Does this mean AMD will never go away?

[Treason]

I used to be a nVidia shareholder so I admit that I am a biased fanboi.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16423/1/

This story caught my eye. A couple of years ago forum member AthlonXP1800 predicted the bankruptcy and destruction of ATi and it seemed to be going that way. I wish it would have happened so nVidia could dominate the entire market. However, after reading this story, the author claims that Intel is propping up their competition to avoid regulatory problems. Now nVidia has been doing this to ATi and later AMD for years, through new drivers, better products, and most importantly, successful PR and marketing. Not financially, but through other means. Similar to a cat smacking around a dying bird just to observe it's death rattles.

I have long left the discrete graphics card market so I don't know what is going on today, but it seems to me AMD will always be around and will always be nVidia's direct competitor in the discrete video card market.

P.S. Where are nVidia's low end and mid-range mobility offerings anyways? My company laptops have all been using variants of AMD HD 3200/3100/4200/4330/4350/4570/3650/4530/etc etc. I'm sure you guys have children/family friends/grandparents who want a laptop but do not want Intel or AMD graphics.

[LordJuanlo]

I remember another user of this forum "predicting" AMD death by 2009... anyway I never understand why anyone would want a single company dominating the market.

I'm sorry for you mate, but I'm afraid AMD will be with us for quite some time

[LydianKnight]

Yeah, I hope they stay with us, too. AMD makes great processors, which I always select for any of my builds (Core i7 was tempting for me, but 130W for any of their models was, in the end, not my cup of tea), and they make great GPUs, too.

Competition is what brings us the best, and I personally hope we're not left alone with another 'netburst' fiasco scenario, not anymore, same goes for NVIDIA, I prefer their GPUs over ATI ones, but I really hope they don't ever dominate the market* (or we could be getting endless refreshes of the GT200 line over and over, god... no).

[Maverick123w]

I just have this feeling that Fermi is going to be epic. Now whether it's an epic failure or success is yet to be seen, but I don't think there is gonna be much of a middle ground with this card.

[cschueths]

I have to agree with LydianKnight. Fanboyism annoys me to no end...

Monopoly = innovation stagnates
Competition = good for consumers

I'm an AMD shareholder (though I buy both nvidia and AMD products), but even I wouldn't trade what we have for an ATI monopoly. Do you think our GPU technology would be anywhere as awesome if Nvidia and ATI weren't leapfrogging each other over the past decade?

[LydianKnight]

I just have this feeling that Fermi is going to be epic. Now whether it's an epic failure or success is yet to be seen

There's too much rumours going around to be fully sure, for me it's more like having a high-end product at launch date, and considering I currently have a 9800GT, for me it's more like having DirectX 11 support and 512 cores VS 112 (so it's roughly 4.5x the performance in very very very naive terms).

Fair enough for me ^^

[TheANIMAL]

Anyone who wishes for a monopoly is either a shareholder of one of these companies or they are sadly misinformed about what is good for the market.

Long live competiton imo.

[Johnny C]

I used to be a nVidia shareholder so I admit that I am a biased fanboi.

http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/16423/1/

This story caught my eye. A couple of years ago forum member AthlonXP1800 predicted the bankruptcy and destruction of ATi and it seemed to be going that way. I wish it would have happened so nVidia could dominate the entire market. However, after reading this story, the author claims that Intel is propping up their competition to avoid regulatory problems. Now nVidia has been doing this to ATi and later AMD for years, through new drivers, better products, and most importantly, successful PR and marketing. Not financially, but through other means. Similar to a cat smacking around a dying bird just to observe it's death rattles.

I have long left the discrete graphics card market so I don't know what is going on today, but it seems to me AMD will always be around and will always be nVidia's direct competitor in the discrete video card market.

P.S. Where are nVidia's low end and mid-range mobility offerings anyways? My company laptops have all been using variants of AMD HD 3200/3100/4200/4330/4350/4570/3650/4530/etc etc. I'm sure you guys have children/family friends/grandparents who want a laptop but do not want Intel or AMD graphics.

You do realize that if Intel had not been able to buy their way out of the netburst **** storm from a few years ago (I'm talking billions in "rebates") that market share in both the desktop cpu and server markets would look drastically different today. How it would look, no one knows...because they "DID" buy their market share back then. Keep in mind that at the time AMD had a far superior Opteron server CPU...and Intel paid computer manufacturers not to use the superior product.

Intel isn't propping AMD up...they're just throwing them some pocket change and promising to no longer hold them down....

[Viral]

AMD are better than ever and I hope they stay around for the long haul. Without relying on crappy third parties to make their chipsets, their CPU business can finally get away from the bad experiences of the past.

They are the best cadidate to make a successful CPU/GPU combo chip and bulldozer looks like a multitaking machine with effectively 8 cores in the die space of less than 6 traditional cores.

ATI GPU's have come a long way and are currently dominating the market. Their products look so much more polised than previous generations (The right balance of: presentation, effective and efficient cooling solution, features, performance).

AMD are here to stay and everyone is to benefit from it.

[nekrosoft13]

in my house hold i have 2 intel machines and 4 amd machines.

do i preffer amd cpus? certainy no, well not atleast their current ones, back in p4/athlon x2 days it was different story.

simply trying to support failling company and hoping they don't go away. because no competition will be bad for everyone

[Sazar]

You do realize that if Intel had not been able to buy their way out of the netburst **** storm from a few years ago (I'm talking billions in "rebates") that market share in both the desktop cpu and server markets would look drastically different today. How it would look, no one knows...because they "DID" buy their market share back then. Keep in mind that at the time AMD had a far superior Opteron server CPU...and Intel paid computer manufacturers not to use the superior product.

Intel isn't propping AMD up...they're just throwing them some pocket change and promising to no longer hold them down....

Don't know about the enterprise market, but certainly on the client side, they had a better product.

The opterons in some single and dual-proc configurations were decent but when you started scaling exponentially, even with inferior processing output per cpu, the Intel solutions were just better suited for enterprise. And the fact is, the enterprise market is where you have the most profitability.

[Redeemed]

Don't know about the enterprise market, but certainly on the client side, they had a better product.

The opterons in some single and dual-proc configurations were decent but when you started scaling exponentially, even with inferior processing output per cpu, the Intel solutions were just better suited for enterprise. And the fact is, the enterprise market is where you have the most profitability.

Really? I'd like to see some proof to back this up. Not that I don't trust you, just that, from my recollection of that time period, AMD was dominating Intel in almost all areas- save for a select few which mostly had to do with multi-threading. Once AMD brought out their dual-core CPUs virtually any advantage Intel had was lost... from my recollection. AMD reigned until the release of the Core2 Duos which smacked AMD around and beat them into submission. :lol:

At least, that's how I remember it. Most reviews I read where targeting gaming and general desktop performance, anything other than that I only skimmed through so it's quite possible I missed a whole other side to that story. :o

[Sazar]

Really? I'd like to see some proof to back this up. Not that I don't trust you, just that, from my recollection of that time period, AMD was dominating Intel in almost all areas- save for a select few which mostly had to do with multi-threading. Once AMD brought out their dual-core CPUs virtually any advantage Intel had was lost... from my recollection. AMD reigned until the release of the Core2 Duos which smacked AMD around and beat them into submission. :lol:

At least, that's how I remember it. Most reviews I read where targeting gaming and general desktop performance, anything other than that I only skimmed through so it's quite possible I missed a whole other side to that story. :o

You should be able to google the enterprise performance with regards to scalability and performance with memory configurations. That was the achilles heal of the various hammer-gen procs in servers, that they had limitations with memory. Granted the PR was good and all but in real-world performance, borne out through personal experience, it was pretty crappy.

[Redeemed]

You should be able to google the enterprise performance with regards to scalability and performance with memory configurations. That was the achilles heal of the various hammer-gen procs in servers, that they had limitations with memory. Granted the PR was good and all but in real-world performance, borne out through personal experience, it was pretty crappy.

Memory? How so? Lack of bandwidth? That doesn't make since as the Opterons utilised HyperTransport which was one of many ways that allowed the architecture to, in general, be vastly more efficient than the netburst architecture.

I suppose that maybe with Intel using DDR2 at that time, and AMD still clinging to DDR, there could have been some performance loss- yet it seems to me that HyperTransport basically erradicated any performance lead Intel might have had with DDR2. The netburst still utilized an FSB, forcing Intel to use DDR2 in order to keep up with the bandwidth provided to the Opterons via HyperTransport.

Or am I completely missing something? Wouldn't be the first time... :lol: :o

[Sazar]

Memory? How so? Lack of bandwidth? That doesn't make since as the Opterons utilised HyperTransport which was one of many ways that allowed the architecture to, in general, be vastly more efficient than the netburst architecture.

I suppose that maybe with Intel using DDR2 at that time, and AMD still clinging to DDR, there could have been some performance loss- yet it seems to me that HyperTransport basically erradicated any performance lead Intel might have had with DDR2. The netburst still utilized an FSB, forcing Intel to use DDR2 in order to keep up with the bandwidth provided to the Opterons via HyperTransport.

Or am I completely missing something? Wouldn't be the first time... :lol: :o

You are looking at it from a consumer/client system with a single proc and relatively limited memory.

Scale upwards with a multi-proc, enterprise level machine with many times more memory and more complex "issues" related to that, and allocation of memory resources per proc and so forth.

If you continue looking at it solely through the POV of a typical client system or workstation, you will not understand the gist of what I am saying :)

Again, this is NOT to say that the opteron procs were a bad solution. Quite the contrary, the performance was quite brilliant in many guises. But some challenges with multi-proc configurations that could add to costs of implementation == people would stick to what they had rather than switch to the new AMD procs (at that time).

[Viral]

Ummm, the opterons always scaled much better than Xeons due to Hyper transport and NUMA memory. Only in early configurations without NUMA and less HT links were they lacking, and by no means compared to xeon.

If a single opteron was 95% the speed of a single Xeon, a dual opteron would usually surpass a dual xeon, while a quad opteron would smash a quad xeon. Of course Intel continied to add more cache to make up for the FSB's limitations, so it went back and forth a lot. Still, HT was a much more elegant solution for interconnectivity and helped scaling stay very close to linear. The on die memory controller when used in a NUMA motherboard also made a significant difference. AMD's real problem was the lack of good motherboards, especially for 2P workstations.

These days, AMD have their own chipsets, so there are usually always good motherboards with the release of any new CPU. Not to mention that HTT is still ahead of Quickpath IMO.

[Redeemed]

Ummm, the opterons always scaled much better than Xeons due to Hyper transport and NUMA memory. Only in early configurations without NUMA and less HT links were they lacking, and by no means compared to xeon.

If a single opteron was 95% the speed of a single Xeon, a dual opteron would usually surpass a dual xeon, while a quad opteron would smash a quad xeon. Of course Intel continied to add more cache to make up for the FSB's limitations, so it went back and forth a lot. Still, HT was a much more elegant solution for interconnectivity and helped scaling stay very close to linear. The on die memory controller when used in a NUMA motherboard also made a significant difference. AMD's real problem was the lack of good motherboards, especially for 2P workstations.

These days, AMD have their own chipsets, so there are usually always good motherboards with the release of any new CPU. Not to mention that HTT is still ahead of Quickpath IMO.

This, for the most part, is precisely how I understood the scaling between the Xeons and Opterons at that time.

[Johnny C]

Ummm, the opterons always scaled much better than Xeons due to Hyper transport and NUMA memory. Only in early configurations without NUMA and less HT links were they lacking, and by no means compared to xeon.

If a single opteron was 95% the speed of a single Xeon, a dual opteron would usually surpass a dual xeon, while a quad opteron would smash a quad xeon. Of course Intel continied to add more cache to make up for the FSB's limitations, so it went back and forth a lot. Still, HT was a much more elegant solution for interconnectivity and helped scaling stay very close to linear. The on die memory controller when used in a NUMA motherboard also made a significant difference. AMD's real problem was the lack of good motherboards, especially for 2P workstations.

These days, AMD have their own chipsets, so there are usually always good motherboards with the release of any new CPU. Not to mention that HTT is still ahead of Quickpath IMO.

I'd also like to point out the lack of quality mobo availability could have been directly related to AMD's restricted market share....again courtesy of the mafia style intel "rebates"

[nekrosoft13]

I'd also like to point out the lack of quality mobo availability could have been directly related to AMD's restricted market share....again courtesy of the mafia style intel "rebates"

quality board, and i mean reall high quality boards are extremely rare for AMD platform

[Redeemed]

quality board, and i mean reall high quality boards are extremely rare for AMD platform

I strongly disagree with this. Granted, I've very little experience with mobos that utilize AMD chipsets, but near every AMD platform I've owned has been rock solid stable, functioned exactly as advertised, while offering the performance expected- and often times exceeded my performance expectations. And I'd say I've far more experience with AMD-based systems than Intel ones. Maybe that creates a placebo effect, not sure. Just stating my experience. :)

[candle_86]

I dunno I had a dual Athlon MP setup for about 2 years, got it for super cheap used back in mid 05. It was using a Tyan Thunder board and a VIA chipset, and I never had a complaint with it honestly, nothing every went wrong with those Dual Athlon MP 1200's

[crainger]

I strongly disagree with this. Granted, I've very little experience with mobos that utilize AMD chipsets, but near every AMD platform I've owned has been rock solid stable, functioned exactly as advertised, while offering the performance expected- and often times exceeded my performance expectations. And I'd say I've far more experience with AMD-based systems than Intel ones. Maybe that creates a placebo effect, not sure. Just stating my experience. :)

How can you strongly disagree, yet admit you have little experience?

nekro has several AMD systems.
Honestly Redeemed, you love to argue, but you rarely have the knowledge to back yourself up and often come off second best.

[Viral]

I've got a couple of friends with 790FX boards, one MSI and the other Gigabyte and they've been awesome in every way. I would personally go with a PhII over a i5 from what I've seen.

[crainger]

Yeah, but does AMD make invisibility hoodies?

[Redeemed]

How can you strongly disagree, yet admit you have little experience?

nekro has several AMD systems.
Honestly Redeemed, you love to argue, but you rarely have the knowledge to back yourself up and often come off second best.

Wow... way to mis-understand Max. :D :p

I've owned nothing but AMD for the most part... just not much experience with their chipsets. Always been VIA or nVidia chipsets. And every one I've owned has been rock solid stable and either met or exceeded my performance expectations.

See, nekro was talking about a quality motherboard for the AMD platform being extremely rare. Considering my current rig and the one before it were the only Intel rigs I've owned within the past, oh, ten years and every other rig has used an AMD processor I strongly disagree with his statement and I have plenty of experience with AMD CPUs. Not their chipsets, but their CPUs. Now, maybe AMD's chipsets are crap or not as good as the competition, but every nVidia chipset for the AMD platform I've used has been exceptional. Every VIA chipset likewise. And the few rigs I've built for friends and family utilizing AMD chipsets have impressed me.

As I said, could be placebo since I'm just used to AMD CPUs, could be part bias, not sure. But I've never had a computer running an AMD CPU that wasn't rock-solid stable and every bit as fast as advertised. This goes back from the Socket 3 5x86 @ 133MHz I had way back when up to the Phenom 9600 BE I used to have, every CPU's been everything I expected from it, and the mobos I used with said CPUs have been steller performers and loaded with very practical features.

What more do I need to be quilified to have an opinion, in your opinion, Crainger?