Author Topic: I had to make sure it was actually tom's hardware... (Read 372 times)

AKDejaVu · « **on:** July 08, 2002, 03:34:04 PM »

An article on Tom's slamming the hardcore AMD fanboy?

http://www17.tomshardware.com/smoke/02q3/020704/index.html

Animal · « **Reply #1 on:** July 08, 2002, 04:34:30 PM »

All fanboys are idiots.
No articles have to be made about that.

Maybe Tom is trying to get rid of his fanboy status by slamming them.
I never trust Tom's articles for my hardware purchases and I never will until Tom has nothing to do with the site.

funkedup · « **Reply #2 on:** July 08, 2002, 04:42:08 PM »

Geez who cares. The only Intel CPU faster than my AMD costs like $500 more and requires ridiculously expensive memory. Why all this talk?

bloom25 · « **Reply #3 on:** July 08, 2002, 06:42:43 PM »

I read that, but for some reason it just sounded kind of like a rant that went no where to me... as does most of what that author writes.

Isn't it funny how Tom's Hardware generally seems biased to who gets the most banner ads on their site.

I've basically stopped taking their reviews seriously, their benchmarks are ok, but the conclusions in their reviews are generally off IMO.

Anandtech is much better.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #4 on:** July 08, 2002, 06:58:49 PM »

I actually thought the digs on AMD's buisness practices were pretty funny.

I still can't figure out how a company that is selling more processors now than it ever has before is operating at such a loss. The have put proving a point over turning a proffit a bit too long.

They make an excellent processor now. Unfortunately, they try to sell it as if its an economy processor... when the process used to make it is by no means an economical process. The more they sell... the more they loose.

AKDejaVu

bloom25 · « **Reply #5 on:** July 08, 2002, 11:39:09 PM »

I think the fact they aren't turning a profit is actually largely due to the failure of their other key lines, namely flash memory. That market has really gone down recently.

AMD also lacks a serious commitment to the chipset market. Intel makes a LOT of money here, as most people who buy an Intel processor also get an Intel chipset MB. AMD mainly relies on 3rd parties for all but it's dual CPU chipsets right now. HP/Compaq uses nForce based boards the last I saw for much of their AMD line. Via and Sis also have significant market share. Via is the #2 chipset manufacturer, which is almost entirely due to their Socket A chipsets. (P4X266 and P4X266a can't account for any significant number of P4 supporting boards.)

Lastly, even though the Athlon XP die size is much smaller than the P4; AMD doesn't use 300 mm wafers and their yields are probably significantly lower on .13u than Intel. On .18u they've obviously done a good job of taking the K7 core as far as it will go, but that also probably means a lot of Athlon XPs probably don't run at all or aren't fast enough at safe core voltage levels. The fact AMD is moving to .13u partially depleted channel SOI is not going to help them in manufacturing costs either, unless the Hammer can scale to clockspeeds far beyond P4. AMD just can't afford to be in a price war with Hammer vs P4. Hammer suffers from the large die size, 200mm SOI wafers, and probably the most expensive PC processor packaging ever (900+ pins

). AMD really needs Hammer to be a hit in the workstation/mid-range server market competing with Xeons, rather than immediately going after the mainstream PC market. For that reason I expect them to go ahead and launch Barton (Athlon XP w 512kb L2 cache and possibly higher FSB) to compete with the P4.

I honestly think that had Intel designed the K7 core and produced it, rather than AMD, it would yield more money to Intel than Willamette or Northwood have. Intel's production facilities are just that much better than what AMD has available to them, enabling very low production costs and certainly higher clockspeeds.

Tumor · « **Reply #6 on:** July 09, 2002, 12:27:40 AM »

I've been following Tom's Hardware for years. It's very true he's been an AMD fanboy for a very long time, however... he puts everything on the line, show's you what he's using, does good tests/comparisons and then adds a very good conclusion that almost always has good things to say about "the winner". Those guys sway with who's doing best. It's not about being an AMD or Intel fanboy, it's about being a performance fanboy.

I'm the same, for a number of years I was a HUGE AMD fan. They gave me a affordable and easily comparable computer for much less the price of Intel. However, the K6-II's (and Via chipsets) began a long road of problems, not exactly major problems.. irritating problems that just kept cropping up. I switched to Intel and will stay there until I'm confident AMD has it together. I think they do, but at this point it's just too early, especially with all the new stuff comming out. I've got my fingers crossed that in the next year and a half or so AMD will "do it for me". For now, I'll buy a couple versions back of Intel and be happy.... At current speeds it's just not that big a deal.

sparkzz · « **Reply #7 on:** July 09, 2002, 02:42:12 AM »

ROFL.. If thats not the pot calling the kettle black.

I've never trusted Toms because of his underlying bias towards certain hardware makers (Intel - 3Dfx). He doesnt inflate the performance values of his favorites, but he definitely seems to deflate the value of hardware from companies he doesnt like. Personally I get my news from HardOCP and AnandTech. Neither have ever led me astray (at least not without a posted retraction).

And for the record I am an Intel potato:D The AMD chips are very good, and in many, many ways better than Intel. But VIA can kiss my...... If only Intel would make chipsets for AMD ( will never see that again I bet) My final Athlon straw was soc. A 900, KT133:mad: , Kenwood CD, and Geforce 2 system. All great hardware at the time.. and all incompatible with the KT133 at the time. Ofcourse none of those issues surfaced on the net until a month after I bought the stuff:rolleyes:

Btw Bloom.. Serial ATA --> Q4 2002
Promo specs of sustained 148mb/s transfer rates at the trade shows.. With claims of ramping it up to 300, 600 mb/s in the near future.

AKDejaVu · « **Reply #8 on:** July 09, 2002, 07:41:04 AM »

Quote

Originally posted by bloom25
I think the fact they aren't turning a profit is actually largely due to the failure of their other key lines, namely flash memory. That market has really gone down recently.

You are partially correct Bloom. The downturn in the flash market has hurt them... but they've also sold 5 times as many processors as they've ever sold before... they just don't sell them at a proffit. To my knowledge... they never have.

Read quarterly reports from the last two years bloom... All of them cite increased sales in the Athlon and Flash memory sales as the reason AMD finally turned a proffit. I'll still maintain that even the stock analysts were wrong on that count and only giving things a cursory glance. The Processor generated revenue, but the generated even more expense.

Quote

AMD also lacks a serious commitment to the chipset market. Intel makes a LOT of money here, as most people who buy an Intel processor also get an Intel chipset MB. AMD mainly relies on 3rd parties for all but it's dual CPU chipsets right now. HP/Compaq uses nForce based boards the last I saw for much of their AMD line. Via and Sis also have significant market share. Via is the #2 chipset manufacturer, which is almost entirely due to their Socket A chipsets. (P4X266 and P4X266a can't account for any significant number of P4 supporting boards.)

Sorry, but I'd have to disagree with you here. I'd venture to say the money made on the chipset market isn't really all that much. I do believe that Intel would rather be here just so they could have a better level of control of the environment the processors are running in.

Maybe if you'd said licensing you would have had a point. USB2 and such;) But ya didn't... so neener neener neener.

Quote

Lastly, even though the Athlon XP die size is much smaller than the P4; AMD doesn't use 300 mm wafers and their yields are probably significantly lower on .13u than Intel. On .18u they've obviously done a good job of taking the K7 core as far as it will go, but that also probably means a lot of Athlon XPs probably don't run at all or aren't fast enough at safe core voltage levels. The fact AMD is moving to .13u partially depleted channel SOI is not going to help them in manufacturing costs either, unless the Hammer can scale to clockspeeds far beyond P4. AMD just can't afford to be in a price war with Hammer vs P4. Hammer suffers from the large die size, 200mm SOI wafers, and probably the most expensive PC processor packaging ever (900+ pins ). AMD really needs Hammer to be a hit in the workstation/mid-range server market competing with Xeons, rather than immediately going after the mainstream PC market. For that reason I expect them to go ahead and launch Barton (Athlon XP w 512kb L2 cache and possibly higher FSB) to compete with the P4.

You're right.. to an extent... though I believe you greatly over-estimate just how much of the P4s are made on 300mm wafers. I'd venture to say its less than 20%... though that will most likely change by the end of the year.

What you are somewhat missing is that AMD is AMD has always been willing to sell processors at a loss... and will continue to do so so that people can say "well its better performance for the buck" in spite of their bottom line.

I'm also gonna go out on a bit of a ledge here and say that the creative book-keeping accusations that are running around are going to find their way to our part of the world. Not sure how Intel will fare there... but I'm pretty sure AMD will fare exponentially worse.

Quote

I honestly think that had Intel designed the K7 core and produced it, rather than AMD, it would yield more money to Intel than Willamette or Northwood have. Intel's production facilities are just that much better than what AMD has available to them, enabling very low production costs and certainly higher clockspeeds.

I dunno if we'd have gotten higher clockspeeds out of it. They've been reversed engineered and scaling/dimmensions wasn't the reason it wasn't going faster. AMD has been well past .13um technology on the front-half of the processor for some time (as have we).

The Athlon is simply a better procesor than the P-3 ever was. It simply wasn't scalable. It wouldn't have been for us... and it isn't for AMD.

Of course... our yield definately would have been better;)

AKDejaVu