AMD: Done for?

scryer_360

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So Intel just launched LGA1156, which, by all means, eliminates AMD's competitiveness in the market above $200. And at below $200 price points, AMD has a hard time fighting it out with the still potent LGA775 solutions down there. Simply put, Intel has completely shut AMD out of the market except in the really low price segments. In pre-built PCs, anything over $550 will soon probably have the i5-750 in it. In performance, only the hardcore AMD crowd would still buy an AMD processor right now.

Looking at the Intel roadmap, the next year will be full of new products: i9 with a 32nm hexacore will be out before years end, and early 2010 will see 32nm dual cores (so Intel will most likely end up dominating the sub $200 price points as well). By the end of 2010, all of Intel's lineup will be 32nm.

And what is AMD doing to counter this?
...

Nothing. Its first hexacore will be on the 45nm process, and still based on the same K10 architecture that Intel has completely overran performance-wise. All next year, it will release more K10 products, all of which are based on the current processors. More steppings and clock speed increases to come.

Its first 32nm product won't ship until 2011. Likelyhood is, it will be at the end of 2011, when Intel starts talking about 22nm.

ATI is at least still competitive in the GPU market. It offers solid cards now at all meaningful price ranges. Nvidia hasn't paid a lot of attention to the GPU market much in recent times, and the GTX3xx series will likely be either a rehash of the current cards on a smaller process (as Nvidia has been doing recently) or will come to the market way after ATi launches its newest chips. And about those chips: they will be launching on a 40nm process that will likely be vastly improved over the last 65nm process in more than just size. The 4770 already gave us a taste of what the low end of the 40nm chips can do, and that was without a ton of structural changes.

My worry is that AMD is going to get bulldozed by Intel, and we will be back in the same spot we were pre-K8. Remember back then? Intel had a crushing hold on the CPU market, P4 was a terrible excuse for a "upgrade." AMD put the spark back in Intel, and got them innovating again. What happens when Intel decides it no longer has need for a large R&D budget?

AMD has only one thing on its side: Abu Dhabi. The oil is running out, and everyone up and down the Gulf needs something to run off of after the black gold disappears. I have no doubts that AMD can secure more financing, and the money needed to make it work again. What I do worry about is that AMD seems to not care: their roadmap is behind Intel's by a whole year, and for that whole year, Intel will dominate the market. Once you have consumers consistently buying Intel chips, its done for. Heck, we are already at that point, standing on the edge even.

What can AMD do? If they can't move the roadmap up, if they can't get a killer processor that people will be willing to spend more than $300 for, something with margin and flair, then its over.

 

omfgnoogies

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I think for the mid range gaming systems, the AMD scales much better with dual GPU's
So they still have a niche market, its just drastically decreased. Its no longer AMD vs Older technology.

I do agree, AMD is in definite need of a come to Jesus talk. They are in for some steep water.
 

xrarey

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I completely agree. AMD is in for some serious trouble. They should have been designing a new micro-architecture AS SOON as the Core 2 was released, at the latest.

Yea, sure, they have shrunk processes and increased clock speeds. The Phenom II is an improvement over the first Phenom, but it is no where close to where it needs to be. I had an Athlon X2 before I replaced it with my Core i7.

I hope AMD can recover, I like the competition for Intel - it keeps them honest and forces them to innovate.
 

spongebob

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You think Abu Dhabi is on their side??? :lol:
The terms will not be favorable.
 

doomsdaydave11

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AMD's processors are still immensely popular in the business world... I have yet to see an Intel product this year that compares to AMD's solid price/performance ratio.

Not everyone has half a grand to drop on a computer chip!
 

ohiou_grad_06

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Hmm, well, let's think about this from the other side. Let's say theoretically AMD declared bankruptcy at some point to get rid of some debt, nvida, love em or not, they have rumors going around of renaming old chips and what not. And Intel seems to be shutting them out of some things and Intel has talked about trying to go for their own graphics card lines if I'm not mistaken.

What if we see AMD in bankruptcy and they come back, and maybe see an AMD/ATI merger with nvidia to go up against Intel. Anyone see this as a possibility?
 

Snow_Patrol

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Wont happen, ever. Not even if you wish really, really, really hard for it. Nvidia can buy AMD twice or even three times over, but it isn't in their best interests to do so.

I dont think AMD is looking over the edge of the cliff of Failure. They're still highly competitive against i7 with their AM3 chips, and now they've even launched a cheap, cacheless quad-core that kicks Intel's low-end dualies out of the playground. AMD's going to play the markets that are looking for value for money and a stable system that can be used for years, without fear of a loss of an upgrade path. Intel, on the other hand, is going to have their hands full trying to convince people to now upgrade from LGA775 to the i5 or i7 platform, especially when there are i5 chips that whip the i7 920. If one invests in an i5 board, you'll have to stick to i5 processors, unless you fork out more money for i7. And I got a feeling that AMD will make a good comeback next year with a few suprises for us - they're still the underdogs, and may just find a way to relive the glory days when they beat the Pentium 4.
 

alikum

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I believe AMD can afford a price war against Intel simply becuase of the die shrinks and better yield. AMD already has Instanbul in the server market and I believe that there just isn't a market for hexa cores yet (except for the server market of course). Thuban would be their best bet at the high end market. If AMD can slash their Phenom II x4 prices to around 150~160, then it'd be great. They'd definitely own the market. Screw Kuma/Athlon x64 7xxx. Discontinue that segment and let Calisto replace it. Tri-core will go head on against Core 2 Duo. That way, AMD will sure be on the winning side.
 

randomizer

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Won't happen. Prices will rise, but that is just FUD.
 

SpadeM

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At the end of 2011 intel will release a new socket 1155 so .. there we go again with intel. Plus their road map is clear and not impressive. AMD info however is missing, the same thing happend back in 2000 with Athlon XP and 2004 with x64. The little info we have points to the Bulldozer architecture which is brand new and doesn't relay on anything they currently have. And if u think about 16 processing cores and maybe thread fusion then ... bye bye intel turbo speed and nehalem architecture.
We're already approaching autumn, 2010 in already this much closer so 1 and a half years till 2011 .... i wonder .. is it worth changing sockets and upgrading to expensive parts during this time? I think not
 

4745454b

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Wow, another AMD is dead thread. Don't these come up every time Intel releases a new CPU? Since like at least the days of the Pentium 1? If the i5 750 is going to be the best of the i5s, then all hope is not lost. Yes its a better CPU then the 965, but not overly so. Assuming the 740 and 730 are slower, AMD can still compete with these. They don't need to increase performance, just cut prices. (not good for the bottom line, but at least its not horrible) Add in the SLI/CF issues and all is not lost for AMD. Yes things just got a little worse, but nothing new was dropped on them.
 

bige420

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Well, I hope for AMD's sake that Bulldozer is radically different than what they have produced thus far. I know its going to have something like hyperthreading, which they badly need. But until then I think that AMD is going to be relegated to the budget bin, they really just cant compete with the i5's. I mean, they need a 3.4ghz Phenom II to reach what the i5 can do at 2.66ghz. This is just a replay of when the first Phenoms came out.
 

jennyh

Splendid


Uhh no, see this is another one intel managed to catch.

The i5 cannot compete with the 965 at stock 2.66...in fact it cannot even compete with a 720 BE at stock. The reason it was able to equal the 965 BE is because it was benched with turbo on. People can say what they like but turbo is overclocking, 2.66ghz to 3.2ghz = overclocking, even if the last 2 cores are downclocked to compensate the first 2 cores are still overclocked.
 

jennyh

Splendid
Ofc it should be left enabled, I'm not disputing that.

It's a nice trick for sure, and it does make the cpu faster. All I'm trying to say is, if you did the same with a Phenom II, you'd get similar results.

The i5 is not faster than the 965 BE at stock. It is faster (or just as fast) when the i5 is overclocking itself.
 

bige420

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All the benchmarks on anand show the i5 750 running at 2.66 and it beats the 965 in most things, very close in others. Also, I dont know where your getting that the X3 720 beats the i5 at stock speeds, no benchmarks that I have seen show that.
 

jennyh

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Read the review, turbo was enabled on ALL benchmarks.
 

amdfangirl

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To be fair, those are Linux benchies,

doesn't represent really what most people do on their computer.