AMD Phenom is a gigantic dissapointment

[Ace Pace]

HardOCP,Anandtech.

I'll spare you all reading this. AMD lost on every front. Even ignoring their pathetic PR debacle with made up benchmarks, ignoring the late launch, ignoring repeated underclocking...
Preformance? Lose.
Price? Lose.
Power? Lose.
therfor, cooling? Lose.
Overclocking? LOSE.


There are no words...

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Fire the Fucking CEO. I have grown intolerant of their failures and their poor execution over the past year.

Guess a Q6600 is the next step for me.

[Uraniun235]

Phenom today is going to be all quad-core only, you'll see dual and triple-core parts in 2008 but for now this is what we get.

...tri-core processors?

[Ace Pace]

Phenom today is going to be all quad-core only, you'll see dual and triple-core parts in 2008 but for now this is what we get.

...tri-core processors?

AMD is using a native quad-core design. This means, that unlike Intels current CPUs, the dies include all four cores, Intel 'bolts together' two dual-core dies. This means that they have three choices when one of the cores is defective. Either they can throw the whole die away. I suspect this would make no sense at all. They can disable two cores and sell it as a dual core part. Not really good for profit margin. Or they can disable one core and sell it as a Tri.

[Netko]

Which could potentially be interesting if it is priced close(r) to the dual core part then the quad core one.

All in all, I'm sad seeing AMD in this state - I've been using them almost exclusively thanks to their superior price/performance since roughly 2000. Yet, I'm also considering switching to Intel for my next machine - AMD still has the advantage of cheap good motherboards, but its close. In any case, we need a viable competitor to Intel to keep the prices down and not (again) get the pricing like in the pre-Athlon era or hubris products like Itanium being forced down our throats.

[Braedley]

Part of the reasoning behind the Phenom is to get new customers that they can easily keep for the long haul. Admittedly, it isn't as good as it should be, and I'll be holding out until a socket AM3 version comes out, but it's still good enough for most small shops to recommend to customers that don't need it for gaming, but want it for a good media centre. Especially if those customers want a less expensive upgrade path.

[Uraniun235]

Yet, I'm also considering switching to Intel for my next machine - AMD still has the advantage of cheap good motherboards, but its close.

Are Intel-chip motherboards really so much more expensive than their AMD-chip counterparts as to negate the price-performance advantage of the Intel chip?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Yet, I'm also considering switching to Intel for my next machine - AMD still has the advantage of cheap good motherboards, but its close.

Are Intel-chip motherboards really so much more expensive than their AMD-chip counterparts as to negate the price-performance advantage of the Intel chip?

Probably not, but for some, it's whether it is enough performance for the given dollar.

[DaveJB]

This looks bad - even the overclocked 3GHz Phenom that HardOCP had is only about as fast as a Q6700 (2.66GHz). Even if AMD can somehow vastly increase Phenom's clockspeed in the next 12 months, Intel isn't going to have any problem keeping up.

The real shocking thing is that the fastest Phenom AMD has is only a lousy 100MHz faster than the Athlon 64 FX-51 that they released four years ago!

[Netko]

Yet, I'm also considering switching to Intel for my next machine - AMD still has the advantage of cheap good motherboards, but its close.

Are Intel-chip motherboards really so much more expensive than their AMD-chip counterparts as to negate the price-performance advantage of the Intel chip?

Its possibly a factor of local pricing, but I'm seeing AMD budget to mid-range processors going for proc+decent MB for around 250US$, while the Intel solution is 300$-350$ for similar performance and MB feature set. Just checking, I was somewhat wrong attributing that to motherboards alone (haven't checked in a month or so), both the more expensive proc and the more expensive MB for the same feature set contribute.

EDIT: Damn dollar-in-freefall, my mental conversion rate is extremely favorable to the dollar compared to the real rate. Edited the numbers.

EDIT2: Also, it isn't so much a price/performance advantage for Intel as simply a pure performance advantage, especially towards the higher end where at some point AMD is no longer able to compete. On the lower end however, AMD with its aggressive pricing actually has a price/performance advantage, again, at least locally.

[Netko]

The real shocking thing is that the fastest Phenom AMD has is only a lousy 100MHz faster than the Athlon 64 FX-51 that they released four years ago!

Not that horribly shocking. The Netburst architecture was a failure primarily because the expected clockspeed scaling never materialized (at one point they had a 7GHz proc on the far future roadmap) - the last couple of years has seen a move to multicore as a result, and you're comparing a 4-core solution to a single core one and each time there is an expansion of cores there is a corresponding bump downwards in Mhz, but with more computational power do to the additional core.

Haven't checked, but has Intel managed to surpass the P4 clockspeed with its Core 2s yet? In any case, they're also hovering around 3Ghz...

[DaveJB]

Not that horribly shocking. The Netburst architecture was a failure primarily because the expected clockspeed scaling never materialized (at one point they had a 7GHz proc on the far future roadmap) - the last couple of years has seen a move to multicore as a result, and you're comparing a 4-core solution to a single core one and each time there is an expansion of cores there is a corresponding bump downwards in Mhz, but with more computational power do to the additional core.

But when AMD went to dual-core and Intel to quad, they only lost a speed grade each, which they were able to make up again in 2-3 months. AMD have lost nearly a full GHz of clockspeed moving from dual-core to quad, and without really gaining enough to justify such a drop.

Haven't checked, but has Intel managed to surpass the P4 clockspeed with its Core 2s yet? In any case, they're also hovering around 3Ghz...

Not at stock speeds, but the new 45nm cores are overclocking to the same levels that Netburst chips O/Ced, apparently without too much difficulty.

[fusion]

God wait until the summer when Intel comes out with the eight cores. They are probably going to be 2000 friggin dollars!!!!! Wahhhh!!!!!

[Durandal]

Face it folks. Intel is on fire, and the Core architecture is probably the best, most scalable architecture they've ever produced. There's not much AMD can do but try and survive until Intel cools off. When your competitor is that much larger than you and has hit this big a home run, there's just no realistic way to beat them until they stumble.

[phongn]

Face it folks. Intel is on fire, and the Core architecture is probably the best, most scalable architecture they've ever produced. There's not much AMD can do but try and survive until Intel cools off. When your competitor is that much larger than you and has hit this big a home run, there's just no realistic way to beat them until they stumble.

Abu Dhabi just pumped in $622m into the company, which will help them survive a little longer, but AMD's total failure of the K9 initiative (rumour mill says it failed twice!) and the purchase of ATI (along with their debt) has put them in a very bad position.

[fusion]

Haven't checked, but has Intel managed to surpass the P4 clockspeed with its Core 2s yet? In any case, they're also hovering around 3Ghz...

Apparently you can get 4.4Gz on the next generation quad core 2!!
link to Legit Reviews The part about over clocking is on the bottom of the page.
So yes you can get speeds faster than P4s.

[Ace Pace]

Haven't checked, but has Intel managed to surpass the P4 clockspeed with its Core 2s yet? In any case, they're also hovering around 3Ghz...

Apparently you can get 4.4Gz on the next generation quad core 2!!
link to Legit Reviews The part about over clocking is on the bottom of the page.
So yes you can get speeds faster than P4s.

P4 routinely reached 5GHZ on dry ice cooling.

[fusion]

Ohh, if you are going to play that way here is something better:
5.5GHz
Core 2.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Face it folks. Intel is on fire, and the Core architecture is probably the best, most scalable architecture they've ever produced. There's not much AMD can do but try and survive until Intel cools off. When your competitor is that much larger than you and has hit this big a home run, there's just no realistic way to beat them until they stumble.

Abu Dhabi just pumped in $622m into the company, which will help them survive a little longer, but AMD's total failure of the K9 initiative (rumour mill says it failed twice!) and the purchase of ATI (along with their debt) has put them in a very bad position.

$622M isn't going to mean much if they continue bleeding 500million every quarter.

And there's the issue of federal approval for the deal?

[Praxis]

Ouch. ATi and AMD are both doing quite similarly; getting stomped by their larger competitors in performance and price and disappointing with new releases.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The funny thing is that AMD is actually still the price / performance king, not with the Phenoms but with the old Athlon X2's. For $130 you can get a 5000+ Black Edition. 2.6 GHz, which corresponds to roughly 2.2 GHz in a Core 2. Even ignoring the unlocked multiplier, Intel simply can't match that for the price, especially when you consider that you can get a good AMD mobo for $70, while an equally good Intel board is $100+. Quad-core is nice to be able to say you have one, but let's be realistic. Dual core has been out a long time, and it's just in the last few months that it's really made any difference in gaming. It will be at least a couple more years before there's a real difference between dual and quad core.

[phongn]

Ouch. ATi and AMD are both doing quite similarly; getting stomped by their larger competitors in performance and price and disappointing with new releases.

ATI's HD 38x0 part is actually price-performance competitive with the 8800GT.

The funny thing is that AMD is actually still the price / performance king, not with the Phenoms but with the old Athlon X2's. For $130 you can get a 5000+ Black Edition. 2.6 GHz, which corresponds to roughly 2.2 GHz in a Core 2. Even ignoring the unlocked multiplier, Intel simply can't match that for the price, especially when you consider that you can get a good AMD mobo for $70, while an equally good Intel board is $100+.

Yeah, but catering to the lower end is no place to be for AMD. Their volume is just not high enough to profit off of that well.

Quad-core is nice to be able to say you have one, but let's be realistic. Dual core has been out a long time, and it's just in the last few months that it's really made any difference in gaming. It will be at least a couple more years before there's a real difference between dual and quad core.

There's a lot more to the computer world than gaming.

[YT300000]

HardOCP,Anandtech.

I'll spare you all reading this. AMD lost on every front. Even ignoring their pathetic PR debacle with made up benchmarks, ignoring the late launch, ignoring repeated underclocking...
Preformance? Lose.
Price? Lose.
Power? Lose.
therfor, cooling? Lose.
Overclocking? LOSE.


There are no words...

So my 4 year-old computer continues to bear just about the last generation of AMD chip that had better performance than the rival Intels (though obviously less reliable). How sad.

[Darth Wong]

Face it folks. Intel is on fire, and the Core architecture is probably the best, most scalable architecture they've ever produced. There's not much AMD can do but try and survive until Intel cools off. When your competitor is that much larger than you and has hit this big a home run, there's just no realistic way to beat them until they stumble.

I can still remember when AMD was strictly considered a manufacturer or second-rate chips for budget computers. They used to make a clone version of the 486. Everyone was simply stunned when their Athlon chips came out and were actually competitive with Intel, and it was huge news when they were the first to hit 1GHz.

Looks like AMD is falling back to their old position. One might argue that instead of Intel getting hot, they're just now recovering from a bad spell. After all, they had a period where nothing seemed to go well for them; they even produced an infamously buggy motherboard chipset at one point, and their fastest chips at the time were basically overclocked in order to stay competitive with AMD. However, in the long run, chip and fab development is expensive shit, and that confers an advantage to the bigger party.

[Durandal]

I can still remember when AMD was strictly considered a manufacturer or second-rate chips for budget computers. They used to make a clone version of the 486. Everyone was simply stunned when their Athlon chips came out and were actually competitive with Intel, and it was huge news when they were the first to hit 1GHz.

Indeed. It looks like they'll be relegated to the Big Iron sector of the market, and that's if they're lucky.

Looks like AMD is falling back to their old position. One might argue that instead of Intel getting hot, they're just now recovering from a bad spell. After all, they had a period where nothing seemed to go well for them; they even produced an infamously buggy motherboard chipset at one point, and their fastest chips at the time were basically overclocked in order to stay competitive with AMD. However, in the long run, chip and fab development is expensive shit, and that confers an advantage to the bigger party.

Even when Intel was on top of the speed wars, they never had an architecture that was so cradle-to-the-grave as Core. Intel has one architecture that annihilates the mobile competition in terms of performance per Watt, outperforms AMD's best offerings on the desktop and still has plenty of room to grow.

What Intel's got right now is basically a perfect storm. They have the clearly superior architecture, gigantic amounts of money to keep that architecture going and the fab resources to pump them out and take advantage of economies of scale. It's kind of a shame that they're doing so well at systematically destroying the competition, because that means no more CPU wars.