The Angry Phenom (or: How I Love-Hate AMD!)

[dr_bowtie]

And here is a little Phenom goodness or.... on the 9600 Black Edition

 

http://www.amdzone.com/amdzone/index.php?o...=9413&Itemid=29

 

And yet some more....

 

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html...W50aHVzaWFzdA==

[lucky1]

Not enough anger, but other than that I think there are valid points about short/long term market strategy, pricing, and the general nature of the price conscious consumer.

 

Where I do disagree is about the financial solvency of AMD. By acquiring ATi, AMD took on huge amounts of debt. Contrast this debt with AMD's short term prospects by failing to deliver Phenom on time with performance and lower power consumption stats that were hyped as being able to beat competitive products from Intel. If anyone has monitored AMD's stock the past five months it has plunged from over $20 share to under $10.

 

Intel is fighting a war of attrition, but AMD is also making huge blunders that are significantly leading towards its own demise. AMD did need a chipset of its own so it could compete with Intel selling complete systems to OEM systems integrators like Dell, HP, and Supermicro. However, AMD also needed Phenom to be a huge success out of the gates with performance and lower power consumption so that AMD could sell their chips at a higher price point and put a large dent in all those liabilities that were acquired from ATi during their merger.

 

The chips did not come out in time in Q1-Q2 '07, and when they finally were released in Q4 '07, the chips were released broken with erratum in L3 cache, that required AMD to recall all Barcelona Opteron chips. Phenom is effected too, but why were these chips not recalled like Barcelona processors? Because it would have cost too much money. AMD's solution? Release a BIOS patch and hope the general consumer doesn't notice any instability or performance loss in Phenom processors. This is also overlooking that Hector and AMD PR spent the better part of '06-'07 hyping Barcelona and Phenom as the chip that would outperform Core2Duo/Quad , but would also offer significant power savings because AMD's True QuadCore architecture allowed for independently clocked cores for on demand processing power.

 

I haven't personally tested a Barcelona or Phenom chip, but from every review I've read, real world statistics do not match the hype. It's a chip that uses more power and offers less performance. By all means it appears Phenom is to AMD what Prescott was to Intel; overhyped and under delivered. Similarly, ATi has failed to produce a GPU product at lower price points than Nvidia with higher performance and lower power consumption the past two generations. The one shining beacon of hope for AMD right now is of course the 790 generation chipset and it uses only 7-9 watts of power. Compare this to Nvidia's 780 generation chipset which requires around 30 watts of power and a huge heatsink with active cooling for sufficient dissipation of heat. This development should help AMD secure more OEM contracts for server, desktop, and laptop markets.

 

Don't take this criticism the wrong way, with the exception of a stability issue due to the infamous crucial ballistix DDR500 I've been happy with my AMD system for the past couple of years. I hope AMD can fix these problems and survive, but their short term outlook is rather bleak.

[doctorcilantro]

The one shining beacon of hope for AMD right now is of course the 790 generation chipset

 

790Fx isn't treating many of us well here in the Gigabyte (concentration) camp...

 

 

http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?p=4193933#post4193933

 

DC

[Praz]

Supposedly straight from AMD.

 

On savait déjà que les versions cadencées à 2.4 et 2.6 GHz des Phenom étaient repoussées au second trimestre. Nous avons pu confirmer hier que les 9650 et 9550, version « débugguées » des premiers Phenom (voir notre article) sont également repoussées au second trimestre. AMD a en effet reçu ses premières puces utilisant le stepping B3 (early silicon), le bug n’est toujours pas corrigé. Un nouveau « spin » est donc nécessaire, ce qui peut repousser les Phenom au mois de mai.

 

Translated:

 

We already knew that the versions clocked at 2.4 and 2.6 GHz of Phenom were postponed in the second quarter. We were able to confirm yesterday that the 9650 and 9550, "débugguées" version of the first Phenom (see our article) are also repelled the second quarter. AMD has indeed received its first chips using the stepping B3 (early silicon), the bug is still not fixed. A new "spin" is needed, which could push the Phenom in May.

 

http://www.erenumerique.fr/ces_2008_amd_in...news-11723.html

[Guest Darien]

@Angry:

Sorry if this is spam...

 

but damn man!! I couldn't have said it better myself... I guess i'm one of the guys who did read the whole thing (cuz I wasn't looking at porno every 3 minutes) and this is praise...

 

but I have my own business, wife, 2.5 kids, 2 crappy cars and guess what...

 

my AMD 3GHz Opteron / Nvidia rig is still pretty damn cool and good enuff for me... even though I couldn't show a respectable bench to save my life at this point.

 

God Bless

[Angry_Games]

heh, reader feedback is never spam...if you guys don't say anything, I won't write anymore because I will figure no one reads it (too busy surfing porno or just never learned to read past the 3rd grade level etc)

[Hemidare]

I love the rant Angry and yes i read the whole thing without looking at porn. I only upgraded because i was depressed and i like to buy stuff when i am depressed. Other then that i love my expert and dual core opty. I however have seen a difference when recording videos with fraps and playing GOW and crysis. But was it necessary? Not really but i am still happy i have the new rig.

[nitemareglitch]

Yep, this is still so true today, although AMD is still missing a piece of the puzzle when it comes to producing a winning chipset.

 

http://1337pc.net/?p=7