Well as it appears I've truly good-and-derailed this thread, I suppose I might at least respond to some of this:
Doomtrooper said:
When AMD goes down, so does affordable X86 processing.
While I don't agree with the hyperbole of this statement, I completely agree with the sentiment. That's why in the post that started all of this I wrote
I said:
(Of course this is all a good thing insofar as it keeps AMD alive.)
To flesh that out a bit: it's a good thing that AMD has managed to reach price parity (on a Quantispeed = MHz basis) with Intel, because if they had to settle for their traditional price structure, AMD would be out of business by now. And that would be very bad for consumers, both because it would lessen price pressure on all x86 chips, and because it would deprive the world of the K8. Quantispeed, as it has been applied to the AXP, is a sham. But as a practical matter, I very much hope AMD will be able to get away with it long enough for a hopefully more accurate use of performance ratings to arise once Hammer hits full stride.
Mulciber said:
Althornin said:
1) Its midrange price/performance (which i think even DaveH will admit kicks the crap out of intels)
Actually I couldn't get him to!
Actually you never asked my opinion on the subject, unless you consider the 2400+ "midrange," in which case I'd say I demonstrated pretty conclusively that AMD's price/performance matchup there is weak at best. (That is, it is significantly slower than a 2.4 GHz P4 on 845PE, but costs ~$40 less; unless I brought in, say, 2.26 GHz P4 results, I'd say it depends where you want to be on the price/performance curve. Definitely no crap kicking at this level, in any case.)
Assuming Althornin defines "midrange" a bit lower than that (as I would), I tentatively agree. Up to about 2000+ or 2200+, the AXP would appear to match up quite nicely with the P4 in terms of price/performance. I can't really be more definitive than that, because it's been a long time since I've seen benchmarks at this performance level, and I've certainly never studied benches of this range of chips paired with today's chipsets and today's software.
If I were putting together a desktop to target this performance range (which I'm not), I would
definitely be strongly considering going AMD, although it would take a good deal of research and thought about my exact goals for the system before I chose either way. Let me point out, though, that--contrary to any insinuations of Intel fanboydom y'all might cast at me--
all other things being equal I would rather buy AMD than Intel, because I want to contribute to their staying in business, and because in my Corporate Moral Calculus their deceptive marketing of the present is balanced out by Intel's nasty anticompetitive behavior of the recent past. (More generally, watching the Intel-AMD wars very closely for the past 4 years has taught my CMC the sad but true lesson that all companies do bad things when they don't have a competitive product.)
But all other things are
not supposed to be equal; AMD is supposed to be the generic brand. As such, they should have a very clear, very substantial lead in price/performance across every market segment they compete in--which they in fact did have 2 years ago. The way it is now, it's like going to the grocery store and the supermarket's generic brand soda costs exactly the same as Coke! Or better yet: a few cents less for 2-liter bottles, and a few cents
more for cans! Now, it may turn out that you either really like the supermarket, or really like their soda, or really dislike Coke, in any of which cases you can obviously buy the supermarket brand. But the point is, everyone would agree that that's not the way the generic brand is supposed to be priced.
Mulciber said:
He still thinks the difference between AMD and intel is something of "cryix-territory" preportion!
The Cyrix comment was very clearly and specifically restricted to the performance gap between a 3200+ Barton and a 3.2 GHz (800 FSB) P4. (And I think it implied but in case not: each using their respective best-available chipsets.) It was very obviously
not referring to AMD and Intel's entire lineups.
Do you really have a reading comprehension problem or are you rather so insecure that you have to purposely misquote anyone who proves you wrong?
