AMD Not Competing with Intel Anymore, Goes Mobile

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In a move than could very well be interpreted as exchanging one problem for another, Advanced Micro Devices has decided to stop focusing so much on the PC business and get its act closer together on the mobile front.

The Bulldozer disaster, as it is known in some circles, must have persuaded AMD's leadership that the PC side of their business wasn't flying very well and far anymore.

Though everyone was expecting much from 8-core processors, the performance was, in the end, well lower than some of AMD's own previous-generation chips.

Whether because of this or something else, it was reported that Advanced Micro Devices has chosen to distance itself from its competition with Intel.

That is to say, it will focus less on processors for PCs and pay more attention to the mobile market.

As such, it will probably start to customize its Fusion platform in such a way as to create tablet and smartphone chips.

"We're at an inflection point," said AMD spokesman Mike Silverman, according to a Mercury News report. "We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mindset, because it won't be about that anymore."

If anything, 2011, with more than half a year of lacking an actual CEO, was a clear symptom that Advanced Micro Devices had to do something, and soon.

The company has a new leader now and, sure enough, the man took some fairly drastic measures, and that includes more than this latest change in direction, as well as a branded RAM project.

The workforce also suffered, especially the PR and marketing departments AMD axed large portions of each as part of its plan to cut total worldwide employee count by 10%).

The complicated thing about the focus on mobile is that ARM already has that well enough in hand, and NVIDIA just launched the Kal-El too. AMD may just be exchanging one headache for another with this

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http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-N...e-237103.shtml


UPDATE November 30

AMD Still Committed to x86, Whatever That Means

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Yesterday's report about how AMD had decided to stop competing with Intel predictably stirred a lot of question and speculations, but at least some fears may be assuaged.

To offer context, AMD said it wasn't going to try and compete with Intel anymore and, instead, turn to the low-power chip market.

This was mostly interpreted as mobile device platforms and, perhaps, the cloud.

Essentially, the short reported statement was enough to
suggest Advanced Micro Devices may be considering anything from lessened emphasis on CPUs to total backout from the x86 chip industry.

Thus, many questions and fears were raised, so words on the company's part were bound to show up soon.

Sure enough, even if the Sunnyvale corporation didn't make some big announcement, it told The Verge that it remains committed to x86.

“AMD is a leader in x86 microprocessor design, and we remain committed to the x86 market. Our strategy is to accelerate our growth by taking advantage of our design capabilities to deliver a breadth of products that best align with broader industry shifts toward low power, emerging markets and the cloud,” the statement says.

This doesn't actually dispute most of the speculations though, only the ones about AMD pulling an HP.

It is still all too easy to assume AMD will leave the PC processor market to Intel and see what it can do in other areas.

Nonetheless, this is as far as rumors can go, since nothing will be made truly clear until AMD holds its next strategy update, in February, 2012.

The failure of Bulldozer to actually impress continues to be the main culprit behind this assumed turn of events.

Still, even if one product slid off the slippery slope, AMD continues to have a solid following, even if Intel leads in terms of sales amount, hence the veritable uproar

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http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-S...s-237441.shtml

Sketchy article. Hard to tell how much is made up. Seems like a lot.

And if AMD leadership actually believes it won't be AMD vs Intel in the mobile space, they're in deep trouble. Honestly that quote has me questioning their sanity.

Intel is doing mobile, too, guys.

Agreed. AMD finally just started making more of a dent in the mobile space due to their APUs in Laptop let alone tablets/phones. Intel really wants a slice of the tablet/phone market and sounds like they will be releasing something in 2012 with the successor to the Atom. Intel has a product out in there before AMD has anything in that space and they say not to worry about Intel. Thats funny.

Guess we'll have to see how drastically they'll change their roadmaps. The quote didn't actually say "We'll stop producing high end CPU's", but that's exactly what it implies if they don't want to compete against Intel.

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Originally Posted by Pantsu

Guess we'll have to see how drastically they'll change their roadmaps. The quote didn't actually say "We'll stop producing high end CPU's", but that's exactly what it implies if they don't want to compete against Intel.

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if they don't...who does? :para:

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Originally Posted by Evantaur

if they don't...who does? :para:

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Unfortunately no one. I'm pretty sure VIA is the only other company with a X86 license and we all know they're not going to step up to the plate. Very very sad news if it's indeed true. :(

This is a prime example of reading too much into a PR person's statement.

How does:


"We're at an inflection point," said AMD spokesman Mike Silverman, according to a Mercury News report. "We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mindset, because it won't be about that anymore."

Become:

In a move than could very well be interpreted as exchanging one problem for another, Advanced Micro Devices has decided to stop focusing so much on the PC business and get its act closer together on the mobile front.

All the spokesperson said is that the market isn't JUST about competing with Intel anymore. That is 100% true. With ARM-based cores making some serious inroads, the traditional "PC" space has evolved a lot in a very short time. AMD and Intel now have to think of everyone from Samsung to Qualcomm.

Heck, Bulldozer may not be the greatest but is it a product without a future? No way. It has plenty left in the tank and could become a go-to option in certain circles once the kinks are worked out.

I feel it safe to say (after owning both AMD and Intel platforms) There has never really been much of a "competition"... If youre building a PC and trying to keep costs down... you go AMD, if you are building a PC and want performance... You get an Intel Chip. This is just my opinion

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Originally Posted by freeloader

Unfortunately no one. I'm pretty sure VIA is the only other company with a X86 license and we all know they're not going to step up to the plate. Very very sad news if it's indeed true. :(

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well i found this no idea true or false..

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IBM has a really crazy x86 license. They can fab any x86 chip they want, and a third party can come to them and fab an x86 chip even if they don't have an x86 license. My understanding is IBM's fabs are more expensive than most other fabs though so it hasn't been worth it. I'm a tiny bit suprised that IBM hasn't had interest in buying out Global foundries yet though.

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Question is Does IBM really want good Xeon competition for Intel? Pushing Intel to improve Xeon would be bad for POWER though.. I can see how IBM would be happy with the way things are standing right now..

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Originally Posted by Torrentskillz

I feel it safe to say (after owning both AMD and Intel platforms) There has never really been much of a "competition"... If youre building a PC and trying to keep costs down... you go AMD, if you are building a PC and want performance... You get an Intel Chip. This is just my opinion

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Not now, maybe, but "never"?
You missed quite a few things in this market, it seems....

Even though the A64 was a better chip there was still really no competition. Intel chose them, for that very reason.

IMO, this farce has gone on long enough. And technology is stagnating because of it.

Break Intel up, and bring real competition.

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

This is a prime example of reading too much into a PR person's statement.

How does:


"We're at an inflection point," said AMD spokesman Mike Silverman, according to a Mercury News report. "We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mindset, because it won't be about that anymore."

Become:

In a move than could very well be interpreted as exchanging one problem for another, Advanced Micro Devices has decided to stop focusing so much on the PC business and get its act closer together on the mobile front.

All the spokesperson said is that the market isn't JUST about competing with Intel anymore. That is 100% true. With ARM-based cores making some serious inroads, the traditional "PC" space has evolved a lot in a very short time. AMD and Intel now have to think of everyone from Samsung to Qualcomm.

Heck, Bulldozer may not be the greatest but is it a product without a future? No way. It has plenty left in the tank and could become a go-to option in certain circles once the kinks are worked out.

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Prescient as always.

If you read the post from which this rather sensational piece pulled a single quote, it is not nearly as dire as this piece makes it seem. From a CPU only perspective, AMD is probably just facing reality. Without serious engineering victories they won't be competing with Intel's kilo-buck CPU any time soon.

The FX series is not at war with Intel for the top performance crown. It's not exactly stellar for any crown, but is still decent for the price point AMD set (it's still too over-inflated at retail IMHO). Price for performance has been the AMD mantra for years, they're just embracing that rather than putting out stupid comic books saying they're going to topple Intel.

Then as stated, there's the additional ARM business AMD is going to be adding. They're not going away, nor will they be abandoning CPUs. This seems like nothing more than out-of-context sensationalism.

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

This is a prime example of reading too much into a PR person's statement.

How does:


"We're at an inflection point," said AMD spokesman Mike Silverman, according to a Mercury News report. "We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mindset, because it won't be about that anymore."

Become:

In a move than could very well be interpreted as exchanging one problem for another, Advanced Micro Devices has decided to stop focusing so much on the PC business and get its act closer together on the mobile front.

All the spokesperson said is that the market isn't JUST about competing with Intel anymore. That is 100% true. With ARM-based cores making some serious inroads, the traditional "PC" space has evolved a lot in a very short time. AMD and Intel now have to think of everyone from Samsung to Qualcomm.

Heck, Bulldozer may not be the greatest but is it a product without a future? No way. It has plenty left in the tank and could become a go-to option in certain circles once the kinks are worked out.

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Thank you for being the voice of reason, as usual, SKYMTL.

When I saw the post title, I highly doubted AMD made an explicit statement that they no longer plan to compete with Intel, and were going to focus on the mobile market (where Intel still exists, and does well).

Unless I see said explicit statement from an AMD representative, I'll go with the logical explanation that the article is severely exaggerating a different statement.

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Originally Posted by Piotrsama

Not now, maybe, but "never"?
You missed quite a few things in this market, it seems....

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I would say so... Anyone else remember the Athlon (and Athlon X2) vs Pentium 4 days? :rolleyes:

if this was an official news story, id expect the stock price for AMD to take a huge swing in some direction.

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_19358655

Much better article IMO. It appears to be the original, that everyone is copying and reinventing.

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Originally Posted by xBanzai89

Agreed. AMD finally just started making more of a dent in the mobile space due to their APUs in Laptop let alone tablets/phones. Intel really wants a slice of the tablet/phone market and sounds like they will be releasing something in 2012 with the successor to the Atom. Intel has a product out in there before AMD has anything in that space and they say not to worry about Intel. Thats funny.

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Intel Neutrino? :D

-PB

AMD need some strategic change in order to make money and survive better.

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Originally Posted by Torrentskillz

I feel it safe to say (after owning both AMD and Intel platforms) There has never really been much of a "competition"... If youre building a PC and trying to keep costs down... you go AMD, if you are building a PC and want performance... You get an Intel Chip. This is just my opinion

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This is only currently true while AMD CPUs are behind Intel.

Back when AMD were thrashing Intel in the S939 days, an Athlon X2 4400+ cost around £350, and the 4800+ around £400+.

The problem with AMD at this point was that they relied on the Athlon architecture for too long, and by the time, and ever since Intel released the C2D and its successive chips, AMD were unable to compete, and constantly failed at trying to catch up, hence they then had to undercut Intel's CPU prices to remain competitive.

If the current performance of AMD and Intel CPUs were reversed, CPU prices wouldnt any different, it would just be AMD CPU's at Intel's current price points and vice versa.

I definitely remember paying £325 for my Athlon X2 4400+ after months on end of searching for a sub £350 price. At least now with Intel, you can get top performance and architectures at the £150-200 price point simply on slower base clocks which matters little when overclocking.

I sincerely wish AMD give up the competition, so I can just safely spend $999 on an Intel CPU to last several years without having to worry about upgrades, which saves lots of money.

After AMD sold it's fab I kinda guessed they would become like Via, only able to compete on very low power CPU. Looks like this is happening now. Too bad the Bulldozer was such a failure, if it was at least competitive it might've saved AMD. A lot of you talk about Intel will slow development and increase prices, I don't think they can increase prices for the consumer CPUs too much, because people will just keep their PCs for longer. And the slower development is also not all bad, if there's a stable platform, software will start to be better optimized for the current platform. For stuff that really needs crunching power, there's always GPU computing.

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Originally Posted by awdrifter

After AMD sold it's fab I kinda guessed they would become like Via, only able to compete on very low power CPU. Looks like this is happening now. Too bad the Bulldozer was such a failure, if it was at least competitive it might've saved AMD. A lot of you talk about Intel will slow development and increase prices, I don't think they can increase prices for the consumer CPUs too much, because people will just keep their PCs for longer. And the slower development is also not all bad, if there's a stable platform, software will start to be better optimized for the current platform. For stuff that really needs crunching power, there's always GPU computing.

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I'm somewhat curious not about how Bulldozer performs (since we all know that now), but rather how it is selling.

When I thought AMD was doing bad, they did post profits for last quarter. Not saying it's selling well, or even good enough to break even, but I do wonder.

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Originally Posted by bhavv

I definitely remember paying £325 for my Athlon X2 4400+ after months on end of searching for a sub £350 price. At least now with Intel, you can get top performance and architectures at the £150-200 price point simply on slower base clocks which matters little when overclocking.

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As do I, AMD really milked the a64 for everything it was worth and some. It seems quite a number of people have forgotten the £1000 price tag for the old FX line (the ones actually worthy of the moniker)

Intel isn't going to drop their game if AMD pull out, they are now apple's boy toy. Whatever apple says, Intel scrambles to get done and apple right now are demanding higher performing cpu/igp with lower power. Oh hey, look at that cpu roadmap.

I'm not so sure about where AMD is going, I can see what they're doing but not, at the same time. (if you know what I mean)

Entering an already saturated ram race to the bottom market? Odd. Even more so, their ram offering which needed to be faster than currently used memory so it could let llano shine is the same slow **** they already use.

Arm markets? Good luck with that, it moves hilariously fast. Tegra 2 got a ton of design wins due to the honeycomb partnership, that's not the case this time round with ICS. No doubt early adopters will try to cash in on the early quad core market till the krait S3/4 is available for use. Qualcomm is a hard one to match/beat considering they have matching radio's in their arsenal too. Samsung and Apple are also hard ones to compete with, the A5 and Exynos were pretty epic when they came out and still are, the A5 had and still had the fastest gpu fitted to an arm core. The next gen of stuff will no doubt continue the trend. The mobile market is just as hard to crack.

Architecture competitiveness and software support has withered due a simple lack of R&D funding, something or someone has been sucking AMDs income.

I don't understand, they're cutting jobs from their PR and Marketing departments... when's the last time you've seen an AMD commercial on TV? Or heard an extended feature/benefit comparison of a Dell/HP laptop more than just "HP's new widget features AMD processors. [END]" They're shooting themselves in the foot because they have no exposure. The average consumer knows little about AMD, and I hate to say it but consumers remember gimmicks. The shiny bunny suits from the 90s, the Blue Man Group, (to a lesser extent) the anthropomorphized robots. Apple sells so well because of their awesome marketing, not because their product is significantly superior than others.

AMD needs to stop banking its bets off the IT and enthusiast industry and start looking for some real exposure. It's the only way they'll survive in the long run.

This decision will have destroyed amd...
There mobile department is something like 1% of the market, whoever is in charge is a complete moron.

Edit:
Perhaps though there might be one good thing about this, if they go under they take ati with them, and good riddance...

What are you on about NEO ?

Yea really neo ati is awesome. What in the world are you talking about.

What I'm saying is, if amd goes down it could take ati with it.
1 bad thing, but yet 1 good thing, I'm not oblivious that this doesn't equate to something good, it would be bad.

Amd believes that the mobile market is the way to go.
However just how much of the mobile market does it have now anyways?
How many laptops do you see with amd's?, there are some but most are core2 socket baised.
Yes they sell amd's at bestbuy as an example, but then again how many actually buy them?, I never see amd laptops, I've seen 2 in my entier life.
How many cell phones use amd?, none?, I dont' really know but as far as I knew it was mostly arm baised.

Tegra3 just came out, and tegra2 looked good to me on paper.
How many ati chips are in cell phones?, again never even heard of one.

What I believe amd is doing is taking it's 5-10% market share and bringing it down to down 1%...
I think they reason why they are going this route is because of the trends, cell phones and alike are getting more powerful, so they want to take as much of that market as possible.
With cell phones you don't compete against intel, so they believe they can take a good portion of it with a high performance-low power chip.
But now they will compete against arm and nvidia.

If they make an arm style chip..
1. They license the cpu style from arm.
2. They compete against nvidia, which is essentually the same exact chip as there's but instead of ati vga it's nvidia vga.

If they make an x86 chip...
1. Now intel gets part of the cell phone money, they essentially become intel.
2. Amd has to compete directly with nvidia+arm with price+perf+watt.

Sure they could doit, not sayign they can't.
But there market was low cost performance desktop cpu's...
Now if they stop making desktop cpu's they essentially toss what they already have in the trash.
I could understand the cell phone pda stuff to the side off into as an extra, lots of cash could be made perhaps, stock's, etc.
But to disregard the desktop cpu market... wth.

Besides isn't it about time that amd stops paying intel for every single cpu it makes anyways?
That's bs I think...

As for ati.
I think they are complete garbage, but that's my opinion.
Good for the avg user, nothing more.
They don't make a professional card that's any good, the quality of the graphics are piss poor, it looks exactly like a console.
Both nv and ati sell bs when it comes down to it, AF is complete bs, it's a marketing thing, a completely useless feature that corrupts the video quality of every texture that is mip mapped.
Ati doesn't even try to make something halfway professional while on the other hand nvidia does at least try, even if what they put out has it's glitches.
I guess this is not the place to be complaining about that but I'm sick of ati even being around.
And if need be, if amd has to go in order for ati to go, then so beit.
But... prices could go up, and that would be bad for most everyone, that's not good...

I think this news is a major bummer for the most part.
From what it sounds like to me is that they are pulling out of the desktop market.
Maybe not completely, but eventually it could go the route that via did.

Via is owned by nvidia btw, so is acer, silicone graphics and probably others.

I'de hate to see intel's competition go away for sure.
Arm is used alot in russia I heard, because it's the cheapest chip you can buy.
I can't see amd competing here when they don't even have there own chip per say...

The future may lye with arm ^^.

http://semiaccurate.com/2011/11/08/l...ew-directions/

Huum, does for one time he was in the right thing ? note his article is not that bad.

[QUOTE=NEOAethyr;5005949]What I'm saying is, if amd goes down it could take ati with it.
1 bad thing, but yet 1 good thing, I'm not oblivious that this doesn't equate to something good, it would be bad.

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Amd believes that the mobile market is the way to go.
However just how much of the mobile market does it have now anyways?
How many laptops do you see with amd's?, there are some but most are core2 socket baised.
Yes they sell amd's at bestbuy as an example, but then again how many actually buy them?, I never see amd laptops, I've seen 2 in my entier life.
How many cell phones use amd?, none?, I dont' really know but as far as I knew it was mostly arm baised.

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Not only AMD, in the same time Intel is going the same road... Both need have some feet there.. whatever it is for make move the mobile market to them, or move some pieces in this market.

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Tegra3 just came out, and tegra2 looked good to me on paper.
How many ati chips are in cell phones?, again never even heard of one.

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There's not so many Tegra device out.... and we have see them only recently on " good device ".

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What I believe amd is doing is taking it's 5-10% market share and bringing it down to down 1%...
I think they reason why they are going this route is because of the trends, cell phones and alike are getting more powerful, so they want to take as much of that market as possible.
With cell phones you don't compete against intel, so they believe they can take a good portion of it with a high performance-low power chip.
But now they will compete against arm and nvidia.

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There will be more and more convergence between mobile and " pc/laptop/electronic (TV ) in the future. why will you they let that to intel and Nvidia ?

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If they make an arm style chip..
1. They license the cpu style from arm.
2. They compete against nvidia, which is essentually the same exact chip as there's but instead of ati vga it's nvidia vga.

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They don't licence anything, they will be at the R@D entry level with ARM, developping the ARM and standard for ARM with ARM .. they will not buy an ARM licence and do secondary system and ecosystem with them.

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If they make an x86 chip...
1. Now intel gets part of the cell phone money, they essentially become intel.
2. Amd has to compete directly with nvidia+arm with price+perf+watt.

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APU are allready designed for a convergence with ARM ( this make 4 years they work with them on it ) .. But the problem is the standard, specially on the memory side (PCI express, communication between an ARM system + x86 don't exist right now )... AMD will design with ARM the future standard for it... will we see a ARM+AMD gpu on a soc or a AMD+Mali400 on a soc ? or a Blade with 4 AMD CPU + 2 AMD Nividia + 128 ARM cores ....? well a bit early to say for know..

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As for ati.
I think they are complete garbage, but that's my opinion.
Good for the avg user, nothing more.
They don't make a professional card that's any good, the quality of the graphics are piss poor, it looks exactly like a console.
Both nv and ati sell bs when it comes down to it, AF is complete bs, it's a marketing thing, a completely useless feature that corrupts the video quality of every texture that is mip mapped.
Ati doesn't even try to make something halfway professional while on the other hand nvidia does at least try, even if what they put out has it's glitches.
I guess this is not the place to be complaining about that but I'm sick of ati even being around.
And if need be, if amd has to go in order for ati to go, then so beit.
But... prices could go up, and that would be bad for most everyone, that's not good...

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Your opinion.. But ofc, yes, when you run a game on an AMD/ATI gpu.. you have PS1 graphism... when with Nvidia you have TRUE DX11 PC graphism... seriously..

UPDATE November 30

AMD Still Committed to x86, Whatever That Means

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Yesterday's report about how AMD had decided to stop competing with Intel predictably stirred a lot of question and speculations, but at least some fears may be assuaged.

To offer context, AMD said it wasn't going to try and compete with Intel anymore and, instead, turn to the low-power chip market.

This was mostly interpreted as mobile device platforms and, perhaps, the cloud.

Essentially, the short reported statement was enough to
suggest Advanced Micro Devices may be considering anything from lessened emphasis on CPUs to total backout from the x86 chip industry.

Thus, many questions and fears were raised, so words on the company's part were bound to show up soon.

Sure enough, even if the Sunnyvale corporation didn't make some big announcement, it told The Verge that it remains committed to x86.

“AMD is a leader in x86 microprocessor design, and we remain committed to the x86 market. Our strategy is to accelerate our growth by taking advantage of our design capabilities to deliver a breadth of products that best align with broader industry shifts toward low power, emerging markets and the cloud,” the statement says.

This doesn't actually dispute most of the speculations though, only the ones about AMD pulling an HP.

It is still all too easy to assume AMD will leave the PC processor market to Intel and see what it can do in other areas.

Nonetheless, this is as far as rumors can go, since nothing will be made truly clear until AMD holds its next strategy update, in February, 2012.

The failure of Bulldozer to actually impress continues to be the main culprit behind this assumed turn of events.

Still, even if one product slid off the slippery slope, AMD continues to have a solid following, even if Intel leads in terms of sales amount, hence the veritable uproar

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http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-S...s-237441.shtml

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Originally Posted by 3NZ0

As do I, AMD really milked the a64 for everything it was worth and some. It seems quite a number of people have forgotten the £1000 price tag for the old FX line (the ones actually worthy of the moniker)

Intel isn't going to drop their game if AMD pull out, they are now apple's boy toy. Whatever apple says, Intel scrambles to get done and apple right now are demanding higher performing cpu/igp with lower power. Oh hey, look at that cpu roadmap.

I'm not so sure about where AMD is going, I can see what they're doing but not, at the same time. (if you know what I mean)

Entering an already saturated ram race to the bottom market? Odd. Even more so, their ram offering which needed to be faster than currently used memory so it could let llano shine is the same slow **** they already use.

Arm markets? Good luck with that, it moves hilariously fast. Tegra 2 got a ton of design wins due to the honeycomb partnership, that's not the case this time round with ICS. No doubt early adopters will try to cash in on the early quad core market till the krait S3/4 is available for use. Qualcomm is a hard one to match/beat considering they have matching radio's in their arsenal too. Samsung and Apple are also hard ones to compete with, the A5 and Exynos were pretty epic when they came out and still are, the A5 had and still had the fastest gpu fitted to an arm core. The next gen of stuff will no doubt continue the trend. The mobile market is just as hard to crack.

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Even if AMD pull out, Intel cant suddenly charge whatever they want as they wouldnt make enough sales. They still need to cover every price point, and the <£200 market is the most profitable in the computing industry.

As someone else also said, if AMD do pull out and Intel slow down with making new architectures, I would definitely welcome this as my new I7 980 would last so much longer just like my 4400+ did.

You buy a £150 CPU, you need to upgrade within 2 years. You buy a £300-£500 CPU and it lasts for at least 5 years. I would welcome that change.

CPUs are nothing like GPUs, they last for a very long time, and would last even longer if Intel werent advancing so quickly. AMD are insignificant to this though, they are so far behind that they are barely affecting Intel's progress and prices. In fact, its Intel's prices on the I5 cpus that forces AMD to sell all their CPUs for less because none of them can compete.

Also someone on another forum posted his invoice for an Athlon X2 4800+ in 2005, it was £499 EX vat :o

Atm you get an Intel 3930k for less than that including vat, or a previous gen I7 980 for £50 less, I find it laughable that people blame Intel for their pricing when AMD used to be so much worse when they had the upper hand.

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Originally Posted by bhavv

As someone else also said, if AMD do pull out and Intel slow down with making new architectures, I would definitely welcome this as my new I7 980 would last so much longer just like my 4400+ did.

You buy a £150 CPU, you need to upgrade within 2 years. You buy a £300-£500 CPU and it lasts for at least 5 years. I would welcome that change.



Also someone on another forum posted his invoice for an Athlon X2 4800+ in 2005, it was £499 EX vat :o

Atm you get an Intel 3930k for less than that including vat, or a previous gen I7 980 for £50 less, I find it laughable that people blame Intel for their pricing when AMD used to be so much worse when they had the upper hand.

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I have to agree with you mate, no way Intel can just suddenly force up their prices. No one will really buy then.

I also paid a small fortune for my Althon X2 4600+ on launch and it was the single most expensive CPU I have ever paid for.
It lasted me long time though, I had it as my main cpu until the Phenom II series launched.

It's still running actually, it's my friends PC now with a 9600GT in it and at a res of 1260 x1024 its perfect for most things and some games.
The same for my old Athlon 64 3200+, which is my mother's back up pc.

My current i7 2600k cost less than half of what I paid for my 4600+ and I intend to hold onto it for a long time.

I do however hope and think that AMD will not just give up on x86. If they leave the martket progress will be slower and as much as I like to keep my hardware for a long time I do like progress :) As I would sometimes build other systems to play around with and give to friends and families as gifts. Like my old E6850 system and Phenom 9600.

Although speaking of GPUs not lasting at long, hmm well at the moment thanks to dumbed down games and console ports they seem to be doing really well unless you just have to max out AA and things like Uber sampling.

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I find it laughable that people blame Intel for their pricing when AMD used to be so much worse when they had the upper hand.

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Not the case at all. Intel has always been more expensive, and by a good margin. The only time prices had some sort of parity was back in the original A64 days but even then an AMD FX chip was going to run you the exact same cash as a Pentium EE.

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

This is a prime example of reading too much into a PR person's statement.

How does:


"We're at an inflection point," said AMD spokesman Mike Silverman, according to a Mercury News report. "We will all need to let go of the old 'AMD versus Intel' mindset, because it won't be about that anymore."

Become:

In a move than could very well be interpreted as exchanging one problem for another, Advanced Micro Devices has decided to stop focusing so much on the PC business and get its act closer together on the mobile front.

All the spokesperson said is that the market isn't JUST about competing with Intel anymore. That is 100% true. With ARM-based cores making some serious inroads, the traditional "PC" space has evolved a lot in a very short time. AMD and Intel now have to think of everyone from Samsung to Qualcomm.

Heck, Bulldozer may not be the greatest but is it a product without a future? No way. It has plenty left in the tank and could become a go-to option in certain circles once the kinks are worked out.

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Agreed. What AMD said sounds more like they are going to focus on doing what works for them instead of trying to outdo Intel at Intel's own game. Perhaps their new CEO has studied Blue Ocean strategy?

People seem to forget that it is within Intel's best interest to keep AMD around. Without AMD, Intel becomes the one thing that would send EU regulators into a mouth-frothing frenzy: a monopoly in the x86 product space.

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Originally Posted by Piotrsama

Not now, maybe, but "never"?
You missed quite a few things in this market, it seems....

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Meh, he's only missed those things if he's older than what, 18? AMD's glory days are far behind (I'm thinking athlon dual cores on s939 and about). Young posters on this board might not even have bought "good" amd products in their life. We see it as a cash game, from the consumer side. However, I think that this situation is showing us that there's simply not enough great engineers available to fill both Intel and AMD's needs. Intel's richer, so they poach the great ones and move forward while AMD is stuck with 2nd tier employees...

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Originally Posted by SKYMTL

People seem to forget that it is within Intel's best interest to keep AMD around. Without AMD, Intel becomes the one thing that would send EU regulators into a mouth-frothing frenzy: a monopoly in the x86 product space.

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This, I would think.

Haven't there been numerous occasions in which Intel has basically been forced to negotiate with AMD (generally about licensing) for the sole fact that if AMD goes under, Intel falls into a virtual monopoly? VIA doesn't seem to hold enough weight to count as a competitor, I suppose since they make almost exclusively low-power x86 CPUs.

However, I don't really know what Intel could do to keep AMD from going under due to their own devices, such as marketing or R&D strategy- or for external circumstances (hypothetically) such as Global Foundries not being able to have high enough yields, etc.

We just have to hope AMD can keep pulling a profit in the CPU division one way or another. Slightly off-topic, but has the GPU division been posting any profits lately?

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Originally Posted by NEOAethyr

As for ati. I think they are complete garbage, but that's my opinion.
Good for the avg user, nothing more.
They don't make a professional card that's any good, the quality of the graphics are piss poor, it looks exactly like a console.

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I'm sorry, but you just lost all credability with that statement.

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Originally Posted by Darxide

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Originally Posted by NEOAethyr

As for ati. I think they are complete garbage, but that's my opinion.
Good for the avg user, nothing more.
They don't make a professional card that's any good, the quality of the graphics are piss poor, it looks exactly like a console.

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I'm sorry, but you just lost all credability with that statement.

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That has to be some serious trolling.

Claiming that AMD/ATI's rendering looks like console graphics is not only baseless, it's ridiculous.

As bad as Bulldozer may seem today, it is actually a very fast architecture WHEN the software support is there as we've seen in a few select benchmarks. This scenario reminds of of when AMD's 64-bit CPU came out and subsequently the 64 X2s. We barely had any 64-bit OS support at the time. We also didn't have a plethora of dual-threaded apps until years later. Bulldozer is a little too ahead of the curve this time around as an OS with a scheduler that can handle it is a year away (Windows 8).

AMD made a solid product with Bulldozer. They simply fail hard at rounding up software support in a timely manner.

PS: My old Pentium 4 945 runs like a champ in Windows 7 compared to XP when it came out. Too little too late I guess.

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Originally Posted by Mechromancer

As bad as Bulldozer may seem today, it is actually a very fast architecture WHEN the software support is there as we've seen in a few select benchmarks. This scenario reminds of of when AMD's 64-bit CPU came out and subsequently the 64 X2s. We barely had any 64-bit OS support at the time. We also didn't have a plethora of dual-threaded apps until years later. Bulldozer is a little too ahead of the curve this time around as an OS with a scheduler that can handle it is a year away (Windows 8).

AMD made a solid product with Bulldozer. They simply fail hard at rounding up software support in a timely manner.

PS: My old Pentium 4 945 runs like a champ in Windows 7 compared to XP when it came out. Too little too late I guess.

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Windows 8 scheduler only gives 10% more performance tops, and it won't be on every application. That won't save Bulldozer from the fail it is, maybe it'll put it in the "not so bad" league, but it won't help a lot.

Athlon64 was a success because it also shines in 32b applications. 64b was only a plus, for the not so near future, when it came out. If this CPU will "shine" within a year or two (which I highly doubt, or even more, I'll bet against it) it will be an outdated bad memory.

I guess it will last for a very short period of time if AMD can get anything better with Piledriver, and act as if FX8000 series never happened. And IMHO they will target the price/performance segment, in which BD also fails.

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Originally Posted by Mechromancer

As bad as Bulldozer may seem today, it is actually a very fast architecture WHEN the software support is there as we've seen in a few select benchmarks. This scenario reminds of of when AMD's 64-bit CPU came out and subsequently the 64 X2s. We barely had any 64-bit OS support at the time. We also didn't have a plethora of dual-threaded apps until years later. Bulldozer is a little too ahead of the curve this time around as an OS with a scheduler that can handle it is a year away (Windows 8).

AMD made a solid product with Bulldozer. They simply fail hard at rounding up software support in a timely manner.

PS: My old Pentium 4 945 runs like a champ in Windows 7 compared to XP when it came out. Too little too late I guess.

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BD simply doesnt perform well in any software out there other than CPU benchmarks. I cant refer to an architecture as 'fast' when it completely fails to live up to this claim in everyday software.

8 cores are useless right now, even more so on such a slow architecture. For people who need raw proccessing power for workstation computers, Intel are better (I7 CPUs). For gaming, Intel are better (I5 CPUs). For none strenuos daily use like office and web browsing, Intel are better (I3 CPUs).

More cores alone have never made one chip better than another, as has been evident with AMDs CPU performance over the last several years.

BD is probaly the worst cpu ever made, its amazing they screwed up on every front. Power, performance, cost, size, buggy,cost to manafacture, ipc and the worst pr disaster leading to a launch(still laughing at jf pulling a vanashing act on launch day) thankfully amd still have good products on the market today that work today.

Good thing about BD is that they are not sitting still but working on improving it. Both IPC and power/clock have much room to grow. This is brand new design on a brand new process. They didn't meet the estimated performance (check my post in SoC topic) and I guess they are working hard to fix whatever is bottlenecking the design. IF they meet their 10-15% "faster" estimates(big if) on a yearly basis,they will do fine in server space. Note that the 10-15% faster is just core+clock improvements. They plan to add more "modules" to both server and desktop so this should be also taken in consideration. By the 2014, they will be running 20nm and packing 14 modules for a total of 28 threads per chip while the core+clock improvements are estimated at 33-55%. So 75% more "threads" and 33% (worst case) more "speed" per core => 1.75x1.33=2.33x performance in 3 years timeframe. We should also remember that the BD generation that comes in 2014 is supposed to carry on board GPU for GPGPU coprocessing capability (GCN based probably).

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Originally Posted by informal

Good thing about BD is that they are not sitting still but working on improving it. Both IPC and power/clock have much room to grow. This is brand new design on a brand new process. They didn't meet the estimated performance (check my post in SoC topic) and I guess they are working hard to fix whatever is bottlenecking the design. IF they meet their 10-15% "faster" estimates(big if) on a yearly basis,they will do fine in server space. Note that the 10-15% faster is just core+clock improvements. They plan to add more "modules" to both server and desktop so this should be also taken in consideration. By the 2014, they will be running 20nm and packing 14 modules for a total of 28 threads per chip while the core+clock improvements are estimated at 33-55%. So 75% more "threads" and 33% (worst case) more "speed" per core => 1.75x1.33=2.33x performance in 3 years timeframe. We should also remember that the BD generation that comes in 2014 is supposed to carry on board GPU for GPGPU coprocessing capability (GCN based probably).

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I tend to believe because of their lack of R&D cash this is simply how AMD rolls. Their initial push to market is essentially a beta or 'proof of concept' designed for future refinement as they 'mature' process, improve yields and advance logic.

It's sometimes not easy being a beta-tester for AMD :p: