"Running A Different Race . . . "

[dasickninja]

Taken from:
http://www.overclockers.com/tips01077/

If you look at what was said at the AMD Analyst Day conference, well, the issue isn't whether AMD is going to be running behind Intel the next couple years. The issue is whether they're going to be running at all.

From our perspective.

What is happening is that what is and will be a good answer for you and what is a good answer for your Sixpack friend are likely to diverge, and stay that way.

I'll put it this way: It will probably make little to no sense for overclockers to buy an AMD processor for the next few years. The 4X4 trails Intel's quadcore (and 4X4 really looks like a server system in disguise anyway). AMD won't provide retail 65nm chips for a few months, and if you look at the preliminary overclocking results here and here, this is no great loss.

The next generation of 65nm chips probably won't be any great shakes either, again, for us. AMD apparently thinks it can get the IPC on these chips roughly equal with today's Conroes.

That's nice, but by the time they do that, Intel will be debuting its 45nm chips, and even if they don't improve the IPC, their default speeds will be considerably higher than AMD's, and O/C speeds probably even more so.

And AMD won't get to 45nm for at least a year after that, and Fusion chips won't show up until around 2009.

Frankly, from our perspective, things look pretty bad for AMD. However, ours is not the only, or most important, perspective.

In a sentence, AMD no longer terribly wants to sell to us. They want to sell to your Sixpack friends, and if you look at it from that perspective, things look a whole lot better.

It doesn't mean squat to a Sixpack with a Dell that a Conroe processor can overclock better than an X2, he isn't going to be doing that. If he's even aware of the IPC difference between the two, he'll just buy a 2.2GHz X2 rather than a 1.86GHz E6300. Odds are he won't, so he'll buy a 2GHz X2 if it's cheaper and be none the wiser for it.

Look down the road, and the same pretty much applies. What matter greatly to us won't matter much or at all to a Sixpack, AMD will be good enough for him.

Look at servers, and the prospects of dual-quad cores married to a faster Hypertransport ought to keep AMD competitive in that market for a while, too.

When 2009 comes, then we'll see Fusion and the difference between Intel and AMD will become even more a matter of comparing apples and oranges.

And that's probably just what AMD wants.

Comments?

 

[BaronMatrix]

ED stroglio makes me want to puke. He is the worst analyst out there. He puts in a few sly remarks and thinks that's informative editorials.

AMD is by no means lacking. Intel is by no means better off being faster. Even if AMD doesn't override Penryn, 70% faster (so far) than Opteron will be something serious. Since all of the new chips will be plug-in compatible, Intel will have to make sure that they do the same or the trend of AMDs growth will continue.

Intel can no longer operate like there isn't a REAL competitor. AMD has stolen the high end from them and owned the desktop for 3 years. The second rev of 65nm will definitely put them back into the lowest power slot and all "Stars" and "Cities" have to do is get 30% increase. The quads will definitely surpass that and the L3 duals should get really close.

Those will also be plug-in for AM2 which means that buyers are guaranteed to be able to use the same mobo and RAM. Intel has at least finally unified for the most part under LGA775.

2007 will be a rough year for both companies because of Intel's insistence on this price war that has decimated ASPs of every Semi company.

Ed sucks.

 

[Pippero]

Hmm, i pretty much agree, at least for 2007.
I estimate K8L to be very comparable to C2D in terms of IPC (hopefully i'll make a detailed analysis on this someday), but AMD will be quite behind in terms of clock speed (even more than now, if the rumors on Penryn are true).
The 4 core K8L will do extremely well in the enterprise market, thanks to the platform / interconnect advantage, and the goodies of being a native quad core in terms of inter-core bandwidth and power balancing among the cores.
And Intel's quad cores won't be as aggressively clocked as the desktop dual cores.
I do still have hopes for 2008 though, because AMD had announced a further core revision (i hope/suspect in terms of pipeline stages / clock scaling) and also the transition to 45nm is scheduled for the middle of the year (of course it has to be seen whether they'll be able to stick to that schedule).
However, i'm not really sure about AMD's plans with Fusion and with their new graphic division... it might be that they're really planning a major shift in their business model.
Anyway, this has nothing to do with people with our "sixpacks friends".
It has more to do with our "white collar friends", i suspect.

 

[mesarectifier]

Why would a company apparently so preoccupied with selling only to 'Sixpack' (anyone want to tell me wtf that means? I'm assuming 'non-enthusiast') consumers put so much into a product like 4x4?

They're looking quite a way down the road to products that surely haven't even left the drawing board yet, and noone can really comment on that with any particular accuracy.

 

[sirheck]

i dont want to intel or amd lose or go out of buisness.

that would be bad for all of us.

so i hope they keep on fighting.

 

[NotAPimecone]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=joe+sixpack

 

[m25]

For the sake of all technology improvements, fanboy flames, great breathtaking articles and reviews etc, tere has to be something wrong in this statement.
I don't think at all that AMD will go out of business, because, as I have stated before; 1. the market is getting so immensely large that even chipzilla can not fill it all 2. AMD is now a big player now and not that far to justify a total wipeout. However, I'd like them both to go head to head as often as possible and for this to happen Intel will only heve to encounter some problems on 45nm.
Talking about the article above, it's almost flawless, however, it assumes the increase in clock rate proportional to the transition to 45nm but as we all know, the forst revs. of a new process are pretty lagging in all aspects, clock rate included; On 130nm Intel started with the notorious NSDS, on 90 and 65 nm they ramped the frequency only after 6-12 months and the last example is AMDs Brisbane so, sincerely, I don't expect Intel's newborn 45nm s to be all flemes and fire before Dec2007-Jan2008 while in the meantime AMD should have a solid, ultra-3GHz 65nm process.
AMD now seems to run a different race only because it's no more in the performance crown focus, but you have to fight on all market, have to aspire to Intel to survive or you end up like VIA. They know it, but they're just fighting with what they can and at the moment they just can't do it decently enough in desktops but brisbane is a clear sigh\n that they're there. They've always put the focus on servers first but then they go to desktops; first dualcores were Opterons but the crown went later to the FXes; the same is going to happen now with K8L.

 

[turpit]

Thinking about it, he may have a point.

Had Intel kept trying to push crapburst beyond its limits for another year, and if (I just love those basic logic and if statements. Stringing them together like that is what consistantly leads another poster here down the path to disaster) AMD was in fact not complacent in its R&D, they might have held on to the perfromance lead and caught up to 65nm .

But it didnt happen that way. AMD got a lot of "word of mouth" advertising from the enthusiast community because they gave you more for less and you could play (OC if you chose) With their current Uarch stretched nearly to its limits, and nothing new for awhile the "more" part is out of the equation. With intel practically giving (relatively speaking of course) chips away the "less" part is out of the equation as well. Courting Dell may be the best way for AMD to go right now. Consistant, steady sales of a product line that has taken a back seat can only help AMD as they prepare for the next round of the match. Their momentum has held them through Q306, Q406 remains to be seen, but expecting their momentum to carry them for 4-8 quarters is stretching it. AMD doesnt have the bulk to sustain them that Intel relied on for 3 years. Using Dell may 'equate" to something similar for them.