Slashdot Mirror
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.
--
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
... but not anymore. That is what is wrong with AMD.
The unanswered question remains, "Is AMD necessary in order to keep Intel honest?"
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.
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.
>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.
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".
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.
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
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*
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.