A Few Notes from the ATI CC

[Geeforcer]

If you followed the stock market in the last couple of years, you'd know that the case is not distorted at all: large, well-established companies with steady profits stagnant growth were deemed unattractive, while everyone who could get airtime on CNBC was touting high-growth stocks. IT DID happen; and we all know how it ended.

I don't see that "huge" in his text, in fact your reply doesn't really seem to fit his statement that closely. I also wonder at how helpful the "Boy, am I glad" comment was.

I am sorry that it didn't see fitting to you, but it seems perfectly appropriate to me. Speaking of condescending, pleased do avoid lecturing on how to post and which words to use in the future, thank you.

 

[demalion]

Well, you both could have just said "Yes" and saved some storage space.

It seems my opinion on how useful the elements of your post are is condescension, and conveniently therefore I am in no position to offer it or else I'm guilty of the same thing. I thought my not using dripping sarcasm and implying some deficiency of your profession or intelligence sort of differentiated it, but I guess it is just another thing I'm not qualified to speak on, right? Yes, this is where I let you go and have the last word, feel free.

 

[Althornin]

Are we headed for a condescension and deprecation contest for the rest of the thread? If so, can we nip it in the bud now?

Oh right, he throws stones, then wants peace when he gets pegged in the forehead with one.

I love the pathetic "You dont know what you are talking about idiot and you should shut up!" standard retort of the Beyond3D boards these days.

Ahh well, I suppose it must be fun to slap the goggles on and fight every losing battle.

Um, what?
like 4 different people are involved in this, and you are treating it like all your opposition is from one person.

 

[tamattack]

First, what growth do you have in mind: profit, revenue or some more obscure criteria, like market share? A company posting quarterly loses as opposed to profit for same quarter year ago does not exhibit profit growth, so what are we talking about here?

Growth usually applies to sales. Everything else follows, provided major mismanagement (eg: expenses) does not occur.

Having no growth prospects is much worse than having a loss.

So let me get this straight, a hypothetical company earning $3-3.3 a year with single digit growth is "much worse" then a company growing 25-30% annually while taking huge looses?

You're taking my statements out of context. A better example would be a hypothetical company earning $1 per year per share, with no growth prospects. This is a losing proposition because annual inflation will keep eroding that $1 ad infinitum.

Compare with a hypothetical company with a current loss of $0.15 per share, but with sales growth of 30%, which is expected to translate into a profit next year of $1 per share and continue growing at 30%.

Now which would you prefer?

Boy, am I glad I didn't have you as my analyst for the last couple of years.

I've been in gold for the past year, and doing quite well, thank you very much.

 

[tamattack]

Are we headed for a condescension and deprecation contest for the rest of the thread? If so, can we nip it in the bud now?

I didn't intend to ignite any flames... and I am attempting to temper my responses to avoid exactly that (even though I'm tempted).

 

[tamattack]

Oh right, he throws stones, then wants peace when he gets pegged in the forehead with one.

Didn't mean to specifically 'throw stones' at you... just objected to your dismissal of Sabastian's post based solely on profit. And I don't want peace so much as I'm interested in accuracy.

I love the pathetic "You dont know what you are talking about idiot and you should shut up!" standard retort of the Beyond3D boards these days.

Funny... that's a pretty close description of what you wrote in your post to Sabastian... Regardless, that's not what I meant, and I don't want you to 'shut up'.

See, here's a Happy Face for you:

 

[Geeforcer]

Tamattack,

Some of the things I said were harsh, and for that I apologize. Its just that some of what you said sounded awfully close (as it seems inadvertently so) to the exuberant rhetoric I heard so much over the last 5 years and that lead most people who subscribed to it into ruin. As an analyst you probably witnessed it first-hand numerous times.

 

[Nagorak]

the truth is motherboard and memory have so little impact on performance

I agree with most of what you say about the average joe user not needing more than a decent machine (600Mhz p3 would serve them more than fine), but this part of your post is wrong.

I disagree... Via KT333 supposedly have much better memory bandwidth than the AMD 760. Bottomline is you barely see the difference in games. Especially in newer games like UT2003 you just end up being graphics card limited.

At most slower memory "brings your CPU down a few notches". But then again with CPUs so cheap, it's easier to just buy a new CPU and put it in an older board than spend more money buying a new board and then having to deal with the potential for stability problems.

Even the difference between PC133 and DDR memory isn't really that huge. I'm not saying it doesn't play a part, but you'll never see as big a jump in performance by changing out your memory and motherboard than buying a new graphics card. Possibly about the same as upgrading your CPU, assuming you weren't way behind the curve to begin with.

 

[Grall]

Nagorak:

The difference wasn't huge way back when DDR was new, or at the CPU speeds we had then. Now that both AMD and iNTEL are (in one case, considerably) above 2GHz and we're having third and fourth generation DDR chipsets/memory controllers, an old SDRAM-based mobo is just going to kill the performance of a modern processor. That's a fact, even with Athlons.


*G*

 

[Bigus Dickus]

I'd guess that the difference between a top end Athlon or P4 with SDR SDRAM and DDR SDRAM could be 20% or so.

Pretty big difference. That's just my guess though, I'll look and see if I can find any relevant benchmarks. It's hard to find reviews of top end CPU's paired with bottom of the line platforms... expcept maybe the P4 on SDR, but those are usually Celeron tests now.

 

[tamattack]

Tamattack,

Some of the things I said were harsh, and for that I apologize. Its just that some of what you said sounded awfully close (as it seems inadvertently so) to the exuberant rhetoric I heard so much over the last 5 years and that lead most people who subscribed to it into ruin. As an analyst you probably witnessed it first-hand numerous times.

Geeforcer: no problem, and no apologies necessary.

I was trying to be very precise in my statements (and perhaps I did not succeed), but I can see now how you may have interpreted that as "exuberant rhetoric".

I was surprised by the 'intensity' of your reaction, but let's let bygones be bygones. Here's a smiley for you too!

 

[tamattack]

It seems my opinion on how useful the elements of your post are is condescension, and conveniently therefore I am in no position to offer it or else I'm guilty of the same thing. I thought my not using dripping sarcasm and implying some deficiency of your profession or intelligence sort of differentiated it, but I guess it is just another thing I'm not qualified to speak on, right? Yes, this is where I let you go and have the last word, feel free.

demalion: I, for one, did appreciate your comments, as they allowed me to step back and temper my responses. I'm not interested in flame wars (although they are fun to read sometimes ) and I credit you for helping me keep a level head in my responses (well, I think I did anyways...)

 

[WaltC]

Paper launches and Barton delays can't have helped AMD's position either. A lot of enthusiasts switched back to Intel this year.

I'm still debating whether to pursue my 8kHA+ to its natural end with a 2600XP when available or give up and start again with Intel at least it might eliminare any 8x AGP issues

I don't recall that Intel's paper launch of the P4 2.8 hurt it very much... In fact, I think these are all "product announcments" as neither company claims to be shipping anything immediately when these announcments are made. It's curious why they bother to do it at all, as announcing a new speed grade or revision is going to ship in 30-60 days can't do either company any good for present sales--but Intel just has way more cash to burn.

I would definitely not recommend haste at this point. What you're hearing now is actually a lot of propaganda. I've talked to several people at length who have sucked up the "new Intel" line and rushed out bought what they thought would be these screamer Intel systems--only to be very disappointed that the performance was not what they'd been led to believe by the hype in comparison to the Athlon performance they abandoned, and the cost was a good deal higher than they were led to believe. I would wait for the smoke to clear and the piling on to stop and then see where things are. I think people tend to forget that it's taken Intel since 1999 to catch the Athlon in performance in the desktop market, and that only with the Northwood 2.53Ghz and up (I've been amazed at how quickly people forget.) I plan to wait at least 4-6 months before deciding whether to make such a switch--I want to see the real scoop on Hammer. I really want AMD to make it because I never want to see another $1300 Intel cpu again... But I'm not going to buy something just because of that. I'll see how things shake out going into the new year.

 

[Humus]

Especially in newer games like UT2003 you just end up being graphics card limited.

Actually, UT2003 is very much CPU limited. In fact, I tried the other day, got the almost same framerate in 800x600 as 1600x1200. Overclocking the CPU give noticable performance increase, overcloking the graphic card didn't offer much.

 

[Nagorak]

Especially in newer games like UT2003 you just end up being graphics card limited.

Actually, UT2003 is very much CPU limited. In fact, I tried the other day, got the almost same framerate in 800x600 as 1600x1200. Overclocking the CPU give noticable performance increase, overcloking the graphic card didn't offer much.

Yeah I take it back, my mistake.

 

[Randell]

I would definitely not recommend haste at this point. What you're hearing now is actually a lot of propaganda. I've talked to several people at length who have sucked up the "new Intel" line and rushed out bought what they thought would be these screamer Intel systems--only to be very disappointed that the performance was not what they'd been led to believe by the hype in comparison to the Athlon performance they abandoned, and the cost was a good deal higher than they were led to believe. I would wait for the smoke to clear and the piling on to stop and then see where things are.

I want to see the real scoop on Hammer. I really want AMD to make it because I never want to see another $1300 Intel cpu again... But I'm not going to buy something just because of that. I'll see how things shake out going into the new year.

yeah I've decided that my next CPU upgrade will be when the XP2600 hits about ~ £100. That will give me a noticable bump over my XP1600 and I can wait a while to see how Hammer performs/costs etc

HAving read all the reviews I'm quiet happy sticking with my current platform for now (PC2100 memory/Athlon)

 

[LeStoffer]

I would definitely not recommend haste at this point. What you're hearing now is actually a lot of propaganda. I've talked to several people at length who have sucked up the "new Intel" line and rushed out bought what they thought would be these screamer Intel systems--only to be very disappointed that the performance was not what they'd been led to believe by the hype in comparison to the Athlon performance they abandoned, and the cost was a good deal higher than they were led to believe. I would wait for the smoke to clear and the piling on to stop and then see where things are.

Why haste if you don't need to haste?

The main question is when you really feel you need that upgrade - and then how much you're willing to pay.

The next major interesting upgrade will be the P4 3.06 with (Hyper Threading) on a Dual Channel DDR intel chipset (E7205) come November. Both will be expensive (but at least you can reuse your DDR).

A nice Christmas present - if you can afford it.

I don't think we'll se the Athlon Barton before very early next year (January). That 512 Kbytes of level-2 cache might give up to 10 percent more performance, but who really knows besides AMD? Anyway Barton should top out at 3000+, so it probably won't trash the P4 3.06 HT.

Should give Athlon user a fairly nice and cheap speed boost.

Towards the very end of Q1 2003 we will finally see the Clawhammers which provide a boost of 25 percent over the current Athlons on a clock for clock basis. There is talk about a launch at 2.5GHz (and maybe a 3400+ rating).

Major new and interesting architecture, but it may not be a dramatic speed increase over the Barton. (25 percent?)

In the second half of 2003 Intel will launch they Prescott P4 on .09 proces with 1 MB level-2 cache which is tailored to work with their Springdale chipset - a Dual channel DDR on a 667MHz front side bus.

Obviously faster than the P4 3.06 HT + E7205 combo due sone, but probably not dramaticly so. (30+ percent?)

Right now all I know is that my R 9700 pokes at my Athlon 1800+ which it don't think is up to the job in the same way that I think.