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Intel and AMD Settle Antitrust, Patent Lawsuits
Kohenkatz writes "Intel has agreed to pay $1.25 billion to AMD. In return, AMD will drop its lawsuits about patent and antitrust complaints. The two companies released this joint statement: 'While the relationship between the two companies has been difficult in the past, this agreement ends the legal disputes and enables the companies to focus all of our efforts on product innovation and development.' The press release also says, 'Under terms of the agreement, AMD and Intel obtain patent rights from a new 5-year cross license agreement,' and that 'Intel and AMD will give up any claims of breach from the previous license agreement.'"
Q: How did you arrive at this number
our SGNA expenses will decrease a bit on a go-forward basis
for us this has never been about money, it's about the marketplace, and there's no correlation between the settlement amount and anything... it's a negotiated number
what's important... it signals a new era, it's a pivot from war to pease, and we're trying oto redefine not only the path to a fair and fierce competitive fight in the blah blah blah tonality blah blah blah buzzword get this behind us and move forward in a very respectful way, blah blah blah
You can tell I'm listening to the webcast.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The best AMD (Phenom II X4 965) is about on par with the i5 and they cost about the same. As the CPU gets faster the price performance gets worse for Intel CPUs.
To be fair, if your buying a whole system that extra CPU cost becomes less significant. An i7-860 might be worth it if it increases the cost of the system by at most 30%. Even an i7-960 can be OK if it increases the price by at most 60%. Given that a good AMD computer costs maybe 600 then the i7-860 is probably worth it, but the i7-960 is overpriced when you factor in the motherboard.
Of course, Intel wouldn't have such good prices without AMD, so in the long run it's good to support AMD. Also most people don't really need the extra speed. If you need a new machine then a midrange AMD for around 500 is probably your best bet.
If you are really concerned about speed then just use the money you save to upgrade more often. Given Moore's law, on average, you'll have a faster machine (or at least a machine with more cores.) Also, when just upgrading, the AMD price/performance gap gets even better.
Chris Mesterharm
According to Newegg:
AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Deneb 3.4GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor $199.99
Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition Bloomfield 3.33GHz LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core Processor $999.99
So I'll grant you that Intel's flagship i7 is faster than AMD's flagship Phenom II, but the Phenom has a slightly LOWER TDP and is 1/5 of the cost of the i7. Is the i7 4-5 times faster?