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FTC Introduces New Orders For Intel; No Bundling
eldavojohn writes "Today a decision was handed down (PDF) from the FTC that underlined new guidelines for Intel in the highly anticipated investigation. Biggest result: the practices Intel employed, like bundling prices to get manufacturers like Dell to block sales of competitors' chips, must stop. No word yet on whether or not Intel will face monetary fines from the FTC like they did in Europe over the same monopolistic practices."
Does this mean an AMD Dell is on the horizon? Oh my.
While I always build my own computers, this could herald a huge increase in funding for AMD's research.
No more garbage intel GPUs for computers?
It would seem that way, at least to a certain degree. If Intel can't make their prices lower than everyone else via some back-alley 'bundling' then we're not likely to see the same market penetration. Beyond Intel being the inexpensive alternative to far superior chips from Nvidia and ATI, there's no reason to buy an Intel GPU, unless you're some kind of masochist that likes slow tech. x.x
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
Other than, of course, the fact that an intel GPU comes on the die of every intel CPU sold, atoms excepted(for now).
This order just prevents them from trimming PCIe so as to make their GPU the only thing with a fast enough connection to the CPU that it isn't a total joke.
these machines have alot of components on one die now. (for instance GPU and CPU are in one chip as opposed to seperate chips)
so how does this work out?
no i didnt read tfa
The agency said Intel forced computer makers into exclusive deals and blocked rivals from making their chips work with Intel’s.
Forced? How'd they do that? Giving a customer a good deal doesn't mean they are forced into doing business. Intel showed a profit, so they weren't exactly dumping chips either. I think it's a good thing Intel "blocked rivals" from making compatible chips. While Intel was busy screwing up Itanium, AMD came out with a good 64-bit technology, which Intel is now using. That saved us all from having to switch to Itanium (thanks, AMD!)
How will this change? Intel knows how many systems Dell, HP and others ship. They don't have to sign exclusive deals, but they can sign "volume sales" deals. Where does the huge discount kick in? At X units (where X is just about what your total sales forecast is).
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
If Intel can't make their prices lower than everyone else via some back-alley 'bundling' then we're not likely to see the same market penetration.
In most markets Intel don't have to worry about 'making their prices lower than everyone else' because there is no-one else who can compete with them. AMD are only really competitive at the low end, precisely because Intel haven't dropped prices low enough to push AMD out of the market.
In addition, while it may have changed now AMD have farmed off their fabs to a third-party, Intel have traditionally had far more production capacity than AMD so there was no way that AMD could take much more of the CPU market without a lot of expensive expansion.
You obviously aren't familiar with the business practices that led to this ruling. Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like dell, hp, acer, lenovo, etc. get wholesale prices negotiated directly with Intel. It was suggested that if one of these OEMs was rumored to be in talks to offer an AMD proc system Intel would send a rep to advise them that they could no longer offer them preferred OEM pricing and the OEM would need to find a third party supplier to purchase their Intel chips in the future. Basically making the OEM buy their chips at retail prices. If you are looking at 20-30% increase in the cost of your primary component in an already tight margin product or shuttle your plans it's not hard to make that decision.
You also probably weren't aware of just how right your statement about the Itanium vs x64 was either. The Itanium was Intel's attempt to lock AMD out of the "clone" market because AMD didn't have a cross license to use the Itanium architecture. If the Itanium had succeeded there would no longer be a choice of processor for Intel based systems. Fortunately the Pentium 4 was a dog and ran very hot and consumed massive amounts of electricity. AMD meanwhile didn't rest on their laurels and came up with the x64 extensions which gave new life to the x86 line. Developers liked the x64 extensions because they didn't have to rewrite their code from scratch so it caught on quickly and Intel eventually licensed the x64 extensions from AMD.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Intel CPU != Intel chipset
really? whats competative at the $300 point with AMD Phenom II X6 1090T from Intel? No really, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115225 is probably the best at stock speeds and it's only a 2.8ghz quad core(yes yes hyper-threading, but it doesn't work as well as real cores last I heard) 130W, and uses more expensive motherboards than the AMD.
A $300 cpu isn't really "low end", more like upper mid range. Sure the i7-980X will beat the pants off the 1090T, but you can buy 3 1090T's for the same price as the 980X. You certainly can do 2(including ram and motherboard), for the $1000 the 980X commands.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3674/amds-sixcore-phenom-ii-x6-1090t-1055t-reviewed for some numbers.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Other than, of course, the fact that an intel GPU comes on the die of every intel CPU sold, atoms excepted(for now).
What are you talking about?
Is LightPeak faster than PCIe?
"take this exclusive deal or no intel CPUs for you"
"take this deal or all you get is last model celerons and atoms."
"Take this deal or we delay sending you the newest chips until launch, and you will be 3-6 months be hind your competition in getting something to market"
Take your pick of the above, all which would have destroyed Dell back in the day of P3s.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
If that's really the case, why aren't you putting a stop to carrier lock-in for cellphones? Some of those agreements are WAY more anti-competitive than any Intel contract ever was.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Plenty of companies sell AMD computers. The thing is they are usually their lower end line. The reason is that AMD just can't compete with Intel's products in terms of price, performance, and power usage on the higher end. Even now they don't have anything that is a solid Core 2 competitor, and Intel has moved on to the Core i lineup.
AMD's real problem seems to be that they only do budget well, and Intel does that ok too. You get in to midrange and up and it is all Intel all the time.
Part of the problem is that when AMD did have competitive high-end parts (Athlon/Thunderbird/64) Intel was using these practices to keep OEMs from offering them. You could not buy an AMD-based computer from the likes of Dell, HP, or Gateway until after Intel caught up and surpassed what AMD was offering in the consumer market (the Opteron was competitive for a longer time, and may still be, I haven't really looked into that area lately). But you're right, AMD currently isn't really competing at the upper mid to high end of the consumer/desktop market. This ruling might have mattered if it had happened 10 years ago, but right now AMD just doesn't have the products to compete - partly due, no doubt, to a lack of R&D funding brought about by Intel's monopolistic practices at a time when AMD parts were competitive (the only time it matters).
really? whats competative at the $300 point with AMD Phenom II X6 1090T from Intel?
The benchmarks I've seen show even an i5 being competitive with a Phenom II X6, let alone an i7. And if you're really looking for the best possible mult-threaded performance -- which is the only reason for buying a 6-core CPU -- why would you settle for second best?
Do you seriously think that AMD would be selling their top of the range CPUs for $300 if they didn't have to in order to compete with Intel's?
Well, it is exactly what they did, and they were found anti-competitive for it. The point being that X should be the same for all the customers, as it is logical for a price governed by the manifacturing process. If it is not it only means that they are making you pay Intel because you sell many AMDs.
Part of the problem is that when AMD did have competitive high-end parts (Athlon/Thunderbird/64) Intel was using these practices to keep OEMs from offering them.
If those chips were really that competitive the OEMs wouldn't have cared about losing their deals with Intel and would have been selling exclusively those AMD chips. But apparently the OEMs had a differing opinion on how well they would have sold since they stuck with Intel.
Why is it so obvious that I'm not familiar with it?
Here's the "inside" scoop, as I used to work for a large OEM who used Intel processors. We would work on an AMD solution, and let Intel see it, and then give us a better deal (which would allow us to cancel the AMD project...until next year). If you are correct, just talking to AMD would get us thrown off the Intel bus (pun intended).
Mod parent down -1, INCORRECT! (OK, since you realized how correct I was about Itanium, we'll let it slide)
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
Part of the problem is that when AMD did have competitive high-end parts (Athlon/Thunderbird/64) Intel was using these practices to keep OEMs from offering them.
But if I remember correctly, AMD was selling every CPU they could produce at that time? And anyone who knew anything about computers -- i.e. those who'd be buying high-end systems -- was saying 'buy AMD, Intel sucks'.
Sadly, the x64 extensions are built on top of a horrendously poor design, making x86-64 just that much messier than the default x86. At least some useless opcodes were deprecated in 64bit mode and the new prefixes are just some bits resulting in a dedicated opcode range rather than completely dedicated opcodes per prefix (tsk tsk Intel, tsk tsk tsk). I still say x86 should just die a horrible death and we should use something with a better design aimed at more modern hardware.
From TFA:
The agency said Intel forced computer makers into exclusive deals and blocked rivals from making their chips work with Intel’s.
Forced? How'd they do that?
Easy: Let's say Dell sells 50 million machine a year, and they are using 100% Intel chips. AMD wants to supply some of their business, and makes a bid to sell Dell as many processors as they can make (let's say 20 million). Dell wants to take the deal, and buy the remaining 30 million processors from Intel, but Intel informs them that if they do any business with AMD, Intel no longer supply processors for them (or will supply them at a much higher price than previously). Dell, faced with the choice of losing a supplier they must have to be in business, makes the only logical choice and doesn't buy from AMD.
On to your second point:
I think it's a good thing Intel "blocked rivals" from making compatible chips. While Intel was busy screwing up Itanium, AMD came out with a good 64-bit technology, which Intel is now using. That saved us all from having to switch to Itanium (thanks, AMD!)
"Blocking rivals from making compatible chips" isn't at issue here. Everyone does that; the x86 cross-licensing deal between Intel and AMD is unique among the industry. No one is saying that AMD should have been allowed to make an Itanium clone.
How will this change? Intel knows how many systems Dell, HP and others ship. They don't have to sign exclusive deals, but they can sign "volume sales" deals. Where does the huge discount kick in? At X units (where X is just about what your total sales forecast is).
Volume sales deals aren't illegal. Making your volume sales deal contingent on not doing business with a rival? That's a different story. In the example above, Intel would still be able to tell Dell that they would get a discount if they purchased 50 million processors, but AMD still must be allowed to say, "Hey Dell, we think you can sell 10 million extra units if you build machines around our processors". However, I don't know if the details of the FTC judgement would restrict this sort of volume deal for the duration of the supervisory period.
The point being that X should be the same for all the customers
There is no statutory or regulatory rules that says you can't give certain customers better prices. Companies do it all the time and face no legal issues by doing so.
If it is not it only means that they are making you pay Intel because you sell many AMDs.
If one was selling so many AMDs why would they care about losing their deal with Intel? If it was really as lucrative to sell AMD chips as people like to claim it would have been everyone would have just been exclusively using or heavily selling on AMD chips.
Other than, of course, the fact that an intel GPU comes on the die of every intel CPU sold, atoms excepted(for now).
BULLSHIT. Intel do seem to be planning to go down that road but right now the only intel chips with a GPU on the cpu are the dual core i series chips and the pine trail atoms.
The quad-core and 6-core nahelm chips don't have any support for shared memory graphics at all afaict so you have to combine them with a graphics card/chip that has it's own memory (which most likely for a desktop means a nvidia or ATI card).
The older core 2 stuff uses a conventional FSB setup with any shared memory graphics being up to the chipset.
Sandy bridge will apparently be brining in on-die graphics to all intels mainstream chips.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
AMD is not competitive with Intel in the low end. AMD utterly defeats Intel in the low end, the only thing keeping Intel in the low end market is brand recognition. AMD is competitive with Intel will into the mid range market and even the start of the high end market (if you don't place much value on energy efficiency). Price/performance AMD curb stomps every Intel processor except the i7 920. But AMD does not compete, at all, above that performance point.
I used to work for a large OEM who used Intel processors.
As it happens I did as well and I am aware of the tactics you speak of. I am also aware of many other predatory practices Intel uses to strong arm it's OEMs but couldn't prove so I shall keep them to myself. Needless to say OEMs must work with the devil they know and that was one way they used Intel's tactics against itself.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Can we have a similar ruling for Apple and AT&T please?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Dell's argument was that AMD could not supply enough processors, which was true.
Now if Dell had said that they would be happy to sell those processors if AMD could make enough then AMD could have received funding to build the fabs that they needed.
If Dell had done that though they would have had to pay 30% more for Intel processors than they were at the time and Intel could supply enough for Dells demands.
Oh and Intel pays pretty well for advertising, all those Dell ads that push Intel are partially paid for by Intel.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
So you're saying Intel, being the owner of the merchandise, cannot rightfully decide for how much and under what terms they're sold?
Using a government-created monopoly, I might add. Without that, nothing would have stopped AMD from making clones.
he's talking about 2011/2012 when intel and AMD start packaging CPU's and GPU's in a single die on a regular basis, right now it's part of arrandale (the 32 nm i5's). I'm presuming he's just misinformed that this doesn't happen now on everything. Or he's making a bad joke about how people don't know the difference between a CPU and the whole computer case.
For AMD this is part of their 'the future is fusion' marketing. I can't recall what Intel has called it. Basically rather than a processor core you get a GPU core. So an 8 core, or 4 core machine can really be a collection of CPU and GPU cores. In the short term this isn't likely to impact a lot of /. readers on their home systems, since you can power, and cool about 1200 mm^2 of chips, split between cpu and GPU but if you want cheap, or cool 'fusion' is a good strategy. It's not like most computer actually need or want a decent (hot) GPU anyway.
As a game development guy I'm strongly opposed to intel gpu's in home users machines. They buy crap and then don't know why stuff doesn't work. But the business desktop is a whole other matter.
Decent netbook graphics aren't what I'm worried about. I want a netbook with a processor and chipset that both sip a few watts of power. The current Atom chipset eats way too much watts in comparison to the atom cpu. Hoping AMD will eventually challenge them in this area.
Haha it's good to see corrupt business practices get the smackdown.
The benchmarks I've seen show even an i5 being competitive with a Phenom II X6
I am backing up my assertions.
Intel does not have any i5 that is even close in performance with the higher end 1090T, which is what the poster you were replying to said he was talking about. Read that? Not Even Close.
The lower end 1055T (which you are talking about) also beats the best performing i5, the 760, and it is cheaper than Intels chip too.
On top of that, the OEM special-edition 1035T, even cheaper than the 1055T, also outperforms all the i5's.
The only thing the i5 does better than the AMD 6 core offerings is better single threaded integer performance (and thats only the best most expensive i5), but is worse at single threaded floating point. For multi-threaded tasks it gets literally destroyed by AMD's 6-core offerings.
"His name was James Damore."
You cannot understand a world where it is more profitable to have a 20% AMD/80% Intel mix for a company?
There's one single argument in favour of Intel GPUs in the workplace :
They interact better with the Q series of Intel chipsets and are better supported by the "Intel AMT".
For those too lazy to read the Wikipedia article : AMT consist of a small system which is always accessible over the network even when the rest of the PC is off.
This small system can be used to do remote administration.
At its most basic form, it can be used to turn the machine on/off or choose from which medium to boot.
It can also do console redirection.
If the graphic card used is a discrete one from ATI or Nvidia :
- Only basic textmode redirection is possible.
If the graphic card used is the integrated Intel :
- Full remote access over a hardware-based VNC server located inside the chipset.
The point of all this is to bring the level of administration which was possible until recently on high-quality servers (I think Sun servers have been having it for ages), to the administration of desktop computer in enterprises.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
PCI-E was released in 2004, 6 years from now would give it a 12 year lifespan. PCI was released in 1993, and it's still commonly found on motherboards 17 years later. ISA was released in 1981, was superseded by PCI 12 years later, and was commonly found on motherboards for several years after that.
A 12 year lifetime for expansion slots is pretty standard, if something better does come along nothing's stopping anyone from supplying motherboards with both slots, just like PCI-E/PCI motherboards today, and PCI/ISA motherboards from 15 years ago.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The Core i3 and Core i5 CPUs have the GPU directly on die.
From http://www.intel.com/products/processor/corei3/index.htm :
This processor comes equipped with Intel HD Graphics, an advanced video engine that delivers smooth, high-quality HD video playback, and advanced 3D capabilities, providing an ideal graphics solution for everyday computing.
From http://www.intel.com/products/processor/corei5/index.htm :
Intel® HD Graphics on Intel® Core i5-600 processor series
Here is a good technical description of the actual terms:
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4205889/Intel-not-fined--agrees-to-restrictions-in-FTC-deal
Read it. All it does is require that Intel stop engaging in the monopolistic practices that it has been using for the last 10 years. So their punishment is that they have to obey the law for the next 5 years. They pay no fine. They don't admit that they did anything wrong.
The best part is at the very end of the article. This is where the juicy details are always buried.
Two million dollars to monitor a company a size of Intel for 10 years? Pathetic.
Despite the hype that the press will put out, this is a complete win for Intel. No fine. No one in the company is held responsible. No admission of guilt.
You have been getting ripped off for 10 years by Intel/Dell/HP in the form of higher prices and decreased innovation. Remember it was AMD that created the x86 64 bit architecture, not Intel. When Intel was paying bribes to Dell none of that money was going into R&D. The EETimes article makes it clear that Intel was modifying it's architecture to make AMD look bad, not to make any real world code run faster.
Your will not get a dime in compensation for the higher prices you have been paying. When you see figures that Dell paid $500 million in fines, or Intel paid AMD $1.2 billion to settle a court case, they are paying with money they stole from you, the consumer.
This settlement is a joke. Non of the people who profited will be held accountable or loose any real money. Consumers had untold billions of dollars stolen from them and the crooks got away clean. Welcome to our so-called capitalistic market driven economy, sucker.
Why is Snark Required?
Did you look at the anandtech benchmarks?
Applications like video encoding and offline 3D rendering show the real strengths of the Phenom II X6. And thanks to Turbo Core, you don't give up any performance in less threaded applications compared to a Phenom II X4. The 1090T can easily trump the Core i7 860 and the 1055T can do even better against the Core i5 750.
Yes the gaming benchmarks are in favor of Intel slightly, but how much of that is due to most games being 2-3 threads max, and them being optimized for Intel, or how much is the AMD chip really being slower. I'm willing to bet that the 1090T is about as good as and equivalent Intel when coupled with a 5670 or gtx260, and 8GB ram, but yet will crush that same Intel chip when I go to encode my dvd rip to h264... hmm looks like AMD wins in my book, along with the socket 1337 board being more expensive than AM3 AMD boards.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
See my post directly above for references. The Core i3 and Core i5 series chips have the GPU integrated directly with the CPU.
really? whats competative at the $300 point with AMD Phenom II X6 1090T from Intel? No really, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115225 [newegg.com] is probably the best at stock speeds and it's only a 2.8ghz quad core :( )
And yet the i7-920 (which is only a 2.66GHz quad-core) seems to hold it's own quite well against the Phenom II X6. http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/146?vs=47 . It seems the amd is generally winning in video encoding while the intel is winning in most other stuff (unfortunately anandtechs charts are hard to read because some tests are lower is better and others are higher is better
and uses more expensive motherboards than the AMD.
If you are trying to build a cheap system the i7-8xx series is probablly a better bet than the i7-9xx series It tends to give more performance per dollar and runs on cheaper motherboards. The downside is you get less PCIe and less memory slots.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
AMD is competitive with Intel will into the mid range market and even the start of the high end market (if you don't place much value on energy efficiency).
The 32nm and 45nm Intel chips are all no more than 95W TDP up to 2.93GHz 6-core, and after that they are 130W, which is pretty much the same as the 125W for the 6-core AMD.
Price/performance AMD curb stomps every Intel processor except the i7 920. But AMD does not compete, at all, above that performance point.
The quad-core i5-750 beats the six-core 1090T in quite a few benchmarks for $100 less for the Intel chip. With the i5-760 only $15 more for 133MHz faster stock clock, it'll likely be even better. And, motherboards with the 1156 socket start at $70, so you can get CPU and motherboard from Intel for less than the CPU alone from AMD, and win many benchmarks.
If you overclock, it gets even worse, because the Intel chips can easily OC to 3.2GHz (the stock speed of the 1090T). After that, both chips are basically even in how much farther they can be overclocked.
Intel didn't do most of the things AMD accused Intel of doing, and lots of people have misinterpreted legal dealmaking as illegal dealmaking.
So unless you do have documented proof, I'm afraid we have to doubt you know of anything illegal that Intel did.
"If the Itanium had succeeded there would no longer be a choice of processor for Intel based systems."
It's been a long time since the x86 could be called "Intel based". Intel and AMD have been sharing instruction-set extensions for a couple of decades.
So you're saying Intel, being the owner of the merchandise, cannot rightfully decide for how much and under what terms they're sold?
That's right. If you have a monopoly in a market, your right to set pricing terms are significantly restricted by the law.
The very prospect of this tactic being effective pretty much proves they have a monopoly. In any actual "free market", a threat to raise prices would result in the customer switching vendors. In the x86 market, there is no other vendor that can guarantee enough supply for big OEMs, so the threat is viable.
And yet x86 has stormed through the performance computing market leaving only very niche players. This is because nobody but a few nerds cares how nice the ISA is, and Intel/AMD have proven that they can can make it perform.
Sure. And now they're buying 20% fewer Intel chips, and any volume discount would be affected by that reduction in volume.
". The Itanium was Intel's attempt to lock AMD out of the "clone" market because AMD didn't have a cross license to use the Itanium architecture."
Itanium had nothing to do with AMD and everything to do with the belief at Intel's own leadership that X86 was an evolutionary dead end. Only after customers balked and fled to Opteron in the enterprise did Intel look at how to wring more life from X86. Intel overestimated both Itanium's performance and the willingness of the enterprise to undergo a wrenching platform change.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Honestly the PCIe cards are not even tapping on the door of the halfway mark for potential PCIe Bandwidth. I fail to see why keeping a good standard for the next 6 years is a down side.
apple systems with amd cpus coming soon??
as they can make a nice low mini system with good on board video and give room for a $1000 mini tower as well.
cable tv and the cable box also cable card is a joke. No VOD, SDV needs a box to work.
You should be able to buy the box and not be foreced to rent it or rent a cable card and get VOD, PPV and all the other stuff that rented box get's.
so if you want usb 3.0 / sata 6 or any other add it it's cut video to x8 or use switch chips that still shear the x16 bus.
itanums biggest issue was that it ran 32-bit x86 code slow. Sadly, the world have built up such a inertia of 32-bit x86 code (especially by way of win32 ties) that anything short of a computing cataclysm (or a media corp funded inquisition) will be able to produce a quick upgrade as seen during the microcomputers.
then again, it may well be that for home computing, until we hit some kind of full sensory VR, there is little real need for a big upgrade. As such the most adaptable of markets have gone away, leaving corporations with their upgrade and maintenance forecasts and plans.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
no bad it's locked to shit video that makes it useless next to the MS VNC and other VNC apps.
also for CAD work, VIDEO / PRO PHOTO work.
That was chipsets. AMD didn't really make their own chipsets. They had one, but it was not that good and didn't support many features (like higher speed AGP). So you had to turn to VIA for chipsets. Those were, to put it charitably, a fucking disaster. I remember getting an Athlon 700, fighting with it for a couple weeks before finally determining that was to way to make a GeForce work on the VIA chip. Took it back, got a P3 and had no issues.
It was an even bigger issue for OEMs because you could single source your stuff. With Intel, they'll make you the board, chipset, and CPU. This is useful because it means if there are any problems, it is the same company that fixes it. With AMD you had a different maker for each part, meaning if there was a problem you'd get a 3-way pointing match.
I'm sure Intel's stuff didn't help AMD, but that wasn't the reason they lost out. They did not provide what OEMs needed to make use of their chips. You can have the greatest processor in the world, but if the hardware that supports it is crap, you have a problem.
Co-op or cooperative advertising is a widespread practice. Basically a manufacturer covers all or much of the advertising cost for an ad that promotes the manufacturers' product(s).
Remember those Dell ads featuring "Intel Inside"?
(you should be hearing a few notes in your head about now...)
Is Intel now prohibited from paying anything towards vendor-specific ads?
If not, the DOJ hasn't gone far enough and left a major loophole.
Also, if my deal with you is based on not dealing with a competitor, that is over the line.
That said, it is openly ignored everywhere.
I don't know if they still do, but Fry's had a sale with a MSI motherboard, and i930. With that combination, you could get a stable 4.2GHz overclock, semi-stable 4.5GHz overlock, for $289.
I would take that bet having owned both systems. The i930, which is the likely the best sub-$300 CPU from intel, easily overclocks to 4.2GHz, while the AMD doesn't even come close. Any game using a reasonable graphics card (295, 470, 480) on most games will favor the i7 greatly over the AMD solution.
And, curiously enough, can still be found today.
Rather than using the built-in GPU core for graphics, it seems like it could be useful for other calculations. This is basically a return to the old "vector processors", just with different names. A lot like Cell architecture, really.
Would it be illegal if Intel just decided to close up shop and stop selling processors, and sell other kinds of chips? This is effectively raising the price of their processors to infinity, so that nobody can get them anymore.
And if you're really looking for the best possible mult-threaded performance -- which is the only reason for buying a 6-core CPU -- why would you settle for second best?
I just got a box from NewEgg today with the first AMD chip I've bought in a decade. 12 core CPU + motherboard for a thousand bucks, 80W typical, 115W TDP with hw virt.
I'm expecting much rockage.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Personally, I'm much more interested in the extent to which this decision will allow nVidia to make motherboard chipsets for current (post-Socket 775) and future Intel CPUs. Intel needs some competition in that space, and the market needs some chipsets for Core i(3-5-7-?) CPUs that have serious integrated graphics capability. I'd love to see, for instance, a motherboard that uses Socket 1156 processors with an integrated-into-chipset GT 240-class GPU in ITX form factor. That would be rockin for an HTPC/compact PC build.
The bit about shooting exclusives in the head is nice and all, but as a build-it-yourself guy, I've always been able to build an AMD-based system whenever I felt like it. Certainly the bulk of the market (which buys prebuilt systems) is more important, but we all care about what affects us personally the most :)
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Are you trying to support my assertion that Intels only advantage in the mid range is efficiency in regards to power consumption? or contradict it? I really can not tell if you misunderstood me or I am misunderstanding you.
You just picked Intel's best price/performance CPU of the generation and compared it to arguably AMD's worst CPU of the generation in price/performance.
You also failed to note that the benchmarks that the 750 beats the 1090 on are all minimally parallel and the AMD PhII 955/965 falls in the same range of performance on those benchmarks.
Both the i5 750 and the 1090T were also released after my last CPU hunt, so I suppose I can add the i5 750 next to the i7 920 on the list of Intel processors close the the price/performance of AMD.
That would be fine, because then Intel would no longer be obstructing other vendors from entering the market.
The point of antitrust laws is to keep a monopoly from leveraging their advantaged position to keep others from ever challenging the monopoly. Obviously, exiting the market altogether is not a tactic that would exclude other players. There might be a temporary price spike, but that would just draw more 3rd parties into the CPU market, and the prices would then return to normal.
Unfortunately there seems to be a massive loophole in the requirement. Other than a requirement that they mustn't break the spec deliberately to cripple performance there are no restrictions on the performance of the interface. So by my reading of the requirements they could supply a single x1 channel and be within the rules.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Uhhhh dude? It works the same way it did with MSFT. You just tell them "Gee, it would really be a shame if we had to cut off these big fat kickback...errr "advertising checks" we have been giving you, along with having to raise your price for our wares 300% above your competitors." Just look at what Dell was offering when Netburst was the space heating pile of suck. Nearly every AMD OEM I saw then were ONLY the lowest of the low end Sempron chips, even though benchmark after benchmark had AMD slaughtering Intel, both on price AND performance. Do you really think that's a coincidence?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
But Microsoft can? Doesn't seem fair to me.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Unfortunately, it is too late, they already succeed the old FSB Atoms which ION attached to with the Pinetrail Atoms. It is unfortunate that the legal system moves slowly.
This is exactly it.
For any sort of multi-threaded performance, AMD easily wins at every price point.
Of course a $1000 CPU (6-core i7 980 extreme edition) beats a $200 CPU (6-core AMD 1055T). But when you start looking at AMD's server chips, which are in the same price range as that i7 980 extreme ripoff, you are looking at getting a 12 core chip that easily destroys Intel's 6-core chip in multi-threaded applications, and has far greater i/o bandwidth too.
I'm sure that Intel will eventually start taking many-core seriously enough to be price competitive, but right now it just looks like they got caught with their pants down. You cannot buy more than 4 cores from Intel for less than a grand, while for less than a grand you can get a 12-core chip from AMD.
We expected better from the years of Larrabee research. We were wrong.
"His name was James Damore."
Actually, for me, I'd just LOVE to buy AMD. But I've had exceptionally poor luck with AMD chipsets in the past, and this is an area where Intel typically excels. Only a couple of years ago, if you bought a 3rd tier motherboard (Gigabyte, Asus, DFI, etc) - if it was an Intel chip, it was an Intel chipset. If it was an AMD chip, it was nVidia or SiS or anyone cheap.
Nowadays, sure you can get AMD chipsets. But I've been burned too many times and the amount of information on the AMD chips and chipsets seems more limited. For example, where's AMD's version of http://processorfinder.intel.com/ ? How do I figure out which AMD chips have which functions (I generally want Intel VT / AMD-V, for example). Do the chipsets support it? Which ones? Which boards have good RAID and SATA drivers? Do they have an equivalent to Intel's Matrix RAID? And obviously no AMD board has Intel Ethernet controllers.
It just seems like a real bun fight :-(
Doesn't Microsoft force computer manufacturers to sell windows only? Why is this allowed? Or am I mistaken?
Except, of course, that nagging fact that Dell did decide to sell AMD processors and Intel continued to sell CPUs to Dell and provide volume rebates. Forced, eh?
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
Well power reduction is a business desktop sort of problem. Most people are better served with a discrete GPU that will actually run the 3d crap in windows or starcraft than they are with a reduction of 100W of power consumption.
It's not that they're fundamentally bad chips, just that they're wrong for the market they're putting them in. No more than diesel engines in everyday cars. They have a place, and an important one, just not in the vehicle I drive to work everyday.
I'm sorry rockoon, but a 1090T overclocked to 4GHz on air cooling won't out perform my i930 running at 4.5GHz on air cooling.
I spoke because I had first hand experience with both machines. While you are obviously an AMD zealot, I actually tested both myself and found that not only did the i930 perform better than the 1090T in most of my personal applications at stock speeds, but the i930 overclocked better as well giving it an even further advantage. If that wasn't enough, the i930, according to anandtech also drain less power at both idle and at full load than a comparable 1090T system.
Rockoon, how did your testing go between both systems, because I'm sure everyone would really like to hear it. Here's another link for you to follow: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/overclocked_cpus.html While I wouldn't consider that the end-all-be-all for performance comparison, it is better than anything you've posted other than your foul mouthed zealot response.
http://www.inminds.co.uk/index.html
Boycott Israel, boycott Intel -- it is that simple! The actions by Israel over the last 62 years and peaking with the aid flotilla when 9 lives were lost 5 people were shot and throw overboard and never seen again, 35 more were wounded, people were beaten up when in custody, $1M of electronic communications equipment and cameras were throw into the sea by the IDF... And the release of faked video footage... It too much and too many lies. It will never end until Israel is taken to task and one thing we can do is NOT BUY INTEL PRODUCTS.
Right, that's in the future. Every CPU in existence does not "come" with a GPU integrated on die, not for a year or two.
The FTC lacks the legal authority to fine Intel unless they breach the terms of the FTC settlement.1 Also, the way this was brought as a section 5 investigation and not a standard anti-trust case had two major implications. One was that it allowed the FTC greater lattitude in what it could go after Intel for, but it also didn't create the opportunity for triple damages liability that a standard anti-trust litigation suit would have opened Intel up to.2 After a normal anti-trust case competitors can apparently go after the convicted for triple damages in certain cases. Not sure why that didn't apply to MS.
A company offering a product under certain terms is not ever obstructing anyone else from entering the market. It may be more difficult, but that's due to the behavior of the buyers, not the seller. The buyers ALWAYS have the ability to stop buying from Intel and buy from anyone else. It's really disappointing how little respect people have for property rights here on Slashdot.
Any "property rights" Intel has in CPUs are a fiction created by the government patent office. Likewise, antitrust laws are a fiction created by the government. It's all the same thing, but it defines how the system currently works.
The current laws on the books do not conform to your Randian property utopia. If you don't like the rules, lobby to get them changed.
You consider it a utopia to think that a person deciding what to do with his own physical property is a utopia? I'm talking about real physical tangible objects-you-can-hold property rights here (I've heard that Rand was an IP-advocate). If Intel wants to offer its real tangible physical processors-you-can-hold-in-your-hands for differing prices based on the behavior of the buyer, then so be it; the buyer is always free to decline buying from Intel.
If you eliminated patents, you'd have a point.
Until then, Intel enjoys a monopoly, and it's not fair to let them set arbitrary prices on their physical chips, because nobody else can make them without Intel's blessing.
Intel's physical property exists only because of government meddling. Until that's changed, it's just as well that the government further meddle to mitigate the damage they've already done.
No disagreement. Sure nice how our patent system results in the government exerting centralized control of production and prices.
It'd be better if the government stopped creating artificial scarcity in the first place, so that no company could monopolize anything in the first place. More government interference will only make things worse for us.
You said 4.2ghz, now you want to talk about 4.5ghz.
What gives in your moving goalpost? This is just more evidence that you dont know what you are talking about. 1090T's have been overclocked to 4.5ghz too. Before you were talking about "easy" overclocking, now you moved to goalpost to the extremes.
The fact is that the *6* core 1090T is going to outperform that 4 core 930 in multi-threaded tasks when clocked at the same rate. You have not presented evidence that the 930 is more overclockable than the 1090T, but have waved your hands claiming that its true. Meanwhile you moved the goalpost from 4.2ghz to 4.5ghz because you previously didnt know that 1090T's are easily overclockable to 4ghz and beyond, which you claimed wasn't true before. You made it up.
Now apparently you didn't know that 1090T's have been overclocked to 4.5ghz on air as well.
Let me clue you in on why machines are so overclockable today. The clock rates on these CPU's are set based on a portion of the market boxing up poor cooling conditions (pick any cramped Dell/HP box) together with consumers maybe not having an air conditioned environment (41C ambient temperatures are not surprising.) This pushes both AMD and Intel, who offer warranties on their products, to clock their chips far below how well they can perform under more ideal conditions. A segment of the market has atrocious cooling conditions and thats why we can reliably push these chips so far above spec.
Even the 1055T, a $200 2.8ghz chip, easily overclocks to 4ghz and beyond with the stock heatsink and fan. Thats 68% of the price of the i7 930 chip, with 50% more cores.
And since you want to drag the e-peen into this, 1090T overclocked to 6.5ghz. Yeah.. we can brag about large overclocks but only "easy" overclocks are relevant. All these chips go over 4ghz on air. You didnt know that. Now you do. Leave your e-peen at the door.
"His name was James Damore."
Right now, that advantage is tilted so far in Intel's favor that 4 Intel Nehalem cores are generally going to be better than 6 AMD cores at the same clock.
The evidence doesnt support your assertion. Yes, Core2 is more efficient, but you are imagining that its 50% better clock-for-clock (that 4 Intel cores beats 6 AMD cores) You might be able to find some obscure task where thats the case, but in general its just not true.
They had expensive high end models back when they had the aces (when it was Athlon 64 / Opteron versus Inte'ls Pentium 4 line). Now they don't.
Um, now you are talking about server chips (what the hell do you think an opteron is) Intel had server chips too.. but you want to compare AMD server prices with Pentium 4 prices? Please. You arent even being honest with yourself here.
Lets talk about server chips, where AMD is beating the snot out of Intel with 12-core chips vs Intel's 8.
Intel isn't winning at the high end of servers because you simply cannot build a 48-core server built on Intel. The best you can do is 32 cores.
The mark of a liar is not being honest with others. The mark of a fanboy is not even being honest with yourself. Stop being a fanboy. Deep down you know that you are arguing without facts to support your assertions, so why do you do it?
"His name was James Damore."
Rockoon, I said i930s were easy to overclock to 4.2GHz, yes. I also said MINE is overclocked to 4.5GHz, also on air. Well, was on air, I moved to watercooling after a bit to reduce noise and keep the system running even cooler.
All performance benchmarks on stock CPU's show that in most cases an i920/i930 out performs the 1090T, with a few exceptions, mainly h.264 encoding, which I personally never do. And that is with the i920 at a stock 2.66GHz (i930 @2.8), and a stock 1090T @3.2/3.6GHz.
I also linked to you performance benchmarks of overclocked 930's and 1090T's. So I'm not pulling shit out of the air like you. I've also done my own testing.
Meanwhile you moved the goalpost from 4.2ghz to 4.5ghz because you previously didnt know that 1090T's are easily overclockable to 4ghz and beyond, which you claimed wasn't true before. You made it up.
No, I never said that it was impossible to overclock 1090T's to 4GHz and beyond. I did however say that the 1090T's weren't even close. I wasn't trying to write a complete article dissecting each system, so I did leave out many details. Since you feel like I "made them up", I'll go into more detail so even you can understand.
(I am going to use the i930 as an example here, but you can do the same with the i920 but since the i920 runs stock at 2.66 vs i930's 2.8 it will be even worse).
If a i930 typically beats a 1090T at stock speeds, and I can overclock the i930 so that it runs at 161% (4500/2800 = 1.61) of it's normal speed, then given everything else being equal, you would need a 1090T running at more than 161% of it's normal clock speed to "even be close" (Which is what I said). Now with the 1090T running at 3.6GHz (with turbo on), you'd have to have a 1090T that is easily overclockable on air to well over 3.6*1.61=5.8GHz, which the 1090T "doesn't even come close", even assuming you get an unusual 1090T that can do 4.5, where 4.0-4.2 is more likely. I can safely say 5.8GHz isn't "easy", and likely impossible on air for any normal definition of air (65-75 degrees) for a 1090T.
Now with that said, let's delve into the details even further. Remember when I said "given everything else being equal"? Well, they aren't. The 1090T has abysmal memory bandwidth, especially for a 6 core CPU, approximately 13.6GB/s (actual measured), while the i930 runs around 28GB/s (actual measured). At these high speeds, the 1090T will quickly become memory bandwidth starved for any load that can't fit within its CPU cache. Taking it one step further, the i930 is even more efficient with it's branch prediction (and therefore needs to flush it's L1 cache less often) which makes the i930 use it's memory bandwidth even more efficiently so it won't be nearly as constrained by memory speed even further widening the performance gap when doing mediocre overclocks.
I don't need you to "clue me in on why machines are so overclockable today". I know enough about electronics and processor designs that I can make my own conclusions, thank you. I'll suffice to say you are mostly right on that aspect however, there actually is more to it than that. Namely reliability, longevity, and overvoltage wearing.
As for the e-peen, I don't find it necessary to brag about what other people have done, nor do I then try and associate their accomplishments with the size of my virtual ego.
This is my last response in this thread. I think I've cleared it up enough that any further discussion is pointless.
You can get 64-core Intel servers: http://www.sap.com/solutions/benchmark/sd2tier.epx
NEC Express5800 Model A1080a-E, 8 Processors / 64 Cores / 128 Threads, Intel Xeon Processor X7560, 2.26 Ghz, 64 KB L1 cache and 256 KB L2 cache per core, 24 MB L3 cache per processor
18185 users, 99450 SAPS
HP ProLiant DL980 G7, 8 Processors / 64 Cores / 128 Threads, Intel Xeon Processor X7560, 2.26 Ghz, 64 KB L1 cache and 256 KB L2 cache per core, 24 MB L3 cache per processor
18180 users, 99320 SAPS
AMD's best result is:
HP ProLiant BL685C G7, 4 Processors / 48 Cores / 48 Threads, AMD Opteron Processor 6174, 2.2 Ghz, 128 KB L1 cache and 512 KB L2 cache per core, 6 MB L3 cache per 6 cores
8675 users, 47420 SAPS
Even restricting Intel to 4 processors and 32 cores, it soundly beats AMD's best result in SAP-SD by 20%!
HP ProLiant DL580 G7, 4 Processors / 32 Cores / 64 Threads, Intel Xeon Processor X7560,, 2.26 Ghz, 64 KB L1 cache and 256 KB L2 cache per core, 24 MB L3 cache per processor
10445 users, 57020 SAPS
you simply cannot build a 48-core server built on Intel
Thanks for the laugh.
Psst... http://shop.amd.com/US/Pages/ShopHome.aspx . You're welcome. ;)
Yes, forced.
Eventually Dell started to sell AMD chips.
However, there was quite a period of time where AMD could have been selling chips to Dell, and Dell was willing to buy but could not. You can read what the gp wrote again if that will help.
The market would certainly have looked a lot different if AMD had more cash for R&D instead of almost tanking.
Sorry that you have no concept of history but not everything can be viewed from a simple current state perspective.
Regards.
useless next to the MS VNC and other VNC apps.
Software applications have one big problem: they need to be executed.
So you only get a VNC using the MS apps or any other server (TighVNC, RealVNC, etc.) if the whole OS is running, and everything is configured correctly, including a setup networking card. You can use it to remote-help a user who is having difficulties with an applications and other such app-level assistance. But not much.
With hardware-based VNC, it's the Q-series chipset directly talking with the network chip and the GPU, by passing the OS, no matter what the CPU is doing. The CPU could even be off. (The whole machine is off, but you can still log into the Intel AMT service to turn it on, and then follow the boot process over VNC).
That means you can even remotely reboot the machine and install a full OS, including installing the drivers (Video and Network drivers).
Hardware-based VNC enables you to do more remote-admin, specially when the OS isn't setup correctly or isn't running.
The only problem is that the current solution from Intel is proprietary and restricted to their hardware. What we need is an open inter-vendor standard :
The same functionality could be achieved with a Killer-NIC type of network card (which has its own embed Linux running on its embed CPU). As PCIe bus authorises card-to-card communication, if there's a standard way to grab the video for serving it over VNC, a VNC server running on the Killer-NIC could grab video over PCIe and serve it, no matter if the main OS is functional or being installed.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You cannot buy more than 4 cores from Intel for less than a grand, while for less than a grand you can get a 12-core chip from AMD.
Right, this really surprised me. I've got two cores from Intel for $79 and six cores is a grand? No, that's a $300 chip, silly rabbits.
AMD's putting 12 on one die simplifies/cheapens the motherboard too. For my applications 12 cores per server is enough. I know some folks would have to see a dualie on this, and maybe it's available, but for my average use cases this is all win.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)