 was first announced it seemed like it was going to be a guaranteed hit. After all, this platform would be moving the tremendously successful socket 939 into the future with its use of DDR2 memory, a greatly increased memory bandwidth, hardware virtualization, and a number of exciting new CPUs. Despite everything AM2 had going for it, this includes a dedicated enthusiast base and a tremendous amount of pro-AMD spirit at the time, the new platform has largely been dismissed by consumers. The question now is, what happened? How did AMD go from record growth and being the darling of enthusiasts to having a new platform which failed to impress?"
What went wrong with AMD's AM2?
Core 2 Duo?
Before it gets slashdotted, or if you don't want 3 pages with ads -- here's most of the text.
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Before we get started it should be made clearly that despite what people may say, AM2 does make for a capable computer. We took a look at an AM2 build based on an Asus M2N32 SLI motherboard not too long ago and were happy with the system. The disappointment in AM2 is not a result of its failure to perform, but rather the failure to match the performance gains seen in the move to the K8 platform. Our testing has confirmed what the industry at large has found to be true- the move to AM2 should bring performance gains of about 3-10% when compared to socket 939, with an average increase below 5%. This is what we would comfortably call an "incremental" performance boost, but nothing more.
So what happened to AM2? Where did things go wrong for AMD, a company that was on a legendary upswing, during which it could seemingly do no wrong. Even with reasonable pricing, a well-timed release date, and high availability AM2 was unable to take off in a way that was commensurate with its potential.
1. Conroe
An appreciably part of the success of sockets 754 and 939 were due to a colossal blunder on the part of Intel: Netburst. This architecture was kept around since 2001 and was always being improved in piecemeal, rather than simply being replaced. The whole episode was capped off by an unimpressive dual core architecture that was kept alive practically on price alone. During this time (754 came out in fall 2003 and 939 came in early summer 2004) AMD did their homework and put out the impressive but short-lived socket 754 and then 939.
But the landscape was changing by the time AM2's release date was announced. Intel had released its Core architecture and the word had begun to spread about Conroe, what would come to be known as Core 2 Duo. Early benchmarking by a number of hardware sites not only let consumers know that AM2 would be a slight performance increase, but that Conroe would be a dramatic one. By the time AM2 was available Core 2 Duo was one of the most highly anticipated processors of all time and AM2 was the "also ran". There was no way that AMD could compete with Intel's marketing clout, regardless of the performance or previous successes.
2. AM2 is setting up AMD for the future
As good as 939 was, it could only last for so long. AMD had to start to look towards the future, which meant moving to DDR2 memory, increasing the availability of memory bandwidth, launching a platform for improved chipsets and the like. Improvements must be done in stages: Socket 754 brought 64-bit, 939 brought dual core, dual channel memory, and mass acceptance of PCI Express video, and AM2 would bring us DDR2. AM2 may not be terribly exciting, but it is paving the way for K8L, AM3, and AMD's 4x4.
3. AM2 is confusing
Unless you follow the processor market closely, AM2 can be confusing. The naming convention "AM2" or "M2" is much different from 754 or 939 and a little investigation reveals that AM2's socket uses 940 pins. As you may recall AMD has already has a socket 940, it came out along with 754 and was used for Opteron and high-end FX systems. Despite the numerical similarity AM2 and 940 are extremely different and are not compatible with one another. Once consumers get past that they will have to figure out the processor they want, more than a few of which have the same name as their 939 counterpart.
4. 939 was too great
OK, a platform can't perform too well, but the success of 939 meant that in order to top it AMD would have to do bring something really innovative. They were clearly unable to do so (or did not intend to) so most 939 owners were never inclined to upgrade. The strong performance of 939, the availability of cheap processors and great motherboards, and the overclockability of most systems meant that convincing people to upgrade has been difficult. A new system would require a new motherboard, memory, and a CPU in the very least, possibly more if the user was upgrading from a
Why should anything be wrong with the AM2 platform?
Nothing.
It is just an evolutionary step for the AMD.
Which leads us to intel core duo or whatever it's named (their naming scheme confuses like hell).
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
...is that Athlon64 performed suberbly on DDR memory. Hence, the move to DDR2 is a lackluster. Now that DDR2 no longer has the price premium it did, AMD needs to come up with a new CPU architecture to take advantage of it. Or maybe more or less skip to DDR3 anyway.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How did AMD go from record growth and being the darling of enthusiasts to having a new platform which failed to impress?"
Question asked, question answered. It failed to impress, and they let Intel jump ahead.
One only has to look at the seesaw video card wars between ATI and NVIDIA to realize the truth. The people who care about such things are a fickle lot. Let one or the other realize a huge gain in performance and odds are that most people--even "loyal" customers--will jump ship in a second.
And if you don't care about such things, then... well, you don't care. So there's no demand, and you might as well have a hamster cage inside the box.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
CORE 2 DUO.
It just did, really, really, unexpectedly well. It is a good processor and has changed a lot of peoples opinions about the processor market and AMD's (and Intel's) competitiveness. I appreciate the fact that Intel, the top dog, is still willing to put up a fight and compete in price, performance, and power in a market that they already dominate.
Sigs are for Terrorists.
Nothing, (yet).
Slashdot starts bitching about it with Intel ads surrounding it... But who cares...
AM2 really is an excellent platform, it consolidated AMD's Value, Mid-Range, and High-End market segments into a single platform. The reason it's not viable in the larger market-wide Enthusiast, Performance, and High-End segments is simply that Core 2 Duo rapes it. If you're already considering spending the money for a higher-end Athlon 64 X2 or FX processor, you can move to a Core 2 Duo-based platform that will destroy the AMD options performance-wise by a margin that is nearly unprecedented while still providing good power and heat usage. Basically, if the market was perfectly rational and had no transition times, all systems would be AMD AM2-based until you reached high enough prices that it was cost-effective to use a Core 2 Duo, and the P4 and Celerons would be merely a bad memory. AMD's aquisition of ATI helps it in this regard, as ATI has been making some chipsets that are very reliable, very fast, and rather inexpensive. ATI definitely has the best integrated graphics solution in the laptop market, and AMD's Turion 64 X2 is more competitive here than the Athlon 64 X2 is in the desktop arena.
I found the article a bit desperate to be honest in trying to portray some sort of honeymoon period being over for AMD. So AMD have released a product that wasn't in itself bad, but just didn't have enough gains about it over what had gone before for people to really go for it. So what? This just means that what went before was pretty damn good, isn't goint to be improved on much and is going to be hard to beat. For Intel, of course, beating what had gone before wasn't hard at all ;-).
The only major gains AMD are going to make is when they shift to a new 65nm process and then kick off a newer architecture from there.
Currently, my pc runs fast, i can do everything I want on it and easily. Plus I am running an amd 3200. I have not been willing to update anything because my pc runs just fine. If I upgrade now, vista is around the corner and also unreal 2007. I want to make sure I can run the game when I get it. I also have not forked out for a new video card since I am running AGP. The last card I can use to upgrade my rig to play at least the current flock of games nicely is the 7800gs+ agp. This pc is going to become a Linux box to run unreal 2007 and I have no intention of updating until i see some benchmarks. at the moment, it runs just fine just like every person I know who owns a pc and does not wish to update. There is also HD video playback, HD video editing, currently, people are asking me about this and I keep telling them the technology is coming and there is no reason to update because your pc needs to be hdmi ready which current new brands and video cards are just barely getting into it. Current flock of technology is no reason to upgrade and most people I know are still making rediculous payments for the current pc's to lowsy dell and circuit city.
Despite everything AM2 had going for it, this includes a dedicated enthusiast base and a tremendous amount of pro-AMD spirit at the time, the new platform has largely been dismissed by consumers. The question now is, what happened? How did AMD go from record growth and being the darling of enthusiasts to having a new platform which failed to impress?
well, the article itself answers this question in the first paragraph:
The disappointment in AM2 is not a result of its failure to perform, but rather the failure to match the performance gains seen in the move to the K8 platform. Our testing has confirmed what the industry at large has found to be true- the move to AM2 should bring performance gains of about 3-10% when compared to socket 939, with an average increase below 5%. This is what we would comfortably call an "incremental" performance boost, but nothing more.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Intel could sell super computers at half the price of AMDs budget range and I'd still never run my main gaming machine on an intel. I don't care how good conroe looks its still supported by old chipsets (NF4 usually) and as far as I know has issues with SLI due to dodgy old chipsets. AM2 is the future, as a platform its superior in all but the processor front and as mentioned in the article I believe that AMD have many more tricks up their sleeves with the AM2 before they move to another socket. Intel seems to have all or most of its cards on the table already. Truth be told it will be interesting to see what happens but my money is metaphorically and literally (since I bought an AM2) on AMD
I remember reading that the reason for the slight performance increase is memory bandwidth: the current DDR2 simply isn't muchfaster than top of the line dual channel DDR. I forgot where I read it, as well as whether the problem was intrinsic to the RAM or whether it was a bus limit problem (seems to be unlikely ...).
<AMD fanboy mode on>
Of course, any and all of these 'problems' will disappear once AMD gets their 65nm process on track, and starts ramping up clockspeed
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Conroe (VHS) gives you more for less than AMD(Beta)'s superior Hypertransport and on-cpu memory controller. Conroe entirely stole the thunder of AM2, and consequently AM3.
When you can get a Core 2 Duo E6600 and have it crush an FX-62 and at a fraction of a FX-62's price... It's the same formula as always, price to bang. You get more bang with 939, or go straight to Core 2 Duo.
You could always argue time. AMD folks are used to living a long time on a socket type. 939 was only around about a year before AM2 came, whereas 754 and the previous socket 7 were very, very long lived. In another couple years, maybe AM2/3 will pick up steam, but it's too early.
It would have been nice if they could have started by showing some hard sales numbers to back up their statement that it is "being dismissed by consumers". I don't have any special love for either company, next time I'm going to upgrade I'll just pick whatever gives me the biggest bang for the buck, but when you write a whole article about "where did they go wrong", it helps your credibility if you can just quickly show some evidence that they HAVE gone wrong.
Especially since many online hardware sites tend to be pretty low journalistic standards, and pretty high on drooling fanboyism.
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
- no real need for update. S939 and S940 were quite adequate.
- no real performance gain with DDR-2. A simple CPU socket change can't help here.
- CPU core itself hasn't chhanged much. Latest dual core model, like 285 are not that differrent from plain old 240. It has two cores, but cores per se aren't much faster or lower power than old ones...
- People have realised that all technological breakthroughs are aimed at AMD's gain, not customer's benefit. Take HT channels, for example. AMD has been showing them as the next technowonder that will change computing world and bring us cheap, high performance multiCPU systems. In reality, on 2-CPU boards it can hardly show any advantage and on 4 and 8-way systems where it does mean something prices are so high that they practically don't exist for mere mortals.
AMD has, pretty much, wrapped up the high-end market with its Opterons. All the noise about Itanium - it's turned into Opteron sales.
So now Intel has made a strong come-back on the desktop... and AMD calculates, do we make slices of silicon that sell for $100, or that sell for $1,000 and the answer is pretty clear. AMD does not have the capacity that Intel has, so it's making the most out its fabs by aiming at the server market.
My blog
Are we talking people who went out and upgraded their processors here, or people who bought amd equipped machines?
if the latter, then it's down to manufacturers not favoring the chip, not consumers as such.
most of the people I know who regulerly upgrade bits in the box (ah yes, bask in the technical terms...) have only recently (last year or so) purchased AMD XP 64 chips, at some considerable cost. It's not like buying candy you know, people generally like to get some use out of stuff before upgrading, not just buying because new stuff is out.
It takes a while for new tech to drop in price, and then there's mindshare, how well aware are people of the product in question?
If your mates have a particuler chip, chances are you will get that one, and not everyone's flush with money, so it won't be top of the range that gets bought.
the chip I bought, an AMD64 4000 jobbie, will do me for a few years now. probably longer, since the machine will be relegated to server duty while I buy spiffy new bits for my next desktop.
When AM2 was first announced it seemed like it was going to be a guaranteed hit.
No. In order to get the funding to prevent the company from being starved out of business, someone had to be told it would be a "guaranteed hit" because
a) Businesses cannot understand failure and why it is important any more
b) Businesses cannot understand moderate success and why it is important any more
c) Middle managers need someone to blame for their own fuckups
this platform would be moving the tremendously successful socket 939 into the future with its use of DDR2 memory, a greatly increased memory bandwidth, hardware virtualization, and a number of exciting new CPUs.
Oops. Powerpoint slides can't have four points. Only three allowed. Someone must be fired now. In fact, just fire the whole department.
The question now is, what happened?
Office politics. Treachery. Lying. Cheating. Irrational requirements. Unworkable schedules. Insufficient capital. Constant meetings. Constant distractions. Insistence on unnecessary documentation. All the smart people who said it wouldn't work were fired for not being team players. Brands instead of products. Concepts instead of ideas. Buzzwords instead of knowledge. Management was unavailable for explanations of why it wouldn't work because they were too busy stuffing their fat asses at the salad bar or talking about golf on the phone.
How did AMD go from record growth and being the darling of enthusiasts to having a new platform which failed to impress?"
Greed.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
1) While virtualization is immensely useful to a small number of people, it is virtually useless to most end-users.
2) While DDR2 offers greatly increased bandwidth, it does so at the expense of latency, and in many common applications, doesn't really perform much (if any) better than the 128-bit DDR memory of the socket 939 Opterons did.
When you look at it that way, other than being more "future-compatible", there aren't really any benefits to *most* end users, and if there aren't any benefits, why would they upgrade?
The Athlon64/Opteron chips were popular because they were innovative in useful ways, which gave the end user something more for his money. The AM2 hasn't kept with that tradition.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Everyone was shouting Conroe before AM2 had even been released. Budget processors? Intel are unloading NetBurst by the truckload. High performance? Conroe it is.
My company is based on using AMD Opteron servers. Our primary web hosting is done on a dual proc Opteron - and it's done very, very well. It, and the Linux (CentOS) OS has performed very, very nicely for us, while our company's growth has mushroomed - more than 2x growth annual. Combine Opterons and SCSI 10k drives, and the performance is nothing to sneeze at.
However, we're about to begin clustering, since load average on the primary application server is approaching 35% (with our growth rate that gives us about 6 months before customers start complaining) and we need high availability!
So the question is: should we stick with Opterons because of binary compatibility (yes, Opterons and Core Duo are binary compatible - but there's less likely a problem between Opterons than between AMD/64 and IA/64)
So, should I seriously consider jumping ship, or should I stick with it, and go with a cluster of rack-mount quad-core Opterons?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
It wasn't AMD doing anything wrong, it was intel doing something right. AM2 was a natural progression from the 939. But intel came out with conroe, a low-power, low-heat-output and blisteringly fast that made AM2 look lacklaster and even worse comparing the bang per buch factor. 939 was so popular because of things like prescott (a cpu that had such a huge heat output a new case spec was required), add to that power consumption and lackluster performance (while trying to maintain the same price-point) and the 939 was hot (figuratively speaking). So where too from now? AMD have already hinted at multi-core cpu's that "look" like single core cpu's and i suspect that will be a killer feature that will rocket AMD back into the lead again, consider a cpu that has the power of 4 cpu's while allowing a single threaded application to take full advantage of it... that would be dam impressive. On a side note, anyone else find it very amusing the evolution of computing since the PC? We've swung from serial to parallel since the dawn and hopefully we will continue to.
I have a AMD X2 4800 Socket 939 with 2GB of RAM. It does what I want. For me to upgrade to the next level, it's not only a new CPU but new motherboard and new RAM too and that DDR2 stuff ain't cheap if you go for the higher speed stuff to try and futureproof.
Many, including myself, are starting to see the introduction of a new CPU socket type as nothing more than a vain attempt to try and keep revenue flowing by trying to persuade us of all the benefits that these new sockets can offer which apparently the old ones can't. Two downsides to this. The first is ASROCK who have proven that the chipsets are more than up to running new sockets with the help of a low cost adapter to allow you to use the different RAM and CPU. The second is Intel who have come along with the undeniably impressive Core 2 processors that not only run on the existing 775 socket but also the i965 chipset with many boards requiring nothing more than a BIOS update to recognise the new range of processors.
So my message to you, AMD, is simple. We're sick of CPU sockets changing every 18 months. For christ sake, Socket 754 had about 6 months before it was superceeded. Slot A, Socket A, Socket 754, Socket 939, AM2 in less than 6 years with the last three having no real benefit over each other..WE'VE HAD ENOUGH.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
I think there are two reasons why AM2 isn't enjoying the same popularity as 939 systems. 1) It doesn't offer a large performance increase over 939, so those with decent 939 setups aren't encouraged to upgrade (and those that are are prepared to spend the extra for C2D). However, I do believe that will be changed a little once AMD release their 65nm core (I think it's called Brisbane), and I do believe they'll tweak the memory controller for extra performance (advantage of having it on the die). 2) Conroe. Let's face it, for a high end system, it's virtually a no-brainer. I do think that for the low end machines, the AMD product is still superior to Netburst (I built an AM2 system for my parents a couple of months back), but Conroe has pretty much wrapped up the medium-high end desktop market. Will AMD get it back? I think it depends on whether AMD can release their 65nm product before Intel releases budget Conroe-based CPUs. Once Intel release Core-based CPUs for the low end, AMD will be in a bit more trouble, IMO.
I know that my reticience to invest in AM2 equipment has had nothing to do with the current market situation or AMD's competitors, I'm simply waiting for the upcoming quad-core processors before I'm investing anything at all into hardware.
I'd still never run my main gaming machine on an intel.
Those of us keen on running mainly open-source software (and hence OpenGL graphics) were quite neutral on the AMD vs Intel debate, because both manufacturers gave us the same amount of (neutral) support for graphics, but sadly this will now be changing against AMD.
Using OpenGL *FULLY* is pretty much impossible with ATI, since they only implement a popular subset of it, and even that is done badly so that there's quite a bit of glitching. Many OpenGL game devs have complained about it in forums and made representations direct to ATI, but ATI just don't care, as OpenGL is for them only a minority interest.
And now, AMD has effectively merged with ATI as far as development is concened. It would seem that this pretty much puts paid to use of AMD hardware for intensive OpenGL games in the future (although simple games will probably continue to work). ATI's very strong links with Microsoft for Xbox 360 means that ATI will continue to keep their OpenGL vastly inferior to nVidia's, and it's likely that AMD hardware will work much better with ATI graphics hardware because of their joint design.
In summary, AMD doesn't seem to have much future at all for intensive OpenGL users (the Second Life client comes to mind). This opposite conclusion contrasts strongly with yours.
Most people just read advertising, hype and Slashdot, and so maybe they deserve what they buy.
I run my own benchmarks. The AMD Turion 64 X2 runs my stuff more than FOUR times as fast as the current Intel Core Duo 2.16 GHz flagship processor (0.2 seconds rather than over 0.9 seconds, with fast being better; array floating point stuff).
So still, people think something is wrong with AMD? It sure ain't the processor. Something's wrong with their brains, that's what's wrong.
I honestly think that a HUGE chunk of the people were looking at moving to a m-ATX board, and saw no advantage with the poor board designs. There are quite a few solid 939 m-ATX boards out there, so why give up what you know and love just to get DDR2 ram and some other seemingly spiffy stuff?
Now most of you will say "omg nobody buys sff motherboards" but in this case you'd be wrong. Some of the m-ATX AM2 mobos actually supported DDR ram, but, once again, they were horribly designed. They would have been the perfect AM2 upgrade, but board manufacturers failed to deliver.
Oh, and the Core 2 Duo pretty much pwned everyone with it's benchmarks and OC stats...lol
Customers and motherboard vendors alike are simply annoyed by the permanent socket changes. Sockets are hardware APIs which these days shouldn't change for a decade and not within a year or so. Besides the performance increase from 939 to AM2 is so insignificant there's no reason to switch.
IMO the best what AMD could do is scrap AM2 and replace it with a socket which is able to plug in 939 (DDR) processors and possible DDR2/DDR4/DDRx processors. Since this will take some time AMD should release any AM2 processor parallel as 939 processors, else AMD will possibly loose some market share.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
The last one didn't even exist, you just made it up.
Intel had bit of an advertising coup in that any advert on TV for a company selling PCs (at least in the UK) seemed to have an "Intel inside" logo and jingle played during each ad.
I never saw an "AM2 inside" equivalent.
America, Home of the Brave.
IMHO it is simply the fact that Intel used 65nm for the core 2 duo and AMD used 90nm for the AM2....
let AMD switch to 65nm and watch the fireworks...[hopefully]....
Hand down, Intel beat AMD like AMD beat Intel back in late 1999. I really think AMD didn't push the envelope as much as they could and they put out a product that just doesn't impress when compared to the Core 2 or even the Core.
Too little, too late.
I've always had a love-hate relationship with AMD, some of my AMD systems have been great, then I seem to have a run of bad luck, switch to Intel, then AMD comes out with something great, I switch, works good for a while, then start having problems on new systems, switch back to Intel, and the cycle continues...
But now I've finally settled, 3800, 4GB of RAM, does everything I need and more, and I don't see a reason to switch to AM2, nor to core 2, for a long, long time. About the only thing I expect to upgrade for a couple years minimum is the graphics card... This will give AMD a chance to be up to AM4 by then, and Intel with about 20 cores/chip, and then I can upgrade to something that just kicks butt...
The enthusiast market.
AMD AM2
Can I use my DDR memory on AM2 - NO
Can I use my AGP video card - Yes (Asrock do have an AM2 board with AGP bit still needs DDR II)
INTEL P4 805 Dualcore 2.66GHz with Asrock Dual-VSTA (Cheap board circa £45)
Can I use my DDR memory - YES
Can I use my AGP video card - YES
Can I switch to DDR2 later without changing the motherboard - YES
Can I switch to a PCIE video card without changing the motherboard - YES
Can I run both DDR and DDR II at the same time - NO
Can I run both PCIE and AGP at the same time - YES (With supported cards)
Worse for AMD the Intel solution is CHEAPER and overclocks like a mad beast..
Go on try and find an X2 AMD processor for less than £70 inculding tax and delivery.
You have (miracle) well find a board that will take that processor and my 1Gb of DDR and my AGP Radeon 9550 for less than £45 will you ?
They had the oppourtinity when deciding on the spec of the AM2 interface to include a more flexible memory controller setup and allow the motherboard manufaturers decide what style of memory to equip their boards with but they didn't.
Way to loose the enthusiast market - make things too expensive AND FORCE you to upgrade your memory at the same time.
WAY TO GO AMD
AM2 will probably take off more so within the next year or so, I and alot of people would have just upgraded to a 939 64 processor, and its running great.
even gets a 4.5 on vista rc1 32bit.
I did look at the AM2 chip, but the lack of mobo's that are avaiable stop me from getting one.
when Dell started shipping systems with AMD...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
The AMD chips that went up against most recent Pentiums won their contests hands down. But now that Intel has finally got its act together with the Core 2 Duos, its obvious that AMD's market share will suffer, for simple reason that it has real competition for the first time in 3 years.....regardless of subtleties in the relative merits of the 2 platforms.
I actually bought myself an AM2 4200, after deciding I needed a new system (I used to have a 2.4 XP) - and seeing it was going to be the new thing, and that it wasn't much price difference. Perhaps at least I can offer some thoughts on actually having used it everyday and built it myself.
Its a wonderful system imho. So what if it's not 5% faster than the previous model? Its not any more expensive. At the very least the thought and design gone into the CPU Mounting is great, no more fiddling with stupid heat-sink clips, its a nice clamping system that feels solid.
It runs Windows XP, Vista and Gentoo fantastically smoothly (Yep, I've tried all three! I use Gentoo normally.) - and seems to do it better than my Intel 939 at work, which is meant to be faster.
It also overclocks like an absolute dream! I can squeeze 8% overclocking on it without a problem.
Not just that, but my nice AM2 Motherboard will support an AM3 processor. Hows that for upgrading?
C'mon guys, just cos its the new thing - and especially after all the chipset problems with 64 bit systems, this is a nice system. I'd never go back to Intel after using it, personally I can't stand the 'Duo Core', even if it is 1% faster or whatever. Whats going to happen when Intel bring out the next big thing?
Dug
I stopped caring about high end CPU performance. The only reason I will have to upgrade is that my current PC is getting flakey. Random crashed when it's pushed beyond ordinary workload. Sure my new system will be spec'd to cope with gaming, but it will probably be with last years technology anyway.
Gone are the days when you can buy something (an Athlon XP) that delivers 95% of the intel equivalent for half the price (saving hundreds of dollars), or offering a value processor (The good'ol Duron) that kicked the living crap out of a faster Intel mainstream CPU for a tad more than nothing.
It was the fact that they used to deliver the substance without the bull and charge accordingly that made AMD so dear to us back then. Not so now - they realized that if people are willing to pay Intel big bucks for fast CPUs, they'd be willing to pay them too. Unlike then - if you want High-end performance today, you gotta cough up some hard cash.
Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't see Cure 2 Duo coming, or perhaps underestimated it, or perhaps yet again just couldn't do any better, as it seems to have caught them pants down.
I just looked up some CPUs for my near upgrade.
For the uber-value dual-core, Intel is practically giving away Pentium D 805's for free - as cheap as the good'ol Athlon XP's, only double the cores.
For the value dual-core game box, The 6400 tears the X2's a new one no matter how you line them up. The price difference - 40$ more expensive than the lowest AMD (AM2 X2 3800). HUGE performance difference. And if it ain't worth the extra 40$, see the first clause above.
For the performance and extreme markets, the 6600 and 6800 tear the X2 an even bigger new one.
This isn't rocket science. It's second-grade math. This round, AMD lose, no matter which side you're looking at (Save maybe the server side, and I'm not sure there too).
Unless AMD either bites the bullet and does some competitive (additional!) price slashing to bring their products in line with the corresponding Intel alternatives, or comes out with something just as kickass to counter the Core 2 Duo, you have to be a certified idiot to be buying their products for anything.
My 2 cents.
-
I actually bought myself an AM2 4200, after deciding I needed a new system (I used to have a 2.4 XP) - and seeing it was going to be the new thing, and that it wasn't much price difference. Perhaps at least I can offer some thoughts on actually having used it everyday and built it myself. Its a wonderful system imho. So what if it's not 5% faster than the previous model? Its not any more expensive. At the very least the thought and design gone into the CPU Mounting is great, no more fiddling with stupid heat-sink clips, its a nice clamping system that feels solid. It runs Windows XP, Vista and Gentoo fantastically smoothly (Yep, I've tried all three! I use Gentoo normally.) - and seems to do it better than my Intel 939 at work, which is meant to be faster. It also overclocks like an absolute dream! I can squeeze 8% overclocking on it without a problem. Not just that, but my nice AM2 Motherboard will support an AM3 processor. Hows that for upgrading? C'mon guys, just cos its the new thing - and especially after all the chipset problems with 64 bit systems, this is a nice system. I'd never go back to Intel after using it, personally I can't stand the 'Duo Core', even if it is 1% faster or whatever. Whats going to happen when Intel bring out the next big thing? Dug
I remember a few months ago when AM2 came out, I briefly contemplated selling my 939 setup to get an AM2 setup. Briefly! The boards cost about the same, the CPUs cost about the same, the ram cost about the same. So I would have sold my old gear for about 2/3rd's the price of the new stuff, to get a synthetic 3-6% improvement I'll never notice. I passed.
The biggest problem with AM2 is that it's nothing new. All it is, is 939 with DDR2 memory. It could have been a bit better, if the new architecture had maximized DDR2's performance like 939 did for DDR1, but it didn't. So why would people pay 100-200$ more for the same mhz, the same features, and a lackluster memory controller ? They didn't. We're all waiting for the next big thing. I even had a look at Core2Duo, even though I have less-than-fond thoughts about Intel and their exploitive pricing schemes. I'm not so much an AMD fanboi, I've just had unpleasant experiences with Intel chipsets in the past and that is a strong stigma to purge.
Right now my gaming rig is a very respectable AMD X2 2.7ghz, 4gig ram on an Nforce4 Ultra board. If I were to upgrade, I need all-new ram, a new CPU that won't give me any more speed as I'm already overclocked beyond the fastest stock AMD processor, and I even have to sacrifice some chipset features as the Nforce5 has less builtins than my NF4 Ultra. It's just not worth it for me, and a lot of people are in the same boat.
If/when AM3 comes around, if they give us a significant jump in speed that justifies the investment, then I'll dive in. I would love to see a 3ghz quad-core AMD, priced at the crucial 299$ point just like the pivotal X2 3800 was at first.. the one that brought dual-core to the dirty smelly unwashed welfare-mongering masses. This means AMD has some homework cut out for them, as they have to research performance improvements, manufacturing efficiencies and design tradeoffs in order to reach that performance/price target.
The CPU industry is much like the graphics card industry, the big players constantly leapfrog each other and stimulate innovation and competition. In theory this is good news for the customers as we have both companies working hard to deliver the best bang for the buck and win our hearts. On the backhand it also means we end up replacing hardware very often if we want to have the best gear, jumping back and forth and relearning each company's products and software every time.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
A M 3
So, what's gunna happen to your motherboard when you want to upgrade?
Dug
Seems to me that the article was written this way by design. It is (in somewhat silly fashion) regarded as the "upside down pyramid" style of composition. Via :
Write in an "inverted pyramid" style. That means that the most important fact goes in the first sentence, then the second most important fact, and so on followed by facts of progressively diminishing importance. This allows the reader to get the most from any story without necessarily reading the entire story. When the facts reach a level that isn't important for that particular reader, that reader will click the "next" button.
By this measure, it seems the style worked.
Admittedly, 4x4 is dumb. I would consider that to be a quad-processor machine with 4 cores each. But they consider it a dual-core dual-processor machine.
AM2 is, I believe, the socket type. You know, instead of A,754,939,LGA775 (Intel).
x.xGHz+ is something you made up. They had xx00+, which was used for marketing so people knew what it compared to in an Intel processor, since their processors ran at lower clockspeeds than the Intel competition.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
4x4 is a direct loan from car industry. You have a jeep that uses 4 wheels to crawl around, it has 4x4 written on it, do you assume it has 16 pulling wheels ? It doesnt say 4 times 4 cores, it says 4x4, it's an expression, not math, it's time to get over it :)
:)
Anyway, i'd like to know where this article author lives, he claims that he can get DDR rams cheaper than DDR2, while in most places where i'm checking out, it's pretty much the other way around. Whatever x86 i will acquire as next will have at least DDR2 in it, there is no point to go for DDR & S939 anymore, the memory price just undermines it's cheapness.
However, what i'd would like to see (and to what amd will say "in your wildest wet dreams") , would be AMD Geode , running on DDR2 memory and consuming 15W power for the cpu and 60W for the whole machine. Fanless ofcourse
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
I have a AMD 64 3000 with 1 gig memory and a Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz . The Core 2 seems a lot slower on a lot of things, required me to get a bigger power supply and seems to need a hell of a lot more cooling.. I also spent a hell of a lot more money on the stupid intel cpu ($300+) then I did for my $150 (at the time) AMD 64 cpu.. I also have a Laptop with a Core 2 Duo in it. Its ok. But still use my AMD for everything. Yes I am more of a AMD fan boy, But I do have both and always have, just like I have Linux, XP , Solaris and a MAc at home.. This if anyting is not making be upgrade my system to the latest AMD, Its because I have not needed to upgrade! Nothing has required me too.
... but not anymore. That is what is wrong with AMD.
The unanswered question remains, "Is AMD necessary in order to keep Intel honest?"
I actually got confused when going to buy a chip thinking AM2 was compatible with a socket 939 since the chips seemed to be named almost identically. Fortunately I realized it was actually different when I glanced over some other review raving about ddr2 and AM2.
Maybe make the last digit of the number a 2 like Athlon X2 4002+. That would clearly differentiate between that and the socket 939 flavor of the same chip. I suppose most vendors specify the socket type right in the item name so maybe it's not necessary. Still, just glancing over things and I got a completely false idea like the 2 would be compatible.
Fear is the mind killer.
DDR memory has gone as far as it can go.
DDR2 memory still has room for improvement.
When faster DDR2 ram comes out, AM2 will look that much better.
I have to go with AM2 to use a dual core processor from AMD, right? Or can I use an affordable dual core cpu in 939? And if I can, what do I need to buy?
This new hardware virtualization support - is it available in 939 or do I have to go for AM2 to get it? If available on 939 what do I need to buy to be sure I get it? And can anyone point me to some good information that actually tells me more about it than a one-line marketing discription?
Thanks in advance for any useful feedback.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The automotive term "4x4" I have always guessed means "it has four wheels, of which four are driving, i.e. connected to the engine". I'm not sure how to apply that to a processor, and go from that to "it has two CPUs, each of which has two cores". It's just ... weird. It's not as if computers need CPUs that don't compute (like wheels that don't drive) to counter gravity and be stable on the desktop surface. Nope. So, obviously, marketing CPUs is hard, since the industry seems to come up with so much weirdness.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
Come on, just look at the community of "power users". Moore's law wnet bunk. Processers no longer jump speeds in warp segments. OK so you got a 64 bit buggier, cool but at around 3g Huh... that ain't much of a gain. Oh let's not forget most cores are "locked" these days so no user tweaks. Then there is the fact most windors users are at a DISADVANTAGE with a 64 bit system for with support is spotty. Dual and quad cores now those are worth waiting for... Nothing like a quad core 64 bit mini-suer cpu in abox.. Throw in a little SLI and quad 21" wide-screen LCDs.... Hey wait, this sounds like my next box... That is really what it is all about... IMO
Core 2 Duo happened. Hello out there...
I myself own an oldskool Via C3, so I'm not too much into this issue anyways ;) Come to think of it, the Via naming scheme might make sense maybe? At least they have a clarifying list :)
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
AM2 is a great socket. AMD's old CPU's are the problem.
AMD has been at 90nm for some time now are Intel took the jump to 65nm months ago. and as you can see, Intel is reaping the benifits of it greatly. I`ll consider AM2 when AMD releases thier next generation of 65nm CPUs
Wikipedia agrees with you, so it must be right ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_wheel_drive
Seriously though, it was silly for the car industry and is even sillier for the computer industry. If the car has 4 wheels that are powered, then it's not gonna only have 2 that are on the road. Duh. It's gonna have at least 4. And since there's a positive dearth of consumer vehicles with more than 4 wheels, this is pretty silly. (Dualies don't count since the sets of wheels are connected and act like 1 wheel with wider traction.)
But at least cars have SOME use for the other wheels other than driving power. Steering, stability, etc.
CPUs only have 1 use: Processing. To state that there are 4 CPUs and all 4 process... Pointless.
This obviously ticked me off from the start and I haven't fully vented about it. At least the market either failed to fall for the hype or couldn't figure out what they hell AMD was talking about.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
For me (in Germany), the calculation looks a bit different:
;-)
For reliability, I want my machines with ECC RAM. Looking (for example) at my preferred vendor Alternate.de, I end up with the following prices:
On the Intel side, AFAIK you have to take the pricy 775X chipset for ECC (and some 775X boards are listed as NOT supporting ECC). Alternate prices for boards that actually support ECC RAM are around 200 euros.
As processor, I might take the cheapest Core 2 Duo for 169 euros. No Pentium D please, I don't need an "enhanced heater"
That makes about 370 euros for processor + board.
Most AMD AM2 mainboards however support ECC - easy enough as it is a feature of the CPU's built-in memory controller.
I found an AM2 board with ECC RAM support for 69 euros (Asus M2N-MX) but I might prefer the full-size Asus M2N for 84 euros.
As processor, I might take the Athlon 64 X2 4200+ for 179 euros. Not quite as fast as the Core 2 Duo above but good enough.
That makes 263 euros for the above combination of processor + board.
So I can save around 100 euros by going AMD, at the expense of having not quite the same CPU power.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I think the problem is people building their own computers that don't have enough common sense to buy a motherboard that has the same socket as the processor they want to buy.
1. Socket 775 CPU
2. Socket 939 CPU
3. Socket AM2 CPU
Now match it with a motherboard
a. Socket 939 motherboard
b. Socket 775 motherboard
c. Socket AM2 motherboard
Its common sense.
The AM2 platform was always going to be an evolutionary step, not revolutionary. The main benefit was the DDR2 memory and some other minor tweaks. To compare a new socket system to a new processor line is just silly. Besides, with me it's never been only about performance - It's been about performance versus PRICE!!!!
Sure if I want the current world's fastest CPU I'll spend $1K and get the new Intel processor but who in their right mind is going to build a home PC with a processor that is that expensive. I can get a processor from AMD for the AM2 socket that performs in excess of even my 3D gaming and video editing needs for home for $265 AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4600+ Socket AM2 (65W) Retail.
Personally, I'd rather either put the extra money towards my video card or put in the bank for my next upgrade.Let's see more articles on who has the fastest CPU at different price levels. Instead of just who has the fastest CPU.
duh bad timing, conroe
Back in the day if you're shopping for CPUs and come across a P3 933, you instantly had an idea of the chips performance, at least enough to say well that's probably a bit faster then an Athlon 750. I'm sure some nitpicking AMD fanboys will argue and say it wasn't, but lets face it 933 > 750.
Your own example is the very reason that AMD "broke" the naming scheme. It was because idiot consumers like yourself were apparently incapable of making the leap of logic that "clock speed" != "performance." Since Intel was aggressively pushing clockspeed while AMD was pushing the operations per cycle, this would leave AMD at a great marketing disadvantage. So they named their chips with numbers represented the clock speed of the Intel chip they roughly performance-competitive with. In reality, you got what you wanted - numbers that represented performance, not just clock speed.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
It hasn't been for ages... Yup, decades I believe.
C SIFFD/IDESCSIFFD/Products_/SCSI_Products/FFD_Ultra 320_SCSI.htm
The performance bottleneck is the disk and it has been forever. You want a really fast system today? This is what you need:
http://www.m-systems.com/site/en-US/Products/IDES
320Mb/sec burst rate, 40Mb/sec sustained and key... 0.02ms access time. It's the biggest performance upgrade you can make to a computer.
Deleted
AMD is still running their plants at capacity or greater. They are still selling everything they make. If they could make more they could sell more.
The only thing holding them back now is manufacturing capacity. It was nice when they were preceved as being the best, but as long as they can sell everything they make, then they are doing fine.
The biggest problem is price pressure from Intel. And they don't actually have to match Intels price straight out. They only have to balance the price against availability to keep all available production going out the door. As long as the price is low enough to sell all of their production quantity, then it's low enough. The high demand over their limited production capacity actually helps them there.
Perception helps in all of that equation, mostly in allowing them to sell their capacity at a slightly higher price, but it's not going to kill the company if it drops a little. They must have known how well Conroe was going to do well before the public benchmarks came out. If AMD knows they are going to take a hit on their perception from Conroe, then this was probably a good time to make a few other changes and put all of the disruptions behind them in the shortest possible time.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
IMO what went wrong was that AMD poked around adding DDR2 support for so long, that I'm willing to believe that they caved to OEM pressures to exchange the DDR memory controller for a DDR2 capable memory controller. They designed the CPU in such a way that they could do that relatively painlessly, yet that is almost ALL that they did. Other than the DDR2 memory controller the AM2 is just a Venice/Toledo/Manchester core with DDR2 capability and slightly improved power management a with zero performance improvements.
So, along come Core 2 Duo which even the lower end chips pretty much walk all over(or match) higher end socket 939 and AM2 chips, and the Core 2 Duos come in at more reasonable prices. Now, if you're going to upgrade and you have a socket 939 machine you're going to have to buy memory and a mb anyways, so why waste your cash on a lower performing CPU when you're already going to have to pretty much replace everything? If you're going to go a little more cheaply and have a socket 939 mb but not the max CPU but also don't want to have to shell out for memory again, then just buying a high end socket 939 is more cost efficient.
While gaming is not all many consumers do with their machines, it IS what alot of them do with them, so unless your on the budget version Core 2 Duo is the way to go ATM as far as best bang for the buck goes unless you're an AMD adoring fan. (I place myself in the budget case as going to AM2 doesn't get me much more memory bw, and in the event I was going AM2 I'd really have to go Core 2 Duo but don't want to shell out for mb + 2G DDR2 + CPU+ I also needed a decent GPU, so I went CPU only, 4800+ as they're fairly decently priced(still need to drop by c. $50-$75 IMO though. I'll be waiting for quad(or more) cores plus sw/games that support them efficiently before I make my next major upgrade to whatever is the best bang for the buck at that time, be it Core 2 Quadro(?) plus new bus or some K8L quad based CPU. The power utilization difference on average isn't enough in AMD's favor(if it truly is at all) to warrant AM2 either, unless I'm running 1000s of machines in a server farm and value the few $1000 saved in power over performance.)
So, this all boils down to AMD is no longer in the performance seat and arguably is only in the power consumption seat, yet they refuse to realize this and act/price accordingly. I don't plan on buying any ATI based GPUs ATM either as nVidia GPUs use less power and are more cost effective for me in the upper mid-end GPU range. (I refuse to pay more for a GPU than I pay for mb+CPU+RAM, so high-end current GPUs are right out.) Maybe the power utilization will change with AMD expertise, but...
On top of this semi-rant, I really don't see K8L taking or matching the performance crown from what little is known about the design, and as far as multi-cores, big deal Intel is already to match or even beat AMD to it while simultaneously maintaining equivalent performance lead. AMD has their work cutout for them in this department, and it will be interesting to see what their designers can come up with.
>it says 4x4, it's an expression, not math, it's time to get over it :)
To me, as a perl coder, 4x4 means 4444.
I take it you're talking about a significant number of machines? Enough that getting the choice right makes a difference in the four to five digit $ range?
Then you might want to buy one or two Core 2 Duo machines now and use them for testing.
If all your applications run fine, consider going Intel.
If they don't, you have spent maybe (pulling numbers out of my ass) $2.000 on avoiding a $20.000 error. Sounds like a good tradeoff to me.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I have a bunch of 939/940 systems around from back when
... what fun on a
...
there were actually decent chipsets to be had for the platform.
With decent I mean "stable" and "also runs under Linux". AM2
has just continued a trend that's started in 939s prime.
- VIA's K8Xnnn series worked great for me but now it's even
more outdated then your proverbial Debian release. Even
that I could live with if a selection of boards were
actually available. The local equivalent of pricewatch
lists a whopping 3 boards, all with the antique south bridge.
- ATIs chipsets look good on paper but there have reportedly
been some Linux compatibility issues. I'd rather let that
fruit ripen a bit more. Then there's the ATI-AMD merger
which might end the life of and support for the current
chipsests very apruptly and prematurely.
- had mixed but generally good experiences with ALi products,
but since nVidia has bought them the compile-yourself driver
sources have become progrssively harder to find.
- Leaves nVidia, and a choice between binary blob drivers that
intermittently refuse to see the onboard LAN or
reverse-engineered open ones that have the same problem. Add
to that the less-than-stellar SATA and the never-dieing
accusations of data corruption.
When my server died a few months back I borrowed a nice nVidia-
based board from a friend and did a test installation: the onboard
LAN could not be convinced to stay up even a day
headless machine. At which point I switched to Intel.
AMC CPUs and Intel chipsets, now that
ok, i've done reading the first page, but there's no nav bar to go to the next!
That was one of the reasons (in addition to the DDR2 memory), behind the AM2 platform in the first place.
What a strange and useless thing to say, that AM2 has been 'dismissed'.
Perhaps one could say this if the platform was somewhat more mature?
As it is, this is still a pretty new platform, with a lot of people still on Socket 939. S939 also has a good choice of CPU's available and I personally haven't found any major bottleneck with not having DDR2 memory.
I still have an upgrade path to a Dual Core CPU that runs several hundred megahurtz faster.
Why exactly would I want to buy a new motherboard?
There's nothing wrong with AM2, it's just that people who already have a S939 system don't yet have a good enough reason to upgrade. People buying new would probably consider it, but then Intel Core 2 is here and its fast.
So I stand by my comment that saying "What went wrong for AM2" is a redundant thing to say. The answer is, "nothing".
("The important thing is to realize why you have loyalty to a certain brand, and be willing to re-evaluate your position when the quality of the brand you favour starts dropping.")
Amen. In contrast to the article's take on things, I was formerly loyal to Intel & ATI, and switched to AMD/nVidia to use an Athlon X2 -- socket AM2. The experience has been good enough that I'm likely to stay with AMD for a while.
Pi Ran Out
I think the reason that AM2 failed to impress is lame marketing. I have to tell you that I am in the IT industry and none of the people I polled nearby (including myself) knows AM2. But we all know Core 2 Duo and we were used to be AMD fans...
---
Best Freeware Reviews
The intel quad-core are just 2 duel core linked by a fsb just like what they did when there duel cores first came out.
Intel chips sets are still behind Nvidia and Ati. The best that Intel has is x8 x8 or x1 x16 while Nvidia has x16 x16 one 590 board even has x16 x8 x16 and most 590 boards have with duel gig-e with ip/tpc offload. These are for amd 590 as the Intel ones are not out yet.
This also shows up in the workstation / severs chips sets as well. Aka the power Mac g5 has more pci-e lanes then the Mac pro and it has less bandwidth in the chip set to chip set link.
Also looking at Motherboards form super micro
Dual AMD® Opteron(TM) 2000 Series (Socket F) Support, 1000 MHz HyperTransport Link
2 (x16), 1 (x8) & 1 (x4) PCI-e, 1 64-bit 133MHz PCI-X, 1 64-bit 100MHz PCI-X
Up to 16GB DDR2 667 SDRAM (or)
Up to 16GB DDR2 533 SDRAM (or)
Up to 32GB DDR2 400 SDRAM
Dual-port Gigabit LAN/Ethernet Controller
2-Channel Ultra320 SCSI with Zero-Channel RAID support
Dual Intel® 64-bit Xeon® Support (667 / 1066 / 1333MHz FSB)
Up to 32GB DDR2 667 & 533MHz FB-DIMM
1(x16) & 1(x4 in x16) PCI-E, 2 64-bit 133MHz & 1 64-bit 100MHz
PCI-X, 1 32-bit PCI
Dual-Channel Ultra320 SCSI & Zero-Channel RAID Support
Dual-port Gbit LAN
The amd board has a lot pci-e slots
Tyan
(2) AMD Opteron(TM) (Rev.F) 2000 series processor support (1207-pin)
(8) DDR2 DIMMs sockets; up to 32GB reg. DDR2 400/533/667 mem.
Supports ECC memory moduels; dual channel memory bus
(4) PCI-E x16 slots
- (1) x16 signal from IO55
- (1) x16 from MCP55
- (1) x16 from MCP55 with x8 signal
- (1) x16 from IO55 with x8 signal
(2) PCI-X 100MHz slots from NEC nPD720404
or (1) PCI-X 133MHz slot if 133MHz card is used
(1) PCI v2.3 32-bit 33MHz slot
(7) Expansion slots total
(6) SATA2 ports (3.0Gb/s), (8) SAS ports (opt.), and (2) GbE LAN ports
(1) 1394a FireWire port and integrated audio
SSI/Extended ATX footprint (13" x 12"; 330.2mm x 304.8mm)
Tyan does not any xeon workstation board with a full x16 slot.
intel 590 is 48 lanes
NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 and 3050 56 lanes 12 links Flexible
NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 28 lanes 6 links Flexible
NVIDIA nForce Professional 3400 28 lanes 6 links Fixed
NVIDIA nForce Professional 2200 and 2050 40 lanes 8 links Flexible
NVIDIA nForce Professional 2200 20 lanes 4 links Flexible
the AM2's are basically refined K8 cores with the same instructions, same pipeline, same cache, etc.
Boring. Core and Core 2 are new designs that can get people interested in looking at.
Especically since Core 2 is way cooler [literally and figuratively] than an AMD64. Granted HT is saving the Opteron front but for the desktop Core 2 Duo is a very good option. This is coming from a staunch AMD supporter and Intel playah-hater.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
1. DDR2 RAM is too expensive.
2. For some reason most AM2 motherboards seem to be micro-ATX and that makes consumers think they're low powered boards for novelty computers.
Slot A, Socket A, Socket 754, Socket 939, AM2 in less than 6 years with the last three having no real benefit over each other..I've certainly had enough.
.. so don't upgrade with every little swing in technology. Honestly, I bought a Slot-A when the Athlons first came out, like 1998 for my Linux server/desktop. That was performing just fine when I had upgraded other computers and finally put in a Socket-A motherboard in maybe 2004 or so. It still runs quite well, same case, hard drives, etc.
Um
Recently I was putting together a MythTV box, and decided to go with a 939 motherboard as I have plenty of hand-me-down memory I can put in that vs buying new DDR2 sticks. Give it time, AM2 might eventually work out. To me, it's still new and too early to decide if it's a complete failure. But then, I don't completely upgrade every computer in my house every 2 months.
The Pentium D 950 runs at 3.4Ghz. The Core 2 Duo E6600 only runs at 2.4Ghz. So by your logic the Pentium must be faster because of the clock speed...
So silly.
AMD put out 3 different socket sets to maximize their profits- socket 754 for low end, non-64 bit computing, and single channel memory, socket 939 for mainstream users, and socket 940 for server and extreme users. All marchitechture, but all forgiven because the AMD users could buy dual cores that weren't just space heaters. Yeah, the price for the good stuff wasn't any cheaper, but the benefits were so obvious that only the Intel/Dell fanboys "stayed the course" or at least, held off from buying.
Then Intel releases a near perfect CPU, great performance, good heat, medium power, just no upgrade to memory acces. Intel fanboys rejoice and finally upgrade. Middle of the roaders feel like they have a choice. AMD is suddenly left in the position it had occupied for all those years, second place. Yeah, it has a lot of options, and is still competitive for server stuff, but it's no longer a lock for the desktop user.
Amd reverts to what worked for them previously- move all desktops to the same socket and give that socket a lot of upgrade life. Since DDR2 is finally available in quanity, and at speeds that actually don't produce a slower OS than using DDR 400, AMD decides to make the change to DDR2. Save for the recent attempt to make money, AMD users have been able to buy one socket for the majority of AMD cpus available at that time, and that provides them some marginal sales, for those users who want a chance at a later CPU upgrade.
SO, socket AM2 is released at a time where it doesn't make much sense to upgrade for AMD fanboys. Intel fanboys are buying all the core 2 duo's their pocketbooks can handle, and middle-of-the-roaders are picking and choosing, just like always, versus performnce and price. AM2 is not cheaper than Intel solutions; the real deals for AMD are the clearance of older socket 754/939 stuff. Any real wonder that AM2 sales, at the moment, have been lackluster? As I see it, AMD took the long view, and released AM2 for the upcoming K8L and newer stuff. They'll take whatever sales they can get, but they aren't overly worried about sales right now. I mean, Dell is finally selling AMD's and I'd bet that AMD is waiting on that cash cow to come in.
The Internet has no garbage collection
intel impressed a little more.
People don't buy sockets - they don't decide what upgrade to get based on the socket.
They choose the best performing CPU for their budget, then maybe the same for a graphics card. Once these two are selected they just chose the memory and motherboard that allows it all to fit together in a stable fashion (or overclock if that's your thing).
Currently if you're looking to upgrade you'll choose a Core based CPU. Once you've got that CPU, it's not really a huge leap of logic to conclude you won't buy an AM2 based board.
This very thing is coming back to bite intel on the ass lately. The idiots who cant let go of the clockspeed thing. I had a notebook I was recently trying to sell, a guy that was interested was completely irate because I had the nerve to sell a 1.6ghz notebook for only a few dollars less than some other guy was selling a 2.0ghz system. He refused to comprehend that the one I was selling was a centrino while the other one he was looking at was an early p4 mobile and that mine was actually faster and cheaper. I finally grew so frustrated that I lied and told him I sold it already and reposted the ad with a new picture.
I think it might be too early to tell how AM2 is doing, I mean...we're rolling into the first holiday season since it was introduced, and on top of that, a lot of people are probably keeping their distance until the second wave of AM2 mobos come out, to ensure a nice stable and compatible build. Nothing like being an early adopter and finding out nothing works. Other than that...who WOULDN'T want a nice 64-bit AMD chip and DDR2?! At this point, it's AM2, or a $2000 Socket-F 2000 or 8000 series opteron. (Did I mention the Socket-F boards cost more than half what the CPU does?) So yeah... I think it's too early to tell. And even the holiday season (And tax season.), might not be enough to judge.
Personally, I like AM2, and will probably build a system based on it...as soon as enough people tell me there's good motherboards out there that take the parts I want, and don't catch fire. (Any more than the rest of the rig, anyway.)
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
General available in August. Meant for DDR2 Opteron with Picifa virtualiztion chips.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
I intend getting an AM2 as soon as the second wave of AM2 motherboards is available. I won't get any of the first such motherboards on gp, (never buy the first of anything).
I already bought a dual-core S939 Opteron this year, I simply have no need for AM-2. There's probably a few people out there who jumped on the dual-core bandwagon (I know a few myself), at which point there's really not a big benefit to jumping to the AM2 systems... since we're not even using all the power of the dual-cores 90% of the time.
To begin with, I've been accused of being an AMD fanboy on this site. I thought I was partial to Alpha processors -because absolutely everything sucks in comparison :p cough sorry.
.65nm. If the Turion X2 was built on .65nm us "AMD fanboys" would be saying things like "Core doo doo" and "Core 2 so over".
IMHO:
The reason AM2 "is not a big hit" is because Core 2 Duo is a better processor. It is faster, runs cooler, and priced right. The reason it is faster is because AMD made a couple mistakes.
1) They bought ATI instead of re-tooling to
2) AMD couldn't implement AM2 with DDR3 support so they shouldn't have introduced it at all. The switch to AM2 was needed to consolidated their platform but until DDR3 the move is pointless. The memory makers beleived strong DDR2 sales were still possible because AMD hadn't moved to it yet.
AMD might have known they would loose the competitive edge with these descisions. They can't count on the nForce product; so, ATI was a good direction. Well, it is a direction anyway. For all I know the cost of re-tooling might have been much more expensive.
I have to give Intel props for the new dual core processor. The Pentium Pro was the last good processor they made. Until now that is. Pentium Pro was a fantastic processor. The new one looks every bit as good.
FanBoy Alert!!!
Don't get me wrong. I think the single core version "Core homo" is shit. Fortunately, it isn't as bad as the "Celery"
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Without competition innovation stagnates. By supporting the underdogs that have comparable products against near monopolies in the long run the consumer wins out. Look how Intel and Nvidia have had to play catch up to AMD and ATI due to market loss. Without these competitors they certainly would have taken the microsoft approach sat back on their next generation technologies and soaked in the profit off their current products on the market place.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Well, more specifically, fanboy-ism. This is capitalism after all. They got their money, I got my product. Nothing else is needed. I use the products that happen to be the best for my price range at the time I'm upgrading. I used to use Intel back in the day, then I switched to AMD, and if I were to upgrade today, I'd get Intel.
...but within a product family greater clockspeed means greater performance, unless you can show otherwise, a 2.8 GHz P-D will always be slower than a 3.2 GHz P-D at default clockspeeds
Conroe is a leap in processor core design, AM2 is just a new motherboard and chipset design that utilized ddr2 ram. NO one I knew off expected massive performance gains. AMD was just going to the future supporting a newer ram standard that uses less power and had higher bandwidth potential.
.60nm or .45nm).
We didn't think AMD would equal much less beat conroe until their new processor core designs (K8L, etc) came out in a comparabble process size (
I'm not sure who exactly was surprised in the last two-three months. Hardcore amd fanboys that didn't pay attention to news or people who weren't reading up on what these two new things were (am2: same processor new chipset vs. massive new processor design that is conroe).
Hmmm... Pie...
Woodcrest
core2duo is modeled after woodcrest, having 4 flops per initial process clock cycle, 2 flops sequential. The one thing AMD will always have over Intel is memory bandwidth (suggesting Intel doesn't change their arch) and this is because of Intel's absolute demand for memory to interface through the southbridge wereas AMD has direct access to memory from the socket. There's about a 85ns latency advantage there... which is huge when your doing visualizations.
AMD also scales better at larger cpu counts.
AMD's mistake is simple. They kept up production of Socket 939 processors, new and old. And some processors for Socket 939 are available for AM2. People saw no need to use AM2 because same processor was available for Socket 939 and it was cheaper to boot. AMD can still fix their mistake by ceasing production of new socket 939 models. If you want fastest damn pc, you'll have to buy AM2.
Which motherboard would you buy, Socket 939 or Socket Am2?
\
If you want a great computer cheap, the older sockets are just fine.
If you're trying to build something that really kicks ass, you're drooling over Socket F, not socket AM2.
There isn't a niche (at least right now) containing people who will see spending the money on Socket AM2 as making sense.
Maybe if they can kill off the old sockets so that they're not for sale anymore (so that Socket AM2 becomes the new low-end) then Socket AM2 will have its day.
It reminds me of when the Athlon 64 FX appeared. I could never figure out who would want to buy one of those. If you're going to spend a premium for more performance than the Athlon 64, then you might as well spend a little bit more, and get something way, way better (Opteron 2xx).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Yes, but try explaining that to the average computer buyer who thinks AthlonXP and Pentium 4 are in the same CPU family. The options for "family" in their mind being roughly "PC" (anything that can run Windows), "Macintosh" (any Apple with a mouse), and "Other" (everything from UltraSparc to ARM to that Russian trinary logic vaccuum tube machine)...
While our sample size is much smaller (8 dual Opterons) we've had only one problem, and it's likely OS related.
And how should that work?
Those chips have different memory controllers on board. Different signal outs/ect.
How could a socket possibly exist that fits the old 939 while still providing the _different_ pinouts needed for ddr2?
You cant just add a row at the outer rim or something...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I have a box similar to yours.. I do not have an application which really overloads its capabilities. Unless we load up on eye candy, or use a computers for scientific modeling and mass number crunching, we have computers that are simply fast enough.. especially for the cost of an upgrade.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Are you people dense?
It has 4 processors driving your computing experience forward. Just like a 4x4 has 4 wheels driving you forward. You don't need to be a marketdroid to be sitting around working on a 4-processor design for the consumer market and see the "4x4" reference.
I think it's kind of cool, personally. But then, I drive a Jeep.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
No, you don't. Download Ubuntu (which is entirely free software), install onto a new MacBook (which uses the Intel 945GM), and it works, including accelerated 3d.
No binary drivers or daemons or extra downloads required.
No, I think we thought a little bit further than you did. To continue your train of thought, head off to "but there's only 4 processors, and the other 4 doesn't mean anything" and then switch tracks to "that would be confusing for everyone, and horribly confusing for Joe Consumer."
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Brand loyalty, especially for smaller companies (underdogs), can promote competition. While I don't completely subscribe to brand loyalty, if a smaller company offers a comparable product at a competitive price, I will tend to buy from them. Smaller companies often cater to the customer's needs to encourage brand loyalty.
Despite previously buying AMD processors ~90% of the time, I cannot justify buying an AMD X2 over an Intel Core 2 Duo. I do applaud AMD for cutting the price for their processors, but Intel has definitely regained the price/performance edge. Hopefully, AMD will answer before I buy a Core 2 Duo.
There is NO WAY anybody in their right mind would choose a chip that's clocked 200 mhz higher, but with 512k of cache over one with 1024k, but clocked 200 mhz lower. Can you tell the diffrence between a chip thats 2.4 ghz and one thats 2.6? Probably not. Can you tell the diffrence between a chip with 512k cache and one with 1024k? Uh, yeah.
Have you looked at the benchmarks? In many cases, the opposite is true of what you are saying for AMD processors because the memory controller is on the chip. Look at the pronounced difference between AM2 X2 3800+ & 4200+. They both have 2x512KB L2 caches, but the 4200 is clocked at 2.2GHz v. 2.0GHz for 3800+. However, the X2 4000+ runs at 2.0GHz and has 2x1MB L2 caches, but it barely outperforms the 3800+.
I really hate when people pull numbers or results out of their ass.Conroe is made with a 65nm process whereas AM2 is still 90nm. That gives Intel a significant advantage in feature density, heat production, and frequency. AMD used to hold that advantage with copper interconnects when they were using the same feature size. AM2 is still the same process as 939, right? When AMD shifts to a 65nm process, they should get a similar improvement. However, Intel's aggressive timeline for switching to a 45nm process, if they can meet it, may make AMD's comeback short-lived.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I hate idiots like you so much... Can't resist yapping about CPUs yet you seemingly have NO FUCKING IDEA how they work.
You're the type of guy that would gladly buy a 8088 Clocked at 3.001GHz over a Core 2 Duo Clocked at 3. Who cares if the IPC if off by thousands? If one is multi-core? If one has a super huge cache? If One has VT/SSE3 and all? If one has HT? It's irrelevant, this one is 0.001 faster!!!
If they went by actual clock, we'd have to lookup complex benchmarks to do even basic comparison. And none of the idiots like you would ever have bought a CPU with a lower number. I'm so sick of explaning this to idiots like you even today.
For the rest of us,.that made a useful number to compare actual performance of the 2 chips.
If anything, I'd blame *INTEL* for *NOT* doing the same! I mean, tell me exactly what's the speed difference between:
1) P4 Socket 423, Willamette core, 256KB cache, 400MHz FSB, no HT, so SSE3, no EM64T, 180nm - clocked @ 3GHz (let's pretend they made a version clocked that fast), and:
2) P4 Socket 775, Cedar Mill core, 2MB cache, 800MHz FSB, HT, SSE3, EM64T, 65nm - clocked @ 3GHz too.
Or perhaps even with a Pentium D (dual core) clocked @ 3GHz? At least with 2 AMD CPUs at the same clock speed like that, you'd have a different "performance rating" to compare them - but you'd likely buy the first anyways, hey, it's 3GHz too so it must be just as fast!!!
MHz alone means very little. It's a bit like giving engine RPMs without the gear ratio instead of the "output speed" or something. </bad_analogy> You have to "combine it" with something like the IPC to get something meaningful out of it. Yes, it can be used to guesstimate which of 2 CPUs is faster within the same very small "family" (same manufacturer/core/cache size/# of cores/FSB/etc), but that's not very useful.
You're also the type of guy who buys his camera only by checking the megapixels and your car by checking raw HP alone, right?
Socket 939 systems are really quite adequate, and the prospect of swapping out a substantial portion of my hardware for yet another upgrade (I thought I'd be set for a while with a 939 mainboard and memory) is unappealing, so I'm trying to put off a major upgrade as long as possible. Also, the Intel Core processor is both cheaper and faster than the current AMD AM2 processors, so if I'm going to replace my mainboard and memory anyway, why not get the hardware that will give me the best return on my investment? If AMD fails to deliver a product competitive with the Intel Core by the time of my next upgrade then I'll move back to Intel. It's as simple as that.
Maybe my view of the whole situation is ridiculous to some, but here it is. AMD built up a loyal fanbase for years by providing a low-cost, high-performance alternative. They treated us well. New processors came out frequently, and prices dropped accordingly. Then, something happened. They became popular enough that they didn't have to drop their prices to keep their business up. So, they didn't. They held the Athlon 64 prices for more than a year. All of us who wait for the prices to drop a bit before taking the plunge were stuck. In doing that, AMD lost my loyalty. They showed that, given the opportunity, they'd behave just like Intel and rest on their laurels. So, now that Conroe came out and offers better performance for a better price, my next upgrade will be Intel. The first Intel I'll own since my p2-350 which was replaced by an Athlon 600. If AMD had aggressively priced their Athlon 64s long before Conroe came out (amazing how some competition caused them to slash prices by 50%), I'd likely still be a loyal fan. I understand that a corporation is obligated to make the most money they can for their shareholders, but the blind idealist in me thought AMD at least cared, even a little, about maintaining some brand loyalty. They proved me wrong.
Consumer vehicles aren't the only place in the automotive industry where # x # is used. It is primarily used for trucks (cars are generally called AWD (all wheel drive)). Consumer trucks are designated 4x4 and 4x2, number of 'wheels' x number driven. Although that's not entirely accurate, because a dually would still be 4x4 or 4x2. It's also used for tractors, the kind farmers use. Semis, also called tractors, are often designated 4x2 and 6x2, despite have 6 and 10 actual wheels.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
To continue your logic, I, being ShieldWolf, must clearly be typing this with my paws.
Did you expect that Crusoe processors were going to come with a Friday co-processor?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I decided to pass my Athlon-XP 2400+ over to my wife and make myself a new system, so I put together an Athlon64-X2 3800+ box with an AM2 motherboard.
I'm still waiting on the DDR2, but I have high hopes for the new AM2 system.
Clickety Click
Cool---my Honda Civic has a redline of 8250 RPM. Does that mean I can sell it to him for more than a Z06 Corvette (redline 7200 RPM)?
I knew this article sounded familiar...it's because I'd already seen it on another site:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=105
The blog's format is repulsive, but take a minute to compare even the intros of both sites -
XYZ:
"When AM2 was first announced it seemed like it was going to be a guaranteed hit. After all, this platform would be moving the tremendously successful socket 939 into the future with its use of DDR2 memory, a greatly increased memory bandwidth, hardware virtualization, and a number of exciting new CPUs. Despite everything AM2 had going for it, this includes a dedicated enthusiast base and a tremendous amount of pro-AMD spirit at the time, the new platform has largely been dismissed by consumers."
Blog:
"When AMD released the Socket AM2 platform during May of this year, many expected it to be a huge hit - after all, it supported DDR2, sporting a 30% increase memory bandwidth, and introduced new features such as hardware virtualization. The Socket AM2 platform took what AMD had learned from the Socket 939 platform and built upon it.
Now, four months on from launch, and the AM2 platform has been largely sidelined and the Socket 939 platform still dominates mainstream AMD PCs. Why? Where did AMD go wrong with AM2?"
If you go through both articles completely, you'll see that the sections and talking points may differ in order and detail, but there is definitely something up here. My questions is, who copied who? Both are dated the 27th, but the blog shows 2:22am for a timestamp
Don't you mean perl scripter?
faggot.
First off nothing went wrong for AMD, they just released later than they wanted to. AMD isn't about to throw it's legendary reliability, stability, and capibility out the window just to satisfy the market. Instead, AMD wanted to maintain that level quality and make the CPU more compatible with DDR2. When I started to reasearch parts for my PC in Dec. 05 I came across DDR2 and thought it was neat, but because Intel didn't have many capable 64-bit CPU's and dual core I opted for AMD. Also a full blown DDR2 Intel system is about $800-$1000 more due to the fact that DDR2 is so new. Also it is my understanding that DDR2 is still getting the kinks worked out so to speak. Also another factor is that a 939 DDR setup has far more suppot and options avaliable than an AM2 system. On Newegg there are 4 types of mobo for AM2: 570 SLi, 570 MCP, 590 SLi, 590 SLi Pro. Now don't get me wrong AM2 is great but there just isn't the avalibility of options to speak of out there. But in about 6 months AM2 will make up lost ground with AMD's 4x4, AM2 CPU sockets being compatible with AM3 CPU's, and the DDR3 RAM spec set to launch in Jan. 07. This is just a case of Intel hyping Conroe then having problems from day 1. An AM2 DDR2 setup is about $250-$500 more than a 939 DDR setup and its got AMD reliability. The problem here isn't the CPU but a lack of mobo and RAM options. DDR2 needs to mature thats all.
There where not Core 2 Duo processors in the benchmark you linked.
Take into account that Core Duo and Core 2 Duo are different arquitectures, Core Duo is the old Netburst in 65nm and Core 2 Duo is the new Conroe, in 65nm.
Then again, I think that Intel marketing is deceptive just because of that.
My bet for now, is not to upgrade anything yet, the best processors/prices still are under the companie's sleeves.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
No. Apple uses Intel, Nvidia and ATI. For example the lowest end iMac has an Intel integrated video chip, the mid range uses ATI x1600 and the top end 24" model uses Nvidia 7300GT with a 7600GT as an upgrade.
The Mac Pro offers Nvidia 7300 GT as standard, upgradeable to an ATI x1900 or a Nvidia Quadro FX 4500.
The MacBook's and Minis use Intel, the MacBook Pro's use ATI.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
To be fair, comparing a PIII to an Athlon was reasonable. I generally figured the Athlon had a somewhat better efficiency, but the designs weren't completely different. It wasn't until the P4 came out that MHz became really useless because you saw chips on the market at the same time, targetted at the same niche with more than a 2x difference in efficiency.
Sure, I wouldn't have been confident that a 750 MHz PIII would be faster than a 700 MHz Athlon, but you could be pretty confident that a 900 MHz PIII would indeed beat the Athlon for almost anything. Personally, I wish that all the CPU vendors would agree to publish CPU's as "Name-SPEC-Clock" With a SPEC benchmark score as the "model number" and the clock speed there so I can easily compare chips in the same family. Does anybody have a good cheat sheet site where I can look at that? I could always go to SPEC's website, but it's not the most convenient thing in the world.