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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"
Motorcycles, trucks... hmm, your analogy is nearly there, but there's something missing, I can't quite put my finger on it..
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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.
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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.
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/
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.
Price/performance is not the criterion here. There are applications where this is important, but an average desktop user is not one of them.
These systems are all quite bloody fast enough for "normal" desktops. The question is :how much does it cost? and AMD will get you a much better price for this class of machine.
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.
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
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);
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
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.
They also tend to still have serial and parallel ports as well. No X58 board has them and very few P55 boards still have them. Despite what people here might say, some of us folks still use these ports. USB adapters don't work very well with most bi-directional parallel port devices and USB serial adapters have issues with timing sensitive devices.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
i5 starts at $180. So IF (big IF) you want to spend $180+ on CPU then yeah you really can't go wrong with Intel i5-xxx series.
However for many users they aren't CPU limited. CPU power makes very little difference in game performance once you get past dual core 2.5Ghz. It makes a difference but not as much as a GPU.
In the $100 to $200 segment is where AMD really shines.
From tomshardware.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-cpu-core-i5-760-core-i7-970,2698.html
Best Gaming CPU for ~$70 - Athlon II X3 425
Best Gaming CPU for ~$85 - Athlon II x3 445
Best Gaming CPU for ~$115 - Core i3-530
Best Gaming CPU for ~$140 - Phenom II x4 945
Best Gaming CPU for ~$160 - Phenom II x4 955
Best Gaming CPU for ~$180 - Phenom II x4 965
Best Gaming CPU for ~$200 - Core i5-760
Best Gaming CPU for ~$290 - Core i5-930
When someone has a fixed budget spending $50 to $100 LESS on CPU allows them to buy $50 to $100 more GPU and that system will offer better overall game performance.
I do agree that $200+ Intel dominates and AMD doesn't really have anything that answers but that is a small segment of the market. One also has to consider that i5 boards tend to run $10 to $20 more than comparable AMD board and i7 boards run $60 to $100 more.
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.