Apple Could Use AMD's Chips

[KingGreatYat]

Oh really? Apple's market cap ~ 63.68 billion (link)
AMD's market cap ~ 13.11 billion (link)

Like I have said at other times: Apple Computer can buy AMD, lock, stock (so to speak) and barrel. Then they would have their own CPU manufacturer. And AMD fans would be buying Apple Athlons, Semprons and Opterons.

hmmm... Thats and apples to oranges comparison if ever I saw one.

AMD supply mainly CPUs, whereas Apple supply the whole computer. (And don't forget the near ubiquitous Ipod/Itunes!)

I think the price difference between a CPU and the rest of the machine is quite large.

Forgive my naive grasp of economics, but I believe that wouldbe one factor in the difference in market cap.

Also, I can't see AMD being bought by Apple. That would be a very dark day :twisted:

 

[theaxemaster]

Meh, worldwide Apple has less than a 2.5% market share. I know it has slightly more over in the US, but contrary to popular American opinion the USA != The World.

As such, who really cares what chips they use?

It may seem like a small number, but Apple is hardly small fry in the computing world is it. So in answer to your question, loads and loads of people care what chips they use.

One facet of the Macintosh advantage is that the software is designed with one platform in mind - and if they have AMD and Intel based machines available then I wouldn't be surprised to see OS X become less stable.

The stability has nothing to do with the CPU. The lack of stability in x86 machines running windows is that any random retarded company can make a component, write some shitty drivers and put it out there. Apple tightly controls their hardware. So in the end it doesn't matter who makes it, because apple will make sure the drivers and hardware are very stable.

And since when has apple been all about peak performance? I hardly see how the platform would matter much if top end performance is the mitigating factor. They both perform well in the windows market, so there's no reason they couldn't do the same in the OSX world. It'll just take AMD some time to get to where they can fully assemble the solution that apple would require.

 

[dasickninja]

Word.

 

[darkstar782]

Apple IS small fry, its just that Jobs has a big mouth on him and therefore Apple makes a disproportionate amount of noise.

Oh really? Apple's market cap ~ 63.68 billion (link)
AMD's market cap ~ 13.11 billion (link)

Like I have said at other times: Apple Computer can buy AMD, lock, stock (so to speak) and barrel. Then they would have their own CPU manufacturer. And AMD fans would be buying Apple Athlons, Semprons and Opterons.

Ok, and what percentage of that 63.68bn comes from Ipods and Itunes, and apples various other activites, and what percentage comes from Computers?

I'd also call Wal-Mart small fry in the PC sales leagues, but they could probably also buy AMD if they so desired.

 

[darkstar782]

ill tell you this from a 10 year vet in the Apple computer world, I HATE NVIDIA.

they run hot, cant buy an upgrade for any of my mac's that i would be proud of putting in my powermac.

While I fully agree that the x1900/x1950s are the faster GPUs for DirectX apps, DirectX is not an option on a Mac.

nVidia are still the better option for OpenGL, ATi have done a good job of optimising for Doom3 but thats just one game.

Also, the x1900/x1950s run FAR hotter than the 7900GT/GTX series.

Therefore, in the Mac/OpenGL world, the 7900GTX is Faster, and Cooler, defeating your argument somewhat.

TBH I'm not sure of the availability and pricing of Mac compatible gfx cards, but then there are very few decent games to run on them anyway so I dont suppose its too much of an issue

 

[levicki]

And this is also the propaganda in favor of intel because AMD also can deliver points 7, 8, 9 and 10 allready.

JumpingJack already answered this so I won't repeat. However:

10. This is irrelevant....

I do not agree with you on this Jack.

No matter how irrelevant the instruction set extensions may be, proper documentation and support in developer toolchain isn't.

I thought Steve had his own compilers.

They use customized gcc 4.0 for the OS at the moment.

@macer1:
I was talking about professional usage of video cards in 3D. Your personal experience with nVidia may be worse depending on what you do with it. But if someone offered me new Woodcrest based Mac Pro with Quadro FX 4500 and another one with X1900 I would pick the one with nVidia in a blink of an eye.

They gave the performance and reliability to Apple Computer systems.

Then answer this:

Why people are complaining about corrupted .inf file in Catalyst 6.9 these days?

Why I had Star Wars Knights Of Old Republic crash so many times while I used Sapphire Radeon 9600 Pro and any version of Catalyst other than the 4.2?

Why if you have >60GB NTFS partition and ATI card and you turn on large system cache in system properties ATI video driver can corrupt your data?

Also, only 10% of Intel's SKUs are faster than AMD. AND Dell is using them now so the sky is the limit.

And how many SKUs each of them has?
What percentage of AMD's SKUs is currently faster than Intel's?

Another thing people are forgetting is this:

Apple wanted to get away from IBM. It did so by selecting Intel. If they selected AMD they will still have to deal with IBM indirectly.

 

[ltcommander_data]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSE4

It seems that SSE4 has been renamed SSSE3 or Supplemental SSE3. That's kind of ironic considering SSSE3 contains 16 new instructions which is more than the original SSE3's 13. Not quite sure what they do though, but it'll be a while before programs begin to support it.