AMD: No 'Bulldozer' Anytime Soon

Status
Not open for further replies.

thedipper

Distinguished
Mar 3, 2009
97
0
18,630
He makes a good point, except for the fact that Intel is the average mindless consumer's primary knowledge. Some people buying systems have no idea what AMD is, so even though Intel's non-enthusiast CPUs are worse per dollar, they're more likely to get bought.
 

Ambictus

Distinguished
Mar 9, 2009
62
0
18,630
[citation][nom]thedipper[/nom]He makes a good point, except for the fact that Intel is the average mindless consumer's primary knowledge. Some people buying systems have no idea what AMD is, so even though Intel's non-enthusiast CPUs are worse per dollar, they're more likely to get bought.[/citation]

I disagree... the "mindless consumer" is going to head to your local Best Buy or other big box retailer to get their computer. So ultimately it's up to the OEMs to determine what the consumer purchases. Which in a performance per dollar aspect may just be an AMD.
 

oicw

Distinguished
Feb 23, 2009
10
0
18,510
Agreeded. While overclocking an i7 or E8400 to 4+ Ghz is impressive, it's just about useless to the average Joe computer shopper. Any AthlonX2 processor in a quiet and cool-looking case should suffice.

What AMD really needs is to create brand awareness, like Apple. Make it somehow "cool and fashionable" to walk down the street with an AMD powered laptop, or a bunch of creative yound college students sitting around an AMD PhenomII desktop in their dorm, or a smart engineer working around an Opteron workstation, etc.

Of course, that's easy to say, but unless an asteroid with $10B of marketing budget magically (and softly) lands besides AMD's headquarters, grand-scale advertising is pretty hard to achieve for a cash-strapped company.
 
Very true indeed. Kind of ashame that Bulldozer won't come as early as previously promised. I just hope it isn't due simply to management decisions, like the previous decision to delay 65nm parts just to sell more 90nm parts. That delay was a big contributing factor to the original Phenom Launch debacle.
 

jrnyfan

Distinguished
Dec 21, 2005
324
0
18,780
Intel might be able to say they have the uber l33t pwnzrz when it comes to the processing crown but my X2 4200+ @ 2.5GHz runs all of my games and applications just fine. I don't have a reason to pay for bleeding edge, that was a fascination for all of 6 months when I had an arms race with a buddy and it turns out I won with my GPU, not my proc.

Bleeding edge doesn't make the money in the end, it's nice to hang your hat on but most people want performance/$ and that is where AMD shines again and again.
 
G

Guest

Guest
Not one intel and nvidia fanboy saying that AMD loses at everything? What happened to Tomshardware?
 
G

Guest

Guest
Very good article, I love the fact that AMD is catching ground again against Intel, I build many custom PC,S for customers and have noticed the price creep for the cheaper Intel CPU'S and Motherboards, It seems here in the uk most of the cheaper great overclockers have disapeeared such as the 7200 and the prices have gone up not down, But with the AMD Phenom II X3 and X4 you can match these to a cheaper board and they go like stink, recently made a X3 setup and it by far outstripped my 7200 at default clock and overclocked, Go AMD go, and lets see intel bring the price down a little for their fantastic chips All in all we all win as consumers
 

haricotvert

Distinguished
Mar 26, 2009
16
0
18,510
The title of this article is terribly misleading. There is a single mention of the Bulldozer core being slated for a 2011 release... and for that you make it the title of the article? The post is about Opterons vs. Nehalem... talk about missing the forest for the trees.

Here's my suggestion for a title: "AMD Unconcerned by Nehalem Release." Short, to the point, and most importantly accurate. Really, whoever edited this article and let it go live with that title should recheck their journalistic integrity.
 
G

Guest

Guest
I think that Intel has managed to keep a very good edge over AMD on performance and price on mainstream processors sice the Core2 arquitecture lauch. So AMD has beed hard-pressed to keep its prices low. AMD's production costs are higher than intel's due manufacturing advantages of the latter. I have been buying and building almost AMD's only based system for the last three years, due my excellent experiences with my Athlon (original) and Athlon 64 purchases. My newer systems have Phenom X4 processors (2x 9850, 1x 9750, 1x 9550 models) they work very well but motherboards were very expensive to buy especially for 9850 and 9750 due to the 125W TDP of this beasts at the moment purchased they were the fastest AMD processors on the market but they were much slower than Intel's on raw (brute) processing power but for my objective (Virtualization) AMD's true-quad core, Virtualization extensions and memory bandwidth technologies made sense.

I want to comment that in order to be in the mindset of people you have to be leader. People likes to buy the top-dog brand. When AMD surpassed Intel's performance crown with Athlon over P3 and Athlon64 over P4, they managed to turn profitable, and this processors weren't cheap. They had many expensive (premium category) high-end models (many above Intel pricing) . Lets face it: If you want to sell in midrange you MUST have a strong position on High-End. When your next high-end generation arrives, your last one turns into the midrange, and so over...
 

reddozen

Distinguished
May 11, 2007
62
0
18,630
I love my AMD 4p server. Price wise, Intel cant touch it.
I built the whole unit in a 1U chassis for under $3000... Good luck repeating that with Intel. In fact, I could probably keep it under $5000 and build an 8p AMD server. Intel just doesn't have the best options for the middle ground server market unless you just have a LOT of money to burn.
 

alentor

Distinguished
Mar 2, 2009
20
0
18,510
HAIL AMD! I'm still using 3800+, and it runs every thing what i throw at it, yeah, i did play crysis at low/med settings with this cpu + 7600GT, the next system will be full AMD, i'm talking about the GPU as well, if before i was a true nVidia fanboy, so now im all into ATI and AMD!

AMD is getting stronger and i want to be part of it.
 
G

Guest

Guest
"AMD Unconcerned by Nehalem Release." Short, to the point, and most importantly accurate. Really, whoever edited this article and let it go live with that title should recheck their journalistic integrity."
 

ta152h

Distinguished
Apr 1, 2009
1,207
2
19,285
I read this stuff from AMD and want to cringe. It's so terribly disingenous.

Here's the reality. The i7 destroys the Phenom in virtually every benchmark, and is roughly the same size. The fallacy in all this is that AMD can make chips cost competitive with Intel, but in reality, they can make the same size chip a whole lot slower. It's not a good situation.

If the Phenom II were a lot smaller, and cheaper to make than the i7, I'd be very happy with AMD's lineup. It's not, it's roughly the same size, and BADLY underperforms it. Right now, Intel positions it high because AMD can't compete with Intel's previous generation, but there's no reason going forward that Intel will continue to position this processor at premium prices. They do because they can, not because they have to.

AMD desperately needs something new. What this man is saying is, our processors are as good as theirs when it doesn't matter. What kind of logic is that?

For servers, it's all over for AMD. The performance per watt is dreadfully against them, and it's going to be very difficult to maintain anything close to their current market share. Intel gave them a gift with the Pentium 4 architecture, and again with FB-DIMMs. With the i7, they're giving them a nightmare.

I know he sounds confident, but what else can he say? In reality, he's got to be seriously concerned about the i7. Anything else just doesn't make any sense.
 

resonance451

Distinguished
Feb 13, 2008
426
0
18,780
once again, pseudo-fact, and it seems the readership is half-retarded as well. are any of you even freaking OEMs?!

Three years ago, it was true that AMD had conquered the low end. Two years ago it was starting to change. Before the Phenom II came out, I would have chosen Intel dual-cores above the low-end AMD's because I got better bang for the buck.

I haven't had occasion to build an AMD-based system for myself or for most clients for the past three years. My first-ever build was an AMD, so I've a soft spot in that sense, but when I compare benchmarks and clearly see Intel coming out on top for most of the setups I come up with, I go with what works best. Insinuating Intel has the high-end but AMD has the low-end is something that should be tossed out the window because things aren't like they were a few years ago. The same philosophies don't work.

Granted, the new Phenom II 940 is excellent and I'm actually going to finally build another AMD system again since it's such a great bargain and offers a number of perks over the low-end core i7 build I was considering, but Intel has been incredible in the low-end market and I have no idea why nobody seems to know what's going on event though all it takes is a bit of cross-referencing with prices and benchmarks/reviews.

Oh well. Stupidity rules, so enjoy.
 

Mucke

Distinguished
Aug 30, 2008
27
0
18,530
...an online prank just doesn't seem like the proper business-like thing to do, especially for huge corporations such as Intel and AMD.

Absolutely, they are a big company, so they should dress up nicely, talk about return-on-investment, shareholder-value and they should never ever do anything funny or geeky.
 

neiroatopelcc

Distinguished
Oct 3, 2006
3,078
0
20,810
[citation][nom]thedipper[/nom]He makes a good point, except for the fact that Intel is the average mindless consumer's primary knowledge. Some people buying systems have no idea what AMD is, so even though Intel's non-enthusiast CPUs are worse per dollar, they're more likely to get bought.[/citation]
The average customer you refer to doesn't know that intel produces processors. The average customer responds with "windows xp" when he is asked which version of office he is using. The average customer buys a hp, a dell or other system. He doesn't know if it has an intel or amd cpu, or even how big his harddrive is. He just know that it can hold 132.000 mp3s, cause that's what the supermarked advertisement told him.
 

JonnyDough

Distinguished
Feb 24, 2007
2,235
3
19,865
With time comes education neiro. Consumers aren't quite as clueless about computers as they were in the early 90's. Most people today know who AMD is. Many have added more memory to their home PC, or at least had a talk with a Best Buy idiot salesman about an AMD Turion-powered laptop. More senior citizens use email than you realize, there have been studies. Even my grandparents use it now and they're pushing 90 and are uber-religious Iowans.
 

neiroatopelcc

Distinguished
Oct 3, 2006
3,078
0
20,810
[citation][nom]jonnydough[/nom]With time comes education neiro. Consumers aren't quite as clueless about computers as they were in the early 90's. Most people today know who AMD is. Many have added more memory to their home PC, or at least had a talk with a Best Buy idiot salesman about an AMD Turion-powered laptop. More senior citizens use email than you realize, there have been studies. Even my grandparents use it now and they're pushing 90 and are uber-religious Iowans.[/citation]
Everyone in my family that isn't dead is on facebook, so I know people use the technology. But they don't know it. At least in my family, and at my place of work people are surprisingly clueless about it. Sure my parents know amd and intel by name, as I've spoken to them every time I've thrown a new piece of hardware into their system, but they still don't know a lot. My mom thought office was a part of windows until recently, when she needed powerpoint and realized it wasn't there. And most people at my company know very little about computers. Sure, they've got 12 IT guys to ask for assistance, so they conveniently don't want to know, but still. A lot of people who ask me to build or recommend computers for them don't know the first thing about them. The only thing they understand is numbers. That's probably why advertisements say 2048mb ram instead of 2gb anyway - bigger number = better.
 

E7130

Distinguished
Nov 20, 2008
93
0
18,630
neiroatopelcc -
That's probably why advertisements say 2048mb ram instead of 2gb anyway - bigger number = better.
No, it may be just to be more accurate in listing specs.

Here is another small point, AMD is still not making a very good profit margin, so even if 90% of their CPUs sold are not high-end, and they feel they've got a strong foot hole in the server sector because of the cost efficiency. They are still forced to sell their product at a loss in order to keep up with the market gain of Intel. AMD maybe happy with cost/efficiency ratio, but their shareholders and company are in the business of making money and that is the bottom line.

They posted a 4th-qrt loss of 2.34 per share, thats not good AMD. At least they weren't as low as 1Q.
 
G

Guest

Guest
he makes a stupid statement!
Indeed the fastest processor doesn't sell most, but it's often the brand that has the fastest processor that sells best in their mid-range.
If I know a core2duo outperforms a dual core Athlon processor at top levels, I tend to go for a mid priced core2duo that costs less!
If on the other hand AMD is known for it's best processors and comes up with the Phenom processor that blasts the core2duo in the dust, then I'd probably go for a mid-priced phenom!

Too many customers don't care or ever see the benchmarks. And the benchmarks only hold true for on which platforms they have been tested.
So most people remember: "Oh, a core i7 processor is fast? I want one", not caring if AMD has anything complementary.
That's why Intel sells the i7 920,which is only a step away price wise from the fastest dual cores, or quad cores.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.