How Will AMD stay alive?

i hope not if intel wins the battle we will see all proc form intel 1000 $ or more

Who told you that?!?

We have very specific rules against this sort of thing, and very specific punishments for those who reveal Secret Plans to Outsiders, and I need to inform the Council whose family must "disappear"...

Yes, I keep hoping something amazing will come along from amd. However since the ati acquisition, they have really turned around the chipset and graphics divisions. I wouldn't count them out just yet-but they need to build on this momentum.

I can pretty much guarantee there will be price drops when i5 is released. which is good for everyone of course.

Well said. I kind of spilled the beans with Intel's future plans. It may have been easier to state some simple Econ 101. It is too often that people assume that because one company is the only maker of a product, that it can charge any amount. That is not true because there are many instances of companies being the single source of a certain good, and that company is not charging an arm and/or leg(except Apple). Realistically, no one is going to pay $1000 for a CPU,

Well look at it this way. PII bests everything but the most expensive I7's. I7 has architectural superiority due to triple channel memory. How is an I5 supposed to compete with PII which outdoes any Core2 and the entry level I7? Core I5 will lose any architectural benefits of the Core I7 that made it a faster chip, and will be overpriced as I've seen. AMD doesn't need to worry about I5, it needs to worry about getting the performance crown again. And who would get the fastest I5 that will be the similar price of the I7 920 when 920 is a hideously faster chip?

smart people research and get what they want...

i would bring up the multi-gpu thing, but the verdict is still out for i7 with them ORB results and nvm the i5 stuff.

lets face it, Intel has the best stuff atm, AMD did with its K8 vs netburst, now it's Intel's domain, unless they can pull a rabbit out of the hat and give us the mythical true K10 they were on the horn about since end of P4 and C2 days then it'd be grand.

That said, if they want to compete in the value market, they need to get brand recognition up with everyone, like say sponsor some major university to give cheap improved amd laptops out (maybe a BIG name tech like MIT or something) and then aggressively market that in TVs, and not tech magazines.

Even better, if they somehow managed to make OEMs to churn out quality AMD based parts by leveraging a whole platform without bumpgate issues and other build quality issues then they would maybe win over OEMs for tight design.

But then, that is heading into the waters of a"PC-Console" where every part is the same...

Actually, some benchies suggest gamers might want to go with a Phenom II, the performace on the fastest Phenom IIs in games is good and the price is decent as well. The "normal citizen" probably doesn't even understand what a processor is and would probably tell you that they prefer Dell CPUs.

Epic win. CJL, don't bother reasoning using "facts" and "benchmarks". The real question is "Is it fast enough to run minesweeper?"

Haha, so much ignorance. I7 920 is a hugely downclocked chip. I don't think anyone runs it at stock speed. It was only downclocked to make it's price affordable. 2.6? Come on, that is the frequency of the past. So you shouldn't compare percentage of overclocking, as if you overclock 920 and 975 will be the same performing chips. Anyway, I7 heats as much as PII, but needs less voltage to achieve 4.0GHz. On PII you need about 1.45 for that, while with the I7 you need 1.3 or a little more. That is it's advantage. And those benchmarks only prove my theory. For the largest part 965 was close or better than the I7 920, which by itself is a proof that I5 won't be able to touch neither of these chips (except in gaming, where higher frequency wins).

You know what the difference is in those two cases?

The i7's 4 second advantage is over 20% in that benchmark. In the second pass encoding, it has over a 30% lead. I'd consider that a fairly thorough flattening.

As for the 3fps? The PhII actually had a 6fps lead in Left4Dead (I'm surprised you didn't pick up on that), but despite the fact that 6fps sounds significant, it's only 5% or so. Far less significant than a 20-30% lead.

Don't let the facts stand in the way of your fanboyism though...

OK, let's look at them again, shall we?

Synthetic:
Sysmark: 4.4% lead in favor of the i7
(I don't think I need to add a total for this category)

Media:
Photoshop: 21.3% lead in favor of the i7
x264, first pass: 1.04% lead in favor of the Phenom
x264, second pass: 31.5% lead in favor of the i7
Windows Media Encoder: 3.6% lead in favor of the Phenom
Overall: 12.04% in favor of the i7

Rendering:
SPECapc 3dsmax: 28.6% lead in favor of the i7
Pov-Ray 3.7: 30.4% lead in favor of the i7
Overall: 29.5% in favor of the i7

Gaming:
Left 4 Dead: 5.3% lead in favor of the Phenom
Crysis Warhead: 0.37% lead in favor of the i7
Overall: 2.46% in favor of the Phenom

Overall for all benchmarks: 11.85% in favor of the i7. That means that averaged over every benchmark here, the i7 still wins by over 10%. Therefore, your claim that "for the largest part, 965 was clos or better than i7-920" is complete garbage.

Nice try though.

What??? Fanboysm??? Is that what you call every person that doesn't lick Intel's blue a** you fanboy? Out of the clear sky you tell me I am a fanboy for posting my opinion that is non Intel pro. You have really given yourself out now. You are a true, hardcore, mega Intel fanboy, by accusing me, and I am totally unbiased towards either company. And my point wasn't that I7 looses to PII, my point was that if it can tie or be better than it now, I5 is pointless. I5 is just a rebranded Core2.

You? Unbiased?

As for me, I am not a fanboy. As I said above, I actually do consider Phenom IIs to be a great choice at their price point (which happens to be below the price point of the i7). They are quite fast, despite not keeping up with the i7, and they are quite a bit cheaper than even the i7 920. I have recommended them to friends, and if I were building a budget system right now, I would strongly consider one as an option. Similarly, I helped a friend out with a rig using an 8800GT a couple years ago, but my current rig has 4870x2s. Why? Because Nvidia offered the right price/performance option for him then, and ATI offered better performance in the price range I wanted now.

As for the rebranded core 2 argument? That kind of proves my earlier point - the only people I have seen claiming that it is a rebrand are AMD fanboys (unless the definition has completely changed while I wasn't looking). Rebranding is like what Nvidia has done, where the same basic GPU was first the 8800GT, then the 9800 GT with minimal changes. It is now the GTS 240, and is still the same basic architecture that it has always been. Similar performance does not mean that a part was rebranded - it would need to have basically the same architecture to fall under that description. The i5 is a native quad core, with an integrated memory controller and PCI-E controller, a completely new system interconnect, the ability to turn on and off single cores entirely, and several changes to the execution core itself. It is about as far from a rebranding as you can get.

despite not keeping up with the i7

See? Doctor, it's getting worse!

Ok, I want no more discussions like this. As long as we agree that we are all healthy and normal human beings scratch those damn CPUs, they are just stupid pieces of metal. And to prove that PII is a bit better (A BIT) in gaming, here are two benchmarks and a thread: http://www.modreactor.com/english/ [...] 7-920.html and http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdo [...] i=3533&p=8

Thread: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forum [...] 514&page=1

That thread is not about I7's, but to prove Core2 isn't all that great in games.

YOU USED NUMBERS TO MAKE ME LOOK SILLY! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!@#$@#!$$

YOU USE BENCHMARKS TO OBJECTIVLY MEASURE PERFORMANCE YOU ARE A FANBOY!

ONLY FANBOYS USE BENCHMARKS AND OBJECTIVE DATA!

BaronMatrix, is that you?

You can't rationalize with irrational people.

Aye... definitely a new thread was not needed. The OP was just trolling.

Starting a new "doom" thread is about as useless as taking benchmark delta percentages and then pretending that you can sum them to create a "score" that actually means something.

You should have included a world of warcraft reference, used more 1337 sp34k and worse spelling. They might get it that way.

That one's easy:
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipse [...] i=3536&p=1

The new Xeon 5500 series has no competition. In 2 socket systems, it competes with most 4 socket setups (both older gen intel and AMD). The new AMD 6-core close the gap a bit, but they still can't really compete with the 5500s.

^ lol

Try adding a few high end GPUs in SLI/CrossfireX to see how well the PII can keep with an i7. Even Core 2 Quad has a hard time with multiple GPUs compared to i7. With a single GPU, I guess it may go either way, but with multiple, high end GPUs, i7 is in a league of its own.

Also, AMD PWNSMYLIFE!

Let's be a bit more specific. While most economists wouldn't call the x86 (by which I really mean x86 plus AMD64 and Intel 64) CPU market a "natural monopoly," it comes quite close actually. There are substantial barriers to entry for various reasons. (i) There are large fixed costs involved in developing a x86 processor; (ii) AFAIK, the most popular OS out there only runs on x86 (apart from the somewhat esoteric Itanium which, coincidentally, is also produced by Intel). So you either have to reverse-engineer something x86 compatible or you have to pay substantial fees to the license holder(s). Other processors, such as those produced by Sun, IBM, etc., are no close substitutes for x86 processors since they don't work with Windows.

The funny thing is that many people argue that current x86 processor prices are close to competitive-equilibrium prices despite the fact that there are only two firms (maybe three if you count VIA) in the industry. Without making a detailed argument, if AMD (and VIA) go away, we could go right up from the competitive-equilibrium to the monopoly price. Basically, once the current competitors are gone, high barriers to entry would enable Intel to charge monopoly prices. Sure, as you say, Intel would still look at the demand for x86 processors--it's very unlikely that we would see $1000 for a mainstream processor. But nevertheless, I'd fully expect Intel to produce substantially less than the current output of x86 processors (=Intel output + AMD output). Prices would likely rise quite a bit.

They might. But fabs which aren't running at capacity are making less money than fabs which are churning out the chips. Unless they want to permanently shrink their business, a corporation in that position will want to strike a decent balance between price and demand.

At a certain point in the price curve, potential customers will stick with an "obsolete" system rather than buy new. Where that point is becomes a big question. Some have asserted that we're there right now, though I don't agree.

Sure that's true...you'd like to have fabs running close to capacity. So I guess what I'm saying is if there really was this doomsday scenario and AMD shuts down, it's not likely that Intel would ramp up its production capacity to replace closing AMD plants. Overall (=market) production would fall.

Look at current profit margins in the budget segment. We know these are not good for the computer manufacturers currently. I assume (I actually doubt Intel and AMD provide exact numbers by market segment) the margins on low-end x86 processors are pretty slim. If AMD were to go down the drain, I'd expect Intel to run a strategy that would bump up the margins in the budget segment.