AMD faded away?

[iCraig]

In researching the gear for a new main machine, I've come across the realisation that the performance processor market now seems dominated by Intel.

Way back when, it was all about the Athlon FX series, and even though some apparently powerful processors by AMD are knocking about, Intel seem to be the new daddy?

Have AMD lost the plot, or are they just having a quiet roadmap at the moment with some benchmark breaking stuff in development? :)

[Mark]

Given how many years Intel had lost the plot, it was about time for a change in fortunes. It took a complete change of direction for Intel to do what they've done. Clever chaps those Israelis.

[Daz]

Just another leapfrog - it's happened before (AMD 64), it'll happen again sooner or later :) Core2Duo is the daddy for now though, aint no mistake.

AMD are blowing some air about their real next gen stuff (I think I read someone boasting up to 40% faster), but dont expect that for a while. In the mean time I expect them to retreat (in the desktop market) to their old ground - attack on price point rather than performance. Difficult to do with the price of things so cheap already though.

[Toby]

Not really cleverness on Intel's part at all, they merely copied AMD.

Their Netburst architecture in the P4 was a serious mistake - an architecture whose primary objective was to achieve very high clock speeds for marketing purposes yet which ultimately proved inadequate in the face of AMD's Athlon 64 and X2 processors. In order to catch up (and overtake as it happened), they had to effectively copy AMD's "more work per clock cycle" approach with the Core 2, although obviously adding many of their own refinements to produce an ultimately better processor.

Intel also had to follow AMD's lead with the 64-bit extensions and, with their next generation Nehalem processors, due next year, will also be copying AMD's on-die memory controller and Hypertransport bus.

Intel spent far too long flogging the dead horse that was the P4 which is what allowed AMD to take huge market share with their superior Athlon 64. Intel also go hammered in the server space by the Opteron, insisting on trying to push the damn squib that was the Itanium.

Intel have learned from their mistakes and have now instigated what they call the "tick-tock" system. They will produce a completely new processor platform every two years with a die-shrink and optimisation in the years in between. The Core 2 was the first new platform released under this scheme last year and later this year we'll see the die-shrink/optimisation which is Penryn. Next year will bring the new platform Nehalem which will be die-shrunk and optimised in 2009.

AMD are going to have serious trouble dealing with this I think as they simply don't have the resources to compete with Intel on this kind of schedule. They have the Barcelona core coming out very soon now, which they've hyped up a lot but it remains to be seen how it will compete with Penryn. The fact that it's a native quad-core design with their trademark integrated memory controller could see them competing very well with Conroe/Penryn as, when we finally have lots of apps and games which take full advantage of quad-cores, Intel could well find themselves seriously hampered by the FSB as all data transfer between the two dual-core dies has to traverse this bus. Native quad-core could really shine here - just a question of whether enough "killer" quad-core apps appear before Intel produce their native quad-core Nehalem. I have my doubts this will happen tbh.

[Daz]

They'll likely do well in the server market with Barcelona - personally I'm not even considering it for desktop/notebook. Opteron has done them well and got their foot in the door with big players (even Dell caved) - Today the Opterons still give even the Woodcrests a run for their money in SQL benchmarks for instance, and Pacifica is still preferred over VT for hardcore virtualisation - it might give them a boost in the desktop arena in the short term, but I dont know if they can pull another trump card like on-die memory controllers out when Intel finally catch up on that front.

[Will]

Given how many years Intel had lost the plot, it was about time for a change in fortunes. It took a complete change of direction for Intel to do what they've done. Clever chaps those Israelis.

Bunch of ***** if you ask me... but that's a personal issue.

I've always been an AMD fan just because it *wasn't* Intel and it was the underdog - and I'm always one to go for the least popular route. I hope they can get better, a bit of healthy competition for the home/desktop market would make for interesting reading/monitoring. :)

[Dymetrie]

I love my new Athlon 64 X2 :D

what were we talking about?

[Will]

I'm quite happy with my x2 4400 but I know it's nowhere near as good as the latest intels, but I'm not a huge game player or need such cutting edge performance.

[Daz]

I've had my little 3800+ for some 2 years now and dont have plans to change. Still does everything I want at home, though my workstation in the office has a Woodcrest Xeon I'll admit :p

[Toby]

FWIW, I have no brand loyalty at all and go with whatever is the best value at the time. Had Intel/AMD/NVidia/ATI over the years.

Had an Opty 165 overclocked to 2.8 until a month ago (55% overclock!) but it required a load of noisy cooling and I had to reduce the speed during hot spells as my cooling couldn't cope. Was time to upgrade and, at this point in time, C2D was a no-brainer. In a year or so when I upgrade again I'd happily go back to AMD if they're competitive.

[semi-pro waster]

AMD aren't dead in the water so to speak but Intel have reclaimed the number one position by (for the first time in a while) having a CPU that is clearly ahead on performance/overclockability and competes well on price. I suspect some of the problem for AMD stems from their purchase of ATI and a bit of a loss of focus.

If I can then I prefer to buy AMD because it is the smaller company and deserves support (to keep Intel vaguely honest if nothing else) but at the moment Intel chips are where my money would be going. :)

[Stan_Lite]

Personally, I would like to see AMD make a comeback soon. I like them because they fought their way into the market with a superior product even though the odds were stacked against them and I'd like to see them do the same again.

Having said that, Intel most certainly have the upper hand at the moment with the Core series. Recent price cuts can only boost their market share - unless AMD come up with something special fairly soon.

With the top of the range Core 2 Duo, the E6850 at less than £180, a Core 2 Quad, the Q6600 only a fiver dearer and at the bottom of the range, the E2140 (which will, allegedly, overclock from 1.6GHz to 3.0GHz with ease - although the 1Mb L2 cache shared between the two cores cripples it a bit) at less than £50 it's hard to see why anyone building a completely new system would choose anything else.

[Feek]

FWIW, I have no brand loyalty at all and go with whatever is the best value at the time. Had Intel/AMD/NVidia/ATI over the years.

I'm the same, I go with whatever is best for me at the time. My last system was AMD and ATI which progressed to AMD and Nvidia and has now changed to Intel/Nvidia.

[Davey_Pitch]

FWIW, I have no brand loyalty at all and go with whatever is the best value at the time. Had Intel/AMD/NVidia/ATI over the years.

Same :) Current rig is AMD/ATI, while the next will be Intel/Nvidia (the first Nvidia card I've owned I think). I just go with what's best at the time for what I can afford :)

[Stan_Lite]

Same here.

Up until recently, I swore by AMD/ATI and all of my folding rigs (including my gaming rig) were built using that configuration.

My main gaming rig is now Intel/Nvidia and I will only switch if AMD/ATI release components superior to those I'm using at the moment.

[Daz]

See I've always preferred nVidia simply because they've always had superior Linux support. Hoping that might change though now ATI are AMD, they're quite good open source supporters.

[Stan_Lite]

See I've always preferred nVidia simply because they've always had superior Linux support. Hoping that might change though now ATI are AMD, they're quite good open source supporters.

I found that when I dabbled with Ubuntu recently, the Nvidia drivers were a doddle to work with whereas, I never did get the ATI drivers to work any sense.