medjohnson77 :
Good point and I agree.
Seems to me that there are alot of noobs here on a run since the I5 release. Funny thing is to me, that it seems that the 965b.e is all the Intel fanboys want to talk about. As you brought up, forget the 965b.e. and just go with the 955b.e and overclock it to and past 965b.e. speeds. One could even go for the Athlon II 550 and unlock the other two cores and Overclock it, at $102 for the chip, I guess that would really shoot down the knocking on the price vs performance issue that they like to bring up with the 965b.e.
Yep. Only I myself would never be able to bring myself to unlocking cores for the fear that they were actually bad ones and in time end up sorrupting the living crap out of your OS and files leaving you screwed in the end.
But to each their own.
Its like back during the Pentium D days THG did a review on two CPUs that were cheap and pretty awesome. The Pentium D 805 ($125 at the time) and the Pnetium M (laptop but Asus made a laptop 478PGA to socket 478 desktop adaptor for their mobos).
The Pentium D 805 was cheap and with a decent HSF it would OC like crazy past a Athlon FX and Pentium D EE as well as outperform and because it was based on the later Ceadermill core it was much cooler and 65nm (best for its time).
The Pentium M was the same. OCed very well with proper cooling and outperformed everything out there, considering it was the Core 2 predecessor I can see why it did.
alikum :
Yes that's precisely it which is why I (and many others) believe that 965's price will not be lowered. For AMD, it's easy because they produce the same chip for all lines be it Deneb, Heka or Callisto. Only difference is that they either have disabled cores or some cache struck out. Many fanboys believe that with i5 out, Intel has won the war. It is not so. Yes performance wise, Intel has the upper hand but production wise, AMD has the upper hand. Think about the number of production lines that Intel has. Core 2 (until they are discontinued) is one line, 1156 is another line and 1336 is another line. All these add up to production costs. For AMD, it's easy - 1 chip for all.
Also note that AMD has Ati on its hand. Intel may have come up with i5, but don't discount AMD just yet. Imagine what it can do, scaling ATI with AMD processors. I'll wait and see what Bulldozer is really capable of.
Note: I'm a fan of neither side and I purchase what's of good value for money and right now, i5 seems to have the upper hand in my opinion. I just hate all these feverish fanboyism. Learn a thing or two before coming up with something like i5 runs 965 all over. It clearly isn't the case.
Well AMD cannot handle lowering prices much more, or thats my belief. Their CPUs came out pretty cheap when they were brand new and they had just built a 45nm plant and set it up for it. Thats not cheap and making up the cost of that lies in the CPU pricing itself. AMD needs one chip to be a high end solution that can be priced near Intels high end (LGA1366 Core i7).
ATI is a big part but they still don't consume enough of the market share to fully keep AMD afloat. Hopefully the HD5K series will be able to grab the performance crown and keep it in the wake of nVidias G300 core. But that would only be possible IF nVidias G300 core is just a C200 core with simple stepping updates and tweaks. Every time ATI seems to bash nVidia back down nVidia just knocks ATI right back down to second best.
Don't get me wrong as I love ATI and always have since my 9700Pro. Currently am running a 4870 1GB OCed(its a Sapphire Toxic without the OCing stock, just did it manually and viola Tocix edition HD4870 1GB).
As for AMD and ATI scaling, while they could tweak drivers a bit I will doubt it would be enough to really change the game. AMD needs to be like Intel and get in with game developers to optimize the software for their CPUs. Much like Intel and Microsoft are working together for Windows 7 to be optimized to run even better on Intel CPUs as well as multiple cores (better handling if multiple threads, and I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 RTM right now and its fast woot). Just like ATI needs to get back together with the game devs like they did before the AMD buyout. Hell Source is still best played on ATI and has the least problems on ATI. but that was the last game engine I was with the ATI logo on the box.
But if AMD would just work with the software and game devs they could possibly close the gap performance wise to be a more considerable threat overall. I mean Intels software and driver divison is larger than Microsofts. Hell its the largest in the world. I understand AMD is smaller in size but if they truly want to compete that is what they will do instead of trying to beat Intel through sheer muscle.
Well thats my thoughts on it.