AMD Analyst Day - Lots of Info

[3dilettante]

I'm probably taking the same course as the vast majority of 32-bit XP users and waiting for when Vista 64 has fewer headaches than Vista 32 which in turn must have fewer headaches than XP 32.

So I'll probably have enough address space for apps that could use quad-fire in about 2 or 3 years.

I don't see myself making that transition this autumn when I get a new system.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Personally I did this immediately on my own PC. I tried a 32-bit beta once, to see how it was, then on the day of release decided that I'd go fully 64-bit. Once I'd gotten the install done I can't say that I've had any issues at all - other than the indexer slowing things down until I turned it off.

 

[Tim Murray]

Personally I did this immediately on my own PC. I tried a 32-bit beta once, to see how it was, then on the day of release decided that I'd go fully 64-bit. Once I'd gotten the install done I can't say that I've had any issues at all - other than the indexer slowing things down until I turned it off.

Been running 64-bit Vista since January. It is fine. The rest of you are ninnies. My complaints are basically limited to NVIDIA not releasing PerfHUD betas for 64-bit OSes...

 

[chavvdarrr]

Been running 64-bit Vista since January. It is fine. The rest of you are ninnies. My complaints are basically limited to NVIDIA not releasing PerfHUD betas for 64-bit OSes...

HAHA
Just tell me what hapens when you try to copy 1GB of data through the network from your Vista machine... the transfer really flies, no? Currently running 32-bit Vista, for good or for bad some things just don't work in 64-bit .... but so far this is one of the least impressive new-Windows version launches

 

[Sound_Card]

Lot's of disclosure? If anything, it created more qustions to be answered than qustions answered.

 

[Twinkie]

I think R600 is a great pice of tech. But 3 things are screwing it up.

1) Dev relations seem to keep missing the boat on brand new releases meaning that initially, R600 is screwed up on the big name games. They probably fix this quickly but you generally don't hear much about the fixes, just the initial screw up.

2) Drivers still seem a bit immature, i.e. some games where R580 still performs better, poor AA performance etc...

3) G80 was so spectacularly good that unless ATI produced a miracle, anything they came up with was going to look average by comparison. I think this same thing afflicted NV30 actually. It was practically twice as fast as the already extremely powerful 4600Ti and came with a far more advanced featureset. Had it been released without competition 50Mhz slower it would have been relaticely cool, quiet and been hailed as an excellent performer (but like G80, not so good at the next gen DX). However in light of R300's even better performance forcing them to raise clocks/noise/heat and R300's relatively good DX9 performance aswell, it was hailed as a total failiure.

However as a standalone product, it was pretty good IMO. Don't get me wrong though, you can't look at it in isolation so im not defending NV. Im just saying that it wasn't necessarily bad, it was just a lot worse than the amazing GPU ATI came up with. If R300 had simply been average and NV30 was still much worse, THEN it would have been bad.

Agreed but people are missing the important key to ATi's failure as a COMPANY economically.

They may have won the battles (e.g benchmarks, superior feature set etc) but they are losing the war (margins, production cost etc etc). Id say they lost the war since AMD bought them out.

For e.g People (hardware junkies/enthusiasts) say the R580 was great and so do i. But the reality is that ATi killed the margins on the video cards with the R580. G71 on the other hand was cheaper to produce and in "mass" quantities (almost double the number per wafer). Yet from my memory nVIDIA hardly droped the prices meaning margins were very good.

Theres other numerous examples of ATi's mid range failing for almost 3 generations now. (X700, X1600.. and now X2600)

Looking at the latest market share in the discrete GPU segement.. nVIDIA is almost catching up to Intel!

 

[vertex_shader]

Theres other numerous examples of ATi's mid range failing for almost 3 generations now. (X700, X1600.. and now X2600)

There is a big difference in x700,x1600 vs hd2600 fail, this round NV fail too with the 8600 series.

 

[Richthofen]

There is a big difference in x700,x1600 vs hd2600 fail, this round NV fail too with the 8600 series.

Still the 8600 series is better than their competitor's products. So again the bigger failure is on ATI's side.
It does not help ATI that Nvidia did not do such a good job in the mainstream like in the past when they again suck even more.

 

[PeterAce]

This is why I purchased the Vista Ultimate Retail (you get both x86 and x64 discs in the box).

 

[Aerows]

Still the 8600 series is better than their competitor's products. So again the bigger failure is on ATI's side.
It does not help ATI that Nvidia did not do such a good job in the mainstream like in the past when they again suck even more.

Sadly enough...

Interesting stuff on the Inq concerning the Phenom 3.0 demo. Personally, I am a lot more optimistic after seeing that than I was the week before hand. It seems, though, that there were some sites <ahem>DT<ahem> that cast some doubt that they were actually running at that speed - which is nonsense and many other sites stated that they physically used the boxes themselves.

It was an excellent sign that on stock cooling they were at 3.0Ghz. It is a very huge shame that there were attempts to cloud up and rain on AMD when they have good news to report for a change. I'll be the first to say I've been disappointed in AMD lately, but that was LOW, and extremely unprofessional of the websites involved.

 

[AlexV]

Sadly enough...

Interesting stuff on the Inq concerning the Phenom 3.0 demo. Personally, I am a lot more optimistic after seeing that than I was the week before hand. It seems, though, that there were some sites <ahem>DT<ahem> that cast some doubt that they were actually running at that speed - which is nonsense and many other sites stated that they physically used the boxes themselves.

It was an excellent sign that on stock cooling they were at 3.0Ghz. It is a very huge shame that there were attempts to cloud up and rain on AMD when they have good news to report for a change. I'll be the first to say I've been disappointed in AMD lately, but that was LOW, and extremely unprofessional of the websites involved.

Dunno, they managed to fubar enough by themselves, without help from evil sites. What's the point of showing this, without any kind of benchies?So yes, a single sample can hit 3.0Ghz on standard cooling, and can run COJ whilst doing so...that tells little really, single samples have failed to be representative for entire product batches before. But if they were to show some mouthwatering numbers, well then, that would've been something else.

 

[Aerows]

It told us little (except that there are some samples floating around that hit 3.0Ghz without straining too badly - that is at least a positive sign), but there was no need to lie about it. If you aren't at an event, don't report a bunch of things so that it seems like you were - particularly if the things reported aren't true. That just totally torpedoed his credibility.

Personally? I'm going to take the 3.0Ghz on stock cooling, and some reports of great gameplay with that CPU from other sites as promising. God knows AMD needs all of the positive light it can stand in! If at Christmas time they have a Phenom at a reasonable price/performance ratio, it will likely be under my Christmas tree (or at least decorated with twinkling lights - LED lights shining merrily from one of my many case fans ).

 

[Geo]

Personally I did this immediately on my own PC. I tried a 32-bit beta once, to see how it was, then on the day of release decided that I'd go fully 64-bit. Once I'd gotten the install done I can't say that I've had any issues at all - other than the indexer slowing things down until I turned it off.

I ran 32-bit for a couple months, and then noticing that folks like you and Tim and Rys hadn't lost any limbs, went to x64. Tho I seem to recall you did have an install issue. . .

And I picked my laptop in part based on it shipping with Vista x64 to make sure that the drivers were all x64 and the manufacturer would not be able to weasel out of support, as they might try to do if I loaded x64 myself after receiving it.

 

[Kaotik]

HAHA
Just tell me what hapens when you try to copy 1GB of data through the network from your Vista machine... the transfer really flies, no? Currently running 32-bit Vista, for good or for bad some things just don't work in 64-bit .... but so far this is one of the least impressive new-Windows version launches

This goes offtopic, but the slow file transfers are plaguing only part of the systems, and there has been some "performance and reliability" patch-beta-stuff which should fix that (though, it also screws up disabling driver signature/integrity check on x64's, except for F8 method, so it's not an option for many)

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I wouldn't call it screwing up disabling driver signing so much as Microsoft trying to remain true to their word before Vista launched that Vista 64 would be a secure platform and require all drivers to be signed.

Personally, it has zero impact on me so I'm not worried about.

I actually did things backwards from many of you. I installed Vista 64 first with the plan to wipe the hard drive and install Vista x86 at the first sign of trouble.

Only problem with that? Vista 64 installed and ran flawlessly. And all my equipment, including printer (thank you Samsung), had 64 bit drivers available. And then in a wonderful convergence of fate, memory prices were cheap so I stuck 8 gigs in there. My laptop runs fine with 1 gig of memory, but I do alot more on the desktop.

So, I've been a happy Vista 64 user ever since then and absolutely can't stand to use Windows XP anymore (god I didn't realize how absolutely crappy it's graphics display engine was). Although my home file and printer server is running XP, but I only access that through RDP, so no biggie right now. With my only disappointment being the absolutely slow network file copying with large files and directories (even with indexing disabled). However the upcoming reliability and performance patches from MS are supposed to take care of that.

Best thing is. When a poorly programmed game crashes (very infrequently compared to XP on the same machine), it doesn't take the OS down with it like it does in XP.

I just wish Microsoft had the balls to release only a 64 bit version. Although considering corporations wouldn't have liked that in the least I'm not surprised that they release a 32 bit version also, sigh.

Regards,
SB

 

[pjbliverpool]

I just wish Microsoft had the balls to release only a 64 bit version. Although considering corporations wouldn't have liked that in the least I'm not surprised that they release a 32 bit version also, sigh.

Perhaps just the home premium version being limited to 64bit would have been a good idea. Possibly the basic and ultra versions aswell.

 

[chavvdarrr]

With my only disappointment being the absolutely slow network file copying with large files and directories (even with indexing disabled). However the upcoming reliability and performance patches from MS are supposed to take care of that.

What, so soon? Vista was available last November, so they'll fix the issua for less than a year?! Good God, these guys are really fast
Any idea how painful is installing Vista in a corporate where there are different kinds of PC configurations?
"where is my sound?" - sorry no signed driver
KMS - it took'em 6 months to make it work as expected
etc, etc
Vista is sooo unpolished, it gets me back to .... dunno, 3.0 ? 98ME ? 95OSR2 and the boot bug when after booting to DOS one started searching his boot floppy?
And seriously - plugging 8GB in a desktop and then claiming that Vista works fine , for what? for few pretty pictures? Or watching your desktop moving? Oh, i'd like to see a commercial - an employee who stays and watches the movement of the desktop, then a writing on the screen: "Vista, the most effective OS , ever"