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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?"
Ah, but it is more than Conroe Duo. But to make a very quick summary of the article, it is this: cost.
The cost of replacing a 939 system with AM2 doesn't justify the price point.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
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.
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
</>
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.
For me AM2/DDR2 is disappointment because it eats into the one thing Athlon64 was and is still, despite DDR2, superior over Intel's offers: low memory latency. DDR can't be run as high clocks than DDR2 but has lower latency, DDR2 feels like oldschool "MHz is everything" piece and AMD dumped DDR for it? Intel changed their game with huge caches and suddenly inegrated memory controllers don't matter anymore because there's so much cache. AMD is going to be left in the dust again unless they can offer something that's faster than what Intel has. And no, multiple cores aren't right kind of faster, that trick didn't save 3dfx and it won't save AMD.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
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.
how about the opteron ? X64 is where it's at, I'm running a whole bunch of them and nothing intel will sell you at a reasonable price comes even close.
they're cool running, very stable and debian etch runs like a charm on them (I had to fiddle a bit to get sarge running on them, especially mysql).
MP3 Search Engine
Well, the Woodcrest is spanking the opterons at present, I just got done benchmarking the new AMD chip vs the Intel woodcrest for PRMAN and Shake rendering and the AM2 is between 20% slower and 50% slower for what we want to do and the Opteron 280's are about as fast (core for core) as our aging 2.8GHz Xeons
To add to that, our reliability record for AMD systems is mindblowingly shocking. Having purchased 65 Dual 280 Opterons, we've had problems with ~60% of them.
I'll agree with that, a lot of the early opteron boxes we bought at $JOB-1 had problems - I think that Tyan rushed out the motherboards in the Black Box Servers and they were not very robust. That said, Black Box Server's build was quite poor too.
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.
Indeed. I really dont get the point. AM2 is simply a platform change; basically just a couple of lines drawn differently on the motherboard. And a new memory standard that's just not that big a deal (and, iirc, the reason it was a big deal at the Socket A introduction was that ordinary SDRAM performance really sucked and nobody wanted to touch RDRAM with a ten foot pole even if they could afford it, creating a huge up market demand for that specific change).
I am not sure if the memory standard isn't a big deal. It probably helped Dell adopt AMD, since they need same memory (DDR2) for Intel boxes, so Dell won't have to have 2 suppliers for memory.
This new memory might help also with quad cores and beyond. Right now the single/dual core AM2 is not bandwith starved (tests give DDR2 an edge of 3-5%), but that might change with quad cores and beyond where HT and faster memory could supply the cores where Intel CPUs might starve with a shared bandwith of 1033 or 1333 MHZ.
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
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.
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.
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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.
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
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.
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*
I recently upgraded to an AM2 system, and here is my reasoning:
I was running an Athlon XP 3200+ box (actually an overclocked 2500+), AGP graphics and DDR memory. It was time for a complete overhaul, and yeah - i guess I could have gone socket 939 and kept my RAM, but I figured future upgradability to K8L was worth the loss (and anyhow I only had 1GB of it, and didn't want to buy more DDR).
This was about a month ago, and Core2 Duos were hard to find, expensive, and the boards even more so. I was looking at an extra $400 (CDN) or so for a basic Core 2 system vs. a basic AM2.
So here I am, typing this on $150 X2 3800+ CPU on a $100 motherboard, and I've managed to overclock it past FX-62 speeds on air cooling (2850Mhz is completely stable so far). I know Core2 has supposedly better price/performance, but beat that price! Consider me happy with my purchase.
Jeremy
When I upgraded to 939 from Socket A/AGP, I found the ASRock Dual 939 had an AM2 upgrade path. It should allow me to piecemeal my upgrade to AM2, PCI Express, DDR2. I have had great success with the board and love the ability to slowly upgrade to the next level. I am not one to brag about a commercial product, but this one has been a great buy.
I have been Intel free on the desktop since the K6 200Mhz. I have a Core Duo laptop and a Core 2 Duo coming soon. The performance is enough to make me consider jumping ship. I would have to buy all new gear except my drives.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run