[trinibwoy]

Better products from AMD would help but that's not the only source of competition. Intel is also competing with their own prior generation chips which in some cases provide stronger competition than AMDs parts.

[AlphaWolf]

Intel is competing a lot with the general lack of need for a faster CPU.

[Davros]

Just some info I've been using 12.1 for 3 days and not a single lockup or problem
I was beginning to think I had a hardware fault with 12.3/12.4

[CarstenS]

Originally Posted by AlphaWolf

Intel is competing a lot with the general lack of need for a faster CPU.

Whenever I do some image editing in GIMP, I tend to think otherwise. Rather, I feel the need for much more single-thread performance ...

[swaaye]

Originally Posted by CarstenS

Whenever I do some image editing in GIMP, I tend to think otherwise. Rather, I feel the need for much more single-thread performance ...

Have you not noticed all of those AMD Brazos/Zacate 14-17" notebooks that have become rather commonplace at the big box stores? I don't think people even notice how slow that hardware is. Web pages still pop up pretty snappy-like, after all.

For that matter, I'm typing this on my EeePC 900 which is a 900 MHz Celeron M and it's more than adequate for such stuff even for me with my 4.3 GHz i5 SB at home.

[Albuquerque]

Originally Posted by swaaye

Have you not noticed all of those AMD Brazos/Zacate 14-17" notebooks that have become rather commonplace at the big box stores? I don't think people even notice how slow that hardware is. Web pages still pop up pretty snappy-like, after all.

Yup. I gave my father-in-law an old Thinkpad X31 (1.3Ghz Banias platform) with 2GB of ram and a 160Gb 5400RPM IDE(!) drive running Windows 7 (without aero, of course.) He found it performed as well or even better than his five year newer Dell Inspiron E1525 -- mostly due to comparing a clean Win7 install against the bloated mess that came with his Dell.

Most of your "Joe Average Consumer" types hit the performance ceiling several years ago. That same father in law has a (comparatively) beastly Q6600 desktop rig in his basement which he uses for connecting his firewire-equipped handicam and converting home movies to DVD format. He finds it absolutely adequate, although upgrading to a cheap i5 rig would probably quadruple his performance. But he doesn't care; he just lets it sit down there and run while he does other errands.

Both of my own parents are the same way, but my step father is more of a performance hound as he is an Adobe power user and 'gets it'. His most recent rig was an i7-2600k and 16GB of ram that I taught him to overclock, and he loves that damned thing to death compared to his prior Q9650 with 8GB of ram.

[swaaye]

Yeah I am surrounded by people who are happy with their old hardware. They get emotionally attached to it y'know. A friend's aunt is still rocking a hand-me-down Abit NF7-S v2 w/ Athlon XP 2500+ for playing Pogo Java games. I've been maintaining various gag-worthy 845P/G Northwood P4s too.

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by swaaye

Yeah I am surrounded by people who are happy with their old hardware. They get emotionally attached to it y'know. A friend's aunt is still rocking a hand-me-down Abit NF7-S v2 w/ Athlon XP 2500+ for playing Pogo Java games. I've been maintaining various gag-worthy 845P/G Northwood P4s too.

Funny, my father still uses an old Abit NF7-S v2 with some Athlon XP (can't remember which one) as his primary PC. He even has a spare NF7-S, a spare Athlon XP and maybe some other parts so he can replace them without having to reinstall all his software (of which he has quite a bit).

[Silent_Buddha]

Haha...

Same. Up until a couple years ago one of my Aunts was still using Windows ME on an Athlon XP machine. My other aunt was still quite happily running Win95 on an ancient Pentium. And I only just recently upgraded my father from an old P4 Northwood to one of the first gen Core 2 Duo's.

Regards,
SB

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

There's a lot of people that just don't need new stuff. What they have is "good enough" for browsing the web, sending emails or typing the occasional letter, which is all they do. There's even people out there who only buy a new PC because they don't know how to repair an old PC or do a format/reinstall.

[Alexko]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.

There's a lot of people that just don't need new stuff. What they have is "good enough" for browsing the web, sending emails or typing the occasional letter, which is all they do. There's even people out there who only buy a new PC because they don't know how to repair an old PC or do a format/reinstall.

I think there are a lot of people like that. You often hear people complaining that their PC is too slow even though they were perfectly happy with it when they bought it, and are not doing anything new with it.

Sometimes, of course, it's because of a real hardware problem, but usually it's just a ridiculously bloated OS, and perhaps a few pounds of dust clogging up the cooling system and making the computer throttle all the time.

[CarstenS]

Originally Posted by swaaye

Have you not noticed all of those AMD Brazos/Zacate 14-17" notebooks that have become rather commonplace at the big box stores? I don't think people even notice how slow that hardware is. Web pages still pop up pretty snappy-like, after all.

For that matter, I'm typing this on my EeePC 900 which is a 900 MHz Celeron M and it's more than adequate for such stuff even for me with my 4.3 GHz i5 SB at home.

Yeah, that's probably related directly to the user's typing speed. *SCNR* I own a netbook myself and am very/painfully aware how sluggish they can be. I am, as you probably know, also very fond of older hardware and would be the last person to throw some of it away carelessly. But for some tasks I just don't see the point why I would have to wait ten or more seconds for a single filter to be applied to one of my digital fotos while half of my CPU just does nothing other than... wait.

And yes, I am also aware that commercial programs like photoshop are much more multicore friendly. But frankly spoken, I prefer shelling out 300 Dollars for a new processor to 3,000 dollars for a software suite.

[swaaye]

I think you misinterpreted me/us. I certainly wasn't saying that an E450 is all dreamy for heavy duty image processing. But that's not what most people do with their PCs. The people who need the horsepower usually know it.

[Davros]

Still no problems since I ditched 12.4 and went back to 12.1
except this looks strange (does it happen with 12.4)


Oh, and nvidia lightning demo has never worked with amd


*not worth starting a thread for

[Grall]

Originally Posted by Davros

except this looks strange (does it happen with 12.4)

What are you trying to ask/explain? That your GPU idles with a quarter load and doesn't enter idle clocks, or that it draws zero power despite a quarter load, what?

Oh, and nvidia lightning demo has never worked with amd

I'm thinking, has any nvidia demo ever worked with anything else? Isn't it routine for them to check for NV hardware first in your box?

[Davros]

Nvidia bubble demo works fine with amd

ps: 25% load zero power how is it running using no electricity ?

[Grall]

I don't think that indicator is working at all. It's not registring anything on my box either regardless of the GPU load.

[swaaye]

That's Powertune. 0% means it's set to enforce the stock power limit.

[Grall]

AMD behind its ludicrous schedule yet again with the 12.5:s. Just go bimonthly already for chrissakes.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Originally Posted by Grall

AMD behind its ludicrous schedule yet again with the 12.5:s. Just go bimonthly already for chrissakes.

Didn't they say it's 12 releases a year, not necessarily one a month? If you don't like it, just install every second one.

CatCreator tweeted the 12.5s will be released this week, so that's usually a Wednesday or a Thursday.

[Dooby]

Wonder if the extra workload bug I'm having in 12.x so far will be fixed.

[Grall]

Originally Posted by Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.

Didn't they say it's 12 releases a year, not necessarily one a month?

First time I heard that, but that just makes even less sense than one release every single month.

If you don't like it, just install every second one.

Heh, I already update wayy less than that, maybe 3-4 times per year, unless AMD fucks up and forces me to download 1-3 hotfixes to get certain game running properly as has happened much too often for my own comfort.

CatCreator tweeted the 12.5s will be released this week

Thanks. I don't pay attention to tweeter, I'm an old-fashioned kind of guy where I visit the website itself to see if the new version is up.

[swaaye]

It's best to wait for a thread to show up here and listen for problem reports. 12.4 is certainly not trouble free, for example (depending on which Radeon you are running).

[CarstenS]

Originally Posted by Grall

AMD behind its ludicrous schedule yet again with the 12.5:s. Just go bimonthly already for chrissakes.

Seems like you've been granted your wish...

http://www.rage3d.com/board/showpost...6&postcount=26

Thumbs up for that decision.

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Ugh. Now it will be switching between different hotfix drivers depending what game you want to play. They'll be breaking one thing to fix another like Nvidia.

Bear in mind it's been posted into a bit of a joke thread, so I'll wait for the official announcement. The poster did say "starting with 12.5 which won't exist", which is a bit of a weird way of putting after Catcreator tweeted 12.5 would be released this week.