[AlexV]

Originally Posted by swaaye

Indeed. I usually try to imagine that these are primarily people who are relatively new to the computing world and don't have much experience. As such, they are more likely to just attach to what's familiar to them. AMD is cheap and has been very popular with the home-brewed computer community so I have few doubts that a lot of people had AMD Athlon rigs as their first machine.

Of course, there are also plenty of feeble-minded "enthusiast" folk out there who happily and heartily poison the minds of those around them. Fanboys don't tend to be very interested in actually reading/reasearching/understanding things.



LMAO... Glory days? You must be kidding me heh heh (right?) AMD 5x86-133 was cheap but glorious? K5 glorious? Hell, K6 was arguably crap until K6-III, but the platform was still probably the worst in history and even then that CPU was really disappointing if you needed FPU speed.... Cheapness has incredible power with consumers though, especially when they haven't experienced the much faster, stabler but more expensive alternatives.

I think the inverted commas suggest he was kidding. That being said, I don't think there's a spot for them to revert into, they're too "fat" now to afford going back into the niche they were at the time. And much too indebted...

Their only chance is to be somewhere around Intel, not necessarily beating them(I stand by my point, without Intel themselves flopping badly, AMD has 0 chance of out-R&Ding or topping their execution, the size difference is just too great), but near enough to be the exotic alternative that makes you a Comandante Che Guevara in the battle against the evil corporations(I always wondered WTF is an economic entity that has an about 6 bln market cap, if not one of the aforementioned evil corporations ), not the exotic alternative that makes your friends laugh their arses off whilst your computer takes a few days to do a virus-scan or to complete the 3DMark CPU test. This is what AMD was before the one hit wonder that the K7 was.

Arguably, the great issue with them was breaking the mold that brought them success in the first place...this is not about Ruiz the evil dude who did this and that, pinning the current state of things only on Ruiz is beyond silly. FWIW, I think he's an astute businessman instead of the noob forumites who can hardly balance their income with their expenses in order to get burgers
paint him as. The entire head team at AMD failed to adapt their silver bullet(newish tech, the overemphasis on true-quad core, IMC and so on) to a changing market, they tried to stick with what brought them unexpected success with the K7 and K8, whilst neglecting that Intel was pretty much out of it's evolutionary dead-end and was slowly awakening.

[Sobek]

I just built my first Intel based system since waaayyyy back when I used a Celery 1.3T.

Doomed. Dooooooomed. Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-

I hope AMD can come up with something better-er sometime soon. These Intels overclock easy, but I absolutely hate not having some fat chipset to install big, modified and/or custom drivers for. That and the same day I built this system, both the Intel & Gigabyte websites were down / crawling at sub-dialup speeds... Bad omen anyone?

The idea of nothing but INF files for drivers is just wierd.

[Fox5]

Originally Posted by Sobek

I just built my first Intel based system since waaayyyy back when I used a Celery 1.3T.

Doomed. Dooooooomed. Dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-

I hope AMD can come up with something better-er sometime soon. These Intels overclock easy, but I absolutely hate not having some fat chipset to install big, modified and/or custom drivers for. That and the same day I built this system, both the Intel & Gigabyte websites were down / crawling at sub-dialup speeds... Bad omen anyone?

The idea of nothing but INF files for drivers is just wierd.

The weirder thing is you probably don't even need those INFs.

But yeah, Intel is killing AMD in the high and mid range in a way that it hasn't since the K6. On the plus side, Athlon X2s don't perform bad anyway, so if you wanna pick up a cpu + motherboard for a total of under $100, you can do it and still have a fairly up to date computer once overclocked.

[MTd2]

DAAMIT, the Necromancer


AMD plans to keep "Brisbane" around, releases new chips based on it

Things at AMD may have gone from bad to worse with the lackluster Phenom launch in late November. Not only did Phenom fail to appeal to professional reviewers, but the company ended up removing one third of its CPU lineup just after the big day.

Last week AMD CEO Hector Ruiz vowed that the company would stop hemorrhaging cash and return to profitability soon. "That is our number one goal right now," Ruiz said in a conference in Bangalore.

Making a profit at AMD apparently means refocusing on its older K8 architecture. The company will introduce eleven 65nm K8 processors over the next two quarters. By comparison: AMD launched two quad-core K10 Phenom processors in November with three more scheduled over the next two quarters. Two tri-core Phenom processors will follow in March 2008.

Essentially, AMD will move any remaining Athlon 64 processors from the 90nm node to the 65nm node, with a few new frequency and TDP variations.

The AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+ will be the first to jump on the new 65nm K8 bandwagon with a 65W TDP. The previous Windsor-based chip of the same featured an 89-Watt TDP. AMD will also add 100 MHz to the core frequency of the Athlon 64 X2 5600+, now rated at 2.9 GHz. Total L2 cache will be halved in the move to the Brisbane core, and the updated Athlon 64 X2 5600+ chips will feature only 1MB of L2 cache. Availability of these processors is scheduled for Q1 2008.

AMD's higher-end Athlon 64 X2 6400+ and Athlon 64 X2 6000+ will both be discontinued.

AMD will also update its "Energy Efficient" series and will release three new chips, the AMD Athlon 4850e, Athlon 4450e, and Athlon 4050e in Q2 2008. All of the new offerings will be based on AMD's Brisbane core and will feature a 45-Watt thermal envelope. AMD's current energy efficient "BE-2xxx" series will be phased out at that time. Respectively, the new chips will run at 2.5GHz, 2.3GHz and 2.1GHz.

All new Brisbane chips will be based on the Socket AM2 interface. These processors are compatible with AMD's AM2+ socket designated for Phenom processors

http://www.dailytech.com/AMD+Resurre...rticle9899.htm

EDIT.: ARS remembers a few things:

One other thing to keep in mind is that while Phenom's current problems undoubtedly have something to do with the firm's renewed interest in K8, a transition from 90nm to full 65nm production was virtually guaranteed at some point. Starting in the first quarter of 2008, AMD's Fab 30 will undergo a complete facility upgrade, including a shift to 300mm Savewafers and 45nm process technology. All of AMD's 90nm CPUs are currently produced in Fab 30, and although the facility will continue to produce processors while under construction, its 90nm production lines obviously aren't going to stay open forever.

It's in AMD's best interests to move production of the K8 series over to 65nm, regardless of Phenom's competitive status, but it's unfortunate that K10's current situation paints the act with an air of desperation. Ultimately, there's not much AMD can do to improve K8's performance vs. Conroe or Penryn—and focusing on power efficiency can only take the company so far.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/hard...-lease-on-life

[Fox5]

Heh, well it looks like they're just going to compete on price since they can't compete on performance then. Athlon X2s should start getting quite cheap as they scale down in size and cut down L2 cache.

[ShaidarHaran]

Originally Posted by Fox5

Heh, well it looks like they're just going to compete on price since they can't compete on performance then. Athlon X2s should start getting quite cheap as they scale down in size and cut down L2 cache.

"Athlon X2s should start getting quite cheap"

Start? Have you checked prices recently? The X2 line is already ridiculously cheap, even the high-end 90nm variants.

[Fox5]

Originally Posted by ShaidarHaran

"Athlon X2s should start getting quite cheap"

Start? Have you checked prices recently? The X2 line is already ridiculously cheap, even the high-end 90nm variants.

I'm aware of that, I should have clarified that I meant production costs. If AMD's prices are going to have to be considerably under Intel's, they might as well go with whatever is the cheapest to produce. Then again, a good portion of the x2 line is already under $100, but it's looking like phenom will be around to that price range soon enough if they don't get performance straightened out.

[RobertR1]

AMD is certainly hurting. Their market cap is at 4.9billion now and their shares the lowest in the past 52weeks. Last I recall, they also owed a fair bit, no?

All this would be fine if they something promising on the horizon. Intel will wipe the floor with them in cpu performance and Nvidia is doing the same on the GPU side of things.

Having had Ati/AMD since about 2004, I recently switched to an Intel Q6600/8800GTX setup. Tried as I may, AMD/ATI simply had nothing to offer as competition.

I expect AMD shares to keep dropping for the foreseeable future and hopefully at somepoint they can pull some magic and become competitive. We all benefit from the competition and for that, we need a heatly AMD/ATi. Here's hoping...........

[MTd2]

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/St...3&tof=15&frt=2

[Geeforcer]

Originally Posted by MTd2

http://messages.finance.yahoo.com/St...3&tof=15&frt=2

Yahoo Investor Message board? They are only good for entertainment.

[hoho]

Originally Posted by Fox5

I'm aware of that, I should have clarified that I meant production costs. If AMD's prices are going to have to be considerably under Intel's, they might as well go with whatever is the cheapest to produce.

Majority of desktop x2's were produced on 65nm and their manufacturing price cannot drop any more. Only in the high-end where there were no 65nm x2's before (>2.7GHz) manufacturing prices will drop.

[silent_guy]

Originally Posted by Geeforcer

Yahoo Investor Message board? They are only good for entertainment.

Not that I don't agree with your point, but speaking from a lot of experience: it's often the best place to find out about layoff's at other sites of your company, long before management tells you about it!

[MTd2]

[...]

A quick survey of AMD partners indicated that customers with specialized needs such as Appro and Los Altos, Calif.-based Liquid Computing were having Opteron orders filled, contrary to The Tech Report source.

Keith Millar, VP of product management at Liquid Computing, said his company's relatively low-volume processor requirements and position as a leader in a cutting-edge technology space gave it a special relationship with AMD.

"AMD's been treating us pretty good. We're in a different situation than HP or Dell because we're the leading provider of fabric computing architecture, which is a disruptor technology, and our volume needs aren't nearly as high. So we get the love and attention from AMD and we get fast-tracked," Millar said.

[...]
"There's one and only one reason this happens [DAAMIT delays] -- time-to-market pressures being placed ahead of engineering. And when it happens, the vendors deserve every single bit of the negative publicity they get," de Raadt told ChannelWeb.

"Modern processors don't all go into gamer machines. People need this stuff to work."

http://www.crn.com/hardware/204701424?cid=topicalFeed

ALSO: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12...on_delays_amd/


Everyone that buys a quad core is a gamer

[vertex_shader]

Any information available about AMD DX10 discrete graphics market share?

[hoho]

Originally Posted by vertex_shader

Any information available about AMD DX10 discrete graphics market share?

Not much of a statistics but I don't know any better: http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

There entire HD series seem to have around 1.5% marketshare vs ~13% for 8x00 series

[Tim Murray]

After reading TR's benchmarks of Phenom with the BIOS fix, I'm a lot more interested in the Linux kernel fix, since that supposedly has a <1% performance penalty (just introduces a few extra page faults).

But then again, that seems to have the disclaimers of "Oh God, if you use this, your machine may explode or open a portal to 2873, where the Insect-Lords of Kron rule Earth with an iron fist."

[vertex_shader]

Originally Posted by hoho

Not much of a statistics but I don't know any better: http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

There entire HD series seem to have around 1.5% marketshare vs ~13% for 8x00 series

Thanks, Valve survey not really informative.
JPR not have any information (or i not find).

[nicolasb]

Originally Posted by MTd2

We're in a different situation than HP or Dell because we're the leading provider of fabric computing architecture, which is a disruptor technology

Shields up! Go to red alert!

[MTd2]

The problem is not only the TLB bug, but also the low yields. TLB bug is just a lame excuse to justify the abscence in the desktop market. They judge that their reputation must be higher with the high performance maket than with the general public, so they send everything they manage to produce to those costumers.

[MTd2]

The Register has received reports of virtualization software slowing by as much as 50 per cent.

We've also confirmed through various channels that it's virtualization code which, in fact, takes the biggest performance hit as a result of AMD's bug cure.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12...nchmarks_down/

[Fox5]

Originally Posted by MTd2

The Register has received reports of virtualization software slowing by as much as 50 per cent.

We've also confirmed through various channels that it's virtualization code which, in fact, takes the biggest performance hit as a result of AMD's bug cure.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12...nchmarks_down/

Ouch, goodbye opteron.

[BRiT]

Originally Posted by Fox5

Ouch, goodbye opteron.

Double Ouch... The 13-50% lower performance comes with a 14-21% increase in heat generation.

And we round out the woeful news threesome with word that AMD has adjusted the peak power consumption figures on 2.0GHz+ Opterons much higher. Company documents show AMD moving from TDP (thermal design power) levels of 68W, 95W and 120W for various flavors of its chips to 79W, 115W and 137W.

[dizietsma]

What would Ned Flanders say at a time like this I wonder ? It would probably include the word "diddly" in it I think.

[MTd2]

We wanted to share the last details of the Core 2 Duo, 45nm Wolfdale chips and to reveal their prices. The cheapest of them with 6MB clocked at 2.66MHz with FSB 1333 and LGA 775 packaging, branded as E8200 will sell for as little as $159.

The second in this line E8400 has the same specification but works at 3.0GHz and it will sell for incredibly cheap $179.

The top dual core at 45nm works at 3.16GHz and it will sell for $258. These chips will replace the existing Core 2 Duo Merom based E6x50 series and we are sure that they will overclock well.

http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?op...4602&Itemid=35

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Anyone know what this is about? The implication is that AMD is about to pull a rabbit out of a hat and it's ass out of the fire.