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Continues to execute long term strategy with powerful 'Zen' processors on roadmap.
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Continues to execute long term strategy with powerful 'Zen' processors on roadmap.
Surely expectations must have been pretty low to start with?
They really really need Zen to come good.
the worrying thing for AMD is that the likelihood is that Intel has a chip tucked away in the lab that can do the same sort of performance jump that zen can on haswell/skylake etc but they haven't brought it out due to not needing to.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silmaril.SE
It's also telling that if those 40% gains are real zen will only really bring AMD level with intel on a clock per clock basis, they need to bring something that out that blows Intel away for a year or two, like the old s939 chips did
Actually, for the vast majority of consumer PCs, they don't - they already have way more performance in the bag then they'll ever need. What they need to go is get more of the major OEMs releasing well-built products with their chips in them. There's still an overwhelming groundswell of opinion amongst the general computer-buying public that you need to have an Intel processor. AMD's biggest problem is consumer inertia. Even if they released a halo product with twice the performance of Intel's enthusiast platform, the average bloke in the street would still equate PC with Intel. Whilst AMD will still push the general PC market and try to get their APUs into mainstream consumer products, I think they've actually made the right choice in focussing on their semi-custom business. Zen will probably make most difference to their server sales, and having a higher performance core to offer the semi-custom business could end up being hugely profitable - after all, that's the line of business that's growing most at the minute. In the future we could easily end up with far more devices containing AMD-made processors than actually have AMD stickers on them: and that white label business could easily float the company.Quote:
Originally Posted by LSG501
Part of what made S939 look so good was that P4 was so bad.
So while the noises around Zen are all the right ones, I can't see how it is going to be any better than i7, because i7 isn't bad.
On the positive side, I think the current FX chips have a tarnished image to the point that some sort of re-release is needed to make people look at AMD again, so Zen should do that.
The fact that the 8350 is now more expensive than it was when I bought mine a couple of years ago might not be helping their sales figures mind.
Same not sure why the 8350 price seems to have risen, the other thing AMD might need to look at is power draw on their CPU's too the 9 series is mad and I thought the 8350's were power hungry enough.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
I would hope there isn't much in that, especially when you see how much the price of i5/i7 has gone up in the same period.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
The main problem I see is that the vast majority of people either buy OEM (and therefore get Intel) or they build for gaming (where benchmarks show Intel as being superior - of course this may change with Windows 10 out there but it's going to be a slow process waiting for DX12 to become the norm - and even then if there is nothing to differentiate performance, people will understandably look at other factors - Price and Power draw).
They will need some serious marketing work to get their CPUs into OEM machines and they will need a very good performing chip to get into gaming machines.
Lets not forget that when they last held the CPU crown, they still struggled to get chips into OEMs.
This is BS. They better get their asses working and forcing OEMs to get more AMD products. They are pretty non-existent, everywhere you look you see Intel. So where's the surprise with the earnings?
Didn't I read this a week or two ago?
1.6ghz 16 core 45w beast please.
I can give you a hint why they've gone up in the last year:Quote:
Originally Posted by lon3wolf2002
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?fr...to=GBP&view=1Y
The exchange rate was also a fair bit lower between September and November 2012 which may have impacted some of the UK stock bought a couple of years ago. There may also have been taxation changes that have impacted UK prices, not too sure on that one. It's not quite as bad as comparisons back to 2008 (when the dollar was properly in the toilet), but exchange rate fluctuations do impact the retail price of electronics in the UK.
Of course, those fluctuations will affect Intel as well, but those fluctuations are more noticeable in the price-sensitive end of the market that AMD are viewed as occupying - AMD are meant to be the value-for-money choice so small price fluctuations will have a larger perceived impact.
AMD need an equivalent of "Intel inside" before the general public (Hexus readers who remember ten-year old triumphs like the Athlon 64x2 are not a fair cross-section of shoppers) consider them as anything but a downmarket option.Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
It is nowhere near as simple to compare AMD based laptops with Intel as it is to compare Intel processor series, and I suspect most buyers won't make the effort, and that manufacturers and resellers may make the same judgement when designing a product range.
For consumers you're right they don't need the high end halo chip but if you're looking for a pc and the store sales person (if they're any good) or the magazine review is saying that xyz chip is a cut down version of the 'best chip on the market' it helps. The sad thing is desktop pc's are a dying product for a lot of people.Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
Intel have the best cpu at the moment and the one area where AMD are ahead, ie APU they're being caught up VERY quickly by intel so AMD needs a true halo product to get some of it's reputation back in my view.
OEM's are a simple bunch really, they're not going to sell a product which people don't want, most people don't want a 'lesser' product which AMD is from a consumer perspective. It doesn't matter if AMD has a better APU if their battery life sucks on laptops or you read reviews where the cpu is 20-30% slower doing certain tasks but costs the same as another intel product that does the same task quicker but has weaker gaming graphics. The gpu can only do so much at pulling in a person to buy a laptop or desktop and with the way skylake is shaping up AMD might not even be able to rely on that aspect of their APU.
Consumers are getting more savvy with tech because it is such a common commodity now and a lot of people know that Intel are literally just running away with performance at the moment.
Now don't get me wrong I like AMD and we need them but they're not doing anything to make people chose them, or 'push prices down', how many times has a new intel cpu been released and you thought, damn I wish that was cheaper or it was worth upgrading from a 2500k cpu....you then realise it's ultimately down to the fact AMD is literally in no mans land.
I was quite shocked when my dad went to PC World for a light gaming capable laptop and got sold something with an AMD APU in it, so they do get recommended and sold.Quote:
Originally Posted by LSG501
I suspect part of AMD's problem here is that I often get told when asking what a machine is going to be used for to work out what spec a build should be, that it will "never ever get used for games". It is always a lie (just look at the number of Intel graphics machines in the Steam stats), but strictly speaking if I go with the spec I am given the extra cost of integrated graphics of an APU is a handicap. If the Athlons had *reduced* integrated graphics rather than none, then that would be viable.
Kind of like Henry Ford's comment that "If I asked the customers what they wanted, they would ask for a stronger horse" (that was the gist and I think it was him, not looked it up to check). People don't know what they want, so even if what AMD sells is what they need they won't buy it.
AMD's problem is that they aren't advertising themselves well for general public to know about their existence in the market. That's why Intel and Nvidia have an edge because all the newcomers go after their products instead if AMD's as ignorant casuals do what they always do ignore researching and go after the mediocre products from Intel side and then Nvidia so that's why AMD is getting hurt from their mistakes that were made in the past with the bulldozer and it wasn't strong as piledriver. Although AMD's flagship cards were capable of beating Nvidia's offerings AMD still loses because they don't market themselves well. In terms of price and performance they are good and needed in the market for the competition. We don't want either side to completly win just come up with better products for us consumers but as long the general consumer doesn't get an ad from AMD then they won't know which is a better option to begin with
Indeed as several people have already said AMD need to advertise themselves better. How many PS4 or Xbox One owners know that there is an AMD chip powering there box?
Maybe a sticker saying powered by AMD :)
Anyway hopefully the rumors are true that an AMD chip will power Nintendo’s upcoming NX video game console. http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/16/mo...nxs-processor/
Part of the problem is Intel, Microsoft and OEM's have created a mess of what a PC should look like. It's now not uncommon now to have 10 different product versions on a similar pc chassis, i.e. HP Envy 15. Lots of gimmicks to no gimmicks to choice from. The latest GUI and cloud options on slightly better dated OS framework or traditional OS on dated framework. It's a cluster of what to make or support and or what experience is important. Rebadged Atoms as Pentiums. It's a crap shoot for the consumer with the house taking the winnings. I am glad I don't own a combination MS/AMD or Intel/OEM product.Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjimActually, for the vast majority of consumer PCs, they don't - they already have way more performance in the bag then they'll ever need. What they need to go is get more of the major OEMs releasing well-built products with their chips in them. There's still an overwhelming groundswell of opinion amongst the general computer-buying public that you need to have an Intel processor. AMD's biggest problem is consumer inertia. Even if they released a halo product with twice the performance of Intel's enthusiast platform, the average bloke in the street would still equate PC with Intel. Whilst AMD will still push the general PC market and try to get their APUs into mainstream consumer products, I think they've actually made the right choice in focussing on their semi-custom business. Zen will probably make most difference to their server sales, and having a higher performance core to offer the semi-custom business could end up being hugely profitable - after all, that's the line of business that's growing most at the minute. In the future we could easily end up with far more devices containing AMD-made processors than actually have AMD stickers on them: and that white label business could easily float the company.Quote:
Originally Posted by LSG501
The non-PC hardware enthusiasts that I work and eat alongside have all heard of AMD and know the company makes CPUs, but they all associate the brand with ho-hum performance unlike Intel whose CPUs are always better.
The reason AMD's Athlon's were so highly thought of probably says more about how bad the P4 and NetBurst were.Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian224
IMO AMD, for the last 5-6 years, have been in a similar situation micro-architecturally wise, as Intel was before they brought out the Core series, whether we are going to see a similar or larger jump in performance when AMD release Zen next year is yet to be seen though.
Not really, no. Athlon was already winning against P3, before P4 came out.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
I think AMD are playing it too aggressively with Zen though. Core came out as Pentium M first, nice and low power but boy the performance sucked. Then they upped the clock headroom and bought out Core2 having flushed the problems out in laptops. If Zen comes out first for servers and desktops, that is a big ask to hit the numbers first shot.
Not sure what benchmark you're looking at but I seem to remember clock for clock the Athlon was ever so slightly behind the P3, not we can entirely trust Wiki articles but even the Wiki article for Pentium III says the following...
Quote:
In terms of overall performance, the Coppermine held a slight advantage over the AMD Athlons it was released against, which was reversed when AMD applied their own die shrink and added an on-die L2 cache to the Athlon. Athlon held the advantage in floating-point intensive code, while the Coppermine could perform better when SSE optimizations were used, but in practical terms there was little difference in how the two chips performed, clock-for-clock.
The 1GHz P3 was recalled as unstable, the 1GHz Athlon shipped first. Intel really struggled at 1GHz, hence their push with the 1.3GHz P4 for marketing reasons despite it being slower that the P3. Up until then, there wasn't really anything in it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
so true. maybe a total rebranding might be in order?Quote:
Originally Posted by Brian224
Out of the circle of friends I have they've all heard about Intel or seen ad's about "Intel Inside" branding but they know nothing about AMD.
Don't they have these sticker things which the OEM puts on the products though? All of the HP and Dell PCs I've seen with AMD chips have those stickers on.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Pie
No one said anything about one particular CPU, well unless the only P3 to ever be released was the 1Ghz CPU.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
Yes a single CPU may have had problems, but that doesn't mean the Athlon was already winning against P3 as you said.
Even though they do its not as widely recognised compared to Intel. Well at least where I am anyway (Hong Kong)....most PC parts retailers mainly put/push Intel anyhow as well so that probably doesn't help too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chugz
Hell in a typical computer parts shopping centre there's at least 1 big advertisement about Intel. Rarely do I see AMD ads
I guess that's always been AMD's problem. Even with their GPUs they've been reliant upon advertising using Social Media and YouTube (the Fixer).Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr.Pie
Slot 1 vs Slot A, at 500MHz the Athlon was fastest:Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
http://images.anandtech.com/old/cpu/...00/Image81.gif
It wasn't just the endgame.
The AMD 750 chipset was a bit of a dog though, that muddied the waters somewhat until VIA and later Nvidia started making decent chipsets.
You're comparing a single CPU with four times the amount of L1 cache.
Maybe if you compared something a little more like for like you would see this.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/423/7
http://images.anandtech.com/old/cpu/...0/image012.gif
Either way we seem to be drifting of the point I initially raise and you contested, that the reason AMD's Athlon's were so highly thought of probably says more about how bad the P4 and NetBurst were.
OK, how about putting it this way... The Mona Lisa is more about me not being able to draw than Leonardo having any talent? No, the fact that I can't draw says nothing about whether Leonardo was a competent artist.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
The P4 wasn't good. That says nothing about the Athlon.
So compare the Athlon to the P3, as that is the only other thing we really can compare it to.
The graph you showed is a very odd one, clearly the GPU is frame rate limiting given the 700 and 800MHz cpus are the same performance within the same CPU family.
The P3 there is Coppermine, and should be faster than the generation older Slot A Athlon. That says what a process advantage can do for you, nothing about the talent of the CPU designers.
But we aren't comparing someone who can't draw with some that can, we are comparing two people that drew, using your example, the Mona Lisa and then one of those people didn't draw anything comparable for the next 5 years, while the other carried on drawing great works of art.
As I initially said the reason AMD's Athlon's were so highly thought of probably says more about how bad the P4 and NetBurst were, or are you going to claim that everyone was jumping all over Athlon's and singing there praise before Intel released the P4?
We have the Fury Nano soon, so less HBM for the Fury X as well
Anand said: (http://www.anandtech.com/show/355/24)Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Dr Tom (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...essor,121.html) said things likeQuote:
Final Words
I don't have to give you a conclusion here, the benchmarks speak for themselves, the Athlon is the fastest desktop x86 processor on the market. It would take at least a 700MHz Pentium III to start to beat AMD's Athlon, but even if Intel does release a Pentium III 700 ahead of schedule, the price of a lower clocked but faster Athlon will still be lower than a 700MHz Pentium III. There is nothing in Intel's current family of processors that can match the performance of the Athlon, even the forthcoming Coppermine will have trouble competing against AMD's latest flagship.
People talked about the team that designed this CPU, like the ex DEC employee that lead the the FPU design who managed to make it nearly as fast as the one in the DEC Alpha.Quote:
I will try and make a comparison between the architecture of Athlon and Pentium III as far as it's possible, so that we can see why Athlon beats Pentium III in pretty much any benchmark.
Overall Intel has always had very mixed bag of product quality. Have you ever used an Itanium? Or one of the original Atom chips? I have a D520 somewhere in a drawer, it really is quite a dog of a chip. How about the original Pentium 60, claimed by Intel before release to be the end of all RISC chips such was its mighty performance, but in fact it was late, hot, missed the clock targets and compared to the Fairchild Clipper and NS32K based machines I was using at the time really sluggish. And don't forget the i432, generally heralded as the worst cpu architecture of all time. Mix this in with their success stories like the 8052, the i960 and the one that their modern desktop chips can trace their lineage to the Pentium Pro.
Oddly, ISTR when the Pentium Pro came out it got quite a critical pasting. That seems rather unfair, if anything made by Intel was their Mona Lisa I would say the 'Pro was it. The i7 is this chip polished so hard you can't see much original architecture any more, but the lineage is there. The P3 was this chip cost reduced and SSE added.
Are you even reading some of what is written?Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
You have linked to an article whose title is "The New Athlon Processor: AMD Is FINALLY Overtaking Intel"... (my emphasis)
And again you are comparing a single CPU made by AMD that the article you linked to says.."The instruction as well as the data caches are with 64 kB no less than 4 times as big as Pentium III" and then using that to validate that ALL Athlon's beat ALL PIII.
I'll tell you what instead of arguing about if the PIII or Athlon were the better CPU why don't you take up this up with the Wiki article that says...
Quote:
In terms of overall performance, the Coppermine held a slight advantage over the AMD Athlons it was released against, which was reversed when AMD applied their own die shrink and added an on-die L2 cache to the Athlon. Athlon held the advantage in floating-point intensive code, while the Coppermine could perform better when SSE optimizations were used, but in practical terms there was little difference in how the two chips performed, clock-for-clock.
You're not seriously using wikipedia as a source are you?
When it comes to comparing the overall performance differences between two entire lines what else would you suggest?
DanceswithUnix argues that the Athlon Processor was successfully before Intel screwed up with the P4, if that's the case then why is socket 939 the one that everyone remembers and not Slot A? The fact is the only reason everyone remembers socket 939 and the Athlon days is because Intel's offering during that time sucked.
Anything else. Wikipedia is not a source.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
He's right - AMD's 3dNow! instruction set was good and helped the K6-2 become a serious competitor long before S939.Quote:
DanceswithUnix argues that the Athlon Processor was successfully before Intel screwed up with the P4, if that's the case then why is socket 939 the one that everyone remembers and not Slot A? The fact is the only reason everyone remembers socket 939 and the Athlon days is because Intel's offering during that time sucked.
S939 was great not because of p4, but because it was a genuinely good chip - onboard mem controller, cool n quiet, and decent arch from server tech. Dual core versions even better.
Intel's Core 2 was also great, but that was a response to AMD, not in spite of it.
Please don't mention the amd k6-s or k6-3.
Fab chips and better than intel's offerings but let down by some of the worst motherboards in history.
Like buying a Ferrari and using a block of cheese for tyres.
Like I said what else would YOU suggest.Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
Like I said, anything else. Even personal anecdotes over wiki because at least then you can put a (psuedo)name to the comment.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Then please provide it, if anything else would be better than a wiki article on comparing the overall performance differences between two entire lines of CPUs then please provide something that's more substantial, or are you saying that, in fact the P4 was better than the PIII, because that's not what you seem to implying here.Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
Smaller L1 cache was Intel's design choice, you can't blame AMD for that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
As for Coppermine, yes when it was released it was faster than the Slot A processors it was competing against. That is a process advantage, nothing to do with design talent. When the Athlon went on die cache shortly after, it was faster, because the cores were better.
As for Wikipedia, if you referred the Athlon page rather than the P3 page you would see a very different story, because Wikipedia is like that. That's why I referred to Dr Tom and Anand from articles at the time.
And what is it with this "comparing a single CPU" malarky? Slot A vs Slot 1 was a win for AMD across the board. Coppermine vs Thunderbird was a win for AMD across the board. Only if you compare Coppermine to Slot A do Intel come out with a win, which is what the Wikipedia article is doing. Well it is a win, if you were buying during those months it counted, but comparing a 250nm to a 180nm device isn't a good indicator of architecture is it.
You have to remember the history here: the DEC Alpha team at Compaq had just been handed over to Intel as part of the Compaq/HP merger thanks to HP not wanting to take on a CPU design team (possibly due to a contractual issue thanks to the Itanium we will probably never know). It seems that the design team of what is probably still the best CPU architecture ever didn't want to work for Intel and a bunch of them went to AMD. That was a big injection of talent into AMD, who were already doing some good things. At this point AMD had the architects of the 29K RISC chip who had gone on to design the K5 (AMD's first out of order chip, beating Intel by years) as well as the acquired NexGen team that had designed the K6, and now some choice DEC Alpha engineers. Really, if AMD didn't come out with something special at that point then something was seriously wrong. Specially as they picked up floating point talent from DEC, as that is what the K5 and K6 had been really missing on for gaming use.
You should be able to find my entire PC CPU history + drop in upgrades here somewhere*, but I lack the ability to compare competing products exhaustively, but from my impressions comparing research at the time and friends and families systems, the PIII was great, certainly. The p4 was not anything like as good clock for clock, but later in the series it was certainly better than what was available years ago in P3. However the AMD chips by this time were better than both.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
*It goes something like: Intel286+287, Intel486dx33->dx66?, AMD K6 200?, IntelP3 800/133->1ghz, AMD X2 3600?->4400+?, Intel i7 950.
I remember being very impressed by the K6-2 systems, but couldn't afford one at the time (everything up to then was second hand - the P3 800 was my first new computer).
Average age of your sample group?Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
I've built one s939 PC in my life. I've lost count of the number of socket A builds I did. Back in my day it was a no brainer: you built Socket A. Even before Netburst, Athlon was competitive with or better than the Northwood P4s. Athlon 64 on s939 was simply a further refinement of the already-better tech in Athlon XP. And at the low end of the market Duron ate Celeron for breakfast, even before AMD rebranded the lower end Athlon XPs to form the Sempron line. AMD was climbing all over Intel long before s939 made netburst look silly. s939 is not the one that everyone remembers.
OK, so let me get this right, you're saying that in fact the P4 and NetBurst wasn't a micro-architecturally dead end, that even before the P4 and NetBurst, that AMD ruled the roost because their 7th generation x86 CPU microarchitecture was so good that it beat all 6th generation x86 CPU on a clock by clock basis that Intel had at the time, that we don't in fact think so fondly of the AMD Athlon era because Intel's 7th generation x86 CPU microarchitecture was a stinker, that people in fact look back at AMD's 7th generation x86 CPU because they were good enough to stand on their own.
Maybe someone need to do a re-write of the history books and tell everyone that in fact the P4 and NetBurst wasn't a micro-architecturally dead end. :shocked2:
I don't think anyone's saying netburst wasn't a mess - they're saying every generation of Athlon was competitive with the contemporary Intel processors. You've even been shown graphs clearly showing Athlon @ 500MHz hammering PIII @ 500 MHz, which is going back WAY before Netburst. So I'm not quite sure what your point is, to be honest: there's clear evidence in this thread that Athlons were competing with, and often beating, contemporary Intel processors for years before netburst, yet you appear to have some hang up that Athlons only looked good because netburst was so bad. That's patently not true.
?? Are you replying to the right thread? Sounds like you're talking about another discussion somewhere, which might be adding to the confusion!Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
That isn't what anyone is saying, I was pointing out that enthusiasm for Athlon pre-dated the Athlon64 and hardly mention the P4. Perhaps we are misunderstanding your original assertion. Let's wind back a bit:Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Sure, the P4 was bad (and yes I think it was a dead end), but is that the reason that the Athlon was highly thought of? Do you really have to link the two?Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Well maybe for you, but personally I am a bit of an architecture nerd, have been since I got a book saying how the Zilog Z80 executed its instructions in the early 80's. I thought that the Athlon was good, that the P4 was misguided, and that is on their own merits. If the Athlon didn't exist, I would still have said the P4 was a mess. Similarly, if Intel had given up with the 486 and the Athlon stood alone, I would have been impressed. I can say that with confidence, having been impressed with chips like the SuperH which were never going to win high end benchmarks but just had some really nice design touches (apart from the use of a delayed branch slot but nothing is perfect).
Quelle surprise, a 7th gen CPU from AMD beats (marginally) a 6th gen CPU from Intel.Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
You seem to be the only one who is confused. :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
That the thing, obviously we can't know for sure one way or the other, would we have thought so well of AMD's 7th generation x86 CPU microarchitecture if Intel hadn't dropped the ball when it released its own 7th generation x86 CPU microarchitecture?Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
I would say one of the ways we could answer that is by looking how the 6th & 8th generation x86 CPU microarchitecture from both sides compare against each other, IMHO that gives the best indication of what may have been the result if Intel didn't go down a dead end with their 7th gen.
So you're saying Intel are fastest except when they're not?
I think maybe you're reading too much into generations. Athlon spent 18 months competing directly with Pentium III, and beating it handily. Any minute now you'll tell me it's not fair to compare Athlon 64 to Netburst P4s because the Athlon 64 was 8th generation and netbburst was only 7th...Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Indeed. They both knew when 180nm was coming (roughly), they both did the best they could with that node. All this "nth generation" stuff is fairly meaningless, specially when AMD purchased one of their generations by buying NexGen.Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
Ahh that must be it then, Athlon doesn't just stick in peoples minds because Intel's offering at the time was a POS, it must be that Athlon was so good that it swept all before it, beating every PIII, every P4 and every Core series CPU. :rolleyes:
Ah, reductio ad absurdam - a rather tired ploy. Someone disagrees with your premise so you stretch theirs to breaking point in an attempt to discredit their arguments.
No-one said that. You know no-one said that. We know no-one said that. Let's all move on....Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Core was after it, so very hard to have been swept before it, but otherwise yes that is pretty much it. Might want to add K6 to the list of swept before it :)Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Core2 was impressively tricked out and a stunning comeback, but are you going to say that Core2 was only good because P4 was a POS? How about i7?
Was my sandwich at lunchtime only good because P4 was a POS? ;)
Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
I'll get my coat :pQuote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
lol. Well "swept all before it" isn't how I would really describe it, but close enough :DQuote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
You really are having difficulty keeping track of this thread aren't you.Quote:
Originally Posted by kalniel
Where are you getting 18 month from?Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
Pentium III was released in February and Athlon was released some 4 months later in June of the same year.
It's got nothing to do with trying to discredit someones argument, its got to do with my initial premise that...Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Sorry but did I say Athlon was not good, because if I did I would appreciate it if you could point it out, IIRC I have been saying and still say the reason AMD's Athlon's were so highly thought of probably says more about how bad the P4 and NetBurst were.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
Sorry, but did I say my sandwich was not good? It was delicious, nice fresh bread and a very tasty filling, but perhaps I only thought so highly of it because the P4 was a POS?Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
This is going in circles. I get the impression that for *you* they are linked. To me Athlon was thought highly of due to being an interesting and well executed design and that predates the P4 so they are two completely unrelated things. I suspect neither of us are alone in our stance.
No, you said it was only good because something else was bad, perhaps you care to point me to where I said the Athlon was not good, instead of just implying that's what I said.
If your sandwich at lunchtime was more memorable because it was a choice between that or a month old rotten sandwich then maybe what you said in another useless analogy, then perhaps it would have been more accurate.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
This is only going in circles because you and it would seem others equate the term highly thought of as meaning something that it doesn't.
You may have thought highly of the Athlon due to it being an interesting and well executed design, but are you seriously saying that the majority of people who bought an Athlon knew how interesting and well executed the design of what they bought was? Or is it more likely that people remember Athlon's because the alternative at the time sucked.
The words "The reason" and "says more about" for me create a causal link. With such a link, the P4 must be bad for the Athlon to be thought highly of. That then implies that if the P4 had been good, then the Athlon would not have been thought highly of.Quote:
The reason AMD's Athlon's were so highly thought of probably says more about how bad the P4 and NetBurst were.
That is how I read the sentence. If that is wrong, what did you mean?
Personally I just don't see a link, I don't see the necessity for comparison. P4 was bad on its own terms. What happens if you get two rotten sandwiches, does one become delicious through comparison? No, you still have two rotten sandwiches. If like with P3 vs Athlon both options were actually rather good, does one have to be labelled bad?
As for "most people", they carried on buying Intel, they didn't care. Of the minority that bought Athlon, I expect most just took some advice on what to buy and used what they bought thinking no more of it.
According to wikipedia - not always a reliable source but I'll trust it for product launch dates - Athlon launched June 23 1999, while Pentium 4 launched on November 20 2000.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
You refuted any comments about Athlon performance v Pentium III by claiming Athlon was 7th Generation v Pentium III's 6th generation. But from June 23 1999 to November 20 2000, Athlon competed directly against Pentium III. Fair enough, I was rounding - it's actually 17 months. But that's still 17 months where AMD had by far the best processor in the x86 market. Which generation those processors belonged to is irrelevant.
I read your earlier statement the same way DanceswithUnix did - as a clear implication that Athlon would not have been highly thought of if netburst had been a better architecture. But Athlon had 18 months of being highly thought of - in certain circles, at least - before netburst was even released. The quality of netburst had little to do with how highly Athlon was thought of.
No it's not wrong, if hypothetically when the P4 was released it was more than twice as fast as anything AMD had would people in today's world look back at the Athlon and heap praise on it, appreciate it for being half the speed, commended AMD for making such a slow CPU?Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
Something can't be good or bad in isolation, it just is, until you have something to compare it with it's impossible to say if something is either better, similar or worse than what you're comparing it to.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
Using your much loved analogies, what if you had never eaten a sandwich, never seen a sandwich, didn't even know what a sandwich was, how would you know if your sandwich was a good sandwich?
I guess when you said "Athlon spent 18 months competing directly with Pentium III" you meant to say P4 then?Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
I'm also not refuting any comment about Athlon performance, if you want to say it was that fastest thing since sliced bread then go for it, what I'm saying is that (imo) the reason that Athlon was so highly thought of, appreciate, applaud, or any other synonym you would like to choose, is because the alternatives sucked.
Erm ... no. Prior to November 2000, Athlon was NOT competing with P4 because P4 wasn't available to compete with. P3 was the best Intel had. That's what Athlon was competing with.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Really? Then please explain what this comment was meant to mean:Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
Because the only way I can read that is that you're saying Athlon's performance advantage over P3 is irrelevant because they were different generations, whereas I'd argue that the performance is relevant because they were direct market competitors.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
In what universe is saying what a surprise considered to be denying the accuracy or truth of something?Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
Tell you what let's compare a Intel Core series with a classic Athlon if, as you claim, generations make no difference.
You can read what ever you like into what I'm saying (it's a free world), there's no need to get all frustrated over the fact that someone doesn't agree with you.
You say the Athlon's are so highly thought of because they were good, I say the Athlon's were so highly thought of because their direct market competitors were late to release a new micro-architecture, and when they did it was a POS.
We disagree, get over it.
Never said you denied the accuracy, just that you claimed the difference was meaningless due to a generational difference. You must've missed that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Corky34
The generations don't matter to consumers - what matters is what they can buy. There were 18 months when consumers could buy a Pentium III, or buy an Athlon. The Athlon was the better processor for all of that time.
Yet you don't seem to think that had anything to do with the Athlon being well regarded. That's apparently entirely down to the P4 being a mediocre processor compared to the K8 Athlon 64. Those 18 months of Athlon dominance over P3 apparently have nothing to do with it.
Jim is correct, generations do not matter. If I created a new company today and released a chip into the market would you compare it with todays CPUs or an Intel 8088?
It is the year of manufacture that should be the constant when comparing as you are.
Wow you're like a dog with a bone ain't you, I've already said we disagree, you seem to be happy to compare a CPU microarchitecture that didn't change significantly since it was introduced in 1995 with a CPU microarchitecture that came out 4 years later, I don't agree with you, simple.Quote:
Originally Posted by scaryjim
And FYI you may want to look up the meaning of words before using them, specifically the meaning of "refute"