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AMD Cuts X2 Processor Prices
BDPrime writes "AMD is cutting prices for its X2 processors, according to an update on its microprocessor pricing list. The cuts refer to AMD's Athlon 64 FX and Athlon 64 X2 chips. Some of the price cuts are almost in half."
Most of the remaining chips on AMD's price list use the Socket AM2 or Socket F form factor, rather than the older Socket 939 interfaces.
I just bought a 4200+ x2 for $159 from newegg. They sold out hours later. I don't think they even make 'em any more. Anything higher than a 4200 was plain sold out everywhere.
So if you've got a socket 939, I'd say you better upgrade with a quickness cuz those CPUs are going, going, gone.
The price cut is in a little less than 2 weeks(April 22nd). Shamelessly ripped from AnandTech:
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6800 2.93GHz x 2 4MB x 2 $1199
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 2.66GHz x 2 4MB x 2 $999
Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 2.93GHz 4MB $999
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.40GHz x 2 4MB x 2 $530
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 2.66GHz 4MB $316
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 2.40GHz 4MB $224
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz 2MB $183
Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86GHz 2MB $163
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.80GHz 2MB $113
I'll bite. 1 GB PC 5300 is $54.99 shipped.
That's no surprise. We have known for some time that Intel is planning to release a few new processors and slash CPU prices dramatically in about two weeks. AMD won't have anything new to show off until later this summer so all they can do is cut their own prices farther and sooner just to keep up.
Itanic was a completely separate architecture. This is x86 with some extra stuff, more or less.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Huh? The Core 2 is based on technology used in the Pentium M which itself was based on technology from the original Pentium families (not P4). The Core 2 family in some ways has a more developed history then the Pentium 4 (NetBurst) family did. Also unlike the Itanium the Core 2 uses x86-32/64 ISA... just like current AMDs processors.
Anyway the Core 2 Duo (and Core Duo before it) have been out for a while now (around a year) and are used in a huge number of consumer, prosumer and workstation systems from many vendors. You think that would prove something...
So, where's that Free Software Intel wireless chipset driver, then? (Just sayin'...)
That would be right here. Everything non-binary is licensed under either GPLv2 or dual-license BSD/GPLv2, according to the documentation. The binaries are released in that form because they are prohibited by FCC regulations from releasing anything that could be modified by the end user to violate regulatory limits. Exactly the same thing applies to the MADWifi drivers for Atheros, who makes available a binary HAL to the developers.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
actually you don't need a chroot at all to run 32bit programs in a 64bit linux environment. Atleast with gentoo all you need are the correct 32 bit libraries installed and you can compile and run32bit programs (like firefox coupled with flash) natively.
As for running a 64bit environment, the biggest factor is memory usage. Its true that 64bit programs yield slightly faster performance boosts, they take a lot more ram (think cumulative of all programs running and you can imagine what i mean) than their 32bit counter parts.
Not only that, but the entire 6000 series will be upgraded to 4MBs of cache.
Also shamelessly ripped from AnanadTech: Currently the E6300 and E6400 both have 2MB L2s, but both chips will be replaced by 4MB versions - the E6320 and E6420 respectively.
The best part is that they won't cost any different than the 2MB versions.
When you have finished this cup of coffee your adventure will begin again.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/dualc ore-roundup.html sums things up rather nicely.
I don't think this it was a question of IF... but WHEN.
Just to take a stupid guess... I think with the need for cash, AMD was hoping Microsoft releasing Vista (Biggest upgrade in 7 years) would create high demand for new PC's and they could sell product as demand exceeded supply. The demand for Vista didn't drive demand as expected.
Vista failing to launch put AMD in tight competition in a smaller market due the lack of demand for Vista. AMD didn't sell to Apple. Intel did. Mac's are selling where Vista is getting so-so response so Intel is selling the new chips into markets AMD is not in. If Intel didn't sell to Apple, and had to cut prices, AMD would be in an even worse position due to the low demand for new Vista machines.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=AAPL&annual
Note that Apple has gone in revenue from 2004-2006 $8,279,000,000 to $19,315,000,000
Operating income has gone from $326,000,000 to $2,453,000,000. This is almost an order of magnitude growth in only 2 years. This isn't just from a few iPod sales. Vista's dead start and XP's malware flood is driving people away from Microsoft. The recent growth in Apple and Linux is not primarily new PC consumers. It's mostly ex-Microsoft consumers.
I'm wondering if AMD is selling chips at a loss instead of having to throw them out. I can't see them making money at that price, only cutting their loss.
Selling chips at half price is not profitable. I'm assuming most chips have only a 10-30% margin. Chopping the price in half is selling under the cost to manufacture.
The truth shall set you free!
AMD has always been incredibly helpful and suportive of open source. They supply full documentation for their hardware, and even donate hardware to open source projects. Its just ati that has sucked, and even then it wasn't always that way. They used to provide docs before they started trying to seriously compete with nvidia. Give AMD some time to deal with the merger before deciding how the new company will behave.
I decided to look for 64-bit and 32-bit comparison charts. So I googled and found one at PCStats.com. So what does zlib Mini-GZIP 1.2.3 32-bit vs. 64-bit benchmark says? It still says Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (WinXP 64/64 Bit) beats AMD Athlon64 FX-62 (WinXP 64/64 Bit) by roughly 30%. So does 64-bit DivX encoding.
;)
And even at Science Mark 2.0 at which Intel C2Duo is slower than FX-62, switching into 64 bit reduces time needed to run the test from 66.241sec to 21.36.
At least provide some sort of sources when claiming performance drop in 64 bit mode. According to the above benchmark I do want to buy C2Duo and run it in 64-bit mode to do all the gzipping.
By the time consumers will start to care about PCI DMA eating more than 4GB of memory, the new revision of Intel CPU will be out with on-die controller
AMD is the best choice for budget customers right now
Hyperom.com
Where's your proof?
2 097&page=12
You've already had someone respond with a link to benchmarks showing exactly the opposite of what you claim:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=
Where are the benchmarks that show what you claim?
Cheers,
Roger
Do you have any better hostages?
You, sir, are a cad and a bounder. What do the ScienceMark and Primordia scores show on Page 11 of the article you linked (http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid= 2097&page=11)? Did you not need to include this data so we can arrive at fair conclusions?
ScienceMark 2.0 has the Athlons run four times faster in 64-bit mode than 32; the Core2 Duo speeds up by a factor of three. Primordia has the AMD64 speed up by a factor near 8/7; Core2 by the smaller factor of 9/8. I'd say that it's swings and roundabouts, as ever with computer architectures.
The Debian team is working on a new multiarch system that will address this, making it simple to install mixed architecture software on machines that support it. Basically, the packaging system will understand all of the various ISAs and their relationships, and which ones will run on which processors, and the package dependencies.
This means that rather than having aptitude (or your apt front end of choice) show you six different versions of the linux-image package (-486, -586, -686, -k7, -k8, -amd64, etc.) or the mencoder package, there will only be one linux-image and one mencoder in the list. The various binary versions will still exist, and by default apt will pick the best of those available for your platform. If you want, however, you'll be able to override its choice and pick a different one. If the one you pick requires different versions of support packages, then dpkg will also know that and apt will handle all of the dependency management, making sure that the right versions of everything are installed.
So for example, if you have an Athlon 64, by default apt will install 64-bit versions of everything. If, however, you decide to install the flashplugin-nonfree package, which is 32-bit only, apt will recognize that it cannot be used with your 64-bit browsers and offer to replace them with 32-bit versions. Since the 32-bit versions require 32-bit libraries, it will also offer to install the required libs. Part of the multiarch specification is a scheme for making it easy to install multiple versions of a given library side by side, and for automatically configuring apps to find the correct library versions.
This might seem like an overly-general solution for addressing the temporary x86 32- to 64-bit transition, but the Debian developers doing it have recognized that as just one example of a much larger problem, including:
So, the plan is to develop a solution that addresses all of these issues in a general way, rather than continuing to use various architecture-specific hacks to get around the fact that dpkg currently believes a machine has only one architecture. It's a pretty big project, but people are pushing to get it included in Lenny (which, judging by past releases should be out mid-2009), and users of unstable and testing should see it much sooner.
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