Is AMD Ever Gonna Make A Great CPU?

[melikepie]

well first off look at this
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/computers/intel-says-future-atom-processors-will-match-amd-phenom-ii-performance-in-2015/6453

well i guess intel is getting better every year but amd is getting worse every year but i really dont know what there gonna do next like they have a great gpu buisness and they have a lot of people helping them by buying a lot of GPUs and i think there great priced and there 7000 series offers tons new things and i think there doing well but while there doing that the CPU stuff is really gonna make them go bankrupt. amd does best at going bankrupt and there spending more and more money on bulldozer when basicly there gonna be spending more money then they are getting and i think some people should get fired. i really think that they hired rats for there marketing or intel workers got hired at amd either way they are probaly gone soon and im wondering i amd will EVER make a cpu that will work as well as intels but if it is as good as ivy bridge... they better be sure thats when ivy bridge is the best intel can offer at that time.

 

[jimmysmitty]

AMD has already produced a great chip, Athlon 64 aka K8. They can do it its just that they have bigger mouths than they need in their marketing department that take simulated numbers and use them as real performance increases.

If BD wasn't hyped up like crazy it would have looked better, but the hype plus a bad process made BD look worse than it was. Its not bad, just not great as people expected.

 

[jaguarskx]

^^^

Yeah, high expectations and then a smack of reality can be a crushing blow to people's psyche.

Better to have modest or low expectations so that the smack of reality isn't too harsh. Or better yet, reality is actually better than expectations which can lead to that feeling of being pleasantly surprised.

 

[jaguarskx]

Hopefully AMD will be able to fine tune Piledriver so that it's performance will be around 10% better than Phenom II / Bulldozer. More would be better though.

 

[cyansnow]

AMD can't be completely gone, governement wont allow Intel to completely destroy them, and even if the good ol government would allow it, intel still probably couldn't outright destroy AMD, get down off of the sandy bridge (see what I did there) and learn that without AMD you probably couldn't afford an intel because without competition there is no reason to lower your prices, same with all the markets, no competition, people will buy it still because there is no one else who has it. Also, intel would suck major if AMD hadn't come around because there is no reason to waste resources making new and faster chips, people will still buy them if that is the only place to get them, and intel as a company wouldn't need to improve, they have no one else that is making CPUs so why innovate? The AMD vs Intel war is just a balance scale, Intel is heavier right now but AMD isn't at the floor either.

Oh amd did make a good CPU FYI, it's called the Athlon.

 

[Cazalan]

I wish AMD the best but I think they're long past the point of being able to come back on the CPU front. Intel is a giant 25 times larger.

Even the biblical David vs. Goliath wasn't more than a 4x factor.

 

[Star72]

The thing is that Intel CAN destroy amd and they CAN keep their prices minimum with amd being gone.

Really? Then why is this chip almost $30 more than what I paid for it? It doesn't look like Intel wants to keep prices low at all.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070&Tpk=i7%202600k

Also, if I'm not mistaken (& please correct me if I am) this chip used to be $200: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072&Tpk=i5-2500k


Personally I don't believe for a second that prices would lower if AMD was gone, since they seemed to have gone up since Bulldozer's release.

AMD will stick around because they can make a good cpu. In addition to that they make a very good apu, & a great gpu. Plus they seem to have a pretty realistic game plan. It doesn't look like they will be disappearing any time soon.

 

[amuffin]

I am elaborating on people saying "without amd, intel processors will jump from a $200 dollar cpu to a $500 dollar cpu"

 

[sonexpc]

Do you guy remember when is last time AMD make good CPU.......
That is almost 5 - 7 years ago when all the people use AMD X2 3500+ / 4200+

That period we sold more AMD than Intel ( Intel may be is Pentium D something like that)

Intel take back the market share is after Core Duo CPU ....!

I would say AMD make good cpu but just bad marketing...!

Now a days the whole line FX series is just overprice.... compare to Intel..

May be they give all big rebate to online store...
because soemtime I see online store selling A6-3650 - $79CAD this is right price position!!

and if the whole FX series can be $30-$40 cheaper... then I think tehy can get back some share...

and the next problem.... is for reseller like us we don't perfer to sell AMD because the big online store allways make special deal... even we get it from distributor is highest price than they sell to the public...

But for intel ... still OK ...you won't see much under cost deal!

 

[jsc]

Oh amd did make a good CPU FYI, it's called the Athlon.

They did.

 

[bardacuda]

If programmers start making every thing utilize parallel and GPU accelerated processing then AMD's APUs will crush Intel's CPUs...even if paired with a discrete nvidia card the APU would have much lower latency communication between the CPU and GPU

 

[noob2222]

I am elaborating on people saying "without amd, intel processors will jump from a $200 dollar cpu to a $500 dollar cpu"

Intel may not necessarily raise thier prices, but they will just stop selling the cheap cpus all together if the gov't locks down their pricing.

Remember how it took AMD's athlon for Intel to even start to lower thier cpu prices? Then they did it in spite to cripple AMD's profits, going so low as to sell the cpus below cost and make money on the motherboard sales. Without AMD, cpu prices would have never dropped below resonable.

Flashback from 1997

Overall the K5 is a great processor, a bit hot, but still useful for business applications. With all of the more expensive chips becoming popular, many people let their want for the fastest chip crowd their judgement for what they really need. If all you run is MS Word, Netscape, and a game or two do not spend $700 on a Pentium II!!! Shell out about $79 for a K5 and get a Monster 3D if you really want to play games on your system.

I started out with AMD because I could only afford an Intel 486 during the pentium days. hmm 486 or k5 ...

 

[nforce4max]

Intel may not necessarily raise thier prices, but they will just stop selling the cheap cpus all together if the gov't locks down their pricing.

Remember how it took AMD's athlon for Intel to even start to lower thier cpu prices? Then they did it in spite to cripple AMD's profits, going so low as to sell the cpus below cost and make money on the motherboard sales. Without AMD, cpu prices would have never dropped below resonable.

Flashback from 1997

Overall the K5 is a great processor, a bit hot, but still useful for business applications. With all of the more expensive chips becoming popular, many people let their want for the fastest chip crowd their judgement for what they really need. If all you run is MS Word, Netscape, and a game or two do not spend $700 on a Pentium II!!! Shell out about $79 for a K5 and get a Monster 3D if you really want to play games on your system.

I started out with AMD because I could only afford an Intel 486 during the pentium days. hmm 486 or k5 ...

I remember reading how expensive the first pentium 2 was when it first came out with a hefty price of $3k, a few hundred short of the pentium pro was during those times. The K5 was their own design then they bought NextGen and changed their designs a little to work with socket 5/7 thus became the K6. Sure it was still lower per clock performance than the pentium 1 but it wasn't far behind. The real treat was k6-2+ and k6-3. They added 3DNow and the fpu performance went up very nicely. For a while the K6-2+ and K6-3/+ was trading blows with similarly clocked pentium 3 that was first gen p2 based. Later the K7 that really put AMD on the map and on the road to socket A. Their 939/940 were amazing value and it is sad to see how things have changed.

Cyrix, IDT, Rise, SST Micro, IBM, and a few others survived in the mainstream market until the end of socket 7 but VIA/IDT is somewhat around. They got a decent cpu that could compete with atom and brazos in the netbook arena but power consumption isn't nice.

 

[melikepie]

They did.

yep but why dont they just take the athlon fix it up a bit and make it as good as ivy bridge and sell it cheap and they will have money

 

[jaguarskx]

yep but why dont they just take the athlon fix it up a bit and make it as good as ivy bridge and sell it cheap and they will have money

It's not that simple.

A CPU architecture can only be improved by so much before there's no more or very little left headroom for performance increases. Intel's Core 2 Duo design abandoned the Pentium 4 architecture in favor of something similar to the Pentium M design. The P4 reached the end of design limits, sure Intel could have increased the frequency and shrunk down the die size to increase performance, but the would be about it.

Who knew something that was designed for the laptop market would turn around Intel's design philosophy?

 

[jimmysmitty]

Really? Then why is this chip almost $30 more than what I paid for it? It doesn't look like Intel wants to keep prices low at all.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115070&Tpk=i7%202600k

Also, if I'm not mistaken (& please correct me if I am) this chip used to be $200: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115072&Tpk=i5-2500k


Personally I don't believe for a second that prices would lower if AMD was gone, since they seemed to have gone up since Bulldozer's release.

AMD will stick around because they can make a good cpu. In addition to that they make a very good apu, & a great gpu. Plus they seem to have a pretty realistic game plan. It doesn't look like they will be disappearing any time soon.

You either got it on sale or they are price gouging. When the 3820 hit last week (the quad core SB-E CPU) the only distributor who had it wanted $389 bucks for them, for us. Intel priced it at $299 for 1Ku sets.

Companies will price gouge something that is popular and in demand to make a higher profit.

 

[jeffredo]

So many comments saying "They've just chosen not to compete in the high end/very high end". They can't compete with their very best vs. with what Intel would consider its mainstream CPUs. Don't make excuses for them.

 

[jaguarskx]

So many comments saying "They've just chosen not to compete in the high end/very high end". They can't compete with their very best vs. with what Intel would consider its mainstream CPUs. Don't make excuses for them.

It's not an excuse people are making up for AMD.

AMD Not Competing with Intel Anymore, Goes Mobile
http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-Not-Competing-With-Intel-Anymore-Goes-Mobile-237103.shtml

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."

Follow up story:
AMD Still Committed to x86, Whatever That Means
http://news.softpedia.com/news/AMD-Still-Committed-to-x86-Whatever-That-Means-237441.shtml

“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.

 

[Raidur]

Choosing not to compete after failing to is the same as giving up IMO.

IPC has definitely changed, but AMD is still great in certain uses, not including the most popular here in the high-end (gaming) and the super-high-end workstations ($600-1000 6 core SB/Nehalem CPUs).

 

[radnor]

****, is the OP serious ?

I got 2 CPUs on the same box. An X4 955 for gaming with a 4850 CF and a E-350 with VMware ESXI.

They both had more value than their Intel counterparts, and do their job just fine. Gaming is important, but in gaming GPU > CPU. As for the rest, BD is a bit expensive but there are other alternatives.

@OP. Facebook and CStrike don't need an 8 core.

 

[jimmysmitty]

****, is the OP serious ?

I got 2 CPUs on the same box. An X4 955 for gaming with a 4850 CF and a E-350 with VMware ESXI.

They both had more value than their Intel counterparts, and do their job just fine. Gaming is important, but in gaming GPU > CPU. As for the rest, BD is a bit expensive but there are other alternatives.

@OP. Facebook and CStrike don't need an 8 core.

You missed the point. There is a difference between a "good enough" CPU and a "great CPU". The Pentium 4 was "good enough" at the time. But Athlon 64 was great. Phenom II is good enough but Core i is great.

My wifes Athlon II X2 is good enough but I want to give her better just so the system lasts long enough.

 

[nforce4max]

****, is the OP serious ?

I got 2 CPUs on the same box. An X4 955 for gaming with a 4850 CF and a E-350 with VMware ESXI.

They both had more value than their Intel counterparts, and do their job just fine. Gaming is important, but in gaming GPU > CPU. As for the rest, BD is a bit expensive but there are other alternatives.

@OP. Facebook and CStrike don't need an 8 core.

Good enough is fine for most people my self included but it depends on how long the useful life of the system is before most bloatware like windows and most apps become to demanding for them to even run.

 

[nforce4max]

You missed the point. There is a difference between a "good enough" CPU and a "great CPU". The Pentium 4 was "good enough" at the time. But Athlon 64 was great. Phenom II is good enough but Core i is great.

My wifes Athlon II X2 is good enough but I want to give her better just so the system lasts long enough.

I didn't consider the pentium 4 good enough even when it was in it's prime, for the power it sucked and the heat it put out for the cost it was only and still is an intellectual curiosity. Most back then waited years before they finally dumped their pentium 3 rigs and athlon (socket a era) amazingly continues to hold on. 754 and 939/940 were great but look at where many surviving examples are now. I'll be glad when all those pentium 4 builds are nothing more than land fill and museum exhibits.

 

[radnor]

You missed the point. There is a difference between a "good enough" CPU and a "great CPU". The Pentium 4 was "good enough" at the time. But Athlon 64 was great. Phenom II is good enough but Core i is great.

My wifes Athlon II X2 is good enough but I want to give her better just so the system lasts long enough.

For 160 Euro, MB + CPU + 8 GB RAM in a Mini-itx format with USB3, SATA3, 64 Bits and Hyper-V/VT-X, Intel can't touch it. Really. For a home lab VMware, you really dont need a Hyper Powerful CPU, it is mostly about RAM and HDD. And x64 CPU with VM microcode.

Gaming wise, it is a 4850 CF. With 2 and half years or so. Intel at the time had nothing on it price point.Even at this point the CPU is

Is BD crap ? So far i didn't had the opportunity to test in a ...DNS Cluster ? IIS/Apache/Tomcat machine ? AD DS system ? LDAP server ?

So, BD is a server chip, so is Nehalem. We gamers are a small part of the pie. Very small. Server is another business.
CPU is for working GPU is for gaming, for now.

 

[callumparker666]

so much mad ITT

 

[jimmysmitty]

For 160 Euro, MB + CPU + 8 GB RAM in a Mini-itx format with USB3, SATA3, 64 Bits and Hyper-V/VT-X, Intel can't touch it. Really. For a home lab VMware, you really dont need a Hyper Powerful CPU, it is mostly about RAM and HDD. And x64 CPU with VM microcode.

Gaming wise, it is a 4850 CF. With 2 and half years or so. Intel at the time had nothing on it price point.Even at this point the CPU is

Is BD crap ? So far i didn't had the opportunity to test in a ...DNS Cluster ? IIS/Apache/Tomcat machine ? AD DS system ? LDAP server ?

So, BD is a server chip, so is Nehalem. We gamers are a small part of the pie. Very small. Server is another business.
CPU is for working GPU is for gaming, for now.

It would be for those types considering it has a power draw of almost 50% more than a 2600K and overall less performance.

Still you don't get good vs great. I don't consider BD crap, its just not great. Not even sure if I would call it good. Phenom was not good either. Low clocks, low IPC and high power draw. Phenom II was/is good but its still not great as it put its performance to where Phenom I should have been, or at least where it should have been per AMD.

Core 2 was a great CPU as it came in and beat AMD in everything Pentium 4 did not; power usage, IPC and performance.