"Huh huh huh. Let's make the AIDs virus and distribute it to Africa. Huh huh huh. That would rule... huh huh.."
Re:True, but there are other factors to consider
on
Analyzing Palladium
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· Score: 1
Here's my suggestion. Make inroads into the home market - get the average Joe User to see how well Linux performs - and word will spread like wildfire. As long as the only people who proselytise Linux are IT directors, it won't achieve the one thing we all want - the downfall of the Big Redmond Machine.
That won't work, however. The problem is that Linux doesn't perform better than Windows (especially not in games, which you use as an example) It is more stable, sure, but that won't compensate for the lack of choice in what games you can play/applications you can use.
The advantage of Linux over Windows is two-fold, IMO - it is powerful and extensible, and it's free from all of Microsofts crap.
Unfortunately most of the Average Joe User's dont' care about the latter and require real skill to take advantage of the former.
What Linux developers need to do is start cranking out quality games of their own. If you want to get hardcore gamers hooked, that is what has to be done. Ease of use is getting there. Compatibility is... eh... sort of getting there if you have the right distribution. But good-quality, homebrew applications/games are what's required to get the jumpstart it needs. If it can be done without the aid of Corporate America, even better. Then when Linux hopefully DOES become a serious competitor on the desktop, DRM/TCPA/Palladium will be ineffective... until some Senator gets the bright idea to pass a law which requires that every piece of software adheres to this standard.
Oh don't give me this "with Intel you get what you pay for" crap.
Getting a non-approved board does NOT mean your chip is going to fry. Do you realize how rarely a HSF falls off or how rarely a fan dies? More importantly, even if it does, how much flame do you think a tiny silicon core like that could possibly fuel?
Guess what? If you know what you're doing you are not likely to crack your core... and if you know where to look finding a good HSF isn't too difficult either. You obviously know the issues in this case so what do you care? Peace of mind is for people who don't know any better. It's obvious that you do so why make dumb arguments like that?
It isn't worth the money for technically-minded people like us, IMO.
It all depends on what you're working with. AMD CPU's have great floating point performance and are usually rated pretty high in kernel compiles compares to the P4 line of CPU's (I realize that Tom's Hardware doesn't use that in their suite of benchmarks very often these days, but when they were the AMD's were generally a lot faster, even in the K6 days)
Intel makes GREAT CPU's, of that there is no question. However, it is not cheap and IMO the P4 at twice the cost does not justify the (at most) 20% performance increase over the latest AMD offering.
Even though it's just $1 per board, that can really add up. I wonder how companies feel about being more or less pushed into this...
AMD isn't forcing the companies into anything. The companies can still make AMD-compatible boards using AMD compatible chipsets but they won't get any certification from AMD. AMD has been doing something similar to this for a while now. What's to complain about?
And furthermore, the $1 cost per board is likely going to be passed on to the consumer anyway... do you think Joe Blow buying a motherboard is going to complain about a less than $1 increase in price? Not likely.
Losing the CPU war? Gee, from the sound of things I thought the war hadn't even ended yet.
It hasn't, make no mistake. It will only really end when one of them goes out of business or leaves the market altogether. The war isn't even CLOSE to over.
I'm not exactly an Intel fan, but this is just a dumb argument.
Want to upgrade your P2/P3 to an athlon? You'll need a new motherboard, new memory, new processor.
Want to upgrade to a P4? You'll need a new motherboard, new memory, new processor...
Let's expand on your counter-argument, shall we?
Let's go back to when AMD was sticking to Socket 7 and Intel was moving away from Socket 7/Socket 8 and into Slot I/Slot II territory
Let's say you had a P133 and you wanted to upgrade to a faster CPU. You could either get a Pentium MMX 233 (which I believe the P1 topped at, but they may have made a 266 MHz version) or upgrade your motherboard and get a PII CPU (if you absolutely had to have Intel.)
AMD didn't do this. They stuck with socket 7 and provided an upgrade path to a much better CPU. Mind you the K6's had their flaws but I ran one for years and it wasn't all that bad. Nice stability. It was a bit on the hot side, but it provided acceptable performance in games.
So what was the reason that Intel abandoned socket 7 anyway? At the time it was widely believed that Intel was doing it to move people away from AMD CPU's because they would not be able to use that architecture.
In a nutshell, Intel has changed their architecture (Socket 7 -> Slot I -> Socket 370 -> Socket 420 -> Socket 478) FOUR times since the end of the P1 days. AMD has changed it twice, first going to Slot A and then to Socket A... which currently has an upgrade path all the way from the low-end Thunderbirds to the Thoroughbred when it is released sometime before the end of the year.
I personally think AMD provides a better upgrade path. Even if you upgrade your board to get a better chipset you won't need to scrap your PC2100 DDR RAM to do it. But what's going to happen when Intel officially drops RDRAM support from their product line? As far as i'm concerned standards DO matter, especially if they are open standards that every CPU maker can conform to which gives the consumer more choice.
AMD decided to create Slot A to make it easier for motherboard manufacturers to create boards based on it since it was similar to the Slot 1 interface. They felt it would help them penetrate the market a bit more easily. I'm sure if they could have gotten away with it they would have only needed to stick with a socket-based interface (which has proven to be better in the long run)
Why play these over and over. If anything, you're not selling your product, you're just annoying the hell out of me. Perhaps that's the point?
Not exactly. It's my belief (and it has been theorized by others as well, I believe) is that repetitive advertising drives "needs association" into your subconscious. When you're thirsty you are conditioned to think "Coke" or "Pepsi", if you're hungry you're conditioned to think
"McDonalds", etc, etc. The repitition itself is simply used to drive the point home more forcefully than if you had only seen the commercial once.
I hate it as much as you probably do, but it's certainly effective.
BTW, I definitely recommend that anyone read "No Logo" or "Culture Jam" to better understand what i'm talking about. "Culture Jam" is a good read and i've heard that "No Logo" is as well.
What I am most worried about is the flagrant misuse of these technologies. I came across a very good article where the reporter would spend some time with those monitoring the cameras? What did they do in their spare time, waiting for some criminal to catch? They were watching women walking by, or having sex in their car, or whatever... how would you feel if your spouse or daughter was being watched by some complete stranger? Would that make you feel comfortable knowing that some sicko could be watching you, your friends, or your loved ones at any given moment? Don't think it can't happen...
And rightly so! Ever since the settling of the New World we have experienced racial/ethnic/religious oppression, corporate power-mongers using their money and influence to squash our rights and freedoms, magic bullet theories, the use of fear to convince us to sign our freedoms away (eg. 09/11 "terrorism", crime) among other things. All of them committed by those in power.
It all boils down to whether you trust them to responsibly use the power they have in cases like this.
In his testimony, Sanders argued that Microsoft's dominance in PC operating systems fosters diversity rather than limiting consumer choice. He compared the situation to "proprietary operating systems that run only on specific hardware designed and manufactured by the same vendor," such as Apple Computer's Mac OS or Sun Microsystems' Solaris. "Microsoft's Windows operating systems run on computers manufactured by thousands of different companies," he stated.
Yeah, so does Linux. So do some of the various flavors of BSD? So does SOLARIS, for that matter!
Sanders praised Microsoft for helping to bring standardization to the computer industry. "Standardized platforms promote competition," he asserted. The absence of this standardization "would diminish overall competition as many software and hardware vendors would have to decide which particular operating system(s) to target as a development platform."
Hate to break it to you, Jerry, but software companies STILL have to make these decisions. Sure, Windows is the obvious choice, but other platforms STILL exist. Many applications are still ported to the Mac. Some are even ported to Linux. Some are even exclusive to these other platforms.
And how exactly is competition diminished by hardware and software vendors having to make these decisions anyway? These decisions are still being made today, despite MS's market dominance. In this case I believe that competition has diminished as a result of Microsoft leveraging their monopoly by pushing IE and Media Player down our throats! Remember when there actually WAS a browser war? And don't get me started on their increasingly restricted licenses preventing third party remote-control applications from being used with XP....
"Were computer manufacturers or other Windows licensees enabled to distribute a smorgasbord of different versions of Microsoft Windows...AMD, like other software and hardware vendors, would no longer be able to rely upon the existence of particular software code in Windows or the APIs," he said.
Well, you can blame Microsoft for that little problem, can't you? I mean if these components weren't as tightly-integrated into the OS to begin with... and couldn't you simply use the core Windows OS as your development platform?
I mean, how difficult would it be to just simply include IE or the necessary DLL's on your drivers CD?
"Contrary to some suggestions I have heard in connection with this case, product integration is unambiguously good for consumers," Sanders testified. "The integration of innovative features is a principal means by which both software and hardware products are improved, to the benefit of consumers."
Except, of course, when you never USE those features yet they increase the price of the Operating System to astronomical levels. If you want a lower-cost version of Windows without the crap? Tough luck. And tough luck for the companies who used to get your business before Microsoft forced you to buy an Operating System+web browser+video player+CD burning software+remote control functionality+utilities bundle+whatever else instead of just an operating system. When someone pays that much money for all that, who's going to want to pay twice for the third-party applications YOU USED TO USE before Microsoft forced you to buy their solution instead?
He cited AMD's integration of memory-controlling functionality into its upcoming Hammer microprocessor as an example of how companies integrate once-separate features into their products.
Apples and oranges here, people. Apples and oranges...
For one thing, AMD doesn't have a monopoly on processors and the only reason they made their own chipsets is because VIA didn't have a solution available at the time and they needed something for the CPU to run with until VIA's solution became available. So AMD is not trying to leverage a monopoly they don't have to capture a market that they are not interested in anyway.
Also, a memory controller (albeit a very important part) doth not a chipset make. VIA will still likely make Hammer chipsets along with SiS and maybe ALi. AMD's intentions are not to take the chipset market for themselves.
"Microsoft's development of reliable and scalable server operating systems has enabled AMD to enter and compete more effectively in the server businesses...because most non-Microsoft server operating systems only run on specialized microprocessors," he testified.
I'll leave it up to you to insert your "MS makes reliable and scalable server OS's" joke here.
Anyway, I was dumbfounded by this quote... MOST non-MS server OS's only run on specialized processors? Ex... scue me? What about Netware? x86 hardware. Linux, *BSD? Multiple platforms including x86 and other non-specialized hardware platforms. As far as I know those are Microsofts most popular competitors (i'm not a market analyst so i'm not sure how much of the market AIX, Digital Unix or any of the others have, nor do I know how many other higher-end Unices and server operating systems exist).
Anyway, if you ask me Jerry is making this up to get in bed with MS. I have a hard time believing anyone (including Bill Gates) would believe this tripe.
No, the only heaven Dani Bunten Berry (aka Dan Bunten, AKA the man who is apparently no longer a man) is in right now is the one reserved for drag queens.
That may have been the case with the TNT, but it is very debateable that this was the case with the Voodoo 3. The TNT2 was pretty damn close to the Voodoo 3 if it didn't surpass it, and the TNT2 Ultra completely blew it away on all fronts (except maybe in Glide)... this performance lead was exacerbated when they further optimized their drivers.
I don't see that as 'taking sides', however. As a hardware reviewer he has a responsibility to recommend what he sees is a better solution for his readers. He is doing this as an impartial reviewer, not as some closed-minded fanboy. I know he has been accused of this many times on these boards and I have yet to see any real evidence presented by anyone who makes this claim.
Tom has long been batting for AMD, and now that Intel has a better product he switched sides. The video of the smoking chip is hype. It didn't show many people at all anything they didn't already know. We all knew that AMD ran hot, and we all know that if your cpu fan starts growling that you need to replace it. All I want to know is whether this was a stunt to get even MORE traffic or to get Intel to send him more shirts and coffee cups.. Long live ars and [H]
Have you even read Toms for the past month? Read his article on the AthlonXP CPU's... read his articles on the Tualatin and the P4 2 GHz... all of these are in the span of 3 months. Yeah, Tom changes sides whenever AMD and Intel one-up each other, huh?(sarcasm) It would be nice if you had actual evidence to back up these baseless claims of yours.
Re:I still wouldnt get an Athlon or any AMD chip.
on
AMD And THG update
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· Score: 2, Informative
Still prefer Intel chips. If I'm going to get an X86 box, i'd still go with intel. Why? Intel stuff is just better engineered. More specifically, Intel CPUs and motherboards are the more stable, better tested combination.
That's nice, but better engineering hasn't translated into significantly better performance, has it?
I Dont know of any hardware site that says that an AMD cpu + some AMD or VIA motherboard can even approach the stability of Intel CPU+chipset.
Even if that is true (and that's certainly debateable) I can tell you first-hand that all of my Athlon systems, and my friends Athlon systems as well (including my friends Athlon 1.4 GHz which currently acts as his main server) is rock-solid stable. At least as stable as any Intel platform. On Windows 2000/XP it has only hard-crashed a handful of times... as far as i'm concerned, the superior stability of the Intel platform is a myth.
My current box is a P4 2GHz (socket 478), Intel 850MV motherboard (tho an Asus P4T is probably just as good), 512Mb PC800 DRDRAM. It runs Linux and FreeBSD very well.
My Athlon runs Linux just as well as any Intel chip. I'd take my AthlonXP 1.4 GHz over your system any day of the week.
I'd urge Linux users not to dismiss Intel chips out of hand. You do pay for quality. Remeber these chips have SSE2 instructions (which even XPs dont have and probably never will), the thermal diode *IS* a kill switch here -- you will not burn them up, much greater memory bandwith than with DDR, they overclock decently (you can usually get 200MHz above spec), and benchmark very well.
You pay for quality? Well, in some cases yes. But in my opinion if you buy an Intel platform these days you are throwing your money away. Let's pick apart the issues you've stated, shall we?
1. SSE2 instructions. A nice boost to performance, but can you name anything that actually supports them (hell, can you name anything which supports SSE?) which isn't called Quake 3? Very few applications support SSE2 or even the years-old vanilla SSE instructions. By the way, the Hammer line of CPU's will support SSE2 instructions, so it isn't totally out of the question that future Athlons may support them as well, though i'm wondering why they would bother if no developers optimize their applications for it.
2. Heat issues. I'll give you that one, at least. If you want to pay twice the amount of cash for better thermal protection (which will eventually be solved on the AMD platform in the future) by all means. Like others have pointed out, it is pretty rare that a HSF will fail or fall off. I've personally never had it happen, but that doesn't mean it never does.
3. Greater memory bandwidth. Is this really relevant if it doesn't really translate into better performance in most situations? It's like your previous comment about the Intel platforms superior engineering -- what does it really matter if real-world performance isn't as good as its nearest competitors offering?
4. Overclockability. 200 MHz above spec? That's probably the equivalent of a 75 MHz increase in clock speed on an Athlon CPU. Sorry, I don't believe that's worth paying the extra money for.
Definitely go with i850 and RDRAM, the 845 is meant for low-end situations and doesnt perform nearly as well.
Of course not. And do not settle for anything less than PC800 either because it will drastically cripple the performance.
The bottom line for me is stability -- I dont think AMD can match Intel CPUs and chipset for that. Look in the Linux kernel source code -- VIA chipsets have many PCI quirks that Intel boards just dont have.
It can match the Intel platform in terms of stability, and it does. I am not a programmer, but any quirkiness with the Via platform hasnt' affected my experience with the Athlon platform in any way, shape or form whether I am using Windows, Linux or whatever else.
I've been following Tom's Hardware for years now, since the days of truly atrocious english translations. I still check Tom's once a week or so for news and updates, and I find it a valuable resource.
However, to me at least, he seems far too emotionally attached to his subject matter to deliver unbiased opinions. Over the past few years, I've seen him be zealously anti-Intel, anti-AMD, anti-Intel, and now fairly anti-AMD again (albeit less fanatically than in the past). He's decidedly anti-Rambus (as am I, but I don't write articles purporting to be unbiased).
Give me a break. Like you, I have been reading Toms Hardware for years now. However, I have NEVER got the impression that he was 'fanatically' anti-Intel OR anti-AMD. When Intel was beating AMD in terms of CPU performance he pointed that out in his reviews. When AMD came out with the Athlon he pointed out that AMD was the performance leader at the time. He didn't seem to fudge his reviews to make one side look better than the other in any case (his reviews have been more or less consistent with other reviewers, ie. Anandtech, Sharkyextreme, Firingsquad...) Some of the reviews and articles he has written in the past two or three months praise AMD for being the price/performance leader and praise Intel for designing their chips to react better to thermal emergencies. A fanatic does not change sides in the space of two or three months.
The only 'fanaticism' I can catch in that article is in regards to Rambus... and in this case he happens to not like Rambus and its business practices. However, who the hell DOES these days?
You should also remember that his site is not meant to be straight reporting. He has his own biases, just like any editorialist, and to my knowledge has never claimed otherwise.
It's a good resource site, but very prone to sensationalism and exageration when flawed test results line up with his prejudices.
I have seen no evidence to back up this claim. I read more than one review of any product that Tom reviews and the results are more or less consistent. The results aren't exactly the same from test to test, but that's not really possible anyway. I've never seen Toms test results radically differ from any other reputable reviewer.
In fact I am getting the impression that you have prejudices and emotional attachments of your own. If you had actually provided any evidence in your post maybe I could take you seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
What a bunch of assholes ...
... huh huh.."
I can just see some dickhead scientist now:
"Huh huh huh. Let's make the AIDs virus and distribute it to Africa. Huh huh huh. That would rule
That won't work, however. The problem is that Linux doesn't perform better than Windows (especially not in games, which you use as an example) It is more stable, sure, but that won't compensate for the lack of choice in what games you can play/applications you can use.
The advantage of Linux over Windows is two-fold, IMO - it is powerful and extensible, and it's free from all of Microsofts crap.
Unfortunately most of the Average Joe User's dont' care about the latter and require real skill to take advantage of the former. What Linux developers need to do is start cranking out quality games of their own. If you want to get hardcore gamers hooked, that is what has to be done. Ease of use is getting there. Compatibility is ... eh ... sort of getting there if you have the right distribution. But good-quality, homebrew applications/games are what's required to get the jumpstart it needs. If it can be done without the aid of Corporate America, even better. Then when Linux hopefully DOES become a serious competitor on the desktop, DRM/TCPA/Palladium will be ineffective ... until some Senator gets the bright idea to pass a law which requires that every piece of software adheres to this standard.
Oh don't give me this "with Intel you get what you pay for" crap.
Getting a non-approved board does NOT mean your chip is going to fry. Do you realize how rarely a HSF falls off or how rarely a fan dies? More importantly, even if it does, how much flame do you think a tiny silicon core like that could possibly fuel?
Guess what? If you know what you're doing you are not likely to crack your core... and if you know where to look finding a good HSF isn't too difficult either. You obviously know the issues in this case so what do you care? Peace of mind is for people who don't know any better. It's obvious that you do so why make dumb arguments like that?
It isn't worth the money for technically-minded people like us, IMO.
It all depends on what you're working with. AMD CPU's have great floating point performance and are usually rated pretty high in kernel compiles compares to the P4 line of CPU's (I realize that Tom's Hardware doesn't use that in their suite of benchmarks very often these days, but when they were the AMD's were generally a lot faster, even in the K6 days)
Intel makes GREAT CPU's, of that there is no question. However, it is not cheap and IMO the P4 at twice the cost does not justify the (at most) 20% performance increase over the latest AMD offering.
AMD isn't forcing the companies into anything. The companies can still make AMD-compatible boards using AMD compatible chipsets but they won't get any certification from AMD. AMD has been doing something similar to this for a while now. What's to complain about?
And furthermore, the $1 cost per board is likely going to be passed on to the consumer anyway... do you think Joe Blow buying a motherboard is going to complain about a less than $1 increase in price? Not likely.
As opposed to being a jaded Intel fanatic?
We're all fanatics in some ways, it seems, aren't we?
Losing the CPU war? Gee, from the sound of things I thought the war hadn't even ended yet.
It hasn't, make no mistake. It will only really end when one of them goes out of business or leaves the market altogether. The war isn't even CLOSE to over.
Let's expand on your counter-argument, shall we?
Let's go back to when AMD was sticking to Socket 7 and Intel was moving away from Socket 7/Socket 8 and into Slot I/Slot II territory
Let's say you had a P133 and you wanted to upgrade to a faster CPU. You could either get a Pentium MMX 233 (which I believe the P1 topped at, but they may have made a 266 MHz version) or upgrade your motherboard and get a PII CPU (if you absolutely had to have Intel.)
AMD didn't do this. They stuck with socket 7 and provided an upgrade path to a much better CPU. Mind you the K6's had their flaws but I ran one for years and it wasn't all that bad. Nice stability. It was a bit on the hot side, but it provided acceptable performance in games.
So what was the reason that Intel abandoned socket 7 anyway? At the time it was widely believed that Intel was doing it to move people away from AMD CPU's because they would not be able to use that architecture.
In a nutshell, Intel has changed their architecture (Socket 7 -> Slot I -> Socket 370 -> Socket 420 -> Socket 478) FOUR times since the end of the P1 days. AMD has changed it twice, first going to Slot A and then to Socket A ... which currently has an upgrade path all the way from the low-end Thunderbirds to the Thoroughbred when it is released sometime before the end of the year.
I personally think AMD provides a better upgrade path. Even if you upgrade your board to get a better chipset you won't need to scrap your PC2100 DDR RAM to do it. But what's going to happen when Intel officially drops RDRAM support from their product line? As far as i'm concerned standards DO matter, especially if they are open standards that every CPU maker can conform to which gives the consumer more choice. AMD decided to create Slot A to make it easier for motherboard manufacturers to create boards based on it since it was similar to the Slot 1 interface. They felt it would help them penetrate the market a bit more easily. I'm sure if they could have gotten away with it they would have only needed to stick with a socket-based interface (which has proven to be better in the long run)
Not exactly. It's my belief (and it has been theorized by others as well, I believe) is that repetitive advertising drives "needs association" into your subconscious. When you're thirsty you are conditioned to think "Coke" or "Pepsi", if you're hungry you're conditioned to think "McDonalds", etc, etc. The repitition itself is simply used to drive the point home more forcefully than if you had only seen the commercial once.
I hate it as much as you probably do, but it's certainly effective.
BTW, I definitely recommend that anyone read "No Logo" or "Culture Jam" to better understand what i'm talking about. "Culture Jam" is a good read and i've heard that "No Logo" is as well.
Oh, come on ...
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http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/0
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/0
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/0
http://gamespot.com/gamespot/filters/products/0
What I am most worried about is the flagrant misuse of these technologies. I came across a very good article where the reporter would spend some time with those monitoring the cameras? What did they do in their spare time, waiting for some criminal to catch? They were watching women walking by, or having sex in their car, or whatever ... how would you feel if your spouse or daughter was being watched by some complete stranger? Would that make you feel comfortable knowing that some sicko could be watching you, your friends, or your loved ones at any given moment? Don't think it can't happen ...
And rightly so! Ever since the settling of the New World we have experienced racial/ethnic/religious oppression, corporate power-mongers using their money and influence to squash our rights and freedoms, magic bullet theories, the use of fear to convince us to sign our freedoms away (eg. 09/11 "terrorism", crime) among other things. All of them committed by those in power.
It all boils down to whether you trust them to responsibly use the power they have in cases like this.
Well, do you?
STUDY THE PAST
That's right, he was a she-male. Or a he-female ... or a ... ahhh ... screw it, I have no idea WHAT he/she/it is ...
Who's more the idiot? Me? Or the one who respects a half-man/half-woman THING? Hmm?
Yeah, so does Linux. So do some of the various flavors of BSD? So does SOLARIS, for that matter!
Sanders praised Microsoft for helping to bring standardization to the computer industry. "Standardized platforms promote competition," he asserted. The absence of this standardization "would diminish overall competition as many software and hardware vendors would have to decide which particular operating system(s) to target as a development platform."
Hate to break it to you, Jerry, but software companies STILL have to make these decisions. Sure, Windows is the obvious choice, but other platforms STILL exist. Many applications are still ported to the Mac. Some are even ported to Linux. Some are even exclusive to these other platforms.
And how exactly is competition diminished by hardware and software vendors having to make these decisions anyway? These decisions are still being made today, despite MS's market dominance. In this case I believe that competition has diminished as a result of Microsoft leveraging their monopoly by pushing IE and Media Player down our throats! Remember when there actually WAS a browser war? And don't get me started on their increasingly restricted licenses preventing third party remote-control applications from being used with XP....
"Were computer manufacturers or other Windows licensees enabled to distribute a smorgasbord of different versions of Microsoft Windows...AMD, like other software and hardware vendors, would no longer be able to rely upon the existence of particular software code in Windows or the APIs," he said.
Well, you can blame Microsoft for that little problem, can't you? I mean if these components weren't as tightly-integrated into the OS to begin with ... and couldn't you simply use the core Windows OS as your development platform?
I mean, how difficult would it be to just simply include IE or the necessary DLL's on your drivers CD?
"Contrary to some suggestions I have heard in connection with this case, product integration is unambiguously good for consumers," Sanders testified. "The integration of innovative features is a principal means by which both software and hardware products are improved, to the benefit of consumers."
Except, of course, when you never USE those features yet they increase the price of the Operating System to astronomical levels. If you want a lower-cost version of Windows without the crap? Tough luck. And tough luck for the companies who used to get your business before Microsoft forced you to buy an Operating System+web browser+video player+CD burning software+remote control functionality+utilities bundle+whatever else instead of just an operating system. When someone pays that much money for all that, who's going to want to pay twice for the third-party applications YOU USED TO USE before Microsoft forced you to buy their solution instead?
He cited AMD's integration of memory-controlling functionality into its upcoming Hammer microprocessor as an example of how companies integrate once-separate features into their products.
Apples and oranges here, people. Apples and oranges...
For one thing, AMD doesn't have a monopoly on processors and the only reason they made their own chipsets is because VIA didn't have a solution available at the time and they needed something for the CPU to run with until VIA's solution became available. So AMD is not trying to leverage a monopoly they don't have to capture a market that they are not interested in anyway.
Also, a memory controller (albeit a very important part) doth not a chipset make. VIA will still likely make Hammer chipsets along with SiS and maybe ALi. AMD's intentions are not to take the chipset market for themselves.
"Microsoft's development of reliable and scalable server operating systems has enabled AMD to enter and compete more effectively in the server businesses...because most non-Microsoft server operating systems only run on specialized microprocessors," he testified.
I'll leave it up to you to insert your "MS makes reliable and scalable server OS's" joke here.
Anyway, I was dumbfounded by this quote ... MOST non-MS server OS's only run on specialized processors? Ex... scue me? What about Netware? x86 hardware. Linux, *BSD? Multiple platforms including x86 and other non-specialized hardware platforms. As far as I know those are Microsofts most popular competitors (i'm not a market analyst so i'm not sure how much of the market AIX, Digital Unix or any of the others have, nor do I know how many other higher-end Unices and server operating systems exist).
Anyway, if you ask me Jerry is making this up to get in bed with MS. I have a hard time believing anyone (including Bill Gates) would believe this tripe.
No, the only heaven Dani Bunten Berry (aka Dan Bunten, AKA the man who is apparently no longer a man) is in right now is the one reserved for drag queens.
Haha! Well, that isn't me ... i'm NOT fat-breasted! :P
From what i've read, it requires registration to view it.
What about CNA, CNE or any of the other various Novell certifications?
Have these idiots been living under an MS-rock for the past 10 years?
No, the only real reform will have to result out of an armed revolution. The people currently in power will never give any of it up without a fight.
:) )
It's time for another Boston Tea Party methinks (Newfoundland CD party?
Well that depends on what you are doing, doesn't it?
If you are gaming, nobody is going to argue that a faster video card instead of a CPU upgrade is going to help you a lot more.
That may have been the case with the TNT, but it is very debateable that this was the case with the Voodoo 3. The TNT2 was pretty damn close to the Voodoo 3 if it didn't surpass it, and the TNT2 Ultra completely blew it away on all fronts (except maybe in Glide) ... this performance lead was exacerbated when they further optimized their drivers.
-- Jim
I don't see that as 'taking sides', however. As a hardware reviewer he has a responsibility to recommend what he sees is a better solution for his readers. He is doing this as an impartial reviewer, not as some closed-minded fanboy. I know he has been accused of this many times on these boards and I have yet to see any real evidence presented by anyone who makes this claim.
Have you even read Toms for the past month? Read his article on the AthlonXP CPU's ... read his articles on the Tualatin and the P4 2 GHz ... all of these are in the span of 3 months. Yeah, Tom changes sides whenever AMD and Intel one-up each other, huh?(sarcasm) It would be nice if you had actual evidence to back up these baseless claims of yours.
That's nice, but better engineering hasn't translated into significantly better performance, has it?
I Dont know of any hardware site that says that an AMD cpu + some AMD or VIA motherboard can even approach the stability of Intel CPU+chipset.
Even if that is true (and that's certainly debateable) I can tell you first-hand that all of my Athlon systems, and my friends Athlon systems as well (including my friends Athlon 1.4 GHz which currently acts as his main server) is rock-solid stable. At least as stable as any Intel platform. On Windows 2000/XP it has only hard-crashed a handful of times ... as far as i'm concerned, the superior stability of the Intel platform is a myth.
My current box is a P4 2GHz (socket 478), Intel 850MV motherboard (tho an Asus P4T is probably just as good), 512Mb PC800 DRDRAM. It runs Linux and FreeBSD very well.
My Athlon runs Linux just as well as any Intel chip. I'd take my AthlonXP 1.4 GHz over your system any day of the week.
I'd urge Linux users not to dismiss Intel chips out of hand. You do pay for quality. Remeber these chips have SSE2 instructions (which even XPs dont have and probably never will), the thermal diode *IS* a kill switch here -- you will not burn them up, much greater memory bandwith than with DDR, they overclock decently (you can usually get 200MHz above spec), and benchmark very well.
You pay for quality? Well, in some cases yes. But in my opinion if you buy an Intel platform these days you are throwing your money away. Let's pick apart the issues you've stated, shall we?
1. SSE2 instructions. A nice boost to performance, but can you name anything that actually supports them (hell, can you name anything which supports SSE?) which isn't called Quake 3? Very few applications support SSE2 or even the years-old vanilla SSE instructions. By the way, the Hammer line of CPU's will support SSE2 instructions, so it isn't totally out of the question that future Athlons may support them as well, though i'm wondering why they would bother if no developers optimize their applications for it.
2. Heat issues. I'll give you that one, at least. If you want to pay twice the amount of cash for better thermal protection (which will eventually be solved on the AMD platform in the future) by all means. Like others have pointed out, it is pretty rare that a HSF will fail or fall off. I've personally never had it happen, but that doesn't mean it never does.
3. Greater memory bandwidth. Is this really relevant if it doesn't really translate into better performance in most situations? It's like your previous comment about the Intel platforms superior engineering -- what does it really matter if real-world performance isn't as good as its nearest competitors offering?
4. Overclockability. 200 MHz above spec? That's probably the equivalent of a 75 MHz increase in clock speed on an Athlon CPU. Sorry, I don't believe that's worth paying the extra money for.
Definitely go with i850 and RDRAM, the 845 is meant for low-end situations and doesnt perform nearly as well.
Of course not. And do not settle for anything less than PC800 either because it will drastically cripple the performance.
The bottom line for me is stability -- I dont think AMD can match Intel CPUs and chipset for that. Look in the Linux kernel source code -- VIA chipsets have many PCI quirks that Intel boards just dont have.
It can match the Intel platform in terms of stability, and it does. I am not a programmer, but any quirkiness with the Via platform hasnt' affected my experience with the Athlon platform in any way, shape or form whether I am using Windows, Linux or whatever else.
Give me a break. Like you, I have been reading Toms Hardware for years now. However, I have NEVER got the impression that he was 'fanatically' anti-Intel OR anti-AMD. When Intel was beating AMD in terms of CPU performance he pointed that out in his reviews. When AMD came out with the Athlon he pointed out that AMD was the performance leader at the time. He didn't seem to fudge his reviews to make one side look better than the other in any case (his reviews have been more or less consistent with other reviewers, ie. Anandtech, Sharkyextreme, Firingsquad...) Some of the reviews and articles he has written in the past two or three months praise AMD for being the price/performance leader and praise Intel for designing their chips to react better to thermal emergencies. A fanatic does not change sides in the space of two or three months.
The only 'fanaticism' I can catch in that article is in regards to Rambus ... and in this case he happens to not like Rambus and its business practices. However, who the hell DOES these days?
You should also remember that his site is not meant to be straight reporting. He has his own biases, just like any editorialist, and to my knowledge has never claimed otherwise.
It's a good resource site, but very prone to sensationalism and exageration when flawed test results line up with his prejudices.I have seen no evidence to back up this claim. I read more than one review of any product that Tom reviews and the results are more or less consistent. The results aren't exactly the same from test to test, but that's not really possible anyway. I've never seen Toms test results radically differ from any other reputable reviewer.
In fact I am getting the impression that you have prejudices and emotional attachments of your own. If you had actually provided any evidence in your post maybe I could take you seriously.