Slashdot Mirror
AMD One-Ups Intel With Cheap Desktop Chips
CWmike writes "Advanced Micro Devices on Tuesday announced inexpensive desktop microprocessors with up to six cores to put pricing pressure on rival Intel. AMD's new chips include the fastest AMD Phenom II X6 1075T six-core processor, which is priced 'under $250' for 1,000 units, AMD said. AMD also introduced a range of dual-core and quad-core Athlon II and Phenom II desktop microprocessors priced between $76 and $185. By comparison, Intel's cheapest six-core processor is the Core i7-970 processor, which is priced at $885 per 1,000 units, according to a price list on Intel's website."
The PassMark Intel vs AMD CPU Benchmarks - High End show the AMD Phenom II X6 1075T as being nothing unusual in speed or price.
There's an important data error in the pricing information in this article. The bulk price quoted by Intel ARK and the AMD catalog is the price per unit for 1000 units, not the total price for 1000 units. Otherwise, Intel's high-end six core processors would have retail prices of $10!
Playing games at 18 watts and under!
This is really nothing new. Everyone can say AMD is worse than intel all day until you actually look at the prices. I've put together computer quotes for people and I can't even put in a wolfdate core2 for remoately close to a 3.0GHz AM3 Regor which is around $62! And for an i3 board and processor together, it's over double an AMD board and processor even with a Phenom in it instead. I mean if you want something so fast that AMD doesn't even make it, only Intel does, go for it otherwise there's a darn good reason why AMD has been "losing" and isn't out of business yet. Their chips are better speed for the price in most cases!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I like AMD because their processors are usually fast enough for me and are usually much cheaper than the processors that Intel sells. I really can't afford to pay nearly as much for the processor as I do every other part for the computer combined, so I go with AMD.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
When selling to a non-tech person, though, such things make little difference. Most aren't savvy enough to know the difference and mostly look at the number of cores and speeds as final arbiters on performance. It's like explaining that while a motorcycle engine may have higher RPMs, a truck has more torque and can move big loads better. Hell, that's the simplest analogy I know for modern chip comparisons and it still goes over some people's heads.
Then, of course, is the SUV-that-never-goes-offroad-computing crowd that throw down big bucks so they can have 3D accelerated, multicore/non-multithreaded MS Spider Solitaire. God bless them.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
Is that AMD's 6 core chip only competes against Intel's 4 core ship speed wise, and then only for apps that can use all 6 cores.
Currently Intel just has an untouchable performance advantage. Now, we'll have to see what the future holds. Both companies have new architectures coming soon. Intel's Sandy Bridge is in final production and slated to launch beginning of 2011, though only in the mainstream market at that time (the high end will come later in the year). AMD has a new architecture called Bulldozer that is supposed to come out in 2011 though they haven't been more specific as to when.
However as of right now, the Core i series kills anything AMD has. Their 6 core CPUs can only keep up with Intel's quads, and then not even the high end. They have nothing that touches Intel's 6 core line.
As such their prices are lower for any given part. They are a more budget solution, not a performance one.
Looks like we're still adding cores and cache to the CPUs, but we're not really coming up with anything really revolutionary. Last really interesting idea was Transmeta's ill-fated effort. Come on, people, innovate!
That said, I think it might be time for me to upgrade my desktop. It's still got an AM2 CPU!
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Motorcycles, trucks... hmm, your analogy is nearly there, but there's something missing, I can't quite put my finger on it..
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Yeah, because you should take aggregate data from three whole samples seriously.
The cache difference would not explain the price (or the transistor difference, 1.1bil vs 0.9bil), since we are talking about 3x+ the price. It is just that Intel enjoys a speed advantage so AMD has to pit its hexa-cores against Intel's quad-cores. And because, as it has always been, Intel is the more "recognized" brand, AMD makes sure that it gives you more performance for the price.
It has been the same deal since my first ever PC: I could get, for about the same price, either an intel 486@66 or an AMD 486@100. My next was an AMD-K6 @ 233 which cost as much as the Pentium MMX 200 (yeah, the K6 lagged behind a PII, but it was no match for the Pentium MMX). Then I went with some Athlons, you remember how those did vs P3 at first, and then, even easier against P4. I am not a fanboy, but on a budget so I did get a Core 2 E8400 at some point because that was the only time I was buying a PC and AMD did not have a performance advantage at my desired price point. Now I am mainly on a Phenom II X4.
But I digress, the point is that the Intel CPU's have traditionally been priced based on how much they can go for, not how much they cost. So right now they can get away with things like $1000 CPU's. If it wasn't for AMD, it would be like the 90's where they had mainstream cpu's at $1000, not just high end ones.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Kinda sad really, only reason I buy AMD is because the AMD motherboards still support more legacy features than Intel boards but still support competitive modern processors (4x PCI slots for legacy video capture equipment but fast processor for encoding).
Oh, so you've already got a hand on and benchmarked these new chips?
No, you haven't. We'll have to see.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I love AMD ( and buy them ) as they are good enough for what I do and have really been the ones driving x86 innovation for the last 10 years. They've made Intel a better Intel by forcing them to keep up and cutting cost. Things would be even better for the consumer if AMD were closer to Intel in fabrication prowess - Andy Grove's company isn't called
Chipzilla for nothing
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Intel could compete on price... but..
Someone has to pay for intels retarded quasi-futuristic commercials playing on tv all day long.
And it won't be me.
Not completely true, it depends on the application. In highly threaded tasks, AMD's 6-core will handily beat that i7 running at 2.4GHz (and even the higher clocked models without HT). Just check the latest benchmarks at Anandtech or Tom's hardware. In apps that are not heavily threaded, yes, Intel may win. But more and more apps are becoming multi-threaded and this will only increase in the future. AMD's current 6-cores are more future-proof than Intel's current platform. Not to mention that Intel loves to switch sockets every fucking generation, while AMD is able to keep sockets the same across many generations while staying competitive.
I use both AMD and Intel, so I am not terribly biased one way or the other, but AMD deserves a lot of credit for keeping the processor market competitive. Without AMD or another strong competitor, we would all be paying $1000 for our CPU's form Intel and we would still be stuck with Netburst.
When selling to a non-tech person, though, such things make little difference. Most aren't savvy enough to know the difference and mostly look at the number of cores and speeds as final arbiters on performance.
I'm a software engineer who has taken several courses on computer/processor architecture, etc... So I could look into the subject, read manufacturers' datasheets, google forum discussions and be able to distinguish what is brand evangelism and who actually seem to know what they're talking about and so on...
But am I really going to go through all that trouble? No.
When a friend asks me "Which one of these processors should I choose?", I'll look at the clockrates and the number of cores and make a suggestion based on how much multithreading I think he needs. If he is the type of a person who I should recommend to overclock (which does have its downsides, too) I might also do a quick google search about "[the model] + overclocking" to see if I see anything special.
It takes a lot of effort to keep up with the latest series from each brand in each area of hardware (display adapaters, processors, etc.)... So unless you actually need the $800 processors, work with them or they're your geek-specialization... You are most likely not going to care enough. ("Okay, the $300 processor wasn't the most optimal one? Damn. Well, it's probably good enough for the next few years, anyways.")
How can you say they're slower when they've just announced them?! There is no possible way you have demoed these 6 core chips.
Is it like he is standing in the garage, about to drive to work, when he realises that his keys are still in the hall?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Well after it came out that Intel was paying off OEMs not to use AMD chips I switched all my builds for customers and myself to AMD after being a lifelong Intel+Nvidia man, and my customers and I couldn't be happier. The bang for the buck is just insane as is seen in TFA, their 95w quads give damned good performance without turning my apt into a space heater, and when paired with an ATI chipset you have a great platform at a great price.
I currently use my 925 quad for video editing and audio creation, and even with multiple realtime Cubase amp sims it just purrs like a big kitten, the Radeon onboard was powerful enough I played SWAT 3 and Bioshock on it with decent framerates until my HD4650 arrived , and I've been selling AMD Neo based netbooks to those customers that were thinking of Atom. After getting their Neo and seeing how nicely it runs compared to an Atom all they do is rave, with the Radeon onboard making it a smooth multimedia portable.
So please, if you care about having real competition in the market as I do, give AMD a try. We really don't want to go back to the bad old days, when Intel would charge insane money for even their shitty chips, and the new AMDs will do any job you throw at them quite well and quite affordable. And where else can you buy a dual kit for $250 a quad for $300 or a fully loaded monster 6 core for $580?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Overclockers.com has a review of the Phenom II x6 1075T processor. Looks like it's got pretty good overclock potential and performs well against similarly priced Intel chips.
http://www.overclockers.com/amd-phenom-ii-x6-1075t-review/
I have had problems with AMDs in the past, but it wasn't the CPUs. The CPUs have always been fine, but often to support them you need to go to some busted-arse chipset from VIA, SLI or Nvidia.
Admittedly it has been some time now since I've had a non-intel box (because of previous bad experiences with non-intel machines), but the most overlooked aspect of building a box is, imho the chipset.
Now AMD appear to be building a lot more of the chipset either into the CPU or GPU (now they've purchased ATI) i might give htem another shot.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
SLI = something else. I forget the company, probably gone bust now. Chipset vendor from the late 90s onwards...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I wonder what the $/performance ratio looks like, rather than $/core...
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
True, but realistically AMD aren't going to have developed & released a radically new arch at a budget price without telling anyone.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
AMD might try to give you more performance for the price now, and when they started they certain did, but remember that AMD are in the boat they are now largely because they used the advantage they gained from Intel's Itanium blunder to sell $400 mid range chips. Intel won their market back because AMD got greedy and Intel under cut them by about 50% with faster chips.
AMD have no high end, with no high end they cannot survive because today's high end is tomorrow's mid range. You need to be tooling up that process 6 - 12 months in advance to compete. As much as I love AMD(I bought AMD for years, until my most recent PC), they're done.
**Citation needed
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Intel provides currently the highest buyable performance. But AMD provides the best performance for value. If you buy a 200euro amd you get the best bang for your buck. If you buy a 800 euro Intel you get more bang but pay more bucks per bang.
Intel offers no chip that provides the same bang for buck ratio as AMD. Hasn't done so in a long time.
That is why AMD is the choice for price concious buyers who want high performance on a budget and Intel for the rich people who simply want the most powerful CPU.
There are plenty of reviews comparing AMD vs Intel, Intel comes out ahead often but only by a small margin and for a HUGE price difference. Your choice wether you pay top money for minor gains.
Just as a super car costing 10x as much as a regular one isn't going to go ten times as fast. By that logic the Shuttle would have to break the speed of light.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
If you use your computer for heavier stuff like Qemu emulating weird architectures, heavy compilation, HD video and things like that:
Go for the X4 models with 6MB L3 cache, it will do wonders with your aging AM2 motherboard (check for compatibility first, of course).
Really, forget the 1 or 2MB L2-only models. Those are quite a disappointment for such tasks (to me? they're rubbish).
I was considering a full upgrade to a Intel i5 (processor, mobo & memory) because my annoying sluggish old AMD Athlon 64. Frankly, my previous bad experiences with AMD processors (K6-1, old Athlons) did not help to form a positive opinion about the brand. But, hey, that Phenon processor was so cheap that I thought "heck, why not" and I was quite surprised.
Intel already does have chips that compete with at the same price. The i5 760 will beat these in pretty much any task, and costs $208. So it doesn't have 6 cores, but it is sufficiently faster on a per-core basis that it doesn't matter.
nope
I would agree, 5 to 10 years ago. Alas, I don't anymore. We are at a performance plateau, where the user (normal, we're not talking special-case) can be perfectly happy with 5 year old machines (I'm a dumpster diver, good P-IV or AMD XP machines can be found there). Any machine in the 2.0GHz range (give or take) will cover the needs of users.
CPU makers are at the point where people who need more CPU power will have to be willing to pay for it. All the rest can go with whatever is cheapest. Intel knows this, hence the Atom. I built an Atom desktop based on the D410PT motherboard for my mother in law running Ubuntu 10.04. At no point performance has been a problem.
Tomorrows "desktop" CPUs won't be the "top-of-the-line" of today. They will be the scaled-down, power-efficient CPUs that won't deliver as much power, but enough for the end-user. All other will have to pay premium to get more power.
Unless we suddenly get a big craving for extra CPU power, that's how it's going to go.
No, the difference in performance is all it takes to explain it. The 1075T is roughly as fast as a Core i5 760, which is about $40 cheeper than it.
The UltraSparc T1 shared his single floating point unit between its 8 cores and 32 threads
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UltraSPARC_T1#Physical_characteristics
AMD is not done, in fact quite the opposite.
2011 will have some of AMDs most anticipated releases ever, Bulldozer and Bobcat. Also decent graphics are no longer a luxury, it is a necessity even in phones and tablets. Intel makes terrible graphics cards, while AMD makes the best performing ones available today. 2011 will see more widespread adoption of integrated CPU+GPU solutions (from both Intel and AMD), and guess who will hold the advantage there.
Life is just a conviction.
AMD might try to give you more performance for the price now, and when they started they certain did, but remember that AMD are in the boat they are now largely because they used the advantage they gained from Intel's Itanium blunder to sell $400 mid range chips. Intel won their market back because AMD got greedy and Intel under cut them by about 50% with faster chips.
AMD have no high end, with no high end they cannot survive because today's high end is tomorrow's mid range. You need to be tooling up that process 6 - 12 months in advance to compete. As much as I love AMD(I bought AMD for years, until my most recent PC), they're done.
Not even close. Bulldozer architecture, merged with their rock solid GPGPU structure in OpenCL is a reality and a fundamental architecture design shift that Intel will work at copying.
ALI (Acer Labs, which eventually got spun off from Acer, I believe). There was also SIS (Silicon Integrated Systems) and OPTi.
But, yeah, the chipsets were usually the problem. I never had a problem with Nvidia's chipsets, personally, but I hear other people have. I'm not sure what kind of wonky add-in cards they were using, but I loaded my systems with lots of stuff, with no issue. There was that one Nvidia chipset that caused hard drive corruption when you used it with a Sound Blaster, but I skipped that one.
Intel still charges insane money for their chips.. they only lower it to a fair price after AMD forces them ...
for the price segments where both AMD and intel are active in (so, that is the below $250 segment), $/performance is roughly equal, with AMD stealing some leads (and in some cases, very significant leads, in some segments intel only offers some insanely slow old celeron, where amd offers a x3 or so). AMD mostly wins because they are offering more cores/$. In single threaded performance, a c2d chip might just beat that athlon II x3, but as soon as threading comes into play, the 3rd core wins the battle for AMD
Taking all things into account (cpu/mobo), a performance equivalent AMD system will be somewhat cheaper then a comparable intel build
Personally i prefer AMD for that reason (not to mention i got into PC building in the amd 64 days, which might have contributed to my AMD preference)
People, what a bunch of bastards
Article neglects to mention that the processor prices are xxx dollars "each" if ordered in quantities of 1000 units or more not xxx dollars for 1000 units... and summary merely repeats the mistake...
processor chips are not really this cheap...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The 1075T is a new chip, but the 1055T and 1090T have been out for months, same six cores, same cache, just a slightly lower/higher clock speed
People, what a bunch of bastards
Yeah, MSI i think. Either way, chipsets are the problem more often than CPUs...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
ALI/ULI
They were bought out by nvidia i think, after they did a last hura for the amd 64, with a chipset which had both PCI-e and native AGP, asrock built some very good boards with their chips.
anyway, as long as you stick to the pick of the day, AMD has some good chips, in the athlon days, VIA KT266/333, Athlon XP > Nforce 2, amd 64 > Nforce 3/4, after that ATI picked up the gauntlet, and these days you just want an AMD/ATI chipset, excellent integrated graphics and performance.
Just keep in mind that picking the right chipset isnt enough if the mobo was designed crappy, i've had a MSI nforce 2 mobo which was SHIT, despite previous good experiences with the NF2 chipset
People, what a bunch of bastards
Personally i prefer AMD for that reason (not to mention i got into PC building in the amd 64 days, which might have contributed to my AMD preference)
Ah yes, the very same reason I like Lotus for office productivity software and FoxPro for databases; once a computing great, always a computing great, and you've got to stay loyal of course.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
Yeah thats the problem nvidia chipset i was talking about.
Its a damn shame, because AMD have had some fine CPUs in the past - but typically the motherboard selection was pretty bad. I lost count of the number of broken VIA chipset problems I dealt with and just got sick of it.
Went to an intel BX chipset P2-350 (back in the day) and never looked back.
Its not just AMD affected though i might add - other motherboards for intel i have had wierd buggy shit on. Ended up just going for intel desktop board + intel cpu and have had very minimal problems since.
If there's a decent AMD CPU + motherboard offering available, I'll give it a shot.
Problem is, plenty of hardware review sites focus on benchmarks, and differences in SiSoft benchmarks, or FPS ratings, when i just don't care about 1-5% performance increases. I just want the box to behave properly and work.
I don't want to be dealing with wierd and wonderful bios/chipset issues. I guess its why I like Macs so much these days... if it doesn't work, there's only one vendor to blame :)
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Yup
and
Yup
and
Yup
So basically, the i5 760 will beat it handily at pretty much everything except for one embarassingly parallel task.
Good game though.
considering you say you like lotus, i guess my sarcasm detector must be on the fritz...
anyway, i prefer AMD, but that is not to say i will ONLY buy AMD, that wouldnt make sense anyway (in fact, my file server is a core 2 Duo, my small experimentel webserver is a dothan based celeron)
People, what a bunch of bastards
Frankly, there was a time when motherboard reviews from Anandtech presented the number of times the board crashed during testing. It then went lower and lower, then they only crashed when using interleaved memory banks, then they didn't crash at all during normal use.
Or maybe the crashes weren't reported any longer.
I think AMD really only One-upped Intel twice: When they were the first past the 1GHz mark and when they developed AMD64 while Intel was mucking around with Itanium.
I've owned many non-Intel machines, the full list goes like this: Intel 8086-4.77, NEC V20-8, Cyrix 286-20, AMD 386-40, Cyrix 486DX2-66, AMD DX4-120, Cyrix P166+, AMD K6-300, AMD Duron-700, AMD K7-1,400, Intel PIV-3,06 Intel PentiumM-1,7, AMD Athlon64 X2-2,0, AMD Phenom X6-3,2
I've never had any trouble with any of them, even though some had motherboard chipsets from SIS or VIA. The DX4-120, K6-300, K7-1,4 and all the newer ones are still running. (The DX4 is a stand-alone DOSbox for my dad to run some ancient software (on 360k floppies!), The K6 serves as a firewall somewhere, the K7 is used when my mom needs Windows (she's got 2 macbooks), the P4 is now in a laptop and now a media server, the PentiumM is in my current laptop, the Athlon64 is in my dads current computer and I run on the X6). :-D
Now I look at it, even though I left my parents over 15 years ago, they are still a kind of dumping ground for my old computers.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
You know "parallel" when you're not running a just a benchmark and you're not running a big server or HPC load means "desktop", right? How often do you only have one application running? Multiple processes go to multiple cores just like multiple threads do.
AMD and NVidia are really the only players in AMD board chipsets these days, and AMD chipsets are on all the really well-performing boards anyway. The tight memory timings you can get with the recent AMD chipsets are great. Now, if only they'd leapfrog Intel's triple-channel and go quad-channel for memory modules, you'd see some really nice performance.
I know some Intel chips outrun AMD chips, but after the whole Randal Schwartz fiasco, Intel refusing to do 64-bit extensions to ia32 because they were counting on Itanium (then bringing out EMT64 as a knockoff of AMD) and messing around with the FSB for so long until they took AMD's lead again for the on-die memory controller, I'll keep rewarding AMD for the way they do business and push the market forward.
I do buy Intel chips sometimes, usually used. Most of my systems are AMD, though, and through the years although I've been mnostly happy with both brands I've been more happy with AMD.
Would that be a bad thing? If regular people couldn't afford powerful CPU's, software makers would be force to optimize for less juice. Everything, from Flash and browser and Javascript, to games and office apps, would have to run well with less CPU power. Would that be all bad?
Cache is king
AMD have no high end
Ever heard of the Opteron, particularly the 6100 series released in March? 12 cores from 1.9GHz to 2.2GHz with 115W TDP or you can go up to 137W TDP and 2.3GHz or drop to 1.7GHz and closer to 65W TDP.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Try an AMD 790 or newer chipset board. DFI, ECS, Asus, Gigabyte, and Foxconn all make them. You should be able to find a decent board from one of those companies. MSI, AsRock, MSI, Biostar, Jetway, and even more companies also make them.
AMD's chipset takes take of the northbridge and soutbridge, the USB, SATA, PCI and PCI-E, etc. Any other chips on the board will be sound or Ethernet unless it's a board with something somewhat unusual like more than one onboard Ethernet or more than half a dozen or so SATA ports.
So if you get any board with an AMD chipset, there are really only a few other things to consider:
You should of course check CPU and memory compatibility carefully if it's been a long time since you've done an AMD build. That's no fault of the chipsets or boards, but just a fact when there are so many chipsets and CPUs on the market at the same time.
My main desktop rig right now is an ECS A790GXM-AD3 Black Edition with a Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition processor and 2x2 GiB Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1333 rated at CL6 (6-6-6-20). I've had it for quite a while now, and I'm pretty happy with the reliability and with the speed for the price. It'll overclock pretty darn well, too. I don't like the extra fan noise and it's plenty fast enough for what I do with it without overclocking.
I don't play a lot of graphics-heavy games right now, so I'm running the integrated graphics. I average near 100 FPS in AssaultCube 1.1.0.1 with that, and it spikes to over 130 and never falls below 80. I should mention that's on Mandriva 2010.1 for AMD64 with the Catalyst blob. The board does have two x16 PCI-E 2.0 slots that will run full speed together. I just haven't put anything in either of them for right now because my fastest discrete PCI Express video card is a 1600 Pro.
Intel will have an offering which provides equal performance for approximately the same price.
You're joking aren't you? Intel currently owns the highest performance segment of the Desktop chip market. AMD doesn't produce any Desktop chips that can match Intel's best in any impartial benchmarking. But AMD has been confidently out competing Intel on "bang for buck" for some time now. I doubt Intel will suddenly lower prices to AMD's levels. If Intel are going to lower prices to compete, they've had just as much reason to do so for some time already. And don't forget motherboard support. AMD has traditionally been friendlier to separate motherboard and CPU upgrading than Intel which is a hidden cost.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Yes, but 1) this is not all parallel tasks, it's one specific parallel task, and 2) how often do you really load up *all* cores at once running multiple desktop applications. Instead, it's *much* more common to load up all cores at once by running one well written process.
Have built systems for quite a few years, and it seems like you can overclock the hell out of intel chips using just good air coolers while AMD pretty much are running at peak speed. Both regarding heat and not crashing.
Built a dual core core 2 Duo 1.83GHz. It is running stable at 3.5GHz.
Intels 32nm i5-650 3.2GHz easily overclocks to 4.7GHz (not sure if stable yet)
If you compare Intel with AMD after you take this headroom into account, intel is on par with if not more cost effective than AMD.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Actually you should see what microsoft has created with microsoft visual foxpro. It's a beautiful product, certainly much more so than access.
Just my 2c.
DANG IT! That's what I get for getting on Slashdot at 6:30 in the morning. Meant Intels are FASTER, not cheaper!
Just think how fast that AMD cpu will be once you get the unlock card from Best Buy!
Seriously; AMD should run an ad campaign pointing out this latest Intel craven shenanigan.
Have there been any real innovations in word processing software in the last ten years?
I mean sure they've gotten shinier and bloatier, but I haven't seen any real groundbreaking features.
Well, I'll admit I'm not a typical desktop user for starters. I'm also not running the typical desktop OS on most of my machines.
Most of the time that I'm filling the four cores on this box to capacity, it's running something that forks into multiple processes rather than threading inside one. Usually something like running make against a C or C++ program. My browser also uses separate processes, one per tab. Sometimes I'll be testing server software or debugging it and the client, server, and all the middleware together will peg all four cores. Most of the software I personally write uses forks rather than threads when I need multiple streams of execution. Linux balances those out among cores very well, and a fork on Linux is cheaper than the equivalent process launch on Windows.
Other people I know do things like run a CPU and GPU intensive game while running antivirus, a host firewall, some communications program (IM or voice chat) and streaming music. Until you get to a really monster number of cores, more cores will give you a speed boost even if most of those tasks only use one or two threads or processes.
Given that more and more people are using SSDs and more and more people are using multi-core chips, there's no reason a full anti-virus scan has to check single files serially. Especially with multiple SSDs in RAID 0, 5, or 6 there's no reason you couldn't fill a couple of cores with just a full filesystem scan.
I run IDS software, backups, logging, update checker, crypto services, mail server, name server, ssh server, time synchronization, database server, intranet web server, X server, window manager, and miscellany on this box all the time, and it spreads those things out over all four cores evenly. When I, say, build a new Linux kernel with make running 32 or 64 jobs at once, having four cores really speeds things up over having two. Having six would speed it up more, I'm sure. Having SSDs or building in a RAM disk wouldn't hurt, but I've yet to pay for enough RAM to do that and I'm trying to pick which SSD I want as I type this.
Frankly if they don't do the cheesy-as-hell activation fee like Intel is proposing I'm sold.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
That's for sure.
From TFA:
Somebody is marking those things way up by the time they get to my local store.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And the i5 760 is just a little faster than the Phenom II X4 965 which is $40 cheaper than the i5... See what I did there?
The problem is that most benchmarks do not take advantage of six cores, right now you'd only get a six core CPU if your applications are heavily multithreaded.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
What kind of innovations can you think of? You type, and the words appear on screen. Break out the bubbly :-)
Living With a Nerd
I bet you're actually thinking of SiS, since MSI never designed any chipsets themselves and are purely manufacturers.
But benchmarks are often to reality what bullshit is to a debate. I am typing this on a Phenom II 925 quad which is running a dozen tabs in FF, playing my fav playlist in WMP 12 AND doing a 16:9 to 4:3 conversion in Virtualdub and everything is smooooth as butter and only running at 123f on stock HSF. Oh and the ENTIRE rig, with 8Gb of DDR2 800, a 1Gb HD4650, a nice business class motherboard, and 2 500Gb HDDs with Windows 7 HP x64 cost a grand total of $650 before MIR and around $585 after.
So one can point out various benchmarks giving test X to AMD, and test Y to Intel, but how often are normal folks actually running benchmark conditions? I pound the living hell out of my CPU, with serious number crunching tasks like video transcoding and audio recording and amp sims with Cubase, and through it all this AMD has handled it like a champ without needing a dozen fans or heating up my apt. Likewise I have many customers that pound their PCs, such as the ones built for graphic design for the local copy shop or the one being abused in a construction trailer, and they couldn't be happier with the performance they are seeing in real world tasks they do every day. And in the end, doesn't that matter more than who gets the score in X?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
AMD's chips perform threaded tasks faster than Intel's - if you want to talk about tomorrow's chips you should also look at tomorrow's software, where heavy threading is going to be the norm. From that perspective, the value of the AMD chips easily doubles.
If you don't factor in purchasing a motherboard, then both chips offer zero bang for infinite bucks.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Some of the benchmark programs are compiled with Intel's C++ compiler, which generates CPUID checks for the manufacturer string 'GenuineIntel' and redirects all other manufacturer's CPUs to the slowest code path. So if you can't compile the benchmark yourself with a trusted compiler, its not worth the paper its printed on.
Intel also releases several libraries that other software vendors use in their products; these libraries contain the same manufacturer check which cripples their performance on chips by AMD, Via, etc. Commercial software products such as Matlab have unintentionally or intentionally shipped with these checks, with the result that they run slower than necessary on AMD CPUs. When the manufacturer test is patched out of the program, it is un-crippled and runs as fast or faster than a comparable Intel chip.
Intel settled out of court with AMD over this, and are in the process of also settling with the FTC, but have not actually stopped the practice.
Thats is probably what I like best about AMD, able to turn one up on Intel everytime, so that intel (with the better product anyways) needs to lower their prices...and therefor will allow me to get their next gen CPU for much cheaper, way to go AMD, keep it up....
On a serious note, has anyone tried the phenom chip, can anyone say they actually like it, I have seen some benchmarks, nothing to get exited over, except the price...
AMD is *always* more bang per buck then Intel - they wouldn't be in business otherwise.
No sig today...
For many years, the Intel C++ compiler has discriminated against non-Intel chips by detecting their manufacturer using CPUID and redirecting all chips not manufactured by 'GenuineIntel' to a slower code path. (And that manufacturer ID is their trademark so other manufacturers may not use it). C++ libraries available from Intel (such as their math libraries) also contain the same discriminatory code checks. This artificially decreases their performance on AMD's chips.
It makes Intel chips look better, by slowing down the program on all of their competitor's chips. So the safest thing is NOT to use Intel's compiler for anything (most especially benchmarking). This is a problem because it has a reputation of producing larger, but faster, code. (Faster on Intel processors at least!).
The code it produces is actually quite decent on AMD chips too, as long as you patch out the generated version checks to un-cripple the performance on AMD chips. You can do it as a post-build step after compiling. It's a hassle that most software vendors don't bother with -- in most cases they aren't even aware that Intel's compiler generates the manufacturer-checks and redirects their program through slower code paths on AMD chips.
Somebody is marking those things way up by the time they get to my local store.
They're called distributors, AKA middlemen.
If you've got a spare $885,000 you could buy 1000, keep a couple for yourself and sell the rest on eBay. :-)
No sig today...
Only on Slashdot can Powerpoint slides of what AMD's chips will be doing in the second half of 2011 be called "rock solid" and get modded interesting in 2010.....
1. Bulldozer will NOT have GPGPU until 2012 at the earliest unless you think AMD is lying.
2. When it comes to GPGPU ATI is nowhere near NVIDIA. Oh don't get me wrong, when it comes to making a good graphics card that plays games (which is what 98+% of the market actually wants) ATI is definitely ahead of NVIDIA. When it comes to GPGPU that the HPC sector wants, NVIDIA is still way ahead not only on hardware but also on software. I know all about the hype around OpenCL, I also know people who do this stuff for a living and CUDA is simply better and while Fermi sucks for playing games, it shreds anything ATI has for GPGPU.
3. Note the "98%" figure I gave above about what the market cares about. For all the hype on Slashdot, the number of applications that can actually take advantage of GPGPU is vanishingly small and inside of that small subset the biggest niche that exists is for video transcoding. Guess what? Using 3 square millimeters of silicon Intel's Sandy Bridge (that will be out at least half a year before Bulldozer) already does this. Also when it comes to normal Floating point performance, an equivalently clocked Sandy Bridge with 4 cores will have TWICE the AVX computing power of an EIGHT core Bulldozer... yes you heard me right 4 cores Intel vs. 8 cores AMD, due to AMD only including 1 full AVX unit in each "module" that contains 2 "cores" in Bulldozer. This is true unless AMD is intentionally lying about Bulldozer to make it sound worse than what the actual architecture will be. Oh.. and before you say that nobody will ever use AVX just remember that you called openCL "rock solid" a few minutes ago. GCC is already able to emit AVX instructions that existing code can be tweaked for RIGHT NOW while OpenCL is stil a pipe dream in many ways.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
It seems that the one main thing that benefits from running on a single fast core versus smaller ones with more combined performance is Flash.
Yes. Our friend Flash is there to ruin your day.
Despite all the nonsense about GPU acceleration (on Win7 no less), it still seems to only do well when running on a single core fast enough to decode a BluRay in software.
Running across a couple of slower cores won't cut it.
For anything else, my own experience favors more cores even for "simple desktop use".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The core i7 860 is more expensive than the 1075t and it requires a more expensive motherboard to boot.
Not really a fair benchmark if what you care about is performance per dollar.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Intel paying off OEMs for exclusivity deals is nothing new, they've done it for years and have been very forthright about it - what you seem to consider as a bribe has been spun as "loyalty discounts" for years.
MS subsidises advertising budgets for PC Mfgs. if they include Windows 95/98/200/XP/Vista/Win7 logos in the ads and ship every model advertised with the OS mentioned. They have been doing this for over 15 years (since Win95 AFAIK).
Intel makes nice chips, and some great deals can be found if you go with last gen technology. Intel has a dual core Celeron E3300 that supports virtualization that I can buy retail, with heatsink/fan, for $40 at http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0327583 - I don't really consider that a price premium over AMD, and MBs are available at comparable prices to AMD models. The cheapest dual core AMD chip I can find retail is $61 http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0346724 with a single core Sempron available for as low as $33 http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0317380 .
AMD & Intel both make some very nice chips, and with a little bit of effort you can buy a quad core CPU from either mfg. for about $100-120 (AMD 620 and Intel Q8300)
Ken
If you had bought an *Intel* SSD it would boot in 10 seconds!
only if you pay Intel $50 more for the unlock code to get the full power of that cpu!
If that's true then how is Intel in business at all?
how often do you really load up *all* cores at once running multiple desktop applications.
Lets see:
I've got three Java background apps running and unlike the Folding Client, they do not back off when I want to do something else. This means Firefox, Word, Outlook, One Note, XMPlay all have to fight them for any ticks on the CPU though I rarely see more then 50-75 avg. cpu loading. That's on an E6300 (1.8GHz) Core 2 running Win7-64 on 8GB and this is a typical situation for my system.
My system is 3 years old and I've just started looking at upgrading but I have a problem. There are no CPU's now available from Intel that are compatible with my board and no a Bios update wont solve the problem. They changed the damn socket 6 months after I built it. Intel has a habit of changing things ever 6 months so you can't upgrade you CPU to gain the performance boost needed when the time comes. In my case, the only option if I could find one is a Q6600, which has already been discontinued (18 months ago) so I'm now forced to look at building a new system.
Due to Intel's policy, I'm looking at AMD for my next system because they don't obsolete Sockets and Chips 6 months after you build the system, forcing you to buy the most chip you can afford and then replacing the entire system in two or three years when it can't keep up with demands. That's right. It's Intel that drives the business upgrade cycle because they can get more money from companies selling all new chips such as north/southbridge, nics and everything in between unlike AMD who prefers to see you buy more CPU's and gives us a gradual upgrade path by simply ensuring their new chips can run in at least the "+" series of sockets even though you may not have access to all features.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
My last system was an AMD build and I just built another right before he 6 core Phenoms came out. I play games and got Phenom II X4, Crosshair III motherboard, and a AMD5850 video card, 800W Corsair PS and a samsung LED. IBasically it amounted to the best an AMD system could offer at the time. The best Intel could offer was more than 1k more. Maybe some Intel systems benchmark higher than mine, but you CANNOT see the difference. That what pisses me off so much about benchmarks is that they are just numbers and people start saying what is what. Try a system, try the operations YOU will be performing on that system and then tell me whats worth it. Benchmarks are a guideline, nothing more. You think because Intel can encode faster that it is better? When was the last time John Doe encoded anything? When was the last time John Doe did anything other that look at porn and type in word. Most people could live with current Netbook performance for their daily tasks. Hell, the iPad seems to be enough for most people nowadays. You should always value your dollar, with any purchase, for anything. I will keep buying AMD until their performance does not match the price, but that won't be for a while cause I'll probably be able to put any next gen chip of theirs in my AM3 socket.
Not sure why some people find it hard to believe.
The i5-750 & i5-760 provide great value for performance.
Generally speaking they match or exceed AMD offering at that price point.
IMHO they provide good value (which is unusually for an Intel offering). Only reason I passed on that is because I had 8GB of DDR2 ram. Using AM3 CPU I could resuse the ram, going intel would require new ram (and $$$). Still the i5-7xx is a nice series of chips.
The large point remains. In the $50 - $274.
What, do the bits fall out when you shake them? Or do you have an STM in your house?
(captcha: oxides)
EXCEPT:
The intel motherboard for those less expensive CPUs has zero forward-looking value. They are already obsoltete when you buy them now. Additionally, the memory on the board will be obsolete DDR2. Furthermore, there will be no USB3/SATA3 option.
The AMD board will be closer to current, can have DDR3 should you choose it, and will support AMDs newest quad core/six core processors currently out.
This is like me pointing out that a prius makes a hella good race car, because it can get over 15 laps out of a gallon of gas. A PC is a bigger picture than the CPU.
The i7-860 costs a lot more than a the X6 1075T
Sure the chip is only $20 more $250 vs $270 however you need a motherboard. i7 MB are notoriously expensive.
One can find a decent crossfire/SLI capable AM3 motherboard for $80 - $100. Not so with i7. Prices start at $160 and tier 1 brands are more like $180 - $200.
When you consider the additional cost of the motherboard your i7 solution is running 30% higher than the X6 platform. 30% higher for maybe 10% more performance.
Performance per $ is what matters. Sure you can get that i7 but it will cost you $100 more. Someone buying an X6 could spend that $100 on a better GPU making an overall better system.
Pure power Intel has always been a leader but many of their solutions fall apart in a price per value metric.
And a cheaper 4-core CPU from AMD will be at par with the i5 760 while being cheaper...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Nvidia (nforce) SATA controllers also don't pass TRIM commands which is essential to maximizing SSD performance.
The best solution (for me) was simply getting new motherboard. This time it has AMD chipset.
The problem w/ NVIDIA chipsets has always been proprietary garbage. How/why Nvidia SATA controller doesn't play nice w/ SSD I don't know but the issue is well documented and there is no solution (other than never again trusting Nvidia w/ chipset duties).
It is good AMD got into chipset business. AMD platforms were always entrusted w/ 3rd party for the most critical aspect (chipset). With Intel you had the reliability of Intel chipset. Even when Nvidia and SIS made chipsets for Intel boards you at least had the OPTION of going with Intel solution.
Because even after those in the know recognize a better value proposition there is significant latency before the rest of the world to catches up- decades in some cases.
Just go w/ AMD chipset + AMD cpu or Intel chipset + Intel CPU.
There is no reason for using 3rd party chipset anymore. They tend to have lower performance, more issues, and more crashes.
Anyways the recommendation is academic anyways. Nvidia crappy solutions has edged them out of consideration. Taking a look at newegg for AMD newest sockets (AM3) the only chipset solution is AMD (700 series or 800 series). For Intel newest sockets 1156 & 1364 the only chipsets are made by Intel
Double Edged sword.
It would cut out a lot of the bloatware in everything from office apps to websites (javascript/flash) to antivirus and even OS.
However somethings like games can only be optimized so far. I think performance/realism/immersion of games would be significantly scaled back.
Also you seem to forget than when Intel ruled the market it wasn't just the high end that was expensive. The "low end" was $500+ CPU. So you get less performance AND higher prices. No way to say that is a winner for consumer.
What I see happening is that we will be seeing more specialized functions put on the CPU silicon as opposed to extra CPU power primarily. Of course, CPUs will get more powerful, but it won't be Moore's law doubling. Instead, what we will see are more specialized tasks (AES encryption for example, perhaps RSA) given specialized hardware. We will see more caching. We definitely will see more cores. Perhaps we will see specialized cores, so a CPU would have six cores that are mainly designed to do integer stuff (but can do FP in a pinch, not optimally though), and two cores optimized for FP work, but can do integer performance. Then operating systems will get a process scheduler that can take advantage of this and put floating point intensive tasks on the FP-heavy cores, unless the FP heavy cores are completely used, then they go on the integer cores.
I also see eventually a hypervisor being put in at the CPU level. This way, a VM sees that it has 12 cores available to it, when in reality, it is handed CPU allocation by a min/weight/max configuration, so the 12 cores might be 25% of a single physical core at minimum, and 100% of 4 cores at maximum.
The features are small, but often quite worthwhile.
For example, in Word 2010, you can choose based on the program you're copying from how you want styles to be handled, whether to use the original style, local style, or paste as plain text. That saves me tons of time I would have spent messing with manually choosing paste type before.
2010 also has built in "dataleakage" detection, warning you about metadata you might be sending on accident.
The last version of Word I used was 2003, then switched to Open Office (which I still often use).
For collaboration reasons, I have to use Word for work and was quite pleased at many of the changed made in 2010 vs old versions. Yes, there's no groundbreaking features, but UI changes can a big deal and big time saver in programs also.
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
As someone who switched from a 8800 GTX to a HD 5850, I'm always struck by how little OpenCL is being used currently. I have seen and heard lots about CUDA, but not about OpenCL. Also, AMD/ATI's graphics drivers really suck in comparison to Nvidia's ones.
AMD will have to do a lot of work to manage to gain the upper hand again. People don't care that they have an Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU (integrated or not) or AMD/ATI, as long as it works.
You may have to consider the cost (CPU+power) of your i7 vs the improvements you actually get. I typically throttle my i7 920 from 2.6GHz to 1.6Ghz in the summer to avoid heat (and also cut down on my power consumption).
I absolutely love launching make -j32, but it is rare. If you're a developer in the OpenOffice.Org team, it could make sense though.
Anybody know what the current state is of virtualization hardware support across the AMD line? I could certainly go look it up for these individual processors, but I'm curious to know, "all X's of the Y line have it".
I've been really happy with a couple recent builds I did with their 12-core parts, even at $750 each. Can these 6-core units handle dual-processor configs (clearly I'm just coming over to AMD from a long stint with Intel)?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
^^^^^^^^^^^^ this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I run IDS software, backups, logging, update checker, crypto services, mail server, name server, ssh server, time synchronization, database server, intranet web server, X server, window manager, and miscellany on this box all the time, and it spreads those things out over all four cores evenly...
I don't disagree with the overall theme of your post, but just a bit of a nit: I often see people saying I run all these things on my computer, so I need as many cores as possible. The number of processes (or threads) really doesn't mean anything; it's how much work each of those processes are doing. My firewall/router computer is an OpenBSD system running on an AMD Geode processor (500 MHz I think). This is a single core CPU that's slower than even an Atom (I've seen people compare it to a 486!). On this machine, I run a name server, ssh server, time server, DHCP server, and a firewall. The Geode is plenty powerful for all these things for a small home network. Of course, if I was, say an ISP with 100s of customers, the Geode wouldn't be sufficient.
So, in general, any one of the processes you listed can be virtually no CPU load, or require a whole cluster by itself. Consider a mail server. If you're not doing virus scanning, I would guess that you can support 100s of typical users on a pretty wimpy computer, as it's really mostly I/O load. But to run, e.g. gmail.com, that requires a bit more power. The same goes for a web server: if you're serving mostly static pages or relatively simple dynamic pages with a limited number of users (for example, a hobby web development server), it's mostly I/O load, and doesn't take a powerful CPU at all. But, on the other hand, pick any high-profile site, and it's obvious you need a lot more horsepower. The point is, simply saying "I run a webserver" doesn't really actually say anything about the load you're putting on your system.
It is very sad that some folks refuse to consider the MANDATORY motherboard change cost. The exceptions favor AMD, with the socket AM2 lasting for about 4 years, and 2+ lasting close to 3, when considering the MOST current CPU of the moment. Intel boards cost morer and last less time. Any top tier (parts-wise) AMD PC built in the last 3 years can move to the latest and greatest processor, by a imple CPU swap. Intel cannot even get you in the i7 GENERATION without a board.
They already do. It's called the i7, and it still manages to beat the six-core Phenom IIs.
Knowing most software makers, they would just have their programs refuse to run if they are not installed on the latest and greatest CPU if push came to shove and they couldn't continue to code on the cheap. Or they would just have their stuff run poorly and users would get used to clicking on a button and waiting 30 seconds for a result, just like the early days of X-Windows on some machines. Marketing people will call it accustoming the user to the new software experience where one types, then 20-30 seconds later the text will show up on the screen.
It makes me wonder what life would be like if a core enterprise UNIX (BSD, Linux, Solaris or AIX), became the mainstream OS of choice for home PCs. People would never tell a computer novice to reboot unless it was a hardware or kernel upgrade, and a reinstall just wouldn't be done unless the box was hacked. Probably one of the most common problems would be replacing the battery powered chips because people set the boot PROM password then forgot it. Viruses wouldn't be an issue, although there would still be break-ins and compromises due to unpatched machines, or Joe Sixpack running a Trojan in effort to view the dancing bunnies.
Hardware guys shouldn't earn money?
OK as someone that follows this pretty closely I am not all that impressed just yet. I have done the research, and no AMD does not have the price/point value or advantage.
Firstly Intel's i5 will beat anything AMD has in 90% of benchmarks at the same price range. Secondly most people are hard pressed to use 2 cores let alone 4 or 6. Thirdly most developed software has a hard enough time using 2 cores, let alone 4, or 6. AMD's technology and die sizes is less advanced, and larger (which is not good). In certain specific situations AMD can have an advantage, but this is rare, and that must be all you plan on doing. So for instance if your using it for work, doing rendering, and that is all you are doing, and AMD has a benchmark advantage in the software you use for that, then sure go out and buy one. However for general usage, video games, etc... advantage Intel.
Someone did make the point that the AMD mother boards are cheaper, and this is true. However at the low or mid end the differance is only maybe 20% or 20-30$ so not all that significant really (at the high end yes their are some stupidly expensive intel MB out there, but who buys those anyway, not someone that is really worried about price or value I assume). Also the past has shown us that AMD makes just as many socket changes as Intel, they have simply delayed it due to not being on par with intel technology. It will happen, and then your 20% less costly MB will be 100% less compatible when they do change the standards, as you just bought at the end of a lifecycle.
Anyway like anything, it really comes down to your requirements, what you need, and what other components you plan on buying to make a complete system. Taking by their definition "components" and passing judgement may not be all that useful as you need to look at the whole system and what you plan to do with it. That said, if I were to go out and buy a new CPU tomorow it would be an Intel i5. AMD did have the advantage years ago, but ever since the Intel Core 2 Duo, AMD has been struggling to keep up. I sincerly hope that they will come out with something that trumps Intel technology, and takes back the technological advantage, as that would be the best thing for the market and the consumer. However simply slapping more cores on a solution it does not make.
What non-profit-manufacturer-X?
Why would any manufacturer eat their sunk costs just to produce something for you for the price it costs them to produce it?
I've never heard of a non-profit company in the manufacturing segment, simply because manufacturing has a ton of sunk costs.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I feel more bad for suppliers/retailers who have stuff in stock. When companies semi-announce a future price drop from $800 to sub-$250 that has to kill sales. The only way those vendors/suppliers are going to sell the chips they bought for $800 is to sell them as if they had paid $250. I realize this is an age-old problem with technology, but it just struck me as a startling drop in this case.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
It doesn't help that Anandtech has become intel and Nvidia-biased of late.
I have had problems with AMDs in the past, but it wasn't the CPUs. The CPUs have always been fine, but often to support them you need to go to some busted-arse chipset from VIA, SLI or Nvidia.
Now AMD appear to be building a lot more of the chipset either into the CPU or GPU (now they've purchased ATI) i might give htem another shot.
As another poster mentioned, there are now really only two chipset vendors for AMD CPUs, nVidia and AMD itself (at least in the desktop space, there may be others in the server space). I haven't done a detailed study recently, but last I checked, both were still sub-par compared to Intel's chipset offerings. nVidia had fairly widespread problems with the actual manufacturing of their chips; it tended to affect laptops more than desktops, but both were at risk. In general, the nVidia chipsets at least used to be quite power hungry.
The AMD chipsets just don't compete with the Intel equivalent. There was a website that benchmarked AMD's SATA 3 against Intel's SATA 2; the Intel won! Also, I don't know if they still exist, but AMD's SATA performance used to change depending on whether you used the native AMD interface or switched to AHCI mode. I forget the details, but you can google for it. AMD also doesn't produce their own ethernet chips. That's not a problem, but it means that AMD boards usually come equipped with an el-cheapo Atheros or Realtek ethernet implementation. I think that Intel makes the best ethernet hardware, hands-down. Yet, outside of the server space, it's impossible to find an AMD board with an Intel NIC on it.
Finally, while AMD's on-board graphics are some of the best you can get (definitely better than anything Intel currently makes), they don't support dual digital output. I have two monitors, and prefer to run them both digitally (i.e. HDMI or DVI). All of AMD's on-board GPUs allow only one digital device to be connected at a time. You can do two monitors with one digital and one analog, but I can see a quality difference; analog sucks.
Overall, though, I think AMD still offers a lot of value. The issues I pointed out will go unnoticed by the casual user. And the power user should understand his needs well enough to know if they make a difference. E.g., I know the Realtek NIC is inferior to the Intel, but is it going to make a difference in day-to-day usage? For the average desktop? Probably not. Another nice feature AMD provides is ECC memory support for all non-Sempron CPUs. With Intel, you have to shell out the big bugs for a Xeon-branded CPU to get ECC support. The unfortunate thing, though, is that most consumer motherboards don't actually provide the traces that allow you to actually use the ECC support! The Biostar A760-G M2+ is a noteable example that actually does let you use the ECC features of the CPU (though it's unofficially supported).
Just for reference –AMD's next major upgrade is coming soon (no I don't mean fusion, I mean bulldozer) and will do away with Socket AM2/2+/3/3+ totally, so you're in the same boat there.
You know... I was feeling that way with my rig's really nice sound card and front panel dials and inputs. Thankfully, though, I've had need of them... I've finally taken my soundcard "off-road" in the past year. Of course, if utilizing the EAX or THX features of my card is off-road, then I've been taking it off-road for awhile now. My graphics card goes off-road everyday.
So, what you're saying is that WP and SS are mature products.It happens
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Opteron is not and has never been a desktop chip, and it's not high end in comparison to the offerings Intel has in the same space.
AMD's foray into being a major player was almost entirely due to Intel screwing up by making the Itanium a chip no on actually wanted. They failed to capitalize on that market share and they lost it.
There's no evidence whatsoever that Intel is going to do something stupid like the Itanium again any time soon, or that AMD has a product on its road map to do what they've never managed before, which is take serious market share from Intel in a race Intel is actually playing in.
And nobody cares.
Even if AMD came out with an amazing GPGPU architecture tomorrow and could sell it at a profit for $1 it really wouldn't matter.
Programming for a GPGPU is an entirely different paradigm than programming for a standard CPU and GPU combination, it involves totally different ways of thinking, totally different ways of designing, and totally different tools. You're just not going to see programmers making that sort of leap until there's serious motivation for them to do so, which there really just isn't at the moment.
We're only just starting to see applications take advantage of 64 bit and that's been around for the better part of a decade. The kind of programming models required to take advantage of a GPGPU are far stranger and more alien than converting from 32 to 64 bit.
By the time there's any serious usage of GPGPU chips, AMD will have long run out of money.
how often do you really load up *all* cores at once running multiple desktop applications.
Lets see:
I've got three Java background apps running and unlike the Folding Client, they do not back off when I want to do something else. This means Firefox, Word, Outlook, One Note, XMPlay all have to fight them for any ticks on the CPU though I rarely see more then 50-75 avg. cpu loading. That's on an E6300 (1.8GHz) Core 2 running Win7-64 on 8GB and this is a typical situation for my system.
My system is 3 years old and I've just started looking at upgrading but I have a problem. There are no CPU's now available from Intel that are compatible with my board and no a Bios update wont solve the problem. They changed the damn socket 6 months after I built it. Intel has a habit of changing things ever 6 months so you can't upgrade you CPU to gain the performance boost needed when the time comes. In my case, the only option if I could find one is a Q6600, which has already been discontinued (18 months ago) so I'm now forced to look at building a new system.
Due to Intel's policy, I'm looking at AMD for my next system because they don't obsolete Sockets and Chips 6 months after you build the system, forcing you to buy the most chip you can afford and then replacing the entire system in two or three years when it can't keep up with demands. That's right. It's Intel that drives the business upgrade cycle because they can get more money from companies selling all new chips such as north/southbridge, nics and everything in between unlike AMD who prefers to see you buy more CPU's and gives us a gradual upgrade path by simply ensuring their new chips can run in at least the "+" series of sockets even though you may not have access to all features.
This. A thousand times this. I got lucky and my friend's dad swapped me my E6600 and $100 for his Q6600. Otherwise, I'd be screwed, which severely pisses me off. At the same time, I've got an AMD machine for my media center and I'm free to upgrade with chips that have just come out. I built the media center a year or so after my Intel machine. I'd say I'm starting to sour on Intel, but for me, the performance is worth it on my gaming PC. I'm pretty much never going to use them for anything else though. PCs for friends, family, other uses around the house...they're going to be AMD. I'm tired of Intel's bullshit. They don't need a new socket type every few months. It's just getting ridiculous now.
"Those who would sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - BenF
Not to burst you bubble too much but if you search say newegg for lga775 and DDR3 memory you get a bunch of choices. As for as USB3 and SATA3 I think you are right.
The url with the search is kind of long sorry:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=Property&Subcategory=280&Description=&Type=&N=100007627&IsNodeId=1&srchInDesc=&MinPrice=&MaxPrice=&OEMMark=0&PropertyCodeValue=705%3A9908&PropertyCodeValue=3879%3A31642&PropertyCodeValue=3879%3A56234&PropertyCodeValue=3879%3A31643&PropertyCodeValue=3879%3A34675&PropertyCodeValue=3879%3A29275&PropertyCodeValue=3879%3A36246&PropertyCodeValue=3879%3A34428&PropertyCodeValue=3879%3A29256&PropertyCodeValue=3879%3A40150
Especially in third world countries, you'll find a US$25 difference can be huge. I know for a fact that in Brazil a US$70 chip is sold for US$150 because of absurd taxation. Now when you factor in the monetary convertion, you'll see that chip being sold for R$300. In a place where the average wage is R$1000, you'll find a US$25 difference in a motherboard to be huge. So AMD will have an enourmous advantage on these kinds of market. Funny thing is they tend to be all overrun with Intel processors, from what I've seen.
No it won't, AMD's fastest 4 core consumer chip (the X4 965) gets beaten handily by the i3 540 in pretty much every test –the only place it claws anything back is in heavy multithreading tests where it can *just* beat the i3.
You must be confused, or we're looking at very different benchmarks:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=143
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
That's for sure.
From TFA:
Somebody is marking those things way up by the time they get to my local store.
$899.99 through newegg.
With a free piece of shit game no one cares about.
$15 / $885 = 1.7%.
So it's pretty obvious - INTEL is the one marking up these prices. No major shop pays anywhere close to that $885 figure. And no smaller shop has to either if they "just sign here" and agree to flog only Intel chips.
My last few purchases have been Intel chips, because of the whole "Core 2 Duo > Anything AMD has" thing. But the prices have been jacked up sky fucking high, the sockets have changed way too often with no backwards compatibility, and the performance difference isn't all that great.
And don't forget Intel's latest rapejobs:
"Yes this chip has virtualization instructions. No you can't use them."
"Download an upgrade to your CPU today! Only $49.99!!!"
I'm going back to AMD, and I'm taking everyone I build / recommend for with me.
If I really want my encodes to go faster, I'll buy a dual-socket mobo and drop 2 AMD cpus in there, and still save money.
I feel more bad for suppliers/retailers who have stuff in stock. When companies semi-announce a future price drop from $800 to sub-$250 that has to kill sales. The only way those vendors/suppliers are going to sell the chips they bought for $800 is to sell them as if they had paid $250. I realize this is an age-old problem with technology, but it just struck me as a startling drop in this case.
Do you really think the stores aren't given plenty of advance notice or buyback offers?
And smaller shops don't order in large enough quantity to be hurt too much, and they don't have customers who know the MSRP of the specific CPU in the PC / parts bundle they're getting.
That is just complete bullshit, Bulldozer will use AM3+ and probably be compatible with AM3 (just as the AM2+ CPUs were compatible with AM2 motherboards).
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Intel still charges insane money for their chips.. they only lower it to a fair price after AMD forces them ...
This is why you don't want *either* company to 'win'.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Why *wouldn't* you consider the mainboard as part of the cost?! The chip can't operate with all your components just by being in contact with them!
bork bork bork!
No, that benchmark bears out exactly what I said –the phenom wins in the multithreaded benchmarks, loses in all the less threaded ones, and costs $40 more. Now lets look at the intel chip you claim that phenom is on a par with...
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/102?vs=191
Oh look, the phenom beaten by between 1 and 40% depending on the benchmark.
AMD's chips perform threaded tasks faster than Intel's
Please provide one shred of evidence that supports this claim.. and I don't mean a comparison of a 6 core AMD CPU to 2 core Intel chip from 2007.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
The upgrade path is key. I hemmed and hawed when I built a new gaming rig about 3 years ago. There was a some fairly convincing hype about how this new AM2 socket was the wave of the future and the key to a long upgrade path. I was skeptical but ended up going that way. I bought a top of the line motherboard with true dual 16 lane PCIe slots. I'm still using that board two processors and three video cards later. And I can still upgrade to the latest class of CPU because Asus keeps cranking out BIOS updates. I could even put a six-core CPU in there, tho I'd only be able to use 4. But that means I could upgrade the CPU now, save up some more money, then upgrade the motherboard and memory later. And, if I'm building a new system with an AM3 socket, I can put any CPU in there from a single-core Sempron to the best six-core they've got.
AMD's management of the AM2/AM2+/AM3 socket progression has sold me on their commitment to system builders.
Meanwhile, I look at Intel and they have THREE current sockets in the consumer market. What a mess.
How often do you use a CPU without a mobo? Not only are comparable AMD motherboards a fair bit cheaper, but AMD doesn't require a new socket every time they release a new processor.
When do we stop letting profit oriented corporations define the age's technological standards?
The day when the Genii of the Lamp grants you Three Wishes.
The first wish for a labor force, materials, production facilities and distribution networks that can be built and maintained without spending a dime.
Power/heat wins causing mass-production for servers could reduce price. Plus licensees price compete.
A Windows port would only need slow x86 emulation for non-.NET apps and could gain perf by using multiple CPUs during emulation, JIT, and mapping calls to native libs for performance.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
Just as a side thought, amidst all this talk of how $900 is an obscene price for a 6-core processor --
It always amazes me how much we have grown to expect the price of amazing things to approach mundane everyday objects. Just think about how little you get for $900 in some of the other things you buy. For $900, you could probably buy a leather couch, a piece of hardware that you yourself could probably build if given a few months, no experience, a hammer and some wood.
Yet we still gripe about we can't believe how a 6-core processor is selling for the extortionate price of $900, a piece of hardware that took trillions of dollars in investment, many hundreds of thousands of people to develop, the great minds of our generations.
By some measures, then, $900 is cheap. But of course, it's all relative to what you come to expect...
Allow your old pal Hairyfeet to help you out with that buddy...Pow! And since according to the graph the ultimate space would be bottom right, you are looking at Phenom II on AMD side (which is what I got, yay me!) or the Core i5 on the Intel side.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
> -the phenom wins in the multithreaded benchmarks, loses in all the less threaded ones
What do you mean by "all the less threaded ones", given that the phenom loses two or three benchmarks out of that whole list (at most)?
> Now lets look at the intel chip you claim that phenom is on a par with...
Seems much more even than the comparison with the i3 that you made...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I am glad to see ... there is someone who can demolish the monopoly of Intel. I have always admired the awareness of AMD processors while utilizing the resources. Great to see it coming back with force.
Regards, Sam I Love My Reliable Service Provider Do you?
You suck at reading stats. The i3 beats the phenom in 7 tests, and if you look at only the not-massively-parallel ones stays within 5% of the phenom.
Meanwhile the i5 gets beaten only 3 times, and averages 20% faster than the phenom, in some tests even managing 60% faster!
beelsebob 4 hours ago: "the only place it claws anything back is in heavy multithreading tests where it can *just* beat the i3."
beelsebob a few minutes ago: "if you look at only the not-massively-parallel ones stays within 5% of the phenom."
Seems you're singing a quite different song now. Of course you had to, since the multi-threaded tests show a huge advantage (pretty obvious since we're comparing a quad-core vs a dual-core... hey it's not my fault, you were the one who brought the i3 into the discussion).
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
He forgot the intertubes!
Yet you're the one who claimed that you could get a 4 core phenom "on a par" with the i5 760 – yet the benchmark clearly shows it to be anywhere up to 60% faster.
I think PopeRatzo was under the impression that it was $885 for 1,000 units instead of $885 per chip when bought in batches of 1000
AMD will likely never be done until X86 is. AMD keeps Intel out of monopoly position while never really giving it a run for it's money. If AMD starts to fall too far behind, Intel will just raise their prices until AMD catches up a bit, or they will stockpile improvements until they need them. Then if AMD starts to get too close to being real competition, Intel will use those resources to pull back ahead.
Intel doesn't set the pace of x86 improvements, AMD does. In the end, that relationship works out for everyone. Intel keeps making insane amounts of money without too much in the way of anti-trust issues. AMD gets to exist. Consumers get improvements from both AMD and Intel at whatever pace, AMD can roll their improvements out.
What else does "$885 per 1,000" mean?
I was joking, of course.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'd also like to see the evidence that heavy threading is going to become the norm any time soon in most applications. It's had the better part of a decade to get there and still substantially less than half of all software supports multi-threading and most of that is lucky to support 2 cores.
People don't seem to realize how much more difficult writing properly multi-threaded software is, or that not all software lends itself to multi-threading.
I doubt AMD can accomplish this alone - they just don't have the fabrication prowess and it's big money to build chip factories. I think the Global Foundries spinoff was a good move but they still too far behind Intel.
However, Chipzilla is getting hit on several fronts and I never thought that the ARM would be the architecture to knock them back a step. And now that Marvell has announced a triple-core ARM(-like?) chip that'll run very-low power when not stressed, this might be another nail in Intel's coffin.
But, on the PC desktop, they are the current champs, except for the price-performance category.
If they swallowed Nvidia like AMD did with ATI, I think they would outright own the desktop again.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Yep, I got an e6400 and with a bios update I can go to an e8400, maybe even an e8600. Except these chip prices have remained stable and overpriced for nearly 2 years and for $40 more I can get an i5 760, except now I need new memory and a new board.
Why is it that porn sites aren't rated in hertz?
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
I used to support 14,000 customers on two dual-processor single-core MX boxes with spam filtering, two tow-proc single-core SMTP outbound box with spam filtering (to catch our customers and keep them from spamming) and four single-proc single-core POP/IMAP boxes that accepted mail only from the MX or SMTP outbound boxes and did antivirus. Webmail was on a separate web server which was also the company's web site server and hosted a couple of specific clients.
I used to support over 100k users at a different employer with four MX boxes with rudimentary spam filtering, four SMTP outbound boxes, four dedicated AV/anti-spam boxes, and 12 POP/IMAP/Perdition/webmail boxes. All of these boxes were dual processor single-core 3.06 GHz Xeons.
Yeah, I get the concepts of percentage used, load average, RAM constraints, and per-user load.
Guess what? I still like to have more cores when I'm doing something massively parellel like running 64 make jobs at once. That example is something I already mentioned, and can be done with GNU make's -j switch and a number of maximum jobs. It can also be done with a bare -j switch by itself, but that tells make it has no maximum, and on a big build it will make your machine pretty much unusable until the build is done, even on a quad-core with the preemptible kernel Linux configuration.
Yes, that's true. Who has the power to spend can only lead the industry. i-core left AMD very much behind the race, but for time being AMD got something to hold on to. Now it just need the right time to get settled down with the latest technology and trend.
Regards, Sam I Love My Reliable Service Provider Do you?
I've been using AMD for about 4 years now, and recently purchased a new desktop, and decided that AMD is just was the way to go. Intel products (are great) but expensive, and as the frugal type of guy I am, I just can't justify the extra cost for Intel products.
Was ALi...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Bulldozer has half the floating point units of Sandy Bridge, but the Bulldozer floating point units have fused multiply add. This means the peak floating point performance of Bulldozer and Sandy Bridge is the same.
Intel is not going to do something like Itanium? What do you think Larabee was?
PS: The difference between Intel and AMD is that Intel has pockets so deep, they can throw multiple teams at the problem. Even if some of the products fail (i860, Itanium, Timna, Tejas, Larabee) they still manage to continue doing business just fine (Pentium, Xeon, Pentium III mobile, Intel Core, GMA graphics). AMD only needs to make one mistake and they are screwed.
The software which does not support multi-threading is usually not performance sensitive anyway. If the software is performance sensitive, the developers will spend time optimizing for it.
I don't think you really understand exactly what it takes to code for a GPGPU, it's not just about optimizing it, it's about totally different ways of writing code.
Even pure multi-threaded isn't all that easy, it's one thing to split a task into two parts, it's totally another to split it into 4 or 6 or 8 or whatever arbitrary number of parallel execution tasks. It's a bit like the old story about using 9 women to get a baby in 1 month, some processes just don't work that way.
Yeah, Everyone knows Word and Facebook benefits a LOT from HT and multicore so average computer user RUSH to the store so they can buy the latest and greatest and they finally get good FPSs in farmvile. Oh and p0rn is more snappier (pun pun pun) with 12 cores /sarcasm
I simply take any benchmark as a grain of salt, it is well known the Intel optimizes their CPUs so they tweak themselves if they detect a benchmark application. Excuse me if I pass on the eV1agr4 I have better things in which spend the money for desktop components.