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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."
Check wherever you bought it from and see if they have one of those "if you find it cheaper in 30 days, we'll refund the difference (especially if it's found cheaper at our same store)" things. A lot of places have them even if they don't advertise it, so it's worth asking.
You should be glad you can deal with Frys and don't have to goto Best Buy and put up with the "Geek squad".
There was a summer price cut around the time of the C2D launch. These are timed to deal with the launch of the ultra-low-end C2Ds, and the price-cuts expected as the new Core 2 Quadros push C2D prices down. AMD's got nothing new until Q3's Barcelona, so they're fighting better chips with cheaper chips.
The fact that we're stuck with x86 isn't Intel's fault. At the time, CISC was considered a good idea, and as for endianness.... I won't even go there.
Intel has tried to move away from x86: look at the Itanium and Itanium II. Intel gambled that they could find enough ILP with their compiler, and lost, but at least they moved off of x86, right?
The fact is, because x86 was so wildly successful, and because so much software was written for it, Intel had to ensure that future processors were compatible with the x86 instruction set. Doing otherwise would have been deliberately alienating a large part of their market share. It could be argued that x86 compatibility (or lack thereof, more specifically) is one of the major reasons why IA-64 was unsuccessful. Completely moving off of x86 would be devastating to the company, and irresponsible in the eyes of their shareholders/employees.
I can't believe that any engineer in his right mind would actually want to stick with IA-32 in the face of its glaring defects, they're very bright people, and if you need proof of that, just look at the Core. But if you want to sell consumer chips, you don't have any other choice.
So, where's that Free Software Intel wireless chipset driver, then? (Just sayin'...)
Also, although I agree with you about old ATI's shitty attitude, it seems a little premature to condemn AMD for it. They haven't been the same company for that long yet, you know, and it remains to be seen whether AMD's leadership might change things.
(Note: I'm not an AMD fanboy; in fact I'm posting this from a Core Duo laptop.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
You're comparing apples and oranges, and, not only that, but comparing two different types of apple with a single type of orange. Or something like that, whatever the correct metaphor should be.
AMD and ATI have only just merged, so it's a little early to judge the "open-source friendliness" of the new company. However, the history is varied. AMD provides very strong support for gcc and other projects that are important to it, funding a number of full-time developers. ATI hasn't provided as much support for its graphics chipsets - partial documentation rather than active development - but the open-source drivers for ATI still do more than those for Intel, just because Intel graphics chips are a whole lot simpler. (Which means that Intel aren't losing any trade secrets by exposing their internals - their graphics chips are using less "clever stuff" than ATI or nVidia). Every ATI chip that has capabilities in the same class as any Intel graphics chip you care to name has a complete open-source driver, and for every closed ATI GPU there's an equally closed Intel wireless chipset.
Both companies play nice where it suits them and take their ball and go home where that is percieved as the more profitable option. My advice to you is to do the same and pick whichever option gives you more performance per dollar.
What would Lemmy do?
I'm one of those freaky Linux people who doesn't mind the occasional bit of proprietary, closed-source software on his systems. Flash is a big reason I haven't made the 64-bit jump yet. I don't want to mess with broken chroot environments (and probably other gotchas with various binary software).
That, and going to 64-bit just isn't that useful right now. With AMD, you may get some speed increases (I really can't say, as I haven't seen the benchmarks or performed any tests myself for Linux--for FreeBSD, I know that the performance just isn't there) but that's architectural. Intel generally beats AMD64(in 32-bit mode), and if I don't have any reason to run in 64-bit mode (and plenty of reasons not to) then what's the point? My next machine will be from the Core2Duo line.
AMD had their day, and they may have it again, but for right now, I'm not interested.
And what of chip companies that do publish specs? There are MANY chips from FreeScale (formerly Motorola's semiconductor division) that include fantastic levels of documentation. All the calls, all the functions, all the features. There are bugger all drivers in any Open Source *nix (xBSD, Linux, Plan9, you name it) for the S1 encryption chip. You want to talk about supporting those vendors who support Open Source? Then support them by adding that support.
Let us get down to basics, here. Part of the reason why companies like ATI can avoid supporting Open Source is because the Open Source community has, itself, failed to support the Open Source community. We have not been perfect, shining examples of our own standards and have no right to expect others to adhere to ideals we ourselves fall desperately short of.
Sure, the Open Source community lacks the kind of funding needed for this sort of stuff. So does AMD, whose profits were almost a billion short of expectation, whose net worth is now not much more than ATI prior to being bought, and whose future (due to Intel's near-monopolistic control over the industry and near-inexhaustible supply of funds) is severely in doubt. AMD has less than a tenth of the money of Intel and can't afford the current price-war for much longer. In the meantime, Intel can not only afford it but can afford to make next-gen components that have exactly the same flaws in concept as all their products have always have. Intel can afford it, Intel will essentially kill AMD, and Intel will only correct the flaws in the logic the next time it is threatened by a chip company.
(I may sound a little harsh on Intel there, but it's basically true of all corporations. Quality for the sake of quality is not a concept most managers comprehend, and "engineering excellence" is an oxymoron in any group outside of a few fringe development projects and maybe a couple of Formula 1 teams.)
If support for Open Source were a criteria, I'd say support nobody and move to another planet. As the old NASA joke goes, there is intelligent life on Earth but it's only visiting. There isn't any meaningful support for Open Source, outside of a handful of individuals.
What about IBM? All those 500+ patents they freed up! Yeah, and how many projects do you see based on them? None? Is that a surprise, when most were hardware patents? Outside of OpenCores, I really don't see many people being able to do much with pipeline optimization or CPU scheduling, and frankly most coders there working on CPUs have been doing just fine using their own methods of solving these problems, and anyone likely to want a high-end 64-bit Open Source chip would probably be looking at the Open Sourced UltraSparc. IBM have released lots of bits of project in the past, but never really maintained them and never really did anything with them. You been using IBM's GUI-based Apache management tool? Ever realized IBM had one?
The community should, by rights, support anything and anyone it can, AMD included, because a monoculture would be far far worse than the putrid stench we have at the moment. The existing mess can be fixed, with a lot of time and a lot of patience. Monocultures are stagnant cultures are cultures waiting to die. What we have right now is no great shakes, but I'll take it over a living death any day. The dead can't be cured - well, unless they're a kipper.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
AMD spent a lot of money on improving gcc (for all architectures) while Intel only made their proprietary closed icc compiler.
I think blaming AMD for ATI's old mistakes is a bit premature at this stage.