AMD Deneb discussion

[Abe]

Actually Rouxenator, whilst the facts of your post are correct to a degree, Intel has kept innovating and at this point in time produces the best CPU's on the market.

Not quite, the AMD Phenom architecure is actually better then the Core 2 (while not faster). Thats the reason why the new Nehalem processors use a very similar architecture to the AMD Phenom.

Intel made mistakes, but they made a complete turn around with Core 2 series, and AMD have not and cannot catch up again.

Thats a very brave statement to make.

 

[km2]

Yeah, as much as I've been a pretty big fan of AMD over the years, to discount all that Intel has done is nuts. The AMD 386DX40 etc was great, but they've had so many hit-and-miss products over the years. Intel has been fairly consistent in churning out better products.

So to list some of what Intel gave us:

Pentium - That was the first real inclination we had that x86 could compete with RISC in the long haul. Before that we were pretty much expecting it to be a matter of time before we had to switch over to Power/Alpha/SPARC. Intel showed that a superscalar design could work with x86, and it really flew compared to the 486. Then the P6 came along and it started to beat some of them.

PCI - what a miracle that was compared to how slow graphics were with ISA cards, and VL BUS with its funny incompatibilities

USB - as much as people can knock it compared to Firewire, it's dirt cheap, it just works, it's pretty fast, its supported by hordes of devices, and its incredibly convenient

Consistency - what really sets Intel apart from everyone is the ability to churn out "decent" products year after year after year. AMD has its moments of brilliance, and then the next year they mess it all up. Even when Intel was struggling at its most with P4 vs Athlon, it was still able to keep somewhat competitive. Compare this to the way other chip companies stumble, Motorola blew the whole of POWER on the desktop/laptop Mac by being unable to keep up with Intel's steady march. AMD messed up the K5 design, got saved by the K6/K6-2, won with Athlon/Duron, messed the launch of Phenom, struggled with TLB bugs that slowed everything down, can't get the clock speed of Phenom up, and still don't have anything which can properly take on Core 2. Meanwhile Intel continues to tighten the screws with Core i7.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm really grateful to AMD (and Cyrix) for making x86 chips affordable for the peasantry and I've owned an awful lot of them over the years, and I do think they have some exceptional engineers. It's just that they can't touch Intel as a professional well-run chip company.

 

[km2]

Not quite, the AMD Phenom architecure is actually better then the Core 2 (while not faster). Thats the reason why the new Nehalem processors use a very similar architecture to the AMD Phenom.

Yeah but that's the problem. Phenom may be a wonderful design, but if it isn't faster no ones going to care. It's nice to see AMD try clever things, and it's great when it pays off (like with HT and the integrated memory controller), but they musn't lose sight of the fact that the overall prize still goes to the fastest chip and not the cleverest. Nehalem uses many of the clever design points of Phenom, yet is still able to hit pretty high frequencies. I know Phenom is still 65nm, so I hope AMD can pull a rabbit out the hat with Deneb.

 

[Asha'man X]

The reason I stated that AMD won't catch up is because of their size, and cash problems. They recently spun off their Fab facilities, because they were losing cash like water. Intel has the manufacturing muscle that AMD can only dream of. AMD has the graphics division now with ATI of course, which does help to a degree.

An example of this would be that Intel is starting to retire certain 45nm chips, including the Q9450, which is my chip, all while AMD has yet to even launch a 45nm chip. The problem with AMD is that they can't seem to mount a proper counter offence. The Phenom was supposed to be a good launch, but instead came hampered by some very bad bugs.

AMD is still pretty popular in the server world, and that is where they are still competing. Yet once again, Intel is chipping away at that lead bit by bit. AMD woke up the beast, and the beast was hungry.

All in all, I don't think AMD will die, but they'll end up being relegated to the budget end of the market again, like they were before Athlon. One never knows, they may yet pull something out the hat that suprises us all, so only time will tell.

 

[km2]

All in all, I don't think AMD will die, but they'll end up being relegated to the budget end of the market again, like they were before Athlon. One never knows, they may yet pull something out the hat that suprises us all, so only time will tell.

No, as sad as it is, I think at the moment Intel is keeping them around as a "pet" (and so that they can't be pointed to as a total monopoly). If Intel wanted to they could crush AMD right now by doing one last hard push of moving their top end up to 4GHz, and shifting the bottom to 2.8GHz, making AMDs entire non-server lineup totally uncompetitive (AMDs server stuff is still pretty good, but Nehalem could change that). Their chips are easily capable of running at that they're just holding them back, while AMD struggles to squeeze out each extra 100MHz.

 

[Abe]

No, as sad as it is, I think at the moment Intel is keeping them around as a "pet" (and so that they can't be pointed to as a total monopoly). If Intel wanted to they could crush AMD right now by doing one last hard push of moving their top end up to 4GHz, and shifting the bottom to 2.8GHz, making AMDs entire non-server lineup totally uncompetitive (AMDs server stuff is still pretty good, but Nehalem could change that). Their chips are easily capable of running at that they're just holding them back, while AMD struggles to squeeze out each extra 100MHz.

Not so simple, they would get into serious trouble with the regulatory crowds.

 

[killadoob]

Agree 100% and happy X2 6000 user,Intel people are like apple people just about everyone wants to own one because they THINK it's the best

I like how you highlight THINK, most intel users buy because they are smart and see intel is the best at the moment and overclock well.

you have the AMD okes who buy inferior cpu's because they support the company, buy what is the best. Also maybe go do some research when comments about us THINKING it is the best.

Guess you have not used intel, nor have you had a look at benchies, would this be correct? Anybody with half a brain knows that intel is the performance and overclocking king AT THE MOMENT. This is not what i THINK it is a fact.

Before core 2 amd had the better cpu and ripped us badly and thought they will milk us all the while intel blew them out the water with the release of core 2. Amd let their fans down big i feel, i stopped using them because they never thought intel would do what they did. They let me an avid AMD fan down when core 2 came out, they offered nothing close to the performance of core2, all they do was drop cpu prices by 60%. Funny how my 3800x2 cost me nearly 2k, 2 months later it was 1k.

Sick bastids ripped us off for years until they lost the performance crown. Now they are only selling cpu's based on fanboi's and not performance. Amazing how people support a certain company even though that same company given the chance will rip you a new hole. AGAIN buy what is the best value for money and that is intel at the moment.

 

[km2]

Not so simple, they would get into serious trouble with the regulatory crowds.

Not at all. Even when you're a monopoly there's no rules preventing you from releasing products that are way better than your competition. There's nothing that says you have to wait up for the fat kid.

The restrictions on Intel basically amount to:

1) No predatory pricing. Can't slash the prices of their chips (free Core 2's for everyone!) to drive AMD into bankrupcy, then afterwards jack up prices since there's no competition.

2) Be careful with exclusivity agreements. Intel can't say "If you promise to buy only Intel chips, we'll give you a 25% discount".

Other than that, Intel's perfectly in their rights to release awesome chips which make AMDs seem comparatively rubbish. At the moment they COULD do that both technically with the headroom their current chips provide, and legally, but they're holding off. Not having AMD around would put them under a lot more regulatory scrutiny and I don't think they want that.

 

[km2]

you have the AMD okes who buy inferior cpu's because they support the company, buy what is the best. Also maybe go do some research when comments about us THINKING it is the best.

Indeed, at the moment it's quite a stretch to find areas where AMD is winning. Mostly you have to dig in bandwidth constrained server benchmarks.

Sick bastids ripped us off for years until they lost the performance crown. Now they are only selling cpu's based on fanboi's and not performance. Amazing how people support a certain company even though that same company given the chance will rip you a new hole. AGAIN buy what is the best value for money and that is intel at the moment.

I don't think AMD ripped one off too badly, it's not like it ever showed in their financial statements at least (they've never really pulled in a big haul). I remember being super pleased with my Duron 650 which overclocked nicely with a pencil and wasn't too expensive. Even though they could have charged a lot more and staggered out the release after the Athlon, they still catered to the low-end.

Look I don't think AMD, Intel, Cyrix, Centaur, NEC, Nexgen, Transmeta, VIA or any one else who played in the x86 game has been too evil. Compared to a company like Microsoft which bolted down their platform so hard that no one else could compete, Intel's a living saint. AMDs done pretty well, and it would be a shame to see them disappear so people do still have some "loyalty". I know that I've been prepared to wait a few more months before upgrading to give AMD a chance to come out with something better than Intel. Obviously if they don't I'll still go with Intel in the end.