Slashdot Mirror
Is AMD Dead Yet?
TheProcess writes "Back in February 2003, IBM predicted that AMD would be dead in 5 years (original article here), with IBM and Intel the only remaining players in the chip market. Well, 5 years have passed and AMD is still alive. However, its finances and stock price have taken a serious beating over the last year. AMD was once a darling in this community — the plucky, up-and-coming challenger to the Intel behemoth. Will AMD still be here in 5 years? Can they pose a credible competitive threat to Intel's dominance? Do they still have superior but unappreciated technology? Or are they finally old hat? Can they really recover?"
At least tbat's what Timecop thinks. He's usually right to be fair.
TCPA will only be a problem for you if you run software that you can't trust. There's nothing about TCPA that says "the evil corporation gets to control my computer" - that only happens if you install software that requires that sort of behaviour. Stay away from Apple and Microsoft OSs, and the TCPA chip will be your friend. You'll decide if you want to use it, and you'll decide what it does. For instance, you can use the attestation features to ensure that your machine only boots Linux kernels that you have signed yourself, which might be useful on a laptop with full disk encryption. And you can use it to store your keys safely, only producing them if the software environment matches one you consider "trusted". It's up to you.
TCPA is just an enabling technology: anyone can use it to improve the security of their computer. The dystopian nightmare of the evil corporation insisting on a particular software stack before you can access their website might come true, but if we all continue to encourage people to run free software, it'll be very hard for the evil corporation to do that. Remember that Apple and Microsoft don't always get what they want. I'm sure they would like to use the TCPA chip for copy protection, forcing everyone to buy Office and enforcing the iTunes DRM, but they are not the only game in town. If you don't like that sort of crap, don't pay for the software that insists on it.
I got my Machine a couple of Years ago here are the specs...
AMD Athlon 64 4600+ Dual Core Socket 939
3072MB DDR-333 Ram
Gigabyte K8N-SLI Nforce 4 SLI Chipset
Nvidia 8800 GTS 386MB GDDR3 Ram
It's a pretty old Machine once you think about it using Last generation Chipset, and Processor and Two generation old Ram. (I'm pretty sure they are up to DDR3 now). Anyways my case and point.... Even though how old this machine is I can still run Team Fortress 2 and Portal on the Highest setting AA, AT, HDR, Blur Effect everything on and will stay above 120FPS. I think AMD seriously needs to go back to Socket 939... All socket AM2 machines I have messed with are complete crap and can't stand up to my socket 939 computer.
My opinion of ATI is that AMD should just drop it or just create workstation video cards for it and stop the futile competition between ATI and Nvidia. Nvidia obviously makes the industry standards now for Video Cards and there is really no need for ATI anymore especially with Intel GMA Video Cards for Workstations.