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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."
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!
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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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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
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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/
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.
That's all very well, but how many bangs could a bangbuck buck if a bangbuck could bang bucks?
which is totally what she said
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.
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.
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.
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