Soldato
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Will it require a funeral / wake?
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AMD Bulldozer Finally!
- Thread starter AceTK
- Start date
There are a few differences between the two which I don't think are fair to compare.
First, let's give AMD a point, as it IS a new architecture and difficult to master.
Right then, let's start with something I think just about everyone on here knows. SandyBridge E-Series has been talked about for... 1-2 years? Delayed once? Also, Intel, nor anyone else really, has even bothered to hype the E-Series, people just take it as it comes. I mean, look at these forums for example: AMD Bulldozer thread: 160 pages, Intel SandBridge E series: 1 thread I can see, the bottom of page 2 with... 1 page.
Bulldozer is another story altogether:
It has been massively hyped up since the day it was announced. Almost as if it were a new architecture designed to cure world hunger!
It has been "hyped" for about 5 years now and let's be honest, that's all it's been; hype. The only thing we have seen from AMD is a Dirt 3 demo, which, any idiot knows, isn't how you benchmark a multicore CPU. Even with Phenom 2, they had the decency of showing off video rendering.
It hasn't been delayed "officially", but it HAS been delayed, numerous times. Over the years many official presentation slides and the like have been leaked which haven't been fakes, although many of them were. Bulldozer has had one delay after the other, and I think it's becoming obvious as to the reason why...
Bulldozer was designed to take on Intel i7 1st generation, because it got delayed, they then had to compete with Intel i7 2nd generation, which, ironically, meant they had to alter the chip to make it more competitive thus inducing further delays (higher clocks etc).
EVERYTHING get's delayed, one thing you failed to realise with the Intel delay however, is SandBridge, IvyBridge AND Hasswell all got delayed by around 6 months... this isn't a "problem", it's a market tactic because Intel have no real competition atm and they can afford to spend more time in R&D fine tuning and reducing production costs.
Both NVIDIA and ATI have delayed their graphics products, but this ALWAYS happens and is usually due to manufacturing problems. The difference is, that NVIDIA, ATI and Intel, haven't had one product which has been on the hype train for about 5+ years now, so when they do get delayed no one particularly cares.
AMD has had this chip on the hype train for far too long and they haven't shown anything for it. Let's just hope this chip lives up to even a bit of it's hype and provides real competition for Intel so we as the consumers can all benifit from price reductions and better products from BOTH sides.
Does a delayed release of Sandy-E matter that much to Intel when their existing chips dominate the performance market and return huge margins?
..or does delay matter more to AMD who currently compete within the low-mid range markets, selling their processors for much lower margins (some would argue losses)?
Intel's delays count for very little when they already dominate the market. In a way delay favors them because they get to see the opponents hand before having to play their own. If Bulldozer does compete with or beat Sandy Bridge, you can bet Intel's Sandy-E will be tweaked to raise the bench even higher.
AMD needed Bulldozer 2 years ago. Intel don't need Sandy-E yet.
..or does delay matter more to AMD who currently compete within the low-mid range markets, selling their processors for much lower margins (some would argue losses)?
Intel's delays count for very little when they already dominate the market. In a way delay favors them because they get to see the opponents hand before having to play their own. If Bulldozer does compete with or beat Sandy Bridge, you can bet Intel's Sandy-E will be tweaked to raise the bench even higher.
AMD needed Bulldozer 2 years ago. Intel don't need Sandy-E yet.
Caporegime
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Considering that Interlagos is already shipping and both Zacate and Llano have enabled AMD to take market share from Intel they are doing fine. They have been selling out production runs for most of this year. This is despite so many people on forums saying AMD was doomed because of Zacate and Llano!
The only high performance computer market which is of any real importance to them is probably servers and supercomputers and AFAIK Bulldozer is designed with these workloads in mind.
However,this is a fact that many people on purpose ignore.
In fact they could just abandon the £100+ retail CPU market and I doubt it would really affect them.
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Caporegime
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Do they just give away their CPUs to cray do they?
Cray is not retail,ie, you can't buy it off a shop like OcUK as a retail package. Interlagos is meant for commercial usage.
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Caporegime
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When I meant retail CPUs I meant the type available as retail packages for most people - Interlagos is a commercial CPU which is sold and marketed by a totally different section of AMD. If Interlagos is available from a shop it is as an OEM package,ie, not retail and it does not use standard motherboards too(server motherboards with a different socket to retail CPUs).
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Do they just give away their CPUs to cray do they?
Just trying clear things up.
It was not about selling CPUs that cost more than £100, Its about bothering to packaging and to sell them to us.
To keep it Simple the Opteron single way was the same chip as the high end Athlon.
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Caporegime
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Inerlagos volume is very much less than Zambezi.
Caporegime
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The main thing to point out is, AMD speak less publically about their stuff than any other company, all the hype is from "us" not from AMD, Intel has just publically demo'd Haswell(unknown clocks, etc, etc) and thats not due for 2 years. Did AMD show Bulldozer almost 2 years ago, did AMD release public info Bulldozer around a year ago, because thats what Intel have done with Ivy .
As for the delays, Sandy-e has been pushed back several times, as has Ivy, and no Sandy-e and Ivy, and Haswell are certainly not being pushed back just because there is no competition, Haswell is being pushed for the moment purely because the process is 6 months late and so is Ivy, so the next product gets delayed, thats natural. Sandy-e, almost everything that makes it "better" than Sandy-non e, more sata, native usb3, pci-e 3, none of it works , Sandy-e without all the extras could literally have launched in Jan as a hex core Sandybridge. Ivy is being delayed likely by a mix of process and getting some of that stuff wrong, as they need to have the usb3, sata, pci-e 3 all working on Ivy aswell.
AMD are having similar issues, though its hard to know the cause for Intel, process or a bad interconnect, rumour is the later. AMD thought they had the chip licked for Q2, yet have seemingly needed 2 respins since then, with known process issues these are likely down to trying to increase yield and fix anything the process is causing problems with.
The only reason Sandy-e is being less "hyped" on forums is quite simple, more people care about chips that will end up priced £50-200, then Sandy -e which is likely to be priced from same speed quads at £250- with a lot more expensive platform, up to actually faster hexcores that are also £600+, or horrible value and no where near the 4 times faster than a 2500k its being priced at.
People aren't interested in Ivy because its a tick, 10% faster CPU, of which almost half comes from a tiny clock speed bump.
AMD are looking to go from uncompetitive on anything but price, to trying to beat Intel, and if they get close to Sandy, they'll be on Intel's tail till Haswell, its a far more exciting product.
Ferrari release another ferrari, or Skoda make a sports car that costs less and is faster, every single time the later would get more hype.
But my main point was just to highlight that Intel, Nvidia and just about every semiconductor maker in the industry is having delays, because thats how the industry goes, so making claims like "one more delay and I'll never buy AMD again" is ridiculous, if he refuses to buy AMD due to delays and no other reason, he'd also be forced to never buy another computer, or gpu, or phone, or etc, etc.
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Sure, I think the reason people on here are behaving like this with Bulldozer, is because official or not, it seems every month someone says "It should be coming out next month"... next month comes... "It should be coming out next month" lol It's been like that since this thread has started.
Of course most of this is speculation so it's their own fault. I think it's mostly due to the fact that "AMD People" haven't had a CPU update in a while, so a LOT of people are awaiting Bulldozer.
As for what you said prior to the bit I quoted about Intel demoing Haswell, I wasn't aware of that, but to be fair, I much prefer Intel's method of business. They keep the customer informed, they aren't scared to show information on their CPUs and they are often a success.
This may be my personal opinion, but for the most part, I honestly believe AMD mostly live off of hype in the retail market. I remember the same thing with Phenom "Surely, a 6 core CPU will be able to compete with Intel’s 4 core CPU"... and yes it did, but only in the value department. Even though it had 2 more cores, the Intel CPU was able to outpace the Phenom in almost every department.
What I am trying to say, is that half the reason AMD keep a lid on things is because they know if they showed off benchmarks people would be disappointed. BUT, when they actually release the product to retail, they have a point to make; "Ours is only 10% slower, but cost half the price". I'm not saying Bulldozer will be slower than Sandy, although it could be, I am saying I seriously doubt it is that much faster otherwise AMD would have given the hype train some substantial information.
The very fact Intel have made the choice to delay their entire CPU line-up as far as they have makes me think they already know what AMD has in store and they aren't worried.
Again though, as for you saying about Intel demoing Haswell, sure, it's 2 years away, are they trying to start hype? Who knows. But, Intel never talk about what's coming out in 5-6 years’ time which is precisely what AMD did with Bulldozer, that's half the reason people are so bored of waiting. AMD seem to love living off of words, "Bulldozer" has been the CPU buzz word for the past 5 years since AMD announced it, and it's the same thing when they announced "Fusion", everyone was talking about it and getting all hyped "What could be Fusion!?", it turned out to be a fancy buzz word for APU. I just wish AMD would release something that knocks the socks off of Intel so we get the better deal as the customer no matter which manufature we choose to purchase from (competition), but I honestly think it's going to be a Phenom repeat. The only hope is that Bulldozer IS a new architecture.
You mean the same way we pay the USD>GBP conversion + VAT on AMD graphics cards, and not this mysterious phantom "UK Premium" often talked about but not seen?
I really don't get why people say this so much while completely ignoring how it doesn't happen the way they claim.
HIS 6970 at OcUK £270 including VAT (£224 excluding VAT)
HIS 6970 at Newegg at current exchange rate £280 including VAT (£234 excluding VAT)
AMD Phenom 2 1100T at OcUK £149 including VAT
AMD Phenom 2 1100T at Newegg £148 including VAT
Back in June 2008 when the 4800s came out, their retail price was set by AMD at $199, guess what I paid for both of mine? Yeah, the current exchange rate price plus VAT from OcUK, £119 each including VAT.
In the case of the HIS 6970, we're paying less sans VAT than they're paying. Let's stop pretending it happens with everything, this arsetalkery is getting old now.
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You have to remember AMD is a much smaller company then Intel,it takes them more time and effort with R&D etc..Intel as the big dog can pretty much do what they want as top dog and for good reason.
BD hype is mainly by people and not AMD IMHO,delays are nothing new by any company so lets be honest here,you can't really expect too much from AMD with their BD,its a new design over the old K series and has more then its fair share of issues and delays,the big question is how much will BD improve with next gen ie MK2 version,only time will tell.
When you look at how big Intel are I'm amazed sometimes AMD is still in there fighting.I bet you if AMD was as big as Intel you would have seen BD out years ago.
Having said all that I'm pretty sure we'll see BD next month.
I think you should give AMD some credit,only competition Intel still has after so many decades.
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Lmao thanks for making my point
. I know it is looking very likely to be next month with all the shops taking pre-orders accross the US etc but still, it just made me laugh that last bit Lmao thanks for making my point
Believe it or not some people expect it out now
...what's a month after all those years 
...I still put odds on BD out before Star Wars :The Old Republic
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Believe or not some people expect it out now
Indeed, I think there are many gamers out there wanting these bad boys for Battlefield 3, wish them all the luck that AMD deliver!