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- shifty2, on 11/19/2007, -5/+48ever since the merger (AMD/ATi), it just seems like a downward spiral for both CPU and GPU departments. The R600 was supposed to the best GPU ever made, well at least on paper it did. The Phenom was the same way against C2D.
I think AMD needs to get their priorities straight and stop rehashing their technologies for another generation. Intel did this with the P4's, more clock, more L2, yet another Extreme edition, etc. AMD took advanage of the fact that Netburst was as useful as a driver's license is to Helen Kellar and over took Intel in sales and performance (PC games, not encoding etc). Intel came back with a vicious bitch slap ala Core 2 Duo. AMD has been sitting seeming like they've had their thumbs up their asses doing prostate exams. Its the same for ATi's part, it looks like when they got absorbed, they tried to play the "Value" card and sell cheaper CPU's and GPU's than the competitor. its like a Walmart brand vs. Armani brand.
AMD/ATi needs to get on the ball and get to work on something that will cater to the masses better. If they can make a product that will ass-rape the competition, they should sell it at competitive price and make money to develop the next "kick in the nuts 2.0" to the competitors.
as of right now, they can not afford (literally) to push out late, under powered products while the competition is 2 steps ahead of them.
I had high hopes for AMD and ATi after the merger since they has SO much potential, but in the last 2 years they managed to hit themselves in the face with the ugly stick, again, and again and again...
/burns fan-boy membership card, hat, pajamas... - Hermmunster, on 11/19/2007, -1/+29What is missing is the idea that AMD is not going for the high end on this. They are not trying to compete with the high end Intel offering. They are trying to make the best price/performance processor for the money. 99% of sales are in this area, so they currently have the best price/performer for 99% of the market. You can't deny them that achievement.
- geoffp, on 11/19/2007, -1/+27You know, as I've used AMD chips a lot, this is pretty disappointing, but for me, the bottom line is this: if AMD can keep their bang-for-buck ratio better than Intel can, I'll still buy AMD for my next build. I don't really give a damn who's top dog at the moment, because I never spend $1200 on a CPU. I want a fast, cool, low-power chip for about $100.
Plus, they're now *both* open-source friendly, which is awesome in a groovy bizarro-world kind of way. I daresay AMD/ATI have upped the ante with the release of full Radeon HD specs, though, and I do feel compelled to reward that. - trapilales, on 11/19/2007, -0/+24Well it's not actually as bad as it looks. The price/performance ratio is not bad. AMD now has a full platform available, and i expect it to be quite attractive for the budget enthusiast.
Intel is still gonna beat it in pretty much any benchmark out there, but for the price it's not a bad buy. If the OCing capabilities are decent, you could build a very attractive system for very little money. - evi1, on 11/19/2007, -1/+18As a Intel/Nvidia fan I am disappointed in seeing AMD do so poorly the last year or so. What leads to all these breakthroughs and advancement in computer hardware is healthy competition in the marketplace. If AMD dies I predict Intel and maybe Nvidia to reduce spending on R&D and live off there monopoly with lackluster products. For example, look at how creative captured the sound card market and then went years without much innovation and ***** driver support.
- ClockworksNine, on 11/19/2007, -1/+14Thanks to your spamming, I've decided to always block your website.
- majorbabu, on 11/19/2007, -1/+12Honestly, what is this article trying to tell me? That you get what you pay for? Most of those intel cpus (except the Q6600) cost more than $700. The Phenom is at a steady $200-$300 price point. That isn't too different from comparing a Civic to an Enzo. AMD is obviously not trying to compete in the high-end market with this move. The only real competitor in this article is the Q6600, which AMD does fairly well against.
The real verdict comes out when Intel releases their new mid-range/budget CPUs, so until we see the pricing and performance of those chips we really can't say much about these new AMDs. - djbon2112, on 11/19/2007, -1/+10Way to blatantly push your own review on another review's digg. ***** off. Buried.
- frgmstr, on 11/19/2007, -1/+10The R600 was fully baked long before AMD got involved. If anything, AMD helped scale R600 to 55nm very quickly and efficiently.
As for priorities, R700 is looking to tape out earlier than thought, and Bulldozer is being worked on for devliery in 2009. They are not looking to occupy the value space as a business strategy, but when you get lemons, you had better make lemonade or get nothing. - djbon2112, on 11/19/2007, -8/+17Well written Kyle, this is very unfortunate. I used to be an AMD man, but I've gone to Intel, and from the looks of this I'm not going back. :(
- alperea, on 11/19/2007, -1/+10I'm glad I'm not a fanboy of either. That way no matter what I win :)
- nanosec, on 11/19/2007, -0/+8Testify!
Everyday AMD stays in business, it's good for all of us.
Otherwise cpu's would still be insanely priced.
+1 for right on the money, 100 dollar cpus work fine for me too. - inactive, on 11/20/2007, -1/+8"Undoubtedly today AMD is going to loose a lot of fans..."
Not sure if I trust a review from someone who cannot spell lose. - Krakn3Dfx, on 11/19/2007, -2/+8I built exclusively AMD systems for past 3-4 years, in their heyday, when they were beating Intel to varying degrees. My latest system is an Intel Q6600 system because I didn't see any reason to move from socket 939 to AM2. With the Phemon, AMD still hasn't given anyone a reason to not go with Intel instead of AMD.
AMD's biggest mistake IMO at this point was abandoning socket 939 so quickly. DDR2 has not shown the performance increases that it promised to date, and the socket AM2 userbase is tiny in comparison to Socket 939. PC builders are not going to build a Phenom system that uses more power, costs more to assemble, and in general is not competitive with the Intel competition. AMD would have strongly benefited from introducing a Socket 939 quad core part that would allow piecemeal upgraders to adopt without having to switch our their RAM, motherboard, and often videocard to enjoy.
If AMD can't be competitive on the leading edge, which it's becoming more obvious that they can't, they should at least make an effort to support their existing base better. - willtrx, on 11/19/2007, -2/+8Abandoning the 939 socket was probably the dumbest thing AMD has done. It gives people like me the perfect opportunity to switch to an Intel solution.
- mysteri0usdrx, on 11/19/2007, -0/+5I didn't get a stable x-fi driver for vista until a full year after vistas retail release. God help me if Nvidia ever goes that route.
- djbon2112, on 11/19/2007, -0/+5Very true. Both companies were very promising before the merger. I honestly think all it did was burn millions of AMD's very much needed money, and waste ~6 months of both company's time. AMD should've left it alone!
- MasterInsan0, on 11/19/2007, -0/+5Thankfully, Creative is now relegated to crappy mp3 players and "h4rdc0re extr3me s0und!!!!!1one!!1" while the on-board sound devices rampage over them. Sound is one of the few aspects of computer performance that are pretty much maxed out as far as scaling goes. The sound we have now is about as good as it gets, so now it's just getting cheaper and cheaper. Eventually, Creative will have to bail out of the sound card market.
- mawh, on 11/19/2007, -0/+5They acquired ATI, not nvidia.
- hexydes, on 11/19/2007, -0/+5AMD buying ATI was a defensive move. The industry is moving into embedded platforms. Most Dell/HP/etc computers ship with an integrated video chipset. Laptops use embedded chipsets. Mobile phones are rapidly replacing every portable device, and will soon need to come with dedicated, embedded video chipsets (indeed, some already do). Gaming consoles use specialized embedded chipsets...the list goes on.
Buying ATI was a long-term solution to a rapidly approaching problem. Intel had a fully-realized integrated platform, whereas AMD just had some embedded chips. The nearest I can tell. AMD went into it knowing that it would put them out of commission for a time in the CPU arms-race, but would give them a jump-start down the road in the integrated/embedded platform arena. - thallwyn, on 11/19/2007, -6/+10I think this is some of your best work, Kyle...the benchmarks were secondary to some insightful commentary...
- breaks, on 11/19/2007, -3/+7Disappointing results from Phenom, though I didn't expect anything different...hopefully CrossfireX results are enough to pull the "Platform" from the fire.
Definitely waiting on the 4xCFX "platform" results. - Lothar121, on 11/19/2007, -1/+5Good thing I have a while to wait before I need an upgrade. I plan to get an AMD no matter what. I'm obsessed with them. And AMD still seems to give the best bang for your buck. I usually get a new midranged PC every couple of years, or a big upgrade, so AMD is stillm y first pick. S
- protias, on 11/19/2007, -3/+7The one thing AMD did right was having the Black Edition the same price as the regular processor. It is a shame that Phenom is a complete let down.
- sk545, on 11/19/2007, -1/+5yeah, 939 was dropped too soon and a lot of people felt betrayed. This is what you get by making one big mistake....and that is all it really takes in the business world.
I hope AMD sticks around, but I am thinking buyout/merger right now. - hexydes, on 11/19/2007, -0/+4That's absolutely not the truth. Comparable Intel Core CPUs are still a good 25-40% more expensive than their AMD counterparts. AMD will bring this series out, and then drop the price in a few months, and simply drop the bottom out from the Core series again.
AMD just keeps coming at Intel with two fists, one being a left hook of price, the other a right jab of performance. They nailed them on price in the first round (Athlon/Duron era), then performance (Athlon XP), now they're back to price again. I would venture to guess that once they've successfully absorbed ATI, and all the waves that such an acquisition inherently produces, they'll pump more money into R&D again, drop the fab process size, and go back to the right jab again...who knows, perhaps this is already in the works as we type... - Tenoq, on 11/20/2007, -0/+4Try working for an OEM. Big system sales are rare - 99% might be pushing it, but 95% seems like a fair call when sectioning out high-performance from everything else. We don't see it because we're geeks and we go for the performance: but everyone else just wants a new computer that works.
- hexydes, on 11/19/2007, -0/+4Considering most people buy low to mid-range budget systems anyway, I don't know that this is really an issue.
- azimuthal, on 11/19/2007, -0/+4TLB is translation lookaside buffer, not lookup.
- twodayslate, on 11/19/2007, -0/+3I want to see some benchmarks and some charts! Bring out the numbers!
- inactive, on 11/19/2007, -4/+7it's not an enthusiast chip...get a life
- dyrshin, on 11/20/2007, -0/+3fantastic post
- mysteri0usdrx, on 11/19/2007, -0/+3sorry, but if you play with headphones, there is no way to get over the usb static caused by moving your mouse/ typing interfering with the onboard sound card. I can not and will not go back to onboard sound again. Also, good luck getting any virtual surround sound from onboard audio.
Then again, this is from a nearly 100% gaming perspective, so if that's not your thing, just ignore me. - gotamd, on 11/19/2007, -3/+6This is disappointing. As you can see from my username, I really do like AMD. They just haven't been delivering with the AM2 platform. The chips certainly aren't any slower than the 939 chips, but they're competing with a whole new architecture from Intel, which is frankly blowing them out of the water.
- louiedog, on 11/19/2007, -0/+3I agree with the sound card comment. I had a great Audigy card a couple of years ago and decided to bring it to the new computer I was building. I disabled the on-board sound, put it in, and found that I had some issues with it locking up the new system. I took it out and used the on-board sound while looking for a fix. After a week I realized there wasn't much of a difference except for software extras that I never used.
I do however disagree with your mp3 player comment. Although there have been a couple of flops, a lot of their players are really good. - spyrochaete, on 11/19/2007, -1/+4According to Tom's Hardware the new midrange ATI cards not as fast as the 8800GT, nor do they give as much GSA per dollar so to speak.
- inactive, on 11/19/2007, -0/+3Hard to believe, but s939 is still a player in today's machines. Granted, you can't build an s939 PC today, but if you have one (and gazillions of gamers do). You are good to go for a long time: s939 Dual Core Opterons get cheaper and cheaper every day!
I miss the lean and hungry AMD. :( - inactive, on 11/19/2007, -0/+3good comments...the reason why I'm not upgrading anytime soon
- jjmckay, on 11/20/2007, -0/+3At least 95% of computer buyers don't consider overclocking potential. You and I do, though. Maybe 90% of buyers don't even know what overclocking is.
- frgmstr, on 11/21/2007, -0/+3The 2.3 and 2.4 number are retail samples and all AMD is offering is 2.3GHz right now. Neither of our retail chips would scale to 3GHz, so we used the ENG sample that would so we could see some "clock to clock" 3GHz tests. Is that compromising our ethics????? And fully disclosing it??? Also discussing it with AMD they felt our numbers at 3GHz were solid. No cookies were harmed in writing this post.
- frgmstr, on 11/19/2007, -2/+5We did a direct comparison with the equally priced Q6600 and this is what we commented on continually through the article. Like it or not, Phenom is AMD's new flagship CPU and needs to be seen alongside Intel's flagship CPUs as well. If you have any questions, you can mail me at Kyle@HardOCP.com and I will try to answer any specific concerns you have. As "dumbest articles" go, I could pick out a couple that excel beyond this one. ;)
- ferrariman60, on 11/19/2007, -1/+4Disappointing for sure against the high end intel chips...... until you see the price. These look like they are a performance bargain! Those Intel QX.... chips that were beating them around cost 3 times more! I love the idea of game-based overclocking, especially in the face of the fact that the hardware has beaten multi-threaded software to market, for the most part. It'd be awesome to throttle back 2 cores and really push the other 2 hard for a game that runs on 1 or 2 cores. Some very neat innovation here, too bad the performance numbers can't match how innovative the chips are.
- kronix2, on 11/20/2007, -1/+3Read my post again. The Phenom (four cores) scored less than the Athlon 64 X2 (two cores) despite them both being clocked at the same frequency. The difference in Quake 4 was about 20%.
What are the other two cores doing? All this shows is that, core for core and clock for clock, the Phenom performs worse than the Athlon 64 X2 in some games. Shocking, really. You expect a new architecture to perform better, not worse.
Like I said, it's embarrassing for AMD. It also hurts consumers; Intel could put out cheap Wolfdale and Yorkfield CPUs if they wanted to, but they haven't because they have no serious competition from AMD at the upper end of the market. - frgmstr, on 11/19/2007, -1/+3The Phenom 9600 lost to the Q6600 in almost every benchmark run and it $3 more expensive. This is the BEST AMD has to offer. This will not bode well at all. After billions of dollars in R&D, AMD has failed to meet Intel's Core IPC that was released a year ago.
- djbon2112, on 11/19/2007, -0/+2Um, the high end ones (2.4 GHz and higher, up to 3.0 GHz) have been DELAYED. TBL BUG. Read the news before making stupid statements.
- Gotno, on 11/19/2007, -0/+2Except that the Q6600 is cracking skulls against the entire Phenom lineup, and it's priced competitively against the 9900. Granted I will agree with you, reviewing the mainstream desktop chip from AMD against Intel's enthusiast desktop chip is retarded at best. I expect there to be more linear comparisons once some non-enthusiast Penryns get released by Intel (read H1 2008).
- Daiken, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2The thing you guys don't get is designing such advanced chips is very difficult. In truth they have no idea how it will perform until it's actually up and running. All the major problems, setbacks, lacking in performance shows up really only after the chip is made. That's why once a company gets a good design going, they usually stick to it like Intel did. Then AMD beat them down so Intel went back to the drawing board. AMD just sort of modified the K8 but it's not good enough still. Same with R600, good on paper, but in the real world problems cropped up. The industry is really hit and miss, and once you've got a good design going you can sit back for quite a while.
- Tenoq, on 11/20/2007, -0/+2I don't think that was the point... more that if no one backs AMD, we'll ALL be buying inferior products when they go under.
- frgmstr, on 11/20/2007, -1/+3High end has not been released yet???? THAT IS AMD's HIGH END PART TODAY!
I think the editor at THG was smoking something. 13%, no problem. It is a great deal, even if Yorkfield CPUs are about to scale down into the mid-2.5GHz range and then the gap will be 20%. - djbon2112, on 11/19/2007, -0/+2I deserve to be dug down, stupid comment.
However from what I've seen so far (i.e. actual e-tailer prices and not MSRP), the 3870 is better performance/dollar than the 8800 GT. It's MSRP may be in the $240 range, but when it's sellling EVERYWHERE for close to $300, the $220-$240 (actual) 3870 is a much better deal. And you never know, it might end up like the 2900 where drivers can make a significant performance difference. -
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